What Is Bluehost?

Bluehost is a web hosting company based in Utah, and one of only three hosts officially recommended by WordPress.org. They offer shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS, dedicated servers, and managed WordPress plans for websites of all sizes.

Who Owns Bluehost?

Bluehost is owned by Newfold Digital, a web technology company formed in 2021 when Endurance International Group merged with Web.com Group. Newfold Digital owns several hosting brands including Bluehost, HostGator, Web.com, and Network Solutions. The company is headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida.

Before the Newfold rebrand, Bluehost operated under the Endurance International Group umbrella, which acquired it in 2010. The original founder, Matt Heaton, started Bluehost in 2003 after running 50megs.com and 0catch.com. As of today, Bluehost hosts more than two million domains on servers housed in a 50,000 square-foot facility in Provo, Utah. For a full breakdown of plans, pricing, and how Bluehost compares to other hosts, see our complete Bluehost hosting guide.

Is Bluehost an American Company?

Yes. Bluehost is an American company. Its servers and main operations are based in Utah, and Newfold Digital (the parent company) is headquartered in Florida. Customer support is US-based as well.

What Hosting Plans Does Bluehost Offer?

Bluehost offers several types of hosting to cover different site sizes and budgets:

• Shared hosting - Multiple sites share a single server. Best for small blogs, portfolios, and early-stage business sites.
• WordPress hosting - Shared plans pre-configured for WordPress, with one-click installation and automatic updates.
• VPS hosting - A virtualized private server with dedicated resources. Good for growing sites that have outgrown shared plans.
• Dedicated hosting - A full physical server for your site alone. Suited to high-traffic sites with specific resource needs.
• WooCommerce hosting - Shared plans with WooCommerce pre-installed and ecommerce tools included.
• Managed WordPress hosting - A higher-tier plan with automatic updates, staging environments, and enhanced security.

How Much Does Bluehost Cost?

Bluehost uses introductory promotional pricing for the first billing term, with higher renewal rates when the term ends. The main shared hosting tiers look like this:

• Basic - intro from ~$2.95/month, renews at ~$8.99/month. Covers 1 website, 10 GB SSD storage, 5 email accounts, free SSL, and a free domain for the first year.
• Plus - intro from ~$5.45/month, renews at ~$11.99/month. Unlimited websites, unlimited storage, unlimited email.
• Choice Plus - intro from ~$5.45/month, renews at ~$16.99/month. Everything in Plus, plus domain privacy and automated daily backups.
• Pro - intro from ~$13.95/month. Dedicated server resources, better performance under traffic spikes, advanced caching.

These are shared hosting plan figures. Managed WordPress and WooCommerce plans are priced separately and include additional features such as staging and enhanced performance.

The promotional rate applies to the first term only (typically 12, 24, or 36 months). After that, renewal pricing applies automatically. For most new site owners, the Basic or Plus plan is the right starting point. See our full Bluehost review for a detailed breakdown of what each plan actually delivers in practice.

The Bluehost Renewal Pricing Reality

The introductory price is real, but it only lasts for the first billing term. Most new customers who sign up for a 12-month plan will hit the full renewal rate at exactly the one-year mark. This is worth understanding before you sign up, not after.

Here are the numbers in plain terms:

• Basic plan: $2.95/month intro, $8.99/month at renewal. That is a 205% increase.
• Plus plan: $5.45/month intro, $11.99/month at renewal. That is a 120% increase.
• Choice Plus plan: $5.45/month intro, $16.99/month at renewal. That is a 212% increase.

Bluehost does disclose the renewal rate during checkout. However, the introductory monthly figure is displayed prominently, and the renewal rate appears in smaller print during the billing summary step. Many customers focus on the headline figure and only see the full renewal cost when the invoice arrives.

The most practical way to reduce this impact is to sign up for a 36-month term at the introductory rate. This locks in the lower price for three years, which gives you enough time to assess whether Bluehost works for your site before you face the full renewal cost. After that first 36-month period, renewal rates apply regardless of the term length you choose going forward.

