BlueHost Review [2022]: After 12 years, Is It Still Worth The Money? No and Here is why.

Last Updated on January 10, 2022 by Obaro Alidou K.

BlueHost is one of the most popular and oldest web hosting companies in the world. It was the first I used and was also the best web hosting ever made because of its amazing speed, good uptime, and well-mannered support. But, that was a long time ago and today, after 10 years, the question is…

Is BlueHost Still Worth Your Money in 2020?

Hum, no and here is why.

As you might already know, BlueHost was bought by EIG (Endurance International Group) in November 2010 or earlier that year. Since then, their whole infrastructure has gone down many times.

Reason being, their datacenters have been moved to the EIG network in Provo. As a result, service has become bad leading to many complaints from customers.

BlueHost has become damn bad that even new web hosting providers beat them. No matter where you go, they have a bad reputation today. From Trustpilot and HostAdvice to the smallest hosting review sites, BlueHost gets bad marks. They are even rated 1/10 by customers on Trustpilot.

Ever heard of pissedconsumer.com? It is a big website that caters the world most disappointing companies rated by consumers. And, guess what, BlueHost is one of the top bad companies.

Back to our review, here are the top…

#10+ Reasons Why BlueHost Is Not Worth the Penny

I’m going to share with you 14 unacceptable facts about BlueHost that most bloggers don’t talk about. Let’s go!

#1. Datacenters

BlueHost doesn’t have its own datacenters like 12 years ago. Customers’ accounts have been moved to the EIG infrastructure which is bad news. Why? Because they are sharing the same datacenters with the whole EIG owned companies made of 80+ hosting providers.

#2. Load time

One of the main reasons I liked BlueHost over a decade ago is speed. Yes, I have to admit they had great speed always ranging from 500 ms to 850 ms. But, that is long away. The current load time from BlueHost is behind the industry average (890). In fact, BlueHost server speed is around 1500 ms to 3000 ms these days.

Similar hosts with faster load time: A2 Hosting (350 ms), TMDHosting (550 ms), FastComet (620 ms)

#3. Uptime

When the same datacenters are managed by many web hosts, they are more likely to be overloaded. And, when a server is overloaded, it most of the time cashes and then casing downtimes.

In the past, BlueHost could deliver 100% uptime for 8 whole months.

Unfortunately, that is not the case today. For 3 months, your site might go down more than normal times (7 times in my experience).

Ok; I have seen web hosts which go down 10x than that but, it was for a few seconds each time. Instead, BlueHost’s downtimes last over 20 minutes each.

The result: A poor 99.81% uptime.

#4. Support

BlueHost had well-mannered support I said from the beginning of this review. But, what about today?

Just see what consumers are saying on screenshots below.

In a single word, I would say BlueHost support is “inexistent”. Sure, there is a live chat and someone to answer if you are lucky, but, you won’t get any help in most cases. The support has become rude and unprofessional.

#5. Non-justified Pricing

BlueHost renews its plans at $7.99/month for Basic, $10.99/month (Pus plan), and $14.99/month for the Prime plan. Honestly, I don’t see why I would pay such prices for poor service in exchange.

Normally, you get what you pay for (in most cases). But, with BlueHost, you pay high for nothing. Here is what I mean…

When you purchase a pricier plan, you most of the time get more resources and better performance. As most hosting companies now use cloud OS, you get more ram, CPU and useful extra when you buy the top tier plans.

A good example is from A2 Hosting.

With the DRIVE plan, you have 2x resource which means better performance. With the TURBO plans, you get 4x more resources, LiteSpeed hosting, and advanced caching with Turbo servers up to 20x faster.

The same thing applies to the cheaper hosting which is FastComet.

As you can see from the screenshot, they provide 2 Cores and 2GB of RAM for the lowest plan, 4 Cores and 3GB of RAM on the middle plan, and 6 Cores and 6GB of RAM for the highest plan.

You also get a big speed boost with RocketBooster on the highest plan. See screenshot below.

In addition, FastComet provides 5 special layers of caching to make your site load super-fast when you buy the highest plan.

What about BlueHost?

With BlueHost, regardless of the plan you purchase, you get access to the same performance. The only difference between the plans is the number of hosted websites. Apart from that, you are paying for nearly nothing important.

The high tier pan which cost $14.99/month is just a waste of money. You already have everything included in the middle-level plan.

I can’t really explain why BlueHost is doing so. Even the new player in the web hosting industry like FastComet has well-structured plans and provides far better value.

To better understand what I’m talking about, let’s move on…

BlueHost Resource limitations

In this section, I’m going to discuss the most basic but important web hosting metrics where BlueHost fails and that I never heard someone mentioning on the internet.

#6. Entry process limit

What a pity…

BlueHost has a 15 entry process limit on shared hosting. It is ok if you just want to start a blog. The problem, though, is that you are bound to the same pitiful limit no matter your hosting plan. So, even if you buy the high tier plan (Prime) you won’t get any larger limit.

What does it mean?

