Bluehost, as you might know, is one of the leading shared hosting companies. Like other hosting firms, BH has launched various plans for its customers. Choosing the best plan for your site can be a difficult task especially when you’re new to blogging or you’ll be launching your first site. Today, I’ll help you choose the best Bluehost plan for your site. Before we look at the plans, you should first know a few things. The type of hosting a person goes for is based on the complexity of the application, storage memory it requires, and the traffic it gets. Applications that process information can be complex or simple. Content Management systems such as WordPress can get complex if you install several plugins. If you install basic WordPress plugins, the installation can be termed as a simple one.
The traffic of a website can be classified into three types – low, medium, and high. Low traffic sites have up to 2000 visitors per day. Websites that have 2001 to 1000 visitors can be termed as medium traffic websites. If a website gets 10000+ UV per day, you can call it a high traffic site. Every application requires some amount of storage memory. For example, video/image uploading/sharing sites require unlimited storage memory. This is because as the application grows, the number of images/videos uploaded every day/month/hour will increase. Thus, hosting with limited storage memory is not suitable for this type of website. Now as you’ve understood the requirements of an application, let’s have a look at Bluehost’s offering to the users:
Bluehost offers four shared web hosting plans. The plan which is priced higher than the plan priced lower offers extra features than the plan which is priced lower than it. Bluehost shared hosting plans have the following features in common:
Free SSL: BH provides an option to enable an SSL certificate for your site. The SSL certificate is provided by LetsEncrypt. It is renewed automatically by Bluehost. For those who are not aware, to enable the secure version of HTTP protocol i.e. HTTPS for your website, you must install and set up a certificate. The certificate can be a free one or premium.
Unlimited Bandwidth: You don’t have to worry about the large media files your website is transferring during HTTP response. This is because Bluehost offers unlimited bandwidth.
Money-back guarantee: If for some reason, you want to cancel your plan within 30 days of buying it, you can apply for a refund.
Basic plan
The Bluehost Basic plan is suitable for bloggers, beginners, and small businesses that want to launch one website. The Basic plan supports only one website and offers 50GB SSD. If you host your website on a basic server and if your site’s traffic is more than 2000, you should switch to another plan. If you don’t do so, other sites hosted on the same server will get fewer resources and your site’s performance will degrade. The Basic plan enables you to park up to 5 domains and 25 subdomains and it costs $7.99. You can get this plan for just $2.95 with this special link.
Must read: Siteground hosting review
Plus plan
The Bluehost Plus plan supports unlimited websites and unlimited storage. It offers a free Spam Experts add-on. Spam Experts is Bluehost’s solution to fight spam. It is available as an add-on to the users who don’t use shared hosting Plus, Pro, Choice Plus plans. Once you have access to the Spam Experts, you can activate it for your site by logging in to the Bluehost spam panel. The Plus plan is great for users that don’t require WhoIs protection/domain privacy which ensures that your WHO IS will remain private as long as it is active. This plan costs $10.99 but with this special link, you can get it for $5.45.
Choice Plus
The Bluehost Choice Plus plan is similar to the Plus plan but it offers two extra features that you won’t find in the above two plans. The features are Domain Privacy + Protection and Site Backup – Codeguard module. Domain Privacy ensures that your domain will remain private until the Privacy module of Bluehost is enabled. Site backup enables you to back up your website without typing code/command. Choice Plus plan costs $14.95 normally but with this special discounted link, you can buy it for just $5.45.
Also see: Hostgator Business Plan review
Pro
Bluehost Pro plan servers are expensive but they offer the best WordPress performance. Also, the servers are assigned a dedicated IP address. If the Bluehost staff moves your sites to another Pro plan server, your site’s IP address will not change. Also, users will get 2 Spam Experts instead of 1 i.e. you can activate and use the Spam Experts filter on two websites. Pro Plan features = Bluehost Choice Plus + Plus + Basic features. It is priced at $23.95/month but with this discounted link, you can get this plan for $13.95.
Bluehost WordPress Pro plan
WordPress Pro is a special service launched by Bluehost for the WP CMS users. It is similar to a managed VPS service. Go through our Bluehost WordPress Pro review to learn more about this service and its plans.
Bluehost VPS hosting
The major difference between the Bluehost VPS and shared hosting is that in the case of shared plans, your site/websites won’t be allocated a fixed number of resources. This is not the case with VPS hosting. If you go for a VPS plan, your account will be assigned a fixed number of resources. The resources depend on your budget.
Bluehost offers three VPS plans – Standard, Enhanced, Ultimate. The Standard plan offers a VPS with 2GB RAM, dual-core processor, and 30 GB SSD. It is priced at $29.9/month ($18.9 with this discounted link). The Enhanced plan offers more resources i.e. 4GB RAM, 2 core processors, and 60GB SSD. It costs $59.9/month ($29.9 with this discounted link). The Ultimate VPS plan provides 8GB RAM, 4 core processor, 120GB SSD. It will cost you $119.9 per month ($59.9 with this special discounted link).
Other features of Bluehost VPS
- Linux OS.
- SSD storage.
- CPanel.
- 1 or 2 IP addresses.
- 1,2 ,3 or 4TB bandwidth.
- Money-back guarantee.
Visit Bluehost.com for more details
Which Bluehost plan to choose?
You can go for a VPS plan if you’re planning to use a complex theme or several plugins or you want to install and use the software of your choice. For example, you can install java Nginx, Apache, Git, Ruby on rails, etc on a VPS.
Shared hosting plans are suitable for non-technical people or for users that don’t want to configure servers themselves. Bluehost makes user’s lives easy by providing a CPanel tool through which they can manage the site. Managing a website with a Cpanel is like creating a Gmail account. It is as easy as that. Cpanel allows you to back up the site/database, manage files, see logs, set up redirects, etc with a few clicks of a button.
Must read: Hostgator VPS review
