Bluehost recently launched its brand new WP Pro hosting service for WordPress users. What's the big deal about that then? I mean, you can host your WordPress website with a simple Bluehost shared hosting plan, right?
Yep, you can indeed. Bluehost's shared hosting will allow you to do just that, however, their WP Pro hosting is a plan optimized specifically for WordPress users.
Moreover, it's a hosting plan that comes with a, pardon the pun, 'host' of money-saving features which I think you and plenty of other bloggers are going to love.
In this Bluehost WP Pro hosting review, we'll take a quick look at some of the features, including the technology that drives Bluehost's WP Pro hosting plan (Affiliate link). We'll also compare it with their cheaper shared hosting plans, and perhaps highlight some alternatives out there too.
At the end of this review, I will briefly talk about Bluehost's hosting and customer service, though I will not dive too deep into things like uptime reliability, technical support, etc. I've made myself pretty clear on what I think of Bluehost's service based on my personal experiences with using them in the past.
Right then, let's get to it. Here's what we're going to be focusing on in this Bluehost WP hosting review!
First, a little bit about the company. Bluehost (Affiliate link) was founded way back in 2002. They are one of the largest web host providers in the business, serving more than 2 million customers worldwide. Bluehost's parent organization is EIG.
Their latest WP Pro Hosting offering is designed for the website owner primarily using WordPress as the platform of choice for building and growing an online business.
OK, so Bluehost provides shared hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting. They also offer shared WordPress hosting.
What a mishmash, right? Pretty confusing I might add.
A standard shared WP hosting plan is considerably cheaper than the WP Pro Hosting Package, and that's because there are three key features built into the WP Pro Hosting plans. In addition to what you will find in the standard, WP shared hosting -
Let's take a closer look at each of those unique offerings.
With a WP Pro Hosting plan (Affiliate link) from Bluehost, your WordPress site is hosted on an SSD-based server (Solid State Drive). This means your website should load and perform considerably faster than if it were hosted on a standard HDD server.
These SSD servers use state-of-the-art technology (apparently so), and are also optimized for speed and performance.
One of the standout features of Bluehost's WP Pro hosting service is the suite of marketing tools that you get. You can manage your entire email communication, social media marketing, and SEO all within a single dashboard on your Bluehost account.
The marketing tools are pretty cool, although basic enough. You can get insights on the data being collected through your site, including keyword selection, tips on how to improve your content and SEO, set automated messages for Twitter and Facebook, and much more.
To make the most of your WP Pro hosting plan, you can integrate Google Analytics into the marketing center and access all your daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly traffic stats in one place.
You also get access to a host of traffic tools, such as enabling ads on your site, enabling share icons, again, all from a single dashboard.
Well, actually, there are three plans available in the WP Pro Hosting option.
If you're just starting out with a brand new WordPress website/blog, the build plan would be more than enough for your needs.
The Build Plan comes with the key features we looked at above, in addition, you get -
Also included is free access to 1 x Office 365 Mailbox for 30 days. Good stuff, right?
That's just the Build plan. Of course, the Grow plan includes a lot more features and additional resources, as so does the Scale plan. These include features like -
Both the Grow and Scale plans come with WordPress Live ticket or Chat support, whereas the Build plan comes with standard support.
If you take a closer look at the plans (Affiliate link), you'll see that prices start from $19.95 per month. Now, that's a steep step up from a standard shared hosting plan that starts from $2.95 per month.
You, of course, are getting a lot more for your money here. The best possible hosting Bluehost can provide, backed with a ton of additional tools, resources, and features.
But, really, let's break down the cost to see whether you actually are saving yourself any money and getting a better all-around deal/service in the long run.
Here's the cost of taking out individual services and plans.
Taking out a Bluehost WP Pro plan
So, as you can see, combining the annual costs of taking each of the services out separately can soon mount up. With a Bluehost WP Pro Hosting plan (Affiliate link), it would appear you are indeed saving yourself a small packet. Which, frankly speaking, you are.
As I said at the beginning of this review, I didn't want to talk too much about Bluehost's ability as a hosting company, or how I personally felt about the overall quality of the service they provide to customers.
But very briefly - I used Bluehost for over 5 years, from 2010 to 2015. It all started well, of course, but over the course of time, particularly towards the end, I began experiencing degraded service and frequent downtimes. And, of course, this eventually forced me to find an alternative web host provider in 2015.
I fully appreciate that a considerable amount of time has passed since then, and I'm sure the quality of the customer service and hosting service has improved. In fact, according to Hosting Facts, the running Bluehost test site is enjoying 99.99% uptime, which certainly makes them a reliable hosting provider.
Anyhow, these days, I still have a Bluehost account and continue to recommend them as a launchpad platform for starting and establishing a blog or website. When the time comes, however, you may choose to stay with them or continue the growth of your business using another web host provider.
Here are some alternatives to consider.
So, there you have it. My personal insight and review of Bluehost's WP Pro Hosting service.
At $19.95 per month starting price, I don't think this is a bad deal at all, considering what you get for your money. Whether you're an experienced WordPress user looking to improve your website's performance and to consolidate all your marketing and SEO in one place, or even if you are totally new to WordPress, then this could be for you.
Of course, there are going to be alternatives to this service by Bluehost. For example, SiteGround offers its own managed WordPress optimized hosting solutions, which is considerably cheaper.
You still get access to tools and features like security and updates, optimized resources for better website and hosting performance, free SSL, backups, and email service, plus a free CDN.
HostGator also has its own hosting services optimized specifically for WordPress, again, which is a lot cheaper than Bluehost's WP Pro hosting offerings. HostGator's WP plans are supercharged by cloud-based, low-density servers, and a CDN.
Anyhow, that's it from me, I hope you've gotten some value from this review. Please let me know if I can improve it in any way.
Signing up for a Bluehost account is super simple. You can follow the steps below, or watch the video to start your WordPress website with Bluehost.
You're in. It's that easy.
Disclaimer: The opinions of Bluehost, HostGator, and SiteGround hosting company and their services, in this review, are purely my own expressed and based on my past and present experiences with these companies as a paying customer. The links to Bluehost, HostGator, and SiteGround in this post are affiliate links, which means if you purchase a hosting plan with any of these companies, I will be paid a small commission, at no additional cost to you. You can read my full affiliate disclaimer here.
