Bluehost is one of the oldest shared web hosting providers still in business, founded in 2003 and owned by Newfold Digital. It is one of only three hosts that WordPress.org has officially recommended since 2005, and it powers more than two million websites today. The platform is built around shared hosting plans starting at $2.95 per month, with WordPress installed in one click and a free domain for the first year. This guide covers what Bluehost includes, what each plan costs, how it compares to other hosts, and where to find step-by-step instructions for everything from setting up email to canceling your account.
What Is Bluehost?
Bluehost sells shared, managed WordPress, VPS, and dedicated hosting from data centers in Provo, Utah and London. Unlike a managed-cloud platform like Cloudways or a pure managed-WordPress host like Kinsta, Bluehost runs on traditional shared servers using cPanel, which gives you direct file, database, and email access without learning a custom dashboard. Read our full What Is Bluehost? guide for the company background, ownership history, and what is bundled with each tier. If the cPanel ecosystem is not a hard requirement, the Hostinger guide covers the closest budget-tier alternative with hPanel instead of cPanel.
The platform layers a custom onboarding flow called WonderSuite on top of WordPress. After you check out, WonderSuite asks what type of site you are building (blog, store, portfolio), then preinstalls a theme, sample pages, and plugins so you can publish without touching the WordPress admin first. This is the main reason Bluehost is the default recommendation for non-technical users.
Bluehost Hosting Plans and Pricing
Bluehost shared hosting comes in four tiers. The headline prices below are the introductory rate for a 12-month term; renewal rates are roughly 3 to 4 times higher, which is the single most common complaint in user reviews. Always factor in year-two pricing before committing.
Shared Hosting Tiers
- Basic - $2.95/month intro ($11.99 renewal). One website, 10 GB SSD, free domain year one, free SSL, 5 email accounts. Fine for a single blog or personal site.
- Plus - $5.45/month intro ($16.99 renewal). Unlimited websites, unlimited storage, unlimited email accounts, free CDN. The default pick for anyone planning more than one site.
- Choice Plus - $5.45/month intro ($18.99 renewal). Same as Plus, plus daily backups via CodeGuard and domain privacy. Often promoted as the same price as Plus during signup, which is why most buyers end up here.
- Pro - $13.95/month intro ($28.99 renewal). Lower density per server (fewer neighbours), dedicated IP, and higher resource limits.
Other Bluehost Products
Bluehost also sells managed WordPress (WP Pro), VPS, dedicated, and a separate WordPress Cloud product aimed at high-traffic sites. For most readers the shared plans are the relevant choice. If you want a deeper look at how Bluehost stacks up overall, see our full Bluehost review.
What Most People Miss: Bundled Email
One detail people overlook: every Bluehost plan comes with email hosting included on your domain. Cloudways and Kinsta do not include email at all; you have to pay for Google Workspace or Zoho separately. That bundled email is a real cost saving for small business owners, though the webmail interface is dated. If you would rather route everything through Gmail, follow our guide on adding Bluehost email to Gmail, or check whether Bluehost free email covers your needs.
Getting Started With Bluehost
Signing up takes about ten minutes. You pick a plan, choose a free domain (or connect one you already own), enter payment, and Bluehost provisions your account. WordPress installs automatically on first login; you do not need to download anything from WordPress.org.
WordPress Installation and Onboarding
For a full walkthrough with screenshots of every screen, including the WonderSuite onboarding wizard, follow our How to install WordPress on Bluehost guide. It covers both the current BlueRock dashboard and the older Legacy cPanel layout, since some accounts are still on the older interface.
If your goal is to launch a blog rather than a generic site, we have a dedicated step-by-step blog setup guide that covers theme choice, essential plugins, and the first five posts.
If you are coming from another host, Bluehost includes one free guided migration for new accounts within the first 30 days. The eligibility requirements, file size limits, and what to expect from the timeline are in our Bluehost free migration guide.
Ease of Use for Beginners
Beginners often ask whether the platform is genuinely usable without prior experience. The short answer is yes, and our breakdown of whether Bluehost is easy to use compares the dashboard against SiteGround and DreamHost.