When your renewal notice arrives, treat it as a prompt to compare options. At $8.99/month for the Basic plan, several shared hosting providers offer comparable or better specifications at their standard (non-promotional) rates. The renewal price is the number that matters for long-term cost planning, not the introductory figure you saw at signup.

What Does Bluehost Include?

Most Bluehost plans come with a free domain for the first year, a free SSL certificate, and a one-click WordPress installer. Their shared plans include cPanel access, which makes it straightforward to manage files, databases, and email accounts.

On the higher tiers, you get features like staging environments (for testing changes before they go live), automatic backups, and advanced caching. Bluehost also handles email hosting, so you can set up professional email addresses on your domain directly through cPanel, with webmail access through Horde or Roundcube.

Is Bluehost Safe and Secure?

Bluehost includes a free SSL certificate on all plans, which encrypts data between your visitors’ browsers and your server. This is a baseline requirement for any website, and Bluehost handles renewal automatically so the certificate does not expire without warning.

Beyond the free SSL, Bluehost offers optional security add-ons at checkout: SiteLock for malware scanning and removal, and CodeGuard for daily automated backups with restore capability. These are sold separately rather than bundled into the base plan. If you skip them, the free alternative for backups is the UpdraftPlus plugin on WordPress, which can back up to Google Drive or Dropbox at no cost.

Bluehost’s shared hosting environment applies server-level protections including spam filtering and basic firewall rules, but you are sharing a server with other customers. For higher security isolation, Bluehost’s VPS plans give you dedicated resources and a more controlled environment.

What Support Does Bluehost Offer?

Bluehost provides 24/7 support through live chat and phone on all plans. This is more generous than many budget hosts, which restrict phone support to higher tiers. The support team can help with hosting account questions, WordPress setup, and basic troubleshooting. Complex WordPress development issues are generally outside their scope.

Bluehost also maintains an extensive knowledge base with step-by-step guides covering account setup, WordPress installation, domain configuration, email, and billing. For common setup questions, the knowledge base typically has a clear walkthrough.

Is Bluehost Good for WordPress?

Bluehost is one of the most popular choices for WordPress beginners. WordPress.org lists it among their three recommended hosts, which means it meets their standards for performance, support, and WordPress compatibility. The setup process is beginner-friendly: you pick a plan, choose a domain, and WordPress is installed automatically.

That said, experienced WordPress developers sometimes prefer hosts that give more direct server control. Bluehost’s shared plans work well as a starting point, but very high-traffic WordPress sites may need to upgrade to a VPS or managed hosting. Our full Bluehost review covers performance in more detail.

What the WordPress.org Recommendation Actually Means

WordPress.org recommends three hosts: Bluehost, SiteGround, and DreamHost. These three appear on the official WordPress.org recommended hosting page, and Bluehost has held a spot on that list for many years.

There is a commercial element to the recommendation that is worth knowing. Hosting companies pay a referral fee when customers sign up via links on the WordPress.org recommended hosting page. WordPress.org discloses this. The disclosure does not mean the recommendation is invented, but it does mean the list is not a purely neutral assessment of the best hosts available. It reflects hosts that have met a defined standard and have a commercial relationship with the WordPress.org project.

What the recommendation does cover: the three listed hosts have agreed to meet certain technical standards for WordPress compatibility, uptime, and support quality. Bluehost meets those standards, which is why it remains on the list.

What the recommendation does not guarantee:

• Best performance among all available hosts
• Lowest renewal pricing
• Most generous storage or resource limits
• Fastest time-to-first-byte (TTFB) or page load speeds

Several hosts not on the WordPress.org list, including Hostinger, Kinsta, and Cloudways, consistently outperform Bluehost on independent speed benchmarks while meeting the same WordPress technical requirements. They are simply not part of the WordPress.org referral program.

