Bluehost Vs. WordPress (2023)

Finding the right web host can be overwhelming for business owners who need help determining the hosting type, storage space, and security features they need.

I’ve worked in the tech world for over a decade and have used nearly all the primary web hosts on the market. With this expertise, I bring you a comprehensive showdown between Bluehost and WordPress, two big names on the web hosting circuit.

Look no further if you need clarification about these services’ differences or which is better to use. You’ll soon see that choosing a web host can cause headaches, but with the proper research, it doesn’t have to!

How Did We Test Bluehost and WordPress?

At Tweak Your Biz, we go the extra mile to ensure we meet the highest quality testing standards. We trust our lab results and data more than personal opinions.

To measure outcome effectiveness, we created two identical staging sites on Bluehost and WordPress to compare them in these areas:

• Hosting Types & Features
• Performance & Speed
• Ease of Use
• Pricing & Value
• Website Security
• Help & Support
• WordPress Features
• Extras

Bluehost Vs. WordPress Winner:

Bluehost is a web hosting service provider. WordPress, on the other hand, is a website builder. 

What does this mean?

These services can be used in combination together. Therefore, they both win. Bluehost and WordPress have been partnered for over ten years.

Continue reading to discover each service’s strengths, weaknesses, key features, and usability.

What is Bluehost Web Hosting?

Bluehost web hosting is one of the largest web hosting companies in the world. Endurance International Group owns it, and the company is based out of Utah.

Bluehost offers these hosting types:

• Shared Hosting
• WordPress hosting
• VPS hosting
• Dedicated hosting
• WooCommerce hosting

PHP7, HTTP/2, and Nginx caching power Bluehost’s servers. The service also offers domain names free for a year by purchasing a hosting plan. Read our Bluehost review here!

Who Uses Bluehost?

Bluehost clients include large tech companies, universities, travel companies, magazines, universities, small businesses, and individual site owners.

Some of Bluehost’s major clients include the University of California in Los Angeles and SoftBank Telecom America Corporation.

Despite its popularity, Bluehost is a great beginner hosting option. Its services are easy to use and come with everything you need to get started with your first website, including a free domain name and site builder.

Bluehost is most reliable for small-medium-sized websites that won’t get much traffic. You won’t have to worry about potentially faulty uptime in those cases.

What are the Benefits of Bluehost?

One of Bluehost’s strengths is its pricing. It’s incredibly affordable, particularly for the first year. If you’re starting a business and expecting increased revenue after about a year, Bluehost could be a suitable option.

Bluehost performs decently when it comes to uptime and speed, as well, particularly for its affordable prices.

Where Bluehost Falls Short

Bluehost’s pricing strength falls after the first year when they begin introducing hefty upsells for no feature improvement. These consistent pitches can get obnoxious and make the company care more about making extra money than offering integrity in web hosting.

Bluehost also doesn’t offer much server diversity. Users only have the option to host in the U.S. As such, clients from other countries could have issues with prolonged loading times.

When it comes to security, Bluehost could do better. Their entry-level price packages offer very little backup support.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is a content management system (CMS) service with an existence that practically goes hand-in-hand with that of the Internet itself. 

This open-source CMS works in PHP language and requires pairing with either a MySQL or MariaDB database. Besides offering content management tools, WordPress is an excellent website builder based on a template system with plugin support. 

Almost 50% of the world’s top 10 million websites use WordPress as of 2021.

WordPress offers two services: WordPress.com and WordPress.org. On WordPress.com, you can publish your website without enlisting the help of a web host. WordPress.org is WordPress’s open-source software, which requires collaboration with a web host. 

Who Uses WordPress?

Major websites like eBay, Sony, and the New York Times use WordPress. However, Internet beginners also use WordPress. It’s a central fixture of site creation, and many pages on the Internet might not exist today if it weren’t for it. 

