I thought it was about time I wrote an honest review of the web hosting company; Bluehost. Bluehost have been my main web host for most of my websites for a good 4 years or more now, and I’d like to share my experiences with them.

Before we go on with the review, click here now to open Bluehost in a new tab so you can sort of follow along with what I’m saying about them, and see what offers they have on at the moment. Don’t worry, you won’t lose your place in this post and you can flick back and forth between the two.

A review of bluehost web hosting in 2017

Just so you know, I’m a blogger/website owner and have been for about 5 years or more now. I started out with a free blog on Blogger/Blogspot, and have since created a Weebly site and a Wix one before realising that self hosted and custom made is the BEST way to go.

Self hosted websites are so much better for a huge number of reasons, and it appears a lot more professional to everyone that sees them. You get your own domain name, and full control over everything that happens on your site. Enough about that though, let’s talk about Bluehost.

What’s good about Bluehost

It’s very easy to use, and getting set up on Bluehost takes less than 4 minutes. That’s 4 minutes to sign up for the hosting, create an account, register a domain name, get a WordPress site live install a theme, and write your first one sentence blog post. (Insert video here).

Their support is very competent, and even complex technical problems are dealt with in real time, over the phone (if you’ve called them) or through live chat. I’ve had instances where I’ve had to configure complicated databases and websites/web apps and they’ve been incredibly helpful.

What’s bad about Bluehost

Over the years, I’ve noticed that response time for the tech support can be a little time consuming. They’ve recently got rid of their ticket system, so to get support you’ll either need to call them (and potentially ave a 30 minute wait if it’s busy) or open a live chat for which the wait time is about 10 minutes on average.

I’ve hosted with them for over 4 years as I said, and I’ve only experienced 2 cases of ‘down time’. This was 2 instances where my sites were offline for about 20 minutes or so, and it seemed that by the time I’d got through to support and said they were down, they were already coming back online and it was all resolved.

Like any hosting company, they’ll have their rare glitches, planned maintenance periods etc, but overall, and for the vast, vast majority of the time there’s no issues whatsoever.

Who should get hosting with Bluehost

Bloggers, first time website owners, or people who want to get hosting to test or validate a business idea.

If you’ve got a large business which you expect to get lots of web traffic (more than 10,000 visitors per day) then I’d suggest getting a higher end host through Bluehost like a VPS or a dedicated server.

Their shared hosting is great for those of you who just want something cheap, that works well, and that can potentially host lots of small websites under the same hosting account, for example if you’re looking to test lots of small websites.

Things to be aware of

There are a few things I’ve learned using Bluehost over the years that might come in useful for you. The first one is that you should always back up your files.

If you don’t purchase backup pro (it’s about $1-2) then it’s always best to manually back your files up every now and then.

Not because Bluehost don’t take backups, but because for your own space of mind, you’ll at least have SOMETHING if there’s a problem with your account, or if something happened.

For example, I once accidentally deleted all the files in my public_html directory (where all your website files are stored), meaning that I had to ask Bluehost to find a backup for everything and install it, which took a fair few hours.

Of course, you probably WON’T delete all your files like I did! But it doesn’t hurt to keep backups and make sure you read every message you see on the screen twice before clicking ‘ok’. Don’t be scared to contact tech support, they’re very helpful when you get through to them.

There are also a fair few special/secret bonuses and discounts you can get once you’re signed up. For example, you can get $50 free advertising credit with Google Adwords and Bing as a standard when you sign up for any hosting plan. This can be found in your Cpanel (The dashboard you’ll log into).

There are also some other things included so make sure you ask them what bonuses you have when you’ve signed up, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

When you sign up for any hosting plan with Bluehost, as a free bonus you’ll get one free domain name registration for one year. USE IT!

When you sign up for an account, it will ask you if you already have a domain name that you’d lie to use or if you’d like to register one. If you already have purchased one elsewhere, use this chance to register another one that you might use in the future, for free.

Bluehost coupon codes and discounts valid in 2019

Here I will list all the discount codes, vouchers and ways you can get cheaper web hosting with Bluehost as and when I find them. Bookmark this page and come back later to see discount codes.

1: Great value shared hosting from $2.99 or less per month (best offer at the moment; January 2019)

Bluehost review summary

Bluehost is a great web host for a basic or small to medium business or company. For a first website, or a small business, Bluehost is perfect. They’re reliable, fast, affordable and the tech support is fantastic. If you’re looking for a host to handle high traffic websites, don’t go for their shared hosting plan; instead opt for the VPS or dedicated servers they offer.

Click here now to get a great discount price on Bluehost web hosting today!