Bluehost Reviews: 29 Bluehost Customers Comment

Bluehost is a huge hosting company that you’ll inevitably hear about if you start looking for information on who you should use to host your first website. But being that much (most) of the Bluehost reviews online are heavily biased from people trying to make affiliate commissions for it, it’s hard to get actual, unbiased Bluehost reviews that have your best interests in mind.

This page is intended to solve that problem by listing actual comments and reviews from actual Bluehost customers on what they think of it. Here’s the simple question we put out:

For people who have used Bluehost to host a website, what did you think of it and can you recommend it? Looking to compile some honest user reviews on Bluehost. Positive and negative comments are all welcome, as long as you’re being truthful.

The 29 comments below are what we’ve received so far, and I’ll continue to update this article as more reviews come in. But I definitely feel like we’ve heard enough from Bluehost customers now to come to a reasonably firm verdict on the quality of their service.

Here’s how I’d summarize what’s been said so far: Bluehost can be a decent host for beginners, but it’s definitely not the best hosting company out there, or even close. And while many people hosting smaller websites like it, there are also an alarmingly large number of people so far who are very negative about it.

The primary issues people have brought up with Bluehost is that it’s unreliable, with websites easily going down for minutes at a time and loading slowly even when they are up, and support being slow and/or ineffective. There have also been some relatively minor complaints of prices going way up after the first renewal (though a lot of hosts do this), constant and annoying upsells, and a lack of servers outside the US.

To quote just a few comments about how Bluehost’s hosting and support is unreliable:

“Bluehost’s hosting is extremely slow. I had an optimized website on Bluehost and it took nearly 6 seconds to load.” (source)

“Their support is often very slow, I knew to wait for a few days to get someone to respond. Also, their support is nowhere near knowledge as from some higher-end hosting providers.” (source)

“The problem I’m having now is that the server response times are too slow, causing a slow website. They don’t seem to offer any upgrade solutions for it either.” (source)

“I decided to move from Bluehost to another host after my first year because of multiple issues. I experienced site downtime and a sudden and random backend issue that caused my site to load extremely slow. It took contacting multiple Bluehost reps to figure out they had changed something on the backend that had severely impacted my site loading time, and it took multiple people to resolve it. After moving hosts recently, I’ve immediately noticed better performance on my site.” (source)

“I had a bad experience with Bluehost. I ended up transferring my site elsewhere. I wasn’t even with Bluehost very long, maybe a month or so. The servers were consistently down.” (source)

“Bluehost is after the money, not the customer experience. My biggest problem with Bluehost was 409 errors on my contact page. I had contact with the support and after over a week of talking to them, they managed to fix it. During this time I got a strong feeling that they really didn’t care and just wanted me gone.” (source)

“I have had the worst experience with this hosting platform. Bluehost doesn’t care for you at all. Their team is not professional and they don’t comply with their policies as well.” (source)

There are also plenty of comments from people who are happy with Bluehost, would recommend it, and had a positive experience with their support. Bluehost provides a legitimate hosting service and it’s not a “scam” in any way. But it’s alarming how many negative comments we’ve received for it. Compared to other user-submitted reviews of big hosts we’ve put together like our DigitalOcean reviews, Kinsta reviews, WP Engine reviews, SiteGround reviews and Namecheap reviews, it’s obvious that Bluehost has more problems than most other established hosts. That may have a lot to do with the fact that Bluehost is now owned by a company called Endurance International Group (EIG), which has brought up a lot of hosts and has something of a reputation for ruining good hosts (that’s also something brought up in our Hostgator review).

But enough from me. Below are all the decent comments we’ve received on Bluehost so far, which I definitely recommend having a read through before signing up to it.

Bluehost is fantastic for beginners.

They are actually quite decent, providing users with fast enough speeds around the world to ensure that users' websites load quickly enough to generate a healthy amount of sales. With excellent usability and excellent UX, Bluehost is fantastic for beginners. The WordPress recommendation gives a lot of credit to this service. One thing we need to mention is that Bluehost is still using cPanel, which is great news for those who are used to using it. Since cPanel raised its prices, most hosting providers have decided to evict them, but so far there seems to be no indication that Bluehost will give up cPanel.

--Julian Goldie, juliangoldie.com

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#julian

Bluehost’s hosting is extremely slow. I had an optimized website on Bluehost and it took nearly 6 seconds to load. The customer service rep told me my site wasn’t built correctly and when I tried to get my refund they kept saying that the chatbot wasn’t working and I needed to be patient, which doesn’t make any sense but if you look up any reviews this seems to be a common ploy they run.