In its inception, WordPress was used primarily for creating and publishing blog posts. However, WordPress now offers the infrastructure to develop any kind of website you want. 

What are the Benefits of WordPress?

WordPress offers massive diversity and customizability in its features, from plugins and themes. Using its services can help you create an incredibly unique and dimensional website.

Its services are versatile, meaning you could use them to create any website. With some basic web knowledge, it’s very user-friendly, as well.

WordPress can also easily be used for SEO purposes, as tons of plugins and features are available to help you navigate this type of digital marketing.

Where WordPress Falls Short

WordPress can be complicated for beginners. Building a WordPress site from scratch can take a good amount of technical know-how.

Furthermore, without consistent WordPress maintenance services, your website will quickly become glitchy and, at worst, inaccessible or prone to hacking.

Bluehost Vs. WordPress: The Details 

Now, let’s get into a direct comparison.

The analyses below measure Bluehost and WordPress on these qualities:

• Hosting types
• Uptime issues
• Speed
• Usability
• Pricing
• Security
• Customer support
• Site migration
• Email Hosting

What Types of Hosting Does Bluehost Have?

Bluehost offers:

• Shared Hosting
• WordPress hosting
• VPS hosting
• Dedicated hosting
• WooCommerce hosting

What Types of Hosting Does WordPress Have?

Wordpress.com offers self-implemented hosting with its website builder. These plans have limited features, and we don’t recommend them for serious websites.

Winner: Bluehost

Bluehost wins this category automatically. It’s an actual web host, while WordPress is a CMS.

Does Bluehost Have Uptime Issues?

Bluehost has minimal uptime issues. Major sites like AccuWeb and Kinsta are more consistent, but it’s reasonable.

Our site didn’t go down during our month-long tests, but that’s likely because it got little traffic. Bluehost could be more reliable when it comes to significant traffic bursts.

Does WordPress Have Uptime Issues?

WordPress.com actually offers excellent uptime, but it doesn’t provide the resources needed to grow your site to the point where uptime could become an issue.

Winner: Tie

The two sites are tied here. Bluehost has the advantage of being a web host, but WordPress technically offers more consistent uptime.

Furthermore, neither site offers an uptime guarantee.

How Fast Is Bluehost?

Bluehost does well with site response times, with their loads averaging 361ms.

How Fast Is WordPress?

WordPress is also very speedy, with response times averaging 311ms. WordPress also uses a more advanced server network with more global locations, so they’re a potentially faster option for clients who don’t live in the United States.

Winner: WordPress

WordPress offers better speed options than Bluehost.

However, the rest of their features are sorely lacking if you’re looking for a comprehensive web host. Before using Wordpress.com, we’d recommend Bluehost for a small website or an alternative host, like SiteGround, for a more significant site.

How Easy is Bluehost to Use?

Bluehost is straightforward to use. Its price packages come with all the essentials for starting your website, including a domain name and access to a site builder.

The platform’s setup is intuitive, as well. If you’re committed, you should be able to have your site up and running within a day.

How Easy is WordPress to Use?

WordPress is more difficult to use than Bluehost, even though it has a drag-and-drop site builder. A complete tech novice may need to enlist the help of YouTube videos or online guides to get a suite set up with WordPress.

Winner: Bluehost

Bluehost wins for extreme usability.

Bluehost Pricing & Value

Bluehost’s WordPress hosting plans are as follows:

These plans are highly affordable, with at least 10 GB of storage space. Their plans include automatic installations, a free one-year domain, automatic updates, and Google My Business verification.

WordPress Pricing & Value 

Here are WordPress’s price plans:

WordPress.com has a free pricing option. WordPress.org is technically free to use, though you’ll need the additional help of an external web host.

Winner: Bluehost

Bluehost is the clear winner regarding value and features, from their automatic updates to GMB integration.

How Secure is Bluehost?

Bluehost offers a free SSL with any plan, Cloudflare, and DDoS protection as additional features. The latter measures must be purchased for an additional cost.