If you are still on the fence, two questions worth answering up front are whether Bluehost is good for your specific use case, and whether you actually need Bluehost to run WordPress (you do not; WordPress runs on any LAMP stack).
For a single page that organises all of these signup and setup decisions in one place, including a checkout add-on breakdown and a first-hour checklist most tutorials skip, the Bluehost setup and getting started guide ties it together.
Domain and DNS Management
Bluehost includes a free domain registration for the first year and acts as your domain registrar by default. Domain renewal pricing is standard (around $17.99 per year for .com), and you can manage everything from the Domains tab in your dashboard without touching cPanel. The Bluehost domain and DNS guide covers nameservers, DNS records, third-party domain pointing, and email DNS in depth.
Common Domain Tasks
- Adding a new domain to an existing Bluehost account (addon domain vs parked domain)
- Assigning a domain to a specific website folder when running multiple sites
- Changing your primary domain after a rebrand
- Changing nameservers when you move DNS to Cloudflare or another DNS provider
- Adding A and CNAME records for subdomains, email verification, or third-party services
Connecting an External Domain
If you are connecting Bluehost hosting to a domain registered elsewhere, point that registrar's nameservers to ns1.bluehost.com and ns2.bluehost.com, then add the domain as an addon inside the Bluehost dashboard. Propagation usually finishes within a few hours.
Configuration and Features
Bluehost gives you the standard cPanel feature set plus a custom dashboard layer on top. For the full walkthrough (cPanel access, email setup, SSL, PHP, refunds), see the Bluehost configuration and features guide.
Most Common Configuration Tasks
- Installing free SSL via the bundled Let's Encrypt integration (one click in the Security tab)
- Changing the PHP version for compatibility with newer themes and plugins (Bluehost defaults are not always the latest stable PHP)
- Changing your cPanel password separately from your Bluehost account password (yes, they are two different credentials)
- Enabling WordPress Multisite if you need a network of subsites under one install
WonderSuite and the Onboarding Layer
WonderSuite, Bluehost's WordPress onboarding tool, sits on top of cPanel and handles theme selection, plugin recommendations, and AI-assisted page generation. It is helpful for first-time site builders, but power users typically disable the WonderSuite plugins after launch because they nudge you toward Bluehost upsells inside the WordPress admin.
If you decide Bluehost is not the right fit, the cancellation flow is straightforward but has a 30-day money-back window for new accounts. Walk through our how to cancel Bluehost guide for the exact steps, refund eligibility, and how to back up your site before you close the account.
Performance and Speed
Bluehost shared hosting performs adequately for low-to-medium-traffic sites. Independent tests typically show TTFB between 400 and 700 ms for cached WordPress pages and load times under two seconds with a caching plugin enabled. That is fine for a personal blog or small-business site, but it lags behind managed platforms like Kinsta or Cloudways, which run on isolated cloud servers with dedicated resources.
How to Get the Best Speed Out of Bluehost
Three changes make the biggest measurable difference on shared Bluehost:
- Enable the free CDN inside the Performance tab. This alone cuts load time for visitors outside the US by 30 to 50 percent on a typical WordPress site.
- Install a caching plugin. WP Rocket is the best paid option; WP Super Cache is solid and free. Both reduce TTFB dramatically for returning visitors.
- Choose a lightweight theme. Avoid the page builders that Bluehost preinstalls during WonderSuite onboarding if speed is a priority; they bundle large JavaScript libraries that hurt Core Web Vitals scores.
Bluehost Security Basics
Bluehost's shared hosting includes a baseline security setup, but some of the most-advertised features are paid add-ons rather than genuine protections. Here is what you actually get and what is worth paying for.
What Bluehost Includes by Default
Every plan comes with a free Let's Encrypt SSL certificate and the option to force HTTPS. The HTTPS redirect is not always enabled automatically; you need to turn it on in the Security tab of the dashboard or add a redirect rule in .htaccess. Leaving it off means visitors who type your domain without "https://" hit an unencrypted version, which browsers flag as insecure. That one step is the single most important security action for any new account.