After finally cancelling and going to another host called Lightning base LLC my same exact site loads in 1 ½ seconds. In my opinion Bluehost’s servers are overloaded and their not spending the money to upgrade them or buy more.

--Jamie Hickey, Coffee Semantics

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#jamie

I have used Bluehost many times during my carrier, for my own websites, as well as for some clients. I also recommend it for complete beginners, who are building their first websites and don't have a lot of money to pay for some better hosting providers. My opinion is that for those kinds of websites, and for low costs, you will get solid and reliable hosting, that will help you start your online journey.

That said, I can't say I would personally use them anymore.

Their support is often very slow, I knew to wait for a few days to get someone to respond. Also, their support is nowhere near knowledge as from some higher-end hosting providers.

They often tell you that some things are your fault, that you should disable plugins, change themes, and such, even though you do tell them that problem is not in that, but probably on their side. Of course, for all the changes, they say all is good, you just need to wait for the cache to clear. In the end, it often comes to some settings on their hosting. My sites were often down for days because of those situations.

Bluehost hosting is also pretty slow, compared to some better hosting providers. Especially inside the dashboard, which is very irritating, because I love to have multi-tabs open, and work fast, which I can't when on Bluehost.

Their prices tend to rise significantly on the next renewal, so you need to be careful about that as well.

Because of all of that, I now use different hosting for all my sites, bigger or smaller.

So, why do I still recommend it for beginners, well, it is simple. It is not that important at the start, and it is very cheap, while still much more reliable than some no-name hosting providers. If you are low on budget, then it is better to invest in content outsourcing, or something else, like social network profiles (depending on your goals), then from the start take expensive hosting.

--Hrvoje Milakovic, Text Paradise

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#hrvoje

I have used BlueHost in the past, and it was a positive experience. Setting up my website was easy, customer service was quick and effective, the platform was easy to use for beginners like me, and the cost was affordable. The only issue was the company constantly trying to upsell add-ons and services to me, many of which I did not need or want.

--Carol Tompkins, AccountsPortal

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#carol

I work in music & video production, and currently host my website at Bluehost.

The experience has been very negative. Over the years I've had several issues with them. The biggest one was one time my emails were not sending because they were being detected as spam. When I contacted bluehost, they informed me this could happen if I'm using a shared server for emails. That was the day I moved my email to GSuit and never looked back. The problem I'm having now is that the server response times are too slow, causing a slow website. They don't seem to offer any upgrade solutions for it either.

I signed up to Bluehost because they were a preferred partner with both Wordpress and Google Domains. I thought they couldn't possibly be bad, but I was mistaken. To make matters worse, I took their 3 year offer too but I may not even stick around to the end of the plan I paid for.

--Calvin West, calvinwest.com

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#calvin

In my opinion, Bluehost is an excellent website hosting provider that's simple to use and offers a range of useful plans for both personal use as well as for businesses. I've been with Bluehost for nearly three years have just added my third website on a Bluehost web hosting plan. Their customer service is very responsive, I've got many questions answered through their live chat. To me, it's one of the top picks for shared web hosting and for novice webmasters in general.

--Marlieke Kemp - Janssen, Aureum Hospitality Advisers

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#marlieke

When I set up my site, I set it up with Bluehosts, I did the whole reading reviews ect most of the reviews were positive, and thought why not, so I went with the shared hosting as it was cheap.

What I found out was that they only have hosting servers in the US (if you don't use a CDN, you'll have lower site speed for Rest Of the World users), my site targets the UK.

Customer Services via phone from outside the US is expensive as they only have a US call centre, I found that I was waiting a few days for replies to emails.

They try to upsell so much that it's annoying, things you don't need or things that are cheaper elsewhere.

When my introductory offer price was due for renewal, I left bluehosts because by then I had learn't more about web hosting and site configuration.

Im now with Cloudways and self host my site myself on my own VPS

I also found out that Bluehosts have one of the highest paid affiliate programs, therefore so many people promote them trying to get some of that commission.

--Michael Alves, HelloGardening

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#michael

We highly recommend Bluehost! We have multiple websites hosted on Bluehost since 2016, and we have been extremely pleased with performance and customer service. Whenever technical support is needed, their customer service is very responsive, courteous, and professional. Their technical support team has always remained on the line until all questions have been answered and resolved. We rate every interaction as 5-star.

