Why should you consider Bluehost alternatives?
As you are looking up Bluehost alternatives, chances are you’re more concerned about what Bluehost doesn’t do so well. But before stepping into the drawbacks, let’s mention what Bluehost does effectively.
Bluehost offers a wide range of hosting plans, such as affordable shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting. It now manages more than 2 million websites from all around the world. It also becomes one of only three WordPress-recommended hosts since 2005.
It has an intuitive and fantastic hosting management dashboard. So, if you are a newbie, Bluehost can make it about as easy as possible to make a website, which is superior. Additionally, Bluehost does a great job of constructing value-added options, even in their low-cost plans. For example, you can get:
- A free domain name for the first year
- Free SSL certificate
- Built-in caching
- Staging websites
However, if you used to launch your website with Bluehost, you might notice some areas where Bluehost isn’t as sturdy as it looks. Based on some surveys and benchmarks, we’ll show you why.
- Performance. First of all, many users report Bluehost’s suboptimal web page load occasions. In ReviewSignal’s 2018 performance benchmarks, Bluehost carried out poorly within the battery of assessments, while most of the other options on this checklist performed reasonably effectively. So, should you prioritize web page load occasions, you can find it somewhere else.
- Support. Many customers are not really satisfied with Bluehost’s help. In a hosting survey conducted by CodeinWP in 2018, among over 830 WordPress customers, Bluehost was rated only 3.2/ 5.0 when it came to customer support. Their WordPress-specific support wasn’t significantly better, at 3.4.
- Migration. Most web hosting providers don’t charge when you switch from another hosting provider to theirs. But Bluehost leaves your pockets empty if you want to migrate when it charges $149.99 for migration.
- Pricing plans. Last but not least, while its costs are generally reasonably aggressive, it does require you to enroll for longer plans if you wish to get the best deals. In reality, for absolutely the lowest worth, it is essential to commit up to 3 years at a time. The lack of monthly billing options makes it somehow less attractive than other competitors.
- Add-ons and upgrades. Bluehost might attract you at first with its cheap hosting plans. Nevertheless, you need to pay extra dollars for additional security and updates, which leaves you questioning whether it’s worth investing in such expensive add-ons that you could get for free with other hosting providers.
Suffice to say, Bluehost took a beating with these above downsides, which brings up an interesting question: How can it remain so popular when so many of its users are unhappy? The answer may be its affiliate program, which pays out a hefty $5 million in 2019 alone to its participants. At $65 per referral that comes out to around 77,000 new customers who found their way to Bluehost by paid recommendations.
Bluehost may look like an ideal solution to beginners, but it might not be the right option for advanced users. With that in mind, here are the best and cheap Bluehost alternatives for your reference.
Best Alternatives for Cheap Bluehost Hosting
If you’re using or considering Bluehost’s cheap hosting, these are the three best alternatives for you…
ASPHostPortal
ASPHostPortal is a specialist Windows ASP.NET hosting provider that also provides Linux shared hosting plans plus cloud hosting, reseller hosting, email hosting, and associated services such as domain registration.
This company markets itself as the “#1 Recommended Windows and ASP.NET Spotlight Hosting Partner in the United States,” and it hosts more than 50,000 websites. It has been in business for over a decade, and it has 12 data centers across Europe, North America, South America, Asia, and Australia. Its website is in English.
Most ASPHostPortal plans run on a Windows server and use the Plesk control panel rather than cPanel. But it does offer a few Linux-based shared hosting, cloud hosting, and dedicated server plans for which you can purchase cPanel.
We like how ASPHostPortal allows us to prepay in 3-month installments so that you can try the service with little risk and see if it is right for us. Even then, we’ll have access to a 30-day money-back guarantee if we don’t like the service and choose to cancel within the first 30 days.
Although ASPHostPortal is a popular web host and has many 5+ year clients, we’ve had trouble finding recent reviews (forum threads specific to ASPHostPortal reviews), either positive or negative, in the past two years on google and web hosting forums. We did, however, find many discussions where their clients are actively recommending this service to people that need Windows ASP hosting.
ASPHostPortal uses 12 world-class data centers located in Washington D.C., Toronto, Amsterdam, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Milan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Melbourne, Chennai, and Sao Paulo. These facilities feature redundant, high-speed network connections, and high-tech cooling and fire-suppression systems. They are staffed 24/7/365 by certified administrators and network engineers.
100% website uptime is assured by DNS failover that monitors customers’ websites for failover from multiple geographic nodes. When a website fails to load, ASPHostPortal will automatically change the DNS records to reroute traffic to a backup IP address or server. This is a paid monthly service.
HostArmada
HostArmada undoubtedly ranks as one of the best Bluehost alternatives for all kinds of users. Its WordPress hosting plans have reasonable prices, and can go blow-for-blow with most other providers when it comes to functionality.
But what makes HostArmada outstanding is not its pricing tiers, it’s the loading times. Thanks to an advanced caching feature called SuperCacher, HostArmada becomes one of the fastest WordPress hosting platforms available. Plus, it keeps your site extremely safe by offering you free SSL, backups, account isolation, and many more.
Unlike Bluehost, HostArmada has a stellar support team that is available 24/7 via various channels. It also has a massive knowledge base and hundreds of video tutorials to assist you.
HostForLIFE.eu
HostForLIFE was founded in 2008 and since then they have grown into one of the largest windows hosting companies in the UK. HostForLIFE is operated from its registered office based in Manchester and data center in Amsterdam and the newest London data center. At HostForLIFE you will find low-cost, yet reliable, windows hosting services. Today they host millions of websites across their infrastructure. From entry-level Shared Hosting packages all the way up to Private Clusters.
Since the company entered the web hosting market back in 2008, it has been steadily growing and has been able to maintain its quality throughout while still holding a place among the leaders. They are also reputed to offer their clients great customer care and support along with an undisrupted up time of up to 99.9%.
HostForLIFE Plesk Web Hosting is perfect for individuals and professionals for hosting personal websites, blogs, and forums. Whether you are looking to move your website over or to work on your next big project, Plesk hosting is a great all-around choice for small to medium websites and blogs. It gives you complete control over your web hosting with the industry-leading Plesk control panel — with a useful range of add-ons bundled in like one-click installation software.
Users of HostForLIFE hosting are entitled to a 30-day money-back guarantee in case their customer is not satisfied with the services offered. There are no hidden charges associated with their products, so far, or the price you see is the price you pay. They provide quality 24x7x365 technical support via email, helpdesk, and knowledgebase. On top of that customers get unlimited transfers, websites, and unlimited space.
So…
Bluehost indeed offers a decent web hosting solution for users. But why do you have to be stuck with Bluehost’s downsides when multiple alternatives offer better features at about the same price? We hope you got enough knowledge of which Bluehost alternatives are best for you.