Bluehost also runs Spam Experts on outgoing email to reduce the chance of your account being flagged for sending spam from shared IP addresses.
SiteLock: Is the Add-On Worth It?
SiteLock is a third-party malware scanning product that Bluehost aggressively promotes during checkout and via dashboard upsell banners. The basic tier (around $1.99/month intro) does daily scans and alerts you to issues; it does not auto-remove malware. The higher tiers add automated remediation and a web application firewall.
For most sites, a free WordPress security plugin like Wordfence or Solid Security handles the same scanning and firewall functions at no cost. SiteLock becomes relevant mainly if you want a server-level scan that runs independently of WordPress itself, or if your host requires it as a condition of a malware cleanup. Do not pay for SiteLock at checkout just because the upsell is prominent; evaluate it separately.
Two-Factor Authentication and Account Security
Bluehost supports two-factor authentication (2FA) for the main account login via Google Authenticator or a compatible TOTP app. Enable it under Account Settings as soon as your account is created. The cPanel login is a separate credential from your Bluehost account, and 2FA on the main account does not automatically protect cPanel access; treat cPanel as a second authentication surface and use a strong unique password for it.
SSH Access and Higher-Plan Features
SSH access is available on Pro and VPS plans. Shared Basic, Plus, and Choice Plus accounts use SFTP only. If you need to run WP-CLI commands, manage files via the command line, or automate deployments, the Pro plan is the lowest shared-hosting tier that unlocks SSH. Developers who need Git-based deployment or staging environments are better served by a managed WordPress host or a cloud platform like Cloudways, where these tools are standard.
What Shared Hosting Does Not Protect You From
Shared hosting by design means your site runs on a server with hundreds of other accounts. Bluehost uses account isolation to limit cross-account contamination, but a compromised plugin or theme on your own site is entirely your responsibility to clean up. Bluehost will suspend an account serving malware but does not proactively remediate it. Keep WordPress core, themes, and plugins updated; run a free security plugin; and keep file permissions tight (folders at 755, files at 644). These three habits prevent the vast majority of WordPress site compromises on shared hosting.
Bluehost Email Hosting in Practice
Email hosting is included on every Bluehost plan, which sets it apart from cloud hosts that leave email entirely to third parties. What you get in practice is more useful than the marketing makes it sound, but it also has real limits.
What Is Included
Bluehost provides Roundcube webmail, which you access at webmail.yourdomain.com or through the cPanel Email section. You can create unlimited email accounts on Plus, Choice Plus, and Pro plans. The Basic plan caps you at 5 email accounts, which is enough for a solo blogger or a very small team but not for a business with multiple departments.
Each email account can have its own inbox, sent folder, and storage quota that you set inside cPanel. You can also set up email forwarders, autoresponders, and catch-all addresses from the same panel without any additional cost.
Deliverability: The Shared IP Problem
The main drawback of Bluehost email is deliverability. Because hundreds of accounts share the same outgoing mail server IP addresses, a single spammy neighbour account can get those IPs flagged by Gmail, Outlook, or spam blacklists. When that happens, your legitimate business emails may land in recipients' spam folders or get rejected outright.
Signs of a deliverability problem include contacts not receiving your emails, high bounce rates on newsletters, or emails from your domain appearing in Gmail's Promotions or Spam tabs. The fix is to route outgoing email through a dedicated transactional email service. WP Mail SMTP or FluentSMTP can connect WordPress to Postmark, Brevo, or SendGrid, all of which offer free tiers covering a few hundred emails per day. This separates your deliverability from whatever your server neighbours are doing.
Connecting Gmail via SMTP
Many Bluehost users prefer to send and receive email through Gmail while keeping their domain address. This is straightforward to set up: you connect Gmail as a send-as account using Bluehost's SMTP settings, and you set up Gmail to pull messages from your Bluehost inbox via POP3. Our guide on adding Bluehost email to Gmail walks through every step with screenshots. The result is that you manage everything inside Gmail but recipients see your domain address in the From field.