--Rick Abbiati, Colony Property Investments

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#rick

My fitness and healthy food blog Bliss from Balance was hosted by Bluehost for a year. For new websites, Bluehost makes it extremely easy to start. Domain registration and hosting are bundled into very affordable packages, although the price will increase after your first term. I decided to move from Bluehost to another host after my first year because of multiple issues. I experienced site downtime and a sudden and random backend issue that caused my site to load extremely slow. It took contacting multiple Bluehost reps to figure out they had changed something on the backend that had severely impacted my site loading time, and it took multiple people to resolve it. After moving hosts recently, I've immediately noticed better performance on my site.

--Michelle Bagnato, Bliss from Balance

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#michelle

I had a bad experience with Bluehost. I ended up transferring my site elsewhere. I wasn't even with Bluehost very long, maybe a month or so. The servers were consistently down.

I think the problem is that Bluehost is owned by a large company called Endurance International Group (EIG). They seem to overload the servers and the servers are slow.

--Steve Morrow, Paddle About

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#steve

I'm both a current customer of Bluehost and several of my clients also use their web hosting product.

I think that Bluehost is a solid web hosting option, especially for WordPress websites. They have excellent user onboarding and a backend that is both flexible and not overwhelming. Their performance for my sites has been solid and steady. For their price point, they work just fine, though I have started moving some of my sites to other, specialized hosts in the past year. I would recommend it, especially for smaller and beginner websites.

--Nate Shivar, ShivarWeb

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#nate

Bluehost is a great hosting site for beginner websites and people just looking to start out in the online space. I used Bluehost for 2 years before switching to another company, which I have had for a little over a year now to truly compare the two. Up until my last 6 months, I was happy with Bluehost. The issues came when I began to dig deeper on why my website seemed slow and my SEO efforts weren't yielding much results. Switching my hosting company made all the difference in the world and I am much happier now. My opinion: Bluehost is a great starter hosting service, but speaking for the long term. you will find that you will grow out of it.

--Christen Phillips, ISeeStarsQuilting

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#christen

Overall, my experience has been okay. Their customer service is pretty good, although I wish I didn't have to use it as much as I do. As a beginner blogger, I always saw the recommendation to start with Bluehost, so that's what I did since it was very affordable. But now I'm learning that your site can actually struggle with speed if you're with Bluehost and a slow site is not good for SEO rankings. I don't have any other major complaints, but due to the site speed issue, I'll be switching hosts when my renewal date comes.

--Lauren Gamboa, Lightened Motherhood

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#lauren

I've been using the hosting service for almost a year now and based on my experience, I would recommend it.

I am by no means technologically competent but using bluehost was very easy. It took very little time for me to learn the functions and how to use them.

When I did have questions, I would reach out to the customer service department via chat and they were always available to talk to me right away.

The customer service is so helpful and always spoke to me using words that I would understand. And if I didn't understand something, they always elaborated to make sure I knew what to do.

At one point, I changed my domain name and Bluehost helped me step by step to set up the new domain and how to make sure links to my old domain were directed to my new one.

My only one concern is that sometimes my website would be unavailable for a few minutes which is because of some issue at Bluehost. In the past year, this one happened 3 times (that I know of) but since I am a small website, it wasn't a major concern at the time.

As I continue to grow, I hope to stick with Bluehost because they truly made hosting a website an easy experience. I felt like someone was holding my hand and guiding me along whenever I was confused.

--Youmna Rab, Sustainably-Yours.com

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#youmna

I highly recommend Bluehost. I use it to host brrushed.com and I bought the domain from them as well. The customer support is unmatched. At any time of the day I can call or chat with an agent. I had an incident where my site was denying me access due to a plugin error. I discussed the issue with the bluehost technical support via chat and got it resolved in less than 30 minutes. The speed of my site has been phenomenal as well!

--Andre Ajayi, Brrushed Cleaning

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#andre

I highly recommend Bluehost because of their customer service. Initially, I had a few issues launching my website and needed help. So I contacted Bluehost customer service through their online chat and immediately had my issues resolved. There was no wait-time in getting a customer service rep, and customer support is available 24/7. I am a current customer of Bluehost.

--Chris Lieu, The Distillery Groove

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#chris

I have had a couple of sites on Bluehost for over a year now and I'm planning on moving them to Siteground.

Bluehost is after the money, not the customer experience.

