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.
- 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.
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.
One detail people miss: 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. 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. 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 people run into:
- 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
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. The most common configuration tasks new users hit:
- 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, 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.
To get the most speed out of Bluehost, three things make the biggest difference: enable the bundled free CDN inside the Performance tab, install a caching plugin (WP Rocket or the free WP Super Cache), and pick 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.
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.
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.
Getting Started
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.
