Bluehost Review 2025: Is It Worth the Hype?

Bluehost is a decent web host for beginners looking to create a simple website with WordPress. The guided WordPress installation and AI WordPress site builder make it possible to set up your site in minutes without any previous technical experience.

While Bluehost has earned WordPress.org’s recommendation, it didn't quite meet all of our expectations. Bluehost doesn’t provide features we’ve come to expect from discount web hosts, like domain privacy. Moreover, we found customer service frustrating to communicate with during our repeat testing.

But despite those minor drawbacks, we think Bluehost may be a good choice for WordPress users who prioritize security and affordability. Learn more in our complete Bluehost review.

Bluehost review at a glance

Price	$2.99-$9.99/mo
Money-back guarantee	Yes — 30 days
Uptime guarantee	99.99%
Monthly visits	40K - 400K
Number of websites	10 - 100
Storage	10 - 100 GB
Free SSL certificate	On all plans
Free domain for a year	On all plans
Backup frequency	Weekly
Migration assistance	Paid service
24/7 support	On all plans
Learn more	Get Bluehost

Score summary

Here's how our star rating is calculated:

Decision factor	Weight	Bluehost Verdict
Our experience	10%	4.5/5
Prices and capacity	18%	4.2/5
Performance	20%	5/5
Features	25%	5/5
Security	20%	5/5
Support and reputation	7%	4.8/5

We last tested Bluehost on November 7, 2025.

Our experience

We had a generally positive experience with Bluehost. The dashboard is straightforward, displaying key information like remaining disk space and the number of sites you’ve used. The sidebar features prominent links to key areas, including website, domain, and email management.

The Websites area includes a quick link for setting up a new WordPress site, which gives you an opportunity to choose between using Bluehost’s free site migration tool or creating a new site.

We created a new site and were presented with two more options: using the AI site builder or building a site from scratch. We decided to test the AI site builder, entering a website title and a basic description for a software testing site. The site builder took around 2 minutes to generate three reasonably attractive layout options.

Bluehost then took us to a customization area, giving us the option to generate replacements for various content areas. Finally, Bluehost directed us to a Design Studio similar to the WordPress customizer. This allowed us to modify elements such as the color scheme and fonts.

With our site set up, we were launched into the Bluehost WordPress dashboard. This area provides a checklist for basic site-building tasks, such as customizing your site header, with links to help you complete them. This can reduce the overwhelming feeling that many first-time site creators feel when they enter WordPress.

We then returned to Bluehost’s account management area to check out the domain management center. This area is much simpler than the traditional cPanel.

One downside was that while testing the various features, we noticed that every page seemed to have an upsell: Emails, SEO, and backups were all extra costs.

Although other web hosting providers offer better user experiences that are more frictionless, Bluehost remains a good option if your priorities are affordability and good security.

Bluehost prices and subscriptions

Starting prices for Bluehost’s shared hosting plans range from $2.99-$9.99/mo, with renewal costs ranging from $9.99/mo to $22/mo.

Features	Starter	Business	eCommerce Essentials
Price	$2.99/mo	$4.19/mo	$9.99/mo
Uptime guarantee	99.99%	99.99%	99.99%
Monthly visits	40K	200K	400K
Number of websites	10	50	100
Storage	10 GB	50 GB	100 GB
Bandwidth	Unmetered	Unmetered	Unmetered
Free domain for a year	On all plans	On all plans	On all plans
Backup frequency	Weekly	Weekly	Weekly
Learn more	View plan	View plan	View plan

Bluehost’s starting costs are slightly higher than average, with many companies offering introductory rates of just $3/mo.

Renewal prices, on the other hand, are lower than average, sitting at just $9.99/mo. However, you can get more value for only a little more money with Hostinger, which provides more than twice as much storage for just $10.99/mo after the first term. Hostinger also provides free email hosting and domain privacy, neither of which is included in Bluehost’s Starter plan.

The best plan for you will depend on the frequency of monthly visits you expect, the number of websites you need, storage capacity, and support availability.

• The Bluehost Starter plan can work for smaller sites like professional portfolios, which likely won’t need additional storage.
• We recommend investing in the higher-tier Business plan if you’re building a larger site, as it provides significantly more storage for just a few extra dollars each month.
• For online stores, the best plan is eCommerce Essentials, as it's the only option that includes commerce tools. It has features like WooCommerce auto-install and secure payment processing.