My biggest problem with Bluehost was 409 errors on my contact page. I had contact with the support and after over a week of talking to them, they managed to fix it. During this time I got a strong feeling that they really didn’t care and just wanted me gone.

--Andreas Grant, Networks Hardware

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#andreas

Bluehost was the first service we signed up for and it was an acceptable experience. It was affordable, 100% uptime, and good speeds, but we were let down by their customer service. They were not as responsive as they should be and that's what eventually led to a switch. For initial websites, their service is good enough as a launching pad.

--Sara Bernier, Born for Pets

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#sara

I'm currently hosting 3 websites on Bluehost's shared hosting plan. I use Cloudflare to improve the loading speed in non-us regions. It's been around 3 years and I still prefer it for cheap shared hosting.

I've used some cheap (15$/year) shared hosting in the past and they go offline for several hours in a month. I've hosted my sites in the cheapest Bluehost shared hosting and didn't saw the site go offline for once. It may not be a deal for most, but website going offline tends to lose traffic from Google, which is quite a pain for people like me.

The thing I didn't like is that there is always a 1.5-second delay from the server. That stacks up in the page loading speed. I'll have to upgrade the hosting plan in order to improve it.

I'd say It's good to start with their shared Hosting. You can upgrade as your website grows in traffic as well as revenue.

--Farhan Sheikh, Vloguide

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#farhan

Although Bluehost is known for its affordable price plans and because WordPress itself endorses it, it leaves you with a horrible experience once you have used it for a while. Getting started with Bluehost is very convenient due to the cheap web hosting and a wide range of services offered. But halfway through the process, it gets bothersome. They increase the rates, and that too, not just by a margin but by almost doubling the prices. Furthermore, you can never expect their customer service to solve an issue for you. They never respond with the answer you’re looking for. A very incompetent and inadequate service that can be a severe headache when you need help.

Apart from this, getting free of the service is even worse. Letting Bluehost know that you don’t want to avail their services leads to another torture where they don’t take no for an answer. They will continue to argue with you for hours and won’t address a word you say to them. Instead, they reply with responses like they will reduce the prices for us, etc., still charging you more than what the price should be. I would not recommend anyone waste their time using Bluehost, and suggest they look for a better service.

--Cale Loken, 301consulting

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#cale

I have had the worst experience with this hosting platform. Bluehost doesn’t care for you at all. Their team is not professional and they don’t comply with their policies as well. They suspended my website in the second week after I started using their hosting service and told me that they detected a virus on the website. I was told that the issue will be fixed in two working days and my website will be restored, but nothing happened. I tried to contact the customer support team but they didn’t respond to my emails.

I was told that Bluehost has a 30-day money-back policy if users are not satisfied, but I didn’t get anything back. They don’t know how to deal with their customers and are the most non-professional team. I managed to contact them over a phone call but the respondent wasn’t supportive at all. They keep telling you that someone will contact you soon, but I didn’t get any call. I suggest you stay away from Bluehost. Not recommended at all.

--Jill Sandy, Constant Delights

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#jill

I've had quite a few dealings with Bluehost in the past. I'd say mostly good experience.

Tech issues: They had to update my PHP to the latest version several times. It's a shame that they don't do it automatically but most guys on the chat are professional and updated it speedily. I remember once a guy didn't because it really seemed like he didn't know what he was doing. I had to close the chat and move on to the next guy who did the job speedily so I couldn't complain.

I had to contact them to link my google console and Cloudflare account. I'm not very tech-savvy so I needed someone to guide me through the steps, by phone this time. They did the job and seemed knowledgeable.

Billing issues: I've had to cancel billing a few times from older site domains I wasn't using anymore but the renewal of which I forgot to cancel. The renewal was canceled and the money back to my account within days.

--Edouard Chevrel, thepetsavvy.com

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#edouard

Bluehost is good hosting. In fact, it's very decent considering the price, and I can recommend it to anyone who's looking for cheap, good hosting and who doesn't need anything special. If you're a casual blogger, then Bluehost is a great option for you.

Anyway, the problem is when your traffic gets bigger, and you need to scale things and maximize the website's speed. Then you might get limited by their server speed. The next problem regarding the speed might be that they have only one server location, and that's in the US, so your website might be slow for visitors from other countries unless you use CDN.

Bluehost's support is good in general, but they are not so helpful with advanced tech issues. But I can't blame them for that. They're customer support, not developers.