Bluehost doesn’t offer firewalls on shared hosting plans, but it does come with automatic backups to restore previous versions of your site quickly.

How Secure is WordPress?

WordPress offers more security than Bluehost with the addition of firewalls.

Winner: Tie

WordPress and Bluehost are tied for security. While WordPress offers firewalls, Bluehost offers automatic backups.

Is Bluehost Customer Support Good?

Bluehost offers 24/7 live chat, email help, phone, and ticketing support. It also provides an extensive online knowledge base.

Is WordPress Customer Support Good?

WordPress only offers email support on its free plan, while the Basic program is limited to chat support. If you upgrade to Business, Premium, or eCommerce, you’ll gain access to advanced live chat.

In any case, you won’t have access to phone support with WordPress.

Winner: Bluehost

Bluehost wins this category because it offers more chat support than WordPress.

Will Bluehost Help With Website Migration? 

Bluehost offers free site migrations and paid site transfers on any of their pricing plans. The site migrations are limited on their basic plan, so if you have multiple sites, consider scaling up.

Will WordPress Help With Website Migration?

Website migration isn’t relevant to WordPress’s features since it’s either a CMS or a website builder.

Winner: Bluehost

Technically speaking, Bluehost wins, but there is little comparison between these two on this front.

Does Bluehost Offer Email Hosting?

Bluehost does offer email hosting via their intuitive and straightforward cPanel. Their email services work via Office 365.

You can access their email hosting on a monthly or yearly plan at three different tiers: Essentials at $4.99/mo or $2.99/mo/year, Business Plus at $9.99/mo or $5.99/mo/year, and Business Pro at $14.99/mo or $9.99/mo/year.

Does WordPress Offer Email Hosting?

Setting up email through WordPress with their Professional Email feature is possible. You can access their upgrade options via your WordPress account, but they cost $3.50/month.

Winner: WordPress

WordPress’s email hosting is more affordable than Bluehost’s.

Does Bluehost Have a Website Builder?

Bluehost does have a site builder called Bluehost Builder. It’s easy to use but only offers a few customization features.

Does WordPress Have a Website Builder?

Website building is one of WordPress’s primary functions. The WordPress site builder is relatively easy to use and offers many customizations and unique site additions.

Winner: WordPress

WordPress offers the superior website builder of these two options.

Bluehost Alternatives 

A2 Hosting

At Tweak Your Biz, we’d recommend A2 hosting over Bluehost because of its superior site speeds and performance. However, Bluehost is more WordPress-oriented than A2, so if you’re a WP purist, Bluehost is more suited to your needs.

A2 is also more expensive than Bluehost. These two hosting providers are each suited to different site needs. For a small-scale site with access to a WordPress builder, opt for Bluehost. For a large-scale website that can handle heavy traffic, go for A2.

Dreamhost

When it comes to affordability and dependable uptime, Bluehost is remarkably similar to DreamHost. Furthermore, they both provide WordPress-friendly tools and a sleek, tailored control panel. 

Although their pricing plans are comparable, Bluehost has been known to increase the cost significantly more after year one than DreamHost does. 

Whether you opt for Bluehost or DreamHost, you’re guaranteed economical rates and appropriate features for a small-scale site.

Now You Decide

Bluehost and WordPress both offer valuable services in the world of web hosting. Lucky for you, they can be used collaboratively!

Bluehost is a solid web host with adequate shared hosting features for sites receiving low traffic. WordPress offers similar qualities to its hosting offerings.

I recommend you host a site on WordPress using Bluehost or different hosting services rather than Wordpress.com hosting because the features are minimal and difficult to manage.

If you’re interested in further researching web hosting, check out my Bluehost review or complete guide to the best web hosting services of 2023.

Regardless of which web hosting provider you choose, it is essential to compare pricing and features before deciding.

WordPress Vs. Bluehost FAQ