Say you are on the Basic plan and you notice that your traffic grows and your blog becomes a bit slower. Then you decide to upgrade to the Plus or Prime plan expecting better performance to handle your growing audience.

Excuse me but, you will still be bound to the same low entry process limit and won’t get any performance boost. You are just wasting your money. What a shame…

Bottom line: BlueHost has one of the lowest entry process limits on the market despite the high renewal costs. And even on the priciest plan, you still get the same deplorable limitation. Again, a waste of money. Yeah; sad truth.

Similar hosts with the best Entry process limits: A2 Hosting : 35-100, FastComet : 20-40

#7. Files limitation

By files limitation, I mean inodes limit. Inode is used by web hosting providers to limit the amount of file a customer can upload to a hosting account. I explained how inodes affect your website especially when it is a blog here.

Awkwardly, BlueHost is far away from being one of the best web hosting for files limit. They only allow 50,000 inodes per shared hosting account and, again, no matter the plan you purchase.

Ok; this is not a hard limit though. When you outgrow, you are allowed up to 200,000 inodes. I agree that this is enough for starting a blog or for a small website. But for a big blog (with a good number of articles) or even a medium-sized one with much long-form content containing beautiful images or eCommerce website, it might be tiny.

Again, even if you pay for the highest plan, you will still get the same file limit. So, what are you paying for?! After all…

The answer: Nothing. Again, you are just wasting your money.

When you know that hosts like FastComet provide 250,000-500,000 inodes and that A2 Hosting allows 600,000 inodes for the same price point (FastComet is even 3x cheaper), BlueHost is just not serious/worth the money.

FastComet Full Details                        Visit A2 Hosting 51% Off 

#8. High Domain Privacy cost

BlueHost claims to offer a free domain name on annual purchase “cough”. It’s great! Right? NO. There is a privacy protection fee of $0.99/month. So, even if you get a domain name for free, you need to pay $11.88 for privacy.

I know that many other companies have the same practice, but BlueHost has one of the highest privacy costs I have seen from a company that claims to provide cheap web hosting. It only costs $2.95/year from FastComet.

The worst is on the way with…

#9. Domain name renewing at $30.87

What you don’t know is the actual domain name renewal cost. During the buying process, BlueHost shows you that your domain name will renew at $11 which is not true.

When you see the message, you naturally think your domain will renew at $11 but, guess what; the actual domain cost is $15.99. And, it is not that simple. The privacy protection which was $11.88 renews at $14.88!

In sum, your domain name renews at $15.99+$14.88= $30.87.

I can hear you saying WHATTTT…..! and, yes, it deserves a yell.

>>>Cheap Hosting With Free Domain Transfer Here 70% Off!<<<

#10. Site transfer cost

Migrating your blog from a web host to another is one of the most dangerous processes a blogger or website owner faces. You could lose your files, databases or even break your entire website and SEO. That is why most serious companies that claim to be serious now provide free website migration to make the switch easier.

Instead of doing so, BlueHost charges more than your hosting cost to transfer your blog to their servers. Thus, if you already own a website and would like to switch to BlueHost, you are asked to pay $149 if you want them to migrate your blog to your new hosting account. Burhh…! Never do that.

$149 for website migration?! That is more than 3 years of hosting fee from FastComet. Plus, they provide free same-day website migration with no downtime from experts and best of all, it nearly 3x cheaper than BlueHost with fixed pricing.

Check FastComet

#11. Malware removal cost

In case your blog gets hacked, BlueHost won’t clean it for free. You will be bound to spend up to $400 to hire an expert to fix your site depending on how deep it is infected.

Yet, many cheap web hosts will clean your site if it gets hacked or infected for free including A2 Hosting and even FastComet. Once again, Bluehost is deceiving.

#12. Lack of WordPress features

BlueHost claims to be WordPress focused and they don’t even supply users with the most basic WordPress specific features like Git, CGI, or WP-CLI. Also, they don’t have any custom caching to make WordPress run faster than on a normal server.

Furthermore, if you want staging feature, I beg you, pass your way.

So, for WordPress specific hosting, you better look elsewhere. There are many other web hosting with killing WP features like A2 Hosting, and FastComet….

They provide features like WP-CLI, Git, and more. A2 Hosting even provides staging and furthermore has its custom super caching plugin called A2 Optimized to make your WordPress site load faster than ever.

These were the #12 reasons why BlueHost is not worth your money.

Now, what is next?

As BlueHost was one of the best web hosting sites and then has become one of the worst, you absolutely want the best alternatives.

#5 Best Bluehost Alternatives

Web Hosts	Av Load time	Uptime	support	security	Price	Details
FastComet	620 ms	99.99%	10	10	$2.95/mo	Learn More
A2 Hosting	350 ms	99.97%	9	10	$3.92/mo	Learn More
Kinsta	298 ms	100%	10	10	$25	Learn More
ChemiCloud	716 ms	99.97	10	9	$2.95	Learn More
Hostwinds	701ms	99.98%	8	9	$3.39	Learn More

FastComet  A2 Hosting Kinsta

Hope this helps you avoid headaches in the future.

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Cheers!

Obaro