In the end, I switched hosting to WPX Hosting because of the things I mentioned above. But to be fair, the price is way higher, and I am also not a regular user because I have hundreds of thousands of visitors every month. For most people, Bluehost is the right choice.

--Ales Wilk, AnimalFate

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#ales

I chose Bluehost mostly because they have been around for awhile, and I had some friends who used smaller web hosts who went out of business or disappeared, and they lost their site. At least I know Bluehost (probably) won't go out of business.

Overall, Bluehost has been great to me and I will continue to use it for the foreseeable future. Here are a few concerns I have with them though.

Concerns with Bluehost shared hosting:

- They may raise their prices and also want you to sign up for one year. At least signing up with Nixihost (A different provider) you can pay monthly and cancel if you want to switch.

- Bluehost uses jailshell and doesn't allow use of node.js. I want to use node.js, as many developers do - so this is a con.

- The support people at Bluehost were able to help me troubleshoot the basic setup, which I was having huge problems and errors so it seems worth it, but if they are in India, I feel a little bad about them helping me at a super low wage, and maybe skeptical if they can see my passwords and user content. Good service, but skepticism for your security.

- I've heard complaints about website connections. I used to work for a shared video host and we would switch and test people's connections if they complained but we were a small company so who knows if bluehost is honest or not.

--Andrew Cunningham, DailyPest

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#andrew

I started hosting sites - some years ago - and at the time (probably still now) everyone seemed to recommend Bluehost so I went with them. Then as I got more into the hosting evaluation there appear to be many haters let me call them.

I used the starter plan - and found the interface easy to use - and I really never had any problems. The uptime I found to be fine. So I would say the user interface is very friendly especially for beginners.

What I found annoying was lots of outreach to me to upgrade this and that.

As my sites grow I do move them to another host - but for my started sites I use Bluehost

--Jim Ken, OnePotDishRecipe

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#jim

I have been using Bluehost for three years, and am no stranger to website hosting. For a cheap and easy low budget solution, they can not be beaten. Every package that they offer above the basic allows you to host unlimited sites. Yes, you still have to pay for the domain name but the ability to host several websites for one low fee is amazing.

I have only dealt with their technical support (through chat) on only 2 occasions and they were helpful both times. I have never needed to contact their billing or customer care.

I do agree with the nay-sayers that Bluehost is not exactly the fastest, but they don't claim to be. They are a solution for people looking to just get started. Once your site is large and established and you are receiving 1000s of hits every day it may be time to look for a more robust service, But the truth is, that is not most people. For most people, Bluehost is exactly what they need.

--Shaun Little, DartHelp

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#shaun

My overall experience of Bluehost was positive and can recommend it.

I started my website using Bluehost, signing up after seeing plenty of mostly positive reviews with the low cost being an incentive.

This was my first step in creating my website, the second was to buy an expensive and popular affiliate marketing course. You can imagine my dismay when the course advised me to avoid Bluehost, and other similar hosts.

This criticism continued in the course’s facebook group with members warning of bad customer service and horrible website speeds.

I was informed that all the positive reviews are fake, driven by the high affiliate commission rates that Bluehost offer to sell their services.

I continued to use Bluehost for about 9 months before I upgraded to a premium service but suffered no issues and the one time I needed customer service I had no problems.

I would not hesitate to recommend using Bluehost to anyone starting a new website, just upgrade your hosting service when you start making some money.

--Richard Keefe, Cnc Philosophy

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#richard

When I started my blog, I started with Bluehost and kept them for almost two years and didn't encounter any issues with service. Then once my blog started gaining more traffic then I decided to upgrade to another host to have a faster website and a fully managed hosting, which is more expensive than Bluehost per month. I honestly think Bluehost is great for new bloggers because they are affordable and their customer service is awesome too!

--Amira Irfan, A Self Guru

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#amira

My agency has been using Bluehost for all things hosting for the last 3 years and most of our clients are hosted with Bluehost. There have been some ups and downs with their customer service department, but for the most part we have had a great experience. We primarily use their shared hosting plans - which have great value and we rarely see any downtime. In my experience, Bluehost is the only hosting company that offers a free SSL certificate for any domain in the account, which is great for our clients because that minimizes costs. Bluehost is probably the best hosting option for WordPress websites when taking pricing into consideration. The only downside is probably their support - you truly never know if you're going to talk to a knowledgeable support representative or not so we just call back and speak with someone new.

--Tanner Scott, Ranksey Digital Marketing

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/bluehost-reviews#tanner