Bluehost is one of the largest hosting companies in the world. It has more than 2 million hosted domains and 600+ employees. Bluehost was started by Matt Heaton, who also hosts a Whiteboard Friday video that appears on Moz Blog every week.

It is the first preference for people looking for a shared hosting solution because of its affordable price range with some excellent features. But not everyone shares a positive experience with Bluehost which I am going to discuss below. Let's see whether you should consider using Bluehost for your website or try different web hosting services based on your requirements.

Pros : 

- Affordable Pricing Plans 

- 99% Uptime Guarantee 

- 30 Day Money Back Guarantee 

- One-Click Installs of Applications like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc. 

- 45 Day Free Trial Period  

Cons :

- Poor Customer Service 

- No Phone Support for Non-VIP Customers 

- 5 Minute Time Limit to Ask a Question through Chat.

Bluehost Pricing Plans: All hosting plans come with Unlimited Bandwidth and Disk Space, but I have listed them in order of their cheapest price to the most expensive one.

Shared Hosting Plan - 'Basic' at $4.95 /month or $60/year (One-time fee)

The basic plan has everything you need to host your small business website, blog or personal site without any hassle. This plan seems good if you are on a tight budget and looking for a hosting plan under $5/month.

 It has:

- A free domain name (you only need to pay for the annual payment) 

- Free Website Transfer (when you move your site from another host) 

- Unlimited Emails accounts and emails per month  

- Unlimited page views, bandwidth and storage space.

Shared Hosting Plan - 'Essential' at $7.45 /month ($83/year) ($10.75 15 days refund period ) 

The essential plan provides a little more resources than the basic plan so if you have a small business website with a few pages on it, this might be a better choice for you as it gives more flexibility. The features of this plan are almost the same as that of a Basic plan except for some additional resources.

 It has:

- A free domain name (you only need to pay for the annual payment) 

- Unlimited Emails accounts and emails per month  

- Unlimited page views, bandwidth and storage space.

Shared Hosting Plan - 'Plus' at $9.95/month ($107/year) ($15 45 days refund period )

This plan is recommended for small business website owners who want to give a professional look and provide a good experience to their users. The features and the price of this plan make it ideal for small businesses. It gives more disk space and bandwidth than what you get in the Essential plan, but those additional resources are not much as compared to the other plans in Bluehost.

 It has:

- A free domain name (you only need to pay for the annual payment) 

- Unlimited Emails accounts and emails per month  

- Unlimited page views, bandwidth and storage space.

Shared Hosting Plan - 'Prime' at $12.95 /month ($143/year) ($20.05 30 days refund period )

This plan is the most suitable for small to medium-sized businesses as it provides a lot of resources that help your site perform better and quickly. It has everything you need to run a website with high traffic, if you have a budget higher than $50/month then go for this plan.

 It has:

- A free domain name (you only need to pay for the annual payment) 

- Unlimited Emails accounts and emails per month  

- Unlimited page views, bandwidth and storage space.

Shared Hosting Plan - 'Ultimate' at $19.95/month ($215/year) ($30.75 15 days refund period )

The ultimate plan is the most suitable for large businesses with high traffic, this plan provides all the features you need to run a successful website. If you are not on a tight budget and looking to host your business in the cloud, then don't even hesitate to go for this plan. It has everything which is needed to run a successful business website.

 It has:

- A free domain name (you only need to pay for the annual payment) 

- Unlimited Emails accounts and emails per month  

- Unlimited page views, bandwidth and storage space.

Shared Hosting Plan - 'Ultra' at $7.95/domain ($95/year or $9.95/domain per month) (One-time fee)

This plan is for those who want to host their website on the cloud and don't need a lot of resources; it's also suitable for second websites that only require the basic features and the cheapest price. It has:

- A free domain name 

- Unlimited Emails accounts and emails per month

With Bluehost you can also add more resources to your plan by adding addon domains which you can manage in cpanel, likewise, you can do the same thing i.e buy or transfer a domain outside of Bluehost from another host and then add it here. You can choose a dedicated hosting plan that comes with a dedicated IP if needed. The price of the dedicated IP is $6/month and the price of the dedicated hosting starts at $50/month which can be increased according to your needs.

Another big advantage for this web host is that it offers you free domain names, so you don't have to buy them from somewhere else. However, if you already own a domain name and want to move your website here, you can transfer it for free as well.

Bluehost offers 24/7 customer support through online chat, phone call, ticket submission system and email ticketing system. The waiting time for the reply is usually not more than 5 minutes during non-busy hours.

The control panel they provide is called CPanel and it contains all the features you need to set up and manage your website. The cpanel is easy to use and navigate through, the best part about this web host that I like is: You can get a free domain name (you only need to pay for the annual payment) along with web hosting.

Ease Of Use: The Cpanel control panel is easy to use and understand, you can easily manage your files, folders, email accounts etc through cpanel. Hosting Features: The features that I like the most about Bluehost are its pricing plans and addon domains i.e if you want to host another website on the cloud you can simply add it through cpanel. Support: Bluehost provides great technical support through online chat, phone call, ticket submission system and email ticketing system. It usually takes not more than 5 minutes during non-busy hours to get a reply from their tech support team.

Uptime/Reliability: I've never experienced downtime with Bluehost, but I read some old reviews where people complained about their service.

Customer Support Rating: 9/10

I hope the information provided in this blog post will be useful to you and that you can use it when choosing a web host for yourself or your business website. If you have any questions or want to share your personal experience with any web host, you are free to do so in the comment section below.

Visit Bluehost official website for more information about their hosting plans, here's the link: http://bluehost.com/web-hosting 

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