Bluehost Pricing Plan

Do you want to find out about Bluehost’s recent pricing plan for web hosting? Here is a quick and detailed factsheet about the Bluehost web hosting pricing plan. At the time of this writing, Bluehost offers three pricing plans – the BASIC plan, PLUS plan, and CHOICE PLUS plan – as shown below.

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Should you wish to host a larger website, you can opt-in for the “Pro” plan, which normally costs $29.99 but has a discounted price of $13.95.

All plans appear cheap at first glance but note that they don’t go that cheap after the first month. The basic price appears $2.95/month, but that just for the first month as this plan subsequently costs $7.99 per month, which is still quite reasonable.

All pricing plans come with unmetered bandwidth and free SSL certificate. You can also enjoy up to $200 in marketing offer bonuses. Bluehost also has an enhanced cPanel, which makes it easy for users to configure and control their websites. 

The basic plan features 1 domain, 5 parked domains, and 25 subdomains while the Plus, Choice Plus, and Pro feature unlimited domains, parked domains, subdomains, Spam experts, etc. 

Bluehost Hosting Plans

Bluehost provides a number of hosting plans, which are:

∎     Shared hosting

∎     VPS hosting

∎     Dedicated hosting

∎     WordPress hosting

∎ Cloud Sites

∎     WordPress Pro

∎     WooCommerce hosting

Shared hosting is the more basic and cheaper option. It is suitable for most beginners and small business owners. This plan is extensively used by customers from all around the world. Just as its name depicts, it’s a type of hosting plan where multiple users set up their sites on the same server and share the same server resources, such as Disk Space, Bandwidth, RAM, CPU, etc. 

With Bluehost’s shared hosting plan, you’ll enjoy the following benefits: 

∎ Highly Scalable

∎ Free SSL Certificate

∎ Reliable Resource Protection

∎ SiteLock and Spam Protection

∎ Knowledgeable and Friendly Support

The most expensive option is the Dedicated hosting plan and is best suited to large commercial firms that require complete control over their resources. With the dedicated hosting option, you are basically renting a physical server. 

WordPress hosting is the hosting plan optimized for WordPress users, and VPS hosting is a mid-way option where customers can share a physical server with others. Let’s take a look at the price level for each plan.

Does Bluehost Offers Free Trial for Their Web Hosting Plans?

Based on our current findings, Bluehost no longer offers a free trial period for their web hosting plans (Shared, WordPress, WP Pro, VPS, Ecommerce, or Dedicated Hosting), although it used to provide a free trial web hosting plan for its customers in the past and may reconsider free trial period in the future.

Aside from the fact that free trial is no longer included on Bluehost’s website, we asked a member of Bluehost’s customer support team to re-confirmed this. However, you can always visit Bluehost’s official website to check for any special offer.

The fact that Bluehost no longer offers a free trial period doesn’t mean Bluehost no longer offers attractive pricing plans for customers. In place of the free trial period, Bluehost now offers attractive promotional pricing for the first month, after which customers are charged the regular rate upon renewal. 

Bluehost also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. This, however, doesn’t extend to domain names.

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Is Bluehost hosting worth the trouble without a Free Trial Plan?

Are you able to get a Bluehost Free Trial web hosting offer? We can’t say for now, and the answer to this question completely relies on the management team of Bluehost. However, Bluehost’s promotional pricing and 30-day money-back guarantee is a perfect and better replacement for the free trial offer.

For instance, with the 30-day money-back guarantee, you still have an option to cancel your hosting plan if, for whatever reason, you aren’t completely satisfied with the services offered by Bluehost services.

Pros of Using Bluehost for Hosting

∎     99.99% Uptime All Through the Year

Bluehost is one of the hosting companies with the best uptime. Server uptime is an important consideration when choosing a web hosting company. Should your site go down, nobody will be able to access or use it. So, everyone wants a consistent good uptime, which should be one of your top priorities, too, as a site owner.

