5 Best Bluehost alternatives 2023: compared and reviewed

For almost 20 years, Bluehost has been the go-to web hosting provider for many. Yet, the service seems to have slept on its laurels and caught a few drawbacks on the way.

Other players in the field have quite a few better things to offer than Bluehost now. This includes lower prices, improved performance, more advanced security features, and more power.

To help you pick the right alternative, we researched and tested dozens of other web hosts. Continue reading to find our list of the 5 best Bluehost alternatives.

Top 5 best Bluehost alternatives

1. Hostinger – best Bluehost alternative for WordPress hosting
2. Dreamhost – best affordable Bluehost alternative
3. HostGator – budget-friendly and versatile hosting provider
4. A2 Hosting – secure and fast Bluehost alternative
5. SiteGround – Bluehost alternative for beginners and businesses

📢 LIMITED OFFER: Cyber Monday! Get 86% OFF Hostinger + 3 months free!

The best Bluehost alternatives – detailed list

We researched dozens of hosting services to find which ones provide you with enough resources, features, and great prices. We also performed performance tests to see which hosts are the best Bluehost alternatives. Keep reading to find out our detailed results.

1. Hostinger – best Bluehost alternative for WordPress hosting

Features	Free SSL, hPanel, and speed-oriented tools
Uptime	100%
Speed	511ms
Best for	Cheap and fast small-to-medium website hosting
Current deal	🔥Cyber Monday! Get 86% OFF Hostinger + 3 months free!🔥

Visit Hostinger

Hostinger is living proof that you can do a lot of things for little money. The fees may tempt you to question its reliability. But rest assured that Hostinger’s affordable prices do not stand for low quality. This provider offers well-rounded services and is beginner-friendly.

So what does Hostinger actually include?

• Hostinger has its own hosting and site management panel called hPanel. In terms of ease of use, it’s quite similar to cPanel used by Bluehost. So no matter your level of experience, you'll be able to navigate it easily.
• The provider has a 99.9% uptime guarantee, which Bluehost lacks, so you can be sure that your site won’t go out for days.
• Hostinger offers 4 different server locations to choose from with its shared hosting plans. You can either go with Netherlands, Lithuania, the USA, or Singapore.
• Additionally, Hostinger is a very performance-oriented provider. It keeps its hardware and software up to date and integrates many advanced features, which make Hostinger able to handle traffic jumps without any trouble.
• Lastly, the prices are some of the lowest in the market, with shared plans starting at only $1.79/month.

The point is that Hostinger aligned all the planets so that you can create a fully functional website with little money and less effort.

Hostinger pricing

Hostinger delivers 2 shared and 1 cloud hosting plan, as opposed to Bluehost’s 4 shared ones. The Premium shared hosting ($1.79/month), the Business package ($3.14/month), and the Cloud Startup plan ($8.09/month). On the other hand, Bluehost charges $2.65/month (Basic), $4.95/month (Plus & Choice Plus), and $9.95/month (Pro).

For an entry-level website, the plans above give you what you need. You get free custom domain, at least 100 e-mail accounts, decent bandwidth, and good performance, plus a few other benefits like weekly backups and a free SSL certificate.

• Premium ($1.79/month) – with this plan you receive up to 100 websites, 100GB storage, unlimited bandwidth, and databases. Suitable for a personal blog with more traffic, portfolio, or for a freelancer.
• Business ($3.14/month) – the plan includes everything from Premium plus, daily backup and 4 times the processing power and memory. Recommended for a heavier website.
• Cloud Startup ($8.09/month) – the package allows up to 300 sites, and includes 200GB SSD storage space, 2CPUs cores, 3GB RAM, cache manager, free daily backups, and CDN. It's very well suited for large projects.

Lastly, just like Bluehost, Hostinger offers the advertised prices only for the first installment. However, keep in mind, while the renewal rates are quite higher, they're not as steep as with Bluehost.

Hostinger performance

Hostinger doesn’t fail to surprise with its performance results. For this part, I’ve tested the provider’s ability to handle heavy traffic on site.