The practical takeaway: the WordPress.org recommendation is a quality floor, not a ceiling. It tells you Bluehost is legitimate, meets compatibility standards, and is safe to consider as a starting point. It does not tell you Bluehost is the fastest, cheapest at renewal, or best-suited to your specific site. Use it as confirmation that Bluehost is a reasonable option, not as a reason to skip comparing alternatives.

Bluehost Uptime and Performance

Bluehost targets 99.9% uptime across their shared and WordPress plans. Independent tests generally show response times in the 400-700ms range for shared hosting, which is acceptable for most small to mid-sized sites. Performance on shared hosting can vary depending on traffic from other users on the same server. If consistent speed matters more than price, their managed WordPress plans or a VPS offer more predictable results.

Bluehost vs Other Beginner-Friendly Hosts

Bluehost is not the only affordable host targeting new WordPress users. Here is how it compares to the most common alternatives:

• Bluehost vs Hostinger - Hostinger offers cheaper renewal pricing and generally faster load times on its Cloud plans. Bluehost has the advantage of official WordPress.org endorsement and better beginner onboarding. For pure price, Hostinger wins; for WordPress tooling, Bluehost has the edge.
• Bluehost vs SiteGround - SiteGround uses faster server technology (LiteSpeed) and provides stronger security defaults, but costs noticeably more, especially at renewal. Bluehost suits a tighter budget; SiteGround suits someone willing to pay more for better performance.
• Bluehost vs DreamHost - DreamHost offers month-to-month billing with no annual commitment, which Bluehost does not match. DreamHost also has a reputation for transparent pricing. Bluehost has better WordPress-specific tooling and broader plan options.

What Bluehost Does Not Include

Knowing what is not included on standard plans helps you budget accurately before you commit. These are the gaps that catch new customers off guard:

• No free daily backups on Basic or Plus plans. Automated daily backups are only included on Choice Plus and Pro. On Basic and Plus, you can take manual backups through cPanel, but automated daily backups require either CodeGuard (a paid add-on Bluehost sells at checkout) or a WordPress plugin like UpdraftPlus, which is free and backs up to Google Drive or Dropbox.
• No free domain privacy on Basic or Plus. Domain privacy (also called WHOIS protection) hides your personal contact information from public WHOIS lookups. It is included free on Choice Plus and Pro, but on Basic and Plus it costs extra, typically $12 to $15 per year. Without it, your name, address, and email address are publicly visible in the domain registration record.
• No malware scanning included on any shared plan. SiteLock malware scanning is an add-on sold at checkout, not a built-in feature. Without it, you are relying on WordPress-level security plugins such as Wordfence or Sucuri for malware detection and removal. Both have free tiers that cover basic scanning.
• No staging environment on shared plans. One-click staging (a separate copy of your site where you can test changes before pushing them live) is available on Bluehost's managed WordPress plans, not on standard shared hosting. To test changes safely on a shared plan, you would need to manually clone your site to a subdomain and manage the sync yourself.
• Shared server performance limits. On shared hosting, your site shares server CPU and memory with other accounts. During busy periods for neighboring accounts on the same server, your site may respond more slowly. Bluehost applies resource protection to limit how much any single account consumes, but the shared environment is a real constraint for sites with high traffic or resource-intensive plugins. Bluehost's VPS and managed WordPress plans remove this constraint.

Who Is Bluehost For?

Bluehost suits:

• New website owners who want a simple setup with WordPress and 24/7 support to back them up
• Small businesses that need hosting, a domain, and professional email in one affordable package
• Anyone who wants WordPress.org-recommended hosting without a high monthly cost
• WooCommerce store owners on a budget who want a managed setup with pre-installed ecommerce tools
• Bloggers and content creators who need a low-cost entry point and room to grow

It is less suited to developers who need root server access, sites with heavy traffic requirements, or teams that prefer managed cloud infrastructure. For those use cases, a VPS or a managed host like Cloudways is worth considering. For advanced use cases such as running multiple WordPress sites from one installation, Bluehost also supports WordPress Multisite across all plan types.

For practical setup guides, see our how-to on how to add a domain to your Bluehost account and our guide on whether Bluehost is a good choice for your site.