Although our benchmark for a good uptime is 99.93%, Bluehost easily surpasses this benchmark. Bluehost has an average server uptime of 99.99%, which is the standard for most industries. Bluehost has been keeping our website live for the past two years, with an average uptime of 99.99%. Let’s examine the monthly breakdown of the past 12 months:

∎ February 2019 average uptime: 100%

∎ March 2019 average uptime: 99.99%

∎ April 2019 average uptime: 100%

∎ May 2019 average uptime: 100%

∎ June 2019 average uptime: 99.98%

∎ July 2019 average uptime: 100%

∎ August 2019 average uptime: 99.99%

∎ September 2019 average uptime: 99.99%

∎ October 2019 average uptime: 99.96%

∎ November 2019 average uptime: 100%

∎ December 2019 average uptime: 100%

∎ January 2020 average uptime: 100% 

From our uptime breakdown above, it can be concluded that Bluehost is one of the best and most reliable web hosting providers

∎     High Website Loading Speed – 405ms

It’s no longer news that website loading speed is one of Google ranking factors. However, it’s a pity that most mobile sites are way too slow, according to a report released from Google last year.

Google’s mobile-first index can either hide or promote your website in the SERPs based on its loading speeds. Recent studies also showed that slow sites almost always translate into lower sales. The site’s speed can be slowed down for two main reasons, and one of them is your hosting service loading time.

Hence, after server uptime, hosting page loading time is the next most important thing to consider to make your site a success.

Based on our continuous observation and reviews on Bluehost’s performance for the past two years, it has been found that Bluehost has an average page loading speed of 405ms, which places the hosting company as the 5th fastest hosting provider.

∎     Low Starting Pricing of $2.95 Per Month

Although Bluehost doesn’t offer free trial anymore, it’s starting price is very friendly and affordable – $2.95 per month covering the first term. That’s a very good deal considering they’ve supposedly reduced it from the original price of $7.99 per month.

For this low price, users will get everything needed for a single website, which includes 50GB SSD storage along with unmetered bandwidth, a free SSL certificate, etc. That means you would be getting a pretty good value for the price, in addition to their consistent uptime and high page-loading speeds.

This is undoubtedly the best lowest hosting price we’ve seen on the market, considering the many benefits attached to this plan. This makes Bluehost a great deal for you if you’re looking for a new and affordable hosting company in the market for now.

∎     Good Security Options

Despite being one of the cheapest hosting company on the market, Bluehost doesn’t cut corners or compromise on critical features like security. Bluehost offers lots of good security options by default, which include the free SSL certificate for all pricing plans.

More so, all pricing plans come with a domain privacy feature that will see to keeping the personal information you used while signing up for a private domain. This good security features will prevent hackers from finding and using your personal information details to design phishing schemes to trick you or others into handing over other sensitive information.

Bluehost also includes several forms of protection for added security. SiteLock is one of them. SiteLock helps to prevent malware attacks, which are very common on WordPress sites. CodeGuard is another added form of protection. CodeGuard provides daily backups so you can roll back to previous versions of your site should in case it gets hacked.

Postini, from Google, is another security tool for added protection. Postini provides spam protection for your email to prevent anything suspicious from getting into your inbox. Altogether, these are a trustworthy security package to keep your site safe and sound always.

∎     Several Apps, Integrations, and eCommerce Features

Aside from the top security features, Bluehost also allows access to several different apps and integrations. This enables you to use the most popular services on the Internet.

For instance, Bluehost has an effective domain manager if you would like to purchase multiple websites and manage them through Bluehost. This domain manager also offers a daily, weekly, or monthly backup just in case.

Bluehost also offers a single-click WordPress installation. You can also install other well-known content management systems (CMS) like Joomla, Drupal, etc. or run an e-commerce shop on Bluehost.

Finally, Bluehost offers access to a Content Delivery Network (CDN), which hosts your images and large files, taking that work off your hosting servers. The CDN helps to deliver these files faster to users around the world and keep your website quick at the same time.

∎     Easy to Use for Beginners

Most great web hosting companies are best only for advanced users. For instance, LiquidWeb offers great services to users who know what they are doing. However, LiquidWeb lacks a user-friendly interface, which makes it non-ideal for non-technical people. So if you’re a beginner, chances are that you would have a tough time using LiquidWeb.

However, Bluehost is not like that. Bluehost has a perfect layout for its control panel (cPanel), which makes the plan easy to use. Most times, all a user has to do is to point and click. Beginners can easily install and start-up WordPress on Bluehost. For instance, users can use the Bluehost website builder tools, which include Drupal and Weebly, to create a template that they can easily customize by using the drag-and-drop features.