I’ve sent 50 Virtual Users (VUs) onto the site to see if Hostinger can handle it. Just a quick note, 50 new continuous users each minute for a month could come up to ~50 000 monthly visits.

And Hostinger handled the full 50 VUs, unlike Bluehost – 15 VUs.

Even the cheapest Hostinger’s plan can handle pretty intense traffic without any failed request (red line, which is, thankfully, nowhere to be found) or continuous slowdowns (blue line). At the same time, Bluehost’s can’t.

Also, Hostinger has 8 server locations with its shared hosting plans, whereas Bluehost doesn’t let you choose your server’s location at all.

The outline here is that Hostinger delivers reliable performance at low prices. It may have a few tricks up its sleeve, but at least its prices and performance are better than Bluehost.

2. DreamHost – best Bluehost alternative for affordable hosting

Features	Free SSL, domain, native control panel
Uptime	>99.99%
Speed	231ms
Best for	WordPress-focused business websites or blogs
Current deal	🔥Get DreamHost now, 79% OFF!🔥

Visit DreamHost

DreamHost is a pretty straightforward alternative to Bluehost. The provider is highly WordPress-oriented and offers only 2 shared hosting plans, which are very affordable. Additionally, the provider puts ease of use at the forefront of its services with its native user management panel.

Here are the main features that make DreamHost a good Bluehost alternative:

• DreamHost comes with its own custom control panel, and the user interface is very easy to use. You will be able to navigate it without getting lost, which is a plus for beginners. Managing all essential aspects of your website takes just a few minutes.
• To make website creation that much easier, DreamHost includes a free WordPress-focused website builder. What this means is that the DreamHost’s builder is integrated as a plugin in your WordPress website.
• While it’s pretty rare to have a 100% uptime guarantee for shared hosting plans, DreamHost offers exactly that. So while this is a little ambitious, you can be sure that your site will remain live longer than the average shared hosting website.
• Lastly, compared to Bluehost’s pricing, DreamHost offers good monthly prices regardless of the billing period’s length. Starter plan retails for $1.99 with monthly billing, $2.95/month with an annual, and $2.59/month with a 3-year billing option.

Basically, DreamHost is affordable, reliable, easy to use, and it seems to have a solution for virtually everyone.

DreamHost pricing

DreamHost offers only 2 shared hosting plans. You have the Shared Starter ($2.59/month) and Shared Unlimited ($3.95/month). Bluehost has 4 plans and noticeably less reasonable prices.

Both plans come with a free domain and its privacy, unlimited traffic, and a pre-installed WordPress. Not to mention that you can use a WP website builder, enjoy fast SSD storage, and a free SSL certificate. However, there are a few differences between the two.

• Starter ($2.59/month) – allows connecting only 1 website and if you want an e-mail account, you have to pay $1.67/month for it. But it’s ideal if you want a simple personal website.
• Unlimited ($3.95/month) – allows connecting unlimited websites, and includes a free e-mail account. You can use this plan to create a small business website.

DreamHost performance

Just like many other Bluehost alternatives on this list, DreamHost’s ability to perform under the stress was just as impressive. I’ve examined the provider’s limits by sending 50 Virtual Users (VUs) onto the site.

Being able to handle 50 VUs is a pretty good achievement as such traffic could easily crash the server and leave your site to sink. Well, that’s not the case with DreamHost. The host handled 50 VUs with no signs of struggle. Clearly, that’s not the limit here.

The response time (blue line) did have a few jumps, but overall it had little impact on the performance as a whole. Much better results than with Bluehost.

And if it weren’t enough, DreamHost actually offers a 100% uptime guarantee. Plus, for each hour of downtime, DreamHost credits 1 day of hosting.

Lastly, I should point out that the provider does have data centers in the US alone. This means that the best performance results can be expected in North America too.

Overall, DreamHost is a reliable and affordable web hosting platform that offers inclusive plans, good prices, and simplicity above all. In my opinion, it’s a good alternative to Bluehost.