When to Upgrade to Google Workspace
Bluehost's bundled email is adequate for simple use cases: a contact form on your site, a few staff addresses, basic newsletters. It becomes insufficient when you need shared calendars, Google Drive integration, mobile sync across multiple devices, or reliable deliverability for transactional email at scale. Google Workspace starts at $6 per user per month and gives you Gmail with your domain, Google Calendar, Meet, and Drive in one account. For a business where email is mission-critical, the upgrade is worth it. For a personal blog or a small site where email is secondary, Bluehost's included hosting is good enough.
Bluehost for WooCommerce
Bluehost is a WordPress-recommended host, and WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, so it works. But not every plan handles WooCommerce equally well, and a few things are worth knowing before you launch a store on shared Bluehost.
Which Plan to Use for a Store
The Basic plan (10 GB SSD, one website) is too constrained for anything beyond a test store. The Plus or Choice Plus plan is the minimum practical starting point for a real WooCommerce store: unlimited storage, unlimited email, and the resources to handle moderate traffic. For any store expecting a few hundred orders a month or running a product catalog over 200 items, the WP Pro managed WordPress tier or even the step up to Cloudways is worth the price difference for the dedicated resources and better database performance.
WooCommerce-Specific Notes for Bluehost
- One-click install: WooCommerce installs through Bluehost's Marketplace and through the standard WordPress plugin directory. The WonderSuite flow will ask about your store type during onboarding and pre-configure some settings, though you should review those recommendations before going live.
- Payment gateways: Stripe, PayPal, and WooPayments all work on Bluehost. You will need an SSL certificate active first (included free on all plans). See our guide on how to set up SSL on Bluehost if it is not yet active.
- Resource limits: Shared Bluehost throttles accounts that exceed CPU or RAM thresholds. A flash sale or a heavily trafficked product page can trigger temporary throttling that slows down the checkout experience. If your store has promotional periods with traffic spikes, the Pro plan or managed WordPress handles those moments better than Plus or Choice Plus.
- Email for orders: Bluehost's bundled email handles transactional order confirmation emails, but deliverability is inconsistent. For reliable order emails, use an SMTP plugin (WP Mail SMTP or FluentSMTP) pointed at a dedicated sending service like Postmark or Brevo.
If the store grows past what shared Bluehost can handle, the next step is either managed WordPress (WP Pro) on Bluehost itself, or a managed cloud platform like Cloudways on DigitalOcean where you get isolated resources and a faster stack. See our Cloudways hosting guide for that comparison.
Bluehost vs Other Hosting Providers
Bluehost competes against three different categories of host depending on your priorities:
- Other shared hosts (SiteGround, HostGator, DreamHost): Bluehost wins on intro pricing and WordPress.org recommendation status. SiteGround typically wins on raw shared-hosting speed and support quality.
- InMotion Hosting: the closest match on price and feature set, with the trade-off that InMotion includes US-based phone support on every plan and a 90-day money-back guarantee (three times longer than Bluehost). Bluehost wins on the official WordPress.org endorsement and slightly cheaper intro pricing.
- Managed cloud (Cloudways): Cloudways is 4 to 5 times faster but costs 3 to 5 times more, has no cPanel, and does not include email or domain registration. Choose Bluehost if you want everything in one place; choose Cloudways if speed is a priority and you can manage DNS and email separately.
- Managed WordPress (Kinsta, WP Engine): These hosts auto-update WordPress, run on Google Cloud or AWS, and start around $30 per month. They make sense for business-critical sites where downtime costs more than the price gap.
For WooCommerce stores or any ecommerce site getting more than a few hundred orders a month, shared Bluehost will become a bottleneck. Look at managed WordPress or Cloudways instead.
Is Bluehost Worth It?
The answer depends on what you are comparing it to. Bluehost is worth it if you want a familiar, all-in-one setup (WordPress, domain, email, and SSL in one account) at a low first-year price. It is less worth it if you have been burned by renewal pricing before, need top-tier performance, or want staging environments and Git deployment as standard features.