Bluehost features

Bluehost offers a decent collection of features on its Starter plan:

• Free domain for one year (without domain privacy)
• SSL certification
• 1-click installs for WordPress and other content management systems
• AI website builder for WordPress
• Managed WordPress updates
• Free CDN
• Creative Email tool for email marketing (with up to 500 email sends per hour)
• Weekly backups
• Proprietary domain management tools
• 24/7 live chat support

Types of web hosting available

Bluehost offers several shared hosting plans. For our testing, we used the shared hosting service. If sharing server resources with other sites isn't a good option, you could also choose:

• VPS hosting: Provides dedicated resources on a shared server.
• Cloud hosting: Enables scalability as your site grows.
• Dedicated hosting: Uses a private server accessible only to your organization.

We recommend that most users begin with Bluehost’s shared hosting or WordPress hosting plans, which provide sufficient storage and bandwidth for most small to medium-sized websites. Ecommerce store creators can invest in WooCommerce hosting for advanced monetization options. Cloud, VPS, and dedicated hosting are advanced options that are ideal for more complex websites.

Web building features

Bluehost is a WordPress-focused host, with quick installation tools and a specialized website builder for WordPress. We were pleased to find all of these tools available on the Starter plan, the lowest-tier shared hosting plan (and the one we tested), as many hosts restrict similar tools to higher-cost hosting packages.

We also appreciated the inclusion of WonderBlocks, a plugin with specialized content blocks not available in the regular Gutenberg editor. This makes it easier to build a site to your exact specifications.

Bluehost has an AI web builder for WordPress. The tool enables seamless integration. We also found the AI website builder both straightforward and effective, similar in power to the IONOS AI site generator.

The process begins by requesting a description of your site. It also asks for your logo.

The AI web builder created three custom templates based on our inputs. The templates were basic and lacked variety.

We selected a template and went to the web builder for further customization. The web builder gave an outdated appearance. The navigation wasn't as intuitive as other web builder tools we've tried. It still did the job, though.

Overall, the Bluehost AI web builder is best suited for basic sites. There are other AI web builders that have a modern interface and intuitive navigation.

WordPress integration

Bluehost provides one-click installation and a semi-guided setup process for WordPress, complete with an AI website builder. All Bluehost plans also include managed WordPress updates for both the core CMS and any themes or plugins you install. With a few clicks, you can install WordPress, transfer an existing site, or create an empty environment to import from other applications.

Web migration

Bluehost offers a free site migration tool that allows you to connect your WordPress site to Bluehost and transfer all your content with just a few clicks. We found the self-service web migration tool fairly easy to use. You'll need to install WordPress if you haven’t already done so. From there, you can add a new WordPress site.

Click on Import an Existing WordPress Site. You'll need to install the Insta WP Migration plugin to complete the process. The plugin will request your login details to gain access to migrate your account.

While the migration is simple, it is still self-service. That means if you encounter any problems or require assistance, you'll need to pay an additional fee to receive help from Bluehost. But you can always just pay for Bluehost’s site migration service upfront if you don’t want to do it yourself.

Bonus features

Bluehost makes it easy to enable a CDN, which stores your site data in multiple servers around the globe. This can improve site speed by allowing users’ devices to retrieve data from the server closest to their physical location rather than possibly having to get it from the other side of the globe.

Bluehost performance

We performed hands-on testing to determine how users will experience Bluehost sites, starting with a speed test to determine how long Bluehost sites take to load. We also spent 3 days monitoring uptime to see how reliably users would be able to access Bluehost sites and ran a stress test to understand how well Bluehost sites handle large groups of visitors.

Speed test

The faster your site loads, the more likely users are to stick around to see it. We generally recommend a site speed (the number of seconds your site takes to load) of 3 seconds or less, with lower numbers being better.

We tested our site speed in Montreal, Dallas, and Strasbourg with Dotcom-Tools to determine whether our Bluehost site met this guideline.

Product	Performance score	FCP	LCP
Bluehost average	100	0.43 s	0.63 s

Bluehost performed admirably, with site speeds of well under 1 second in all three locations. We experienced similarly rapid loading times when navigating the site ourselves.

Uptime and response

Bluehost offers a 99.99% uptime guarantee, which means your site won’t go down for more than 2 minutes per week. This is better than the industry-standard 99.9% uptime guarantee, which allows your site to go down for up to 10 minutes per week.

We spent 4 days monitoring our site with UptimeRobot to determine how well Bluehost lives up to this above-average guarantee, with the following results:

Product	Uptime	Average response time	Minimum response time	Maximum response time
Bluehost average	100%	139 ms	120 ms	215 ms

This suggests that Bluehost does, in fact, live up to its above-average uptime guarantee and might even exceed it. Moreover, the response times are all well under 1 second, ensuring fast site speed for your visitors.

Stress tests

• Stress test results: Bluehost passed the stress test.