3. HostGator – excellent budget-friendly and versatile alternative to Bluehost

Features	Free website builder, free domain, WordPress hosting, unlimited emails, 24/7 customer support
Uptime	>99.99%
Speed	525ms
Best for	Cost-effective portfolio or blog hosting
Current deal	🔥 Cyber Monday! Get up to 76% OFF HostGator! 🔥

Visit HostGator

Consider HostGator as another worthwhile and affordable Bluehost alternative if Hostinger didn’t catch your eye. This provider offers a wide range of pricing options for various hosting needs. Additionally, the appealing price tag doesn’t come at the cost of feature abundance or quality. Here’s a glance at what HostGator offers:

• You’ll easily utilize this service due to its approachable customized dashboard combined with the familiar cPanel.
• The starter plans include all the essentials to kick-start your web hosting journey. You’ll have free SSL, unlimited email accounts, a server-side firewall, WordPress support, and a free domain.
• Although HostGator is easy to use, it offers 24/7 customer support via live chat and a phone line in case you ever encounter issues.
• Subscription options cover shared, WordPress, VPS, reseller, and dedicated hosting, thus accommodating various customer needs.
• HostGator provides excellent price-to-performance results. During our tests, we experienced >99.99% uptime and an average response time of 525ms.

While reviewing HostGator, we concluded it’s a balanced option for price-conscious users looking for a well-performing alternative to Bluehost.

HostGator pricing

Before you can start with HostGator, you must choose a hosting plan best suited for your needs. The five available options are shared, WordPress, VPS, Reseller, and Dedicated hosting. For now, we’ll focus on the most versatile and budget-friendly shared hosting option, which begins at only $2.52/month.

Furthermore, this plan is split into three subsequent tiers. Your choice will depend on the scale of your online presence.

• Hatchling. The first tier costs only $2.52/month and permits hosting one website.
• Baby. The second option asks for $3.05/month and unlocks the ability to host unlimited websites.
• Pro. The ultimate tier costs $4.67/month and includes perks like unlimited websites, a dedicated IP address, SEO tools, and an upgrade to positive SSL.

It’s also worth noting that some optional security features are available as paid extras. For example, automatic backups cost $23.95/year, which many consider a crucial component of any hosting endeavor. Another unlockable feature is SiteLock Essentials, which costs $23.88/year.

HostGator performance

Let’s dive into the details regarding HostGator’s performance. Our evaluation process involved sending 50 virtual users to put some pressure on the site for an extended period to test its mettle. Overall, we were more than happy with the outcome.

Our site didn’t experience significant performance issues while testing was underway. Response time remained the same throughout, with only a few short-lived spikes.

Besides that, we also used HostGator to host a website for around two months to monitor long-term performance. During this time, the webpage experienced 3 outages, resulting in 5 minutes of downtime. This hiccup is insignificant in the long term and allows us to confidently say that HostGator offers >99.99% uptime. Finally, the average response time during this time was around 525ms, which is quite good compared to the hosting market average.

4. A2 Hosting – best Bluehost alternative for fast and secure hosting

Features	Free SSL, caching, DDoS protection, cPanel
Uptime	99.99%
Speed	597ms
Best for	Fast and highly secure personal or business sites
Current deal	🔥Get A2 Hosting now, 75% OFF!🔥

Visit A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting is a highly secure and performance-focused alternative to Bluehost. As for site management, the host also includes the audience’s favored cPanel for a very straightforward and simplistic process. Best of all, the pricing is pretty affordable with prices starting at just $2.99/mo.

Now let’s explore A2 Hosting’s offerings in more detail:

• Talking about ease of use, the provider offers a standard cPanel for all site management tasks. The panel is very functional and intuitive, although slightly outdated. Regardless, both beginners and advanced users will have no issues using it.
• When it comes to security, A2 Hosting is one of the most secure hosting providers. Even the cheapest entry plan comes with tools like an SSL certificate, server-level firewall, DDoS protection, automatic updates, Patchman enhanced security package, and more.
• A2 Hosting pays a lot of attention to the site’s speed. The host even has 2 plans that are hosted on Turbo servers and offer enhanced performance. Features like LiteSpeed web servers and cache, HTTP/3, and more are included with both plans, free of charge. On top of that, you can choose from 4 server locations.