Where Bluehost genuinely delivers:
- WordPress.org endorsement since 2005: not a paid partnership, just a long track record of compatibility with core releases.
- Everything in one account: shared hosts that bundle domain, email, SSL, and cPanel eliminate 3 to 5 separate vendor relationships that cloud hosts require you to manage independently.
- 24/7 phone and chat support: competitors like SiteGround have removed phone support from all but enterprise plans.
- 30-day money-back guarantee: enough time to migrate a site, run tests, and evaluate real performance before committing.
Where Bluehost falls short of expectations:
- Renewal price jumps: the Plus plan introductory rate is $5.45/month; renewal is $16.99/month. Over three years, the total cost is often higher than a more expensive-looking competitor with flat pricing.
- Shared hosting resource limits: Bluehost throttles sites that consume excessive CPU or RAM on shared servers. A sudden traffic spike from a viral post can trigger temporary throttling. You would not see this on Cloudways or Kinsta.
- WonderSuite upsells: the onboarding flow and WordPress admin include persistent nudges toward premium add-ons. Easy to dismiss, but worth knowing about before checkout.
For a personal blog, small business site, or a first WordPress project, Bluehost is a sensible choice at the introductory rate. For a WooCommerce store or a site where a 500ms TTFB costs conversions, the performance ceiling makes Cloudways or Kinsta a better long-term investment.
Who Bluehost Is Best For
Bluehost fits a few specific user types well:
- First-time site owners who want WordPress, a free domain, email, and SSL bundled together without configuring anything
- Bloggers and small business owners on a tight first-year budget who want under-$3-per-month hosting
- Site owners who need cPanel: developers and freelancers comfortable with traditional shared-hosting tools find Bluehost more familiar than custom-dashboard hosts
- People moving from another shared host: Bluehost offers free migration for qualifying new accounts within the first 30 days, a paid migration service (around $149) for additional sites, or you can use the free WordPress migration plugin yourself
Bluehost is less ideal for high-traffic sites, ecommerce stores with heavy backend workloads, anyone who has been burned by renewal pricing before, and developers who need SSH access, staging environments, or Git deployment as standard features.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Bluehost include security features, or do I need to buy SiteLock?
Bluehost includes a free SSL certificate and basic account isolation on all plans. SiteLock is a paid add-on that Bluehost promotes aggressively, but for most WordPress sites a free plugin like Wordfence covers the same malware scanning and firewall functions at no cost. SiteLock is worth considering only if you want a server-level scan that runs outside of WordPress, or if you have had a malware incident and need professional cleanup. Do not purchase it by default at checkout.
Is Bluehost email reliable enough for a small business?
Bluehost's included email works for basic use: a contact form address, a few staff inboxes, simple forwarding. The main risk is deliverability. Shared server IP addresses can get blacklisted due to other accounts on the same server, which causes your legitimate emails to land in spam. For a business where email deliverability matters, route outgoing email through a dedicated SMTP service (Brevo, Postmark, or SendGrid all have free tiers). For a business that depends heavily on email, Google Workspace at $6 per user per month is a more reliable long-term choice.
Can I host a WooCommerce store on Bluehost's cheapest plan?
Technically yes, but the Basic plan (10 GB SSD, 5 email accounts, one website) is too limited for a store you intend to grow. The storage cap fills quickly once you add product images, order data, and plugin files. The Plus or Choice Plus plan is the minimum practical tier for a real WooCommerce store: unlimited storage, unlimited email, and enough headroom to handle moderate order volumes. For stores expecting consistent traffic or running promotional campaigns, the Pro plan or managed WordPress avoids the resource throttling that shared plans impose during traffic spikes.
Next Steps
Bluehost offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on shared hosting plans, so you can sign up, test the platform, and get a refund if it does not work for you. Sign up through Bluehost to grab the intro pricing and your free domain, then walk through our WordPress install guide for the next steps. If you are wondering what Bluehost charges to build a site for you versus using the free tools, see our guide on Bluehost website building costs. For a deeper performance and feature breakdown, read our full Bluehost review.
