Bluehost: Best Reliability ($3.95/Mo)

Blue host overview

Bluehost is currently responsible for hosting more than 2 million websites all over the world and is one of the most popular and least expensive shared hosting services available.

Founded in 1996 by Matt Heaton and Danny Ashworth in Provo, Utah, they have a staff of 750 employees working around the clock to ensure the highest quality of service possible.

1. Strong Uptime of 99.99% (#1)

Since their services underwent a major overhaul, Bluehost has improved its uptime so profoundly that it's darn near perfect (<99.99%).

With only 2 outages in the past 8 months, Bluehost's phenomenal uptime is well over the industry standard of 99.94% and resulted in only 1 hour of downtime out of the 4380 hours that we logged over the period of our review.

Overall, it's the best uptime we've seen over the past 8 months after monitoring more than 33 hosts:

·         September 2017 average uptime: 99.98%

·         October 2017 average uptime: 99.86%

·         November 2017 average uptime: 100%

·         December 2017 average uptime: 100%

·         January 2018 average uptime: 99.99%

·         February 2018 average uptime: 100%

·         March 2018 average uptime: 100%

·         April 2018 average uptime: 100%

Simply choosing Bluehost allows eCommerce sites to obtain a free SSL security certificate, OpenPGP/GPG Encryption, and more right away.

6. 'Official' WordPress.org Recommended Host

Although you should typically take non-data drive hosting recommendations with a grain of salt, when the world's largest CMS recommends a hosting provider, it's typically a good idea to listen up.

The WordPress official site (WordPress.org) recently re-made their hosting page and listed their 3 favorite hosting providers. Among those included are SiteGround, Dreamhost and, you guessed it, Bluehost.

With Bluehost's simple interface, you can access all of your websites and email addresses from one place.

1. Their Customer Support is fast but Could be More Knowledgeable

Although Bluehost has seen an astronomical improvement in its customer support response rate in recent months (in fact they have a near-perfect internal customer review score), the quality of their customer support is still lagging behind its contemporaries.

2. The $3.95/mo Price Only Comes with 36-month Plan (But $4.95/mo is Still Cheap)

Bluehost is cheap.

But just how cheap? Well, it depends...

Their super-low introductory rate of only $3.95 a month comes with a few strings attached. Namely, it requires a three-year commitment.

If you only want 12 months of service, your rate jumps up to $4.95 per month.

3. Site Migrations Aren't Free...

Most of the hosting providers we've reviewed will happily help you move an existing site from its current location to their service.

After all, it's a quick procedure to get you to switch companies and become their loyal customer for the next few years.

Unfortunately, Bluehost is not one of those companies.

·         Basic plan: For 3.95 per month, you get one website max, 50GB storage and 'unlimited' bandwidth. You also get 5 email accounts (with a max storage of 100MB each).

·         Plus plan: $5.45 per month provides 'unlimited' websites, storage, bandwidth, email account and email storage and Included 1 Domain.

·         Prime plan: Their largest plan comes normally at $5.45 per month, providing 'unlimited' websites, storage, bandwidth, email account and email storage, Included 1 domain, 1 domain privacy, 1 Spam Experts and Site Backup Pro. (Currently On Sale)

You need to pay for three years at once to enjoy the advertised price for their shared hosting plans. It will cost much more if you choose a shorter duration, and the minimum duration you can pay for is 12 months.

·         Free domain? Yup.

·         Ease of Signup: Easy two-page sign-up process.

·         Payment Methods: Major credit cards and PayPal.

·         Hidden Fees and Clauses: The low introductory starting rate for three years minimum (with renewal plans that jump). And that whole, we'll delete your account if you go over 1,000 database tables or 3GB total database, thing.

·         Upsells: Some Upsells... But it's common in the web hosting industry, so don't worry about it.

·         Account Activation: Most users enjoy instant activation for most users. If the information is inaccurate or there's suspicion of fraud, activation might get delayed.

·         Control Panel and Dashboard Experience: Simple, easy to use control panel.

·         Installation of Apps and CMSs (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): Mojo Marketplace makes app installation quick and easy!