In short, A2 Hosting is a performance-focused provider that brings good ease of use, as well as impressive speed and server power.

A2 Hosting pricing

Just like Bluehost, A2 Hosting offers 4 shared hosting plans, with prices starting at $2.99/mo and going up to $14.99/mo. Alternatively, Bluehost’s prices range from $2.65/mo to $9.95/mo.

Now talking about offerings, all A2 Hosting plans are well-equipped. No matter which plan you’ll choose, it will include a free SSL, unlimited email accounts, an extensive set of security tools, as well as cloning and staging tools. Although Bluehost includes a free domain with all its plans, A2 Hosting charges extra for a custom domain.

Here’s what each plan has to offer:

• StartUp ($2.99/month) – allows hosting 1 site and comes with 100GB SSD storage for it. This plan is best suited for a personal or a small business website.
• Drive ($5.99/month) – comes with unlimited websites, SSD storage, and free automatic backups. The plan will best suit a small business website that requires more server resources.
• Turbo Boost ($6.99/month) – everything from the Drive plan plus it includes advanced caching and your site will be hosted on an NVMe AMD EPYC Server with LiteSpeed Web Server. This is a good solution for sites that value fast and reliable performance.
• Turbo Max ($14.99/month) – everything from the Turbo Boost plan plus even more enhanced performance. Due to high security and many performance optimization tools, the plan is best fitted for medium-sized business sites or online stores.

A2 Hosting performance

When it comes to performance, A2 Hosting is far from disappointing. Especially when performing under stress.

To test the provider's abilities in handling intense traffic, I’ve set 50 Virtual Users (VUs) to the website. Keep in mind, that 50 VUs continuously roaming around the site could result in 50 000 monthly views. And that’s a lot!

Yet it seems that A2 Hosting had no issues. The provider handled the full 50 VUs without breaking a sweat. For comparison, Bluehost can handle only 15 VUs.

The graph shows that A2 Hosting managed to keep a stable response time (blue line) with no fails (red line) in sight. This suggests that the cheapest provider’s plan is capable of even more.

Lastly, while Bluehost has its data centers in the US alone, A2 Hosting

allows you to choose from 4 locations – 2 in the US, 1 in Europe, and 1 in Asia.

As a whole, A2 Hosting is one of the best Bluehost alternatives if you wish to run a fast and secure site. Small business, an online store, or large blog site – A2 Hosting got you.

5. SiteGround – speedy Bluehost alternative focused on businesses

Features	WordPress staging, caching, Ultrafast PHP, backups
Uptime	99.99%
Speed	217ms
Best for	Small and medium business websites
Current deal	🔥 Get up to 83% OFF SiteGround + FREE TRANSFER! 🔥

Visit SiteGround

If you’re on the lookout for more Bluehost alternatives, SiteGround is a good option too. Its whole hosting platform is focused on the content management system and offers great security and speed tools to power it up even more.

Let’s look at what SiteGround offers in more detail:

• SiteGround provides a native hosting control panel, which is easy to use, and provides everything for a smooth start in setting up a website. You can reach the Site Tools panel from the management area of each separate website.
• SiteGround for WordPress is also simple and straightforward. If you want to set up WordPress on SiteGround, the host will provide you with all the required steps and even has a WP Migrator plugin, and WordPress Started Sites plugin.
• The hosting provider has 3 shared hosting plans that come with free SSL certificates, email accounts, a native CDN, unlimited bandwidth, and built-in caching.

SiteGround is a versatile option that caters to both beginners and more advanced users that want scale.

SiteGround pricing

SiteGround offers 3 hosting plans, as opposed to Bluehost’s 4. For starters, all 3 shared hosting plans come with free SSL certificates, email accounts, a native CDN, automatic daily backups, unlimited bandwidth, and more perks. Let’s dissect all plans:

• StartUp (starts at $2.99/month) – you can host 1 website, get 10GB SSD storage space, and up to 10,000 monthly visitors.
• GrowBig (starts at $4.99/month) – can host unlimited websites, get 