30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

Before now, Bluehost offers a free trial period, which enables new customers to use the Bluehost host plan freely for about a month before paying the regular rate for the following month if they want to continue using Bluehost services.

Currently, Bluehost offers a 30-Day money-back plan to new customers in place of the free trial period. This means any new customer can demand his or her money back if he or she is satisfied with services provided by Bluehost for up to 30 days.

You can try out their service to personally evaluate their performance. If you’re completely satisfied, you can go on using the service, but if you aren’t completely satisfied, you can ask for a refund. However, there are some clauses associated with the 30-Day money back plan. For instance,

∎ A user can only get money back on the web hosting cost and not on other products like domains or add-ons

∎ If a user received a free domain in his or her plan, a $15.99 fee would be deducted

∎ Any refund request after 30 days will not be honored

So, ensure that you’re OK with those clauses above before signing up for the 30-Day money back plan on Bluehost.

∎     Great Customer Support

Finally, Bluehost offers an excellent customer support service, which includes phone support, email ticket support, live chat, and a knowledge base. Our research showed that the live chat from Bluehost connected within two minutes. Though there were slight delays between each reply, the overall chat was OK, and direct answers to each question were offered. 

Bluehost customer service gives you a painless experience.

Before we dive into the drawbacks of Bluehost, it’s worth knowing that Bluehost is the recommended and official WordPress.org hosting company. Currently, WordPress is the most used website platform, and it only officially recommends three hosting companies, which are:

∎ Bluehost

∎ Dreamhost

∎ SiteGround

This doesn’t mean you can’t build your WordPress site on any other web hosting company, but the fact that Bluehost is among the few recommended ones is encouraging.

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Cons of Using Bluehost for Hosting

Despite the many advantages of Bluehost, the hosting company still has a few drawbacks, which are:

∎     Higher Renewal Rates 

Bluehost offers highly discounted prices (less than $3 for the Basic plan) per month but only for the first term. Regular rates apply upon renewal, and renewal rates are higher (about $8 for the Basic plan). The best manner in which to get the lowest possible web hosting rate on Bluehost is to pay for one, two, or even three years upfront on the first term.

Prepaying for a longer period will help you to lock in that discounted price for a longer time. However, after your introductory period expires, you will begin to pay the higher renewal rates. These range between $7.99 to $8.99 per month on the most basic plans.

Note that this is a common practice among most web hosting companies and is not peculiar to Bluehost alone.

∎     Site Migrations Are Not Free

While most other web hosting companies allow you to move your existing website from your previous hosting site over to their service for free, Bluehost does the same migration for a fee.

Bluehost charges a one-time fee of $149.99 for the migration of up to five sites, 20 email accounts, and any other database files for these sites. Bluehost claims that their site migration process is quick and seamless, without any experience of delays or downtime. However, the fact that you’re paying for it makes it a drawback.

Bluehost Quick Facts

∎ Bluehost offers a free domain, but only for the 1st year; domain renewal costs $15.99.

∎ Bluehost offers a very easy two-page sign-up process.

∎ Payment methods allowed by Bluehost include PayPal and all major credit cards.

∎ In terms of hidden fees and clauses, Bluehost is transparent enough with its pricing, and there are no hidden fees. Both the regular and discounted fees are clearly indicated on their website, which reflects that renewal rates for both domains and hosting will increase. More so, the 30-Day money back plan doesn’t cover payment on domain names. 

∎ Expect to see some upsells in Bluehost. This is a common occurrence in the web hosting industry, and it happens a lot in other well-known hosting companies.

∎ Your account will get activated instantly on Bluehost. However, if the details you provided are inaccurate or there is suspicion of fraud, your account activation may be delayed.

∎ Bluehost has a very simple and easy-to-use control panel (cPanel).

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Conclusion

As stated above, Bluehost doesn’t offer a free trial period anymore. Instead, Bluehost offers a 30-Day money-back plan. Either way, you would enjoy the best value for your money with Bluehost hosting. I hope you found our detailed information and analysis on Bluehost free trial useful. Should you have any further questions regarding Bluehost’s pricing plans, 30-Day money back plan, or free trial period, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.