We performed a stress test using Loader.io to determine whether Bluehost could still reliably and quickly deliver our site when faced with an influx of traffic. We sent 250 simultaneous users to our Bluehost site, and 249 were able to access it, with an average response rate of 697 ms.

However, there was one failure, and the longest response rate was over 6.5 seconds. While these results were anomalous enough for Bluehost to pass our test, they are less than ideal compared with the results we’ve achieved with other hosts, such as IONOS.

Bluehost security features

Security is essential to protect your site from cyberthreats. Bluehost goes the extra mile to ensure that your site is kept secure with these features. Here are a couple of highlights:

SiteLock Security: Bluehost offers malware scanning for all its plans. Malware removal is available for Choice Plus plans and above. SiteLock manages these security features. Regular security scans ensure that your site remains safe.

CDN: All plans include a Content Delivery Network (CDN) from Cloudflare. It's an extremely valuable security feature. The global CDN caches content on a network of servers to minimize latency and provide robust protection against DDoS attacks.

Your web host should use a variety of tools and protocols to prevent malicious users from accessing your site and keep viruses off of your web server. Bluehost also includes other security features, such as:

• SSL certification to encrypt all data sent to and from your website, protecting your — and your users’ — information.
• HTTPS protocols to signal to Google, browsers, and VPNs that your site is safe.
• Firewall protection to identify and block viruses and other malicious data.
• DDoS protection to prevent your site from malicious floods of traffic sent to your site with the express intention of shutting down the server.
• Malware scanning to find any malware that gets through the firewall (with malware removal options available on higher-tier plans).

• Domain privacy (for Custom Plus and eCommerce Essentials plans) to conceal and protect your domain's personal information.

• IP blocker to block access from unwanted IPs.

• WordPress scanning to automatically check your site's applications and code for security threats.

Bluehost customer support and reputation

Support type	Bluehost
Email or live chat	Yes — Live chat
Phone	Yes — Starting at Choice Plus plans
Online guides or forums	Yes

Bluehost offers a live chat and a comprehensive knowledge base, complete with helpful tutorials and guides. Phone support is available starting with the Choice Plus plans. Phone representatives are available from 7:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m. EST.

Our chatbot experience wasn't great. When we asked a follow-up question, it stayed focused on our original inquiry. After we confirmed the first question was answered, the chat ended abruptly. We started a new chat to ask a follow-up question, but the chatbot made us go through guided questions to find the topic. Only then did it send us to a live representative. It was a disjointed process.

Bluehost user reviews

• Trustpilot rating: 4.6%

Bluehost has over 20,000 five-star reviews on Trustpilot, mostly citing excellent customer service. However, there are also over 4,000 negative reviews, with many referencing problems cancelling their services. This rating is lower than those of GoDaddy (4.6), Hostinger (4.7), and IONOS (4.7).

There are also some extremely negative Bluehost reviews on Reddit, citing terrible experiences with customer service and significant downtime issues. This suggests that Bluehost doesn’t provide a consistent user experience — some have a great time, while many face major problems and fail to receive the support they need to fix the issues.

Most of the positive reviews focus on the great service received from customer support representatives, which doesn’t align with our experience.

Top alternatives

While Bluehost provides reasonably good service for equally reasonable prices, you may want to consider one of these other web hosting companies:

Hostinger

Hostinger provides affordable shared, WordPress, and cloud hosting for websites of all shapes and sizes. All Hostinger plans include managed WordPress updates and a site assistant to help you learn the CMS. You’ll also get more storage — starting at 25 GB — on Hostinger plans than on comparable Bluehost plans. 

Check out Hostinger vs Bluehost for a full comparison between these two hosts.

Learn more in our Hostinger review.

IONOS

Ionos offers more affordable pricing — both before and after renewal — than Bluehost. Ionos also has a guided installation process and AI website builder for WordPress, though these are limited to the WordPress hosting plans.

Learn more in our IONOS review.

SiteGround

SiteGround is a WordPress host that provides guided installation, including theme selection and plugin installation, as well as managed WordPress updates on all plans. The customer service is also excellent. However, the renewal prices are higher than Bluehost’s, so you should only choose SiteGround if you’re prepared to pay the higher long-term costs.

Learn more in our SiteGround review.

FAQs

Bottom line: Is Bluehost good?

Bluehost is a decent web host. It provides an intuitive dashboard, excellent WordPress tools, and good server performance. However, the customer service is inconsistent, and it lacks certain features — like domain privacy — that are frequently bundled into web hosting packages from other low-cost hosting companies like Hostinger.

Bluehost is an affordable option, though. It also features robust security tools to safeguard your site against malware and DDoS attacks. Let's not forget that WordPress.org recommends Bluehost as a web host provider. Overall, Bluehost may be best for small WordPress sites that prioritize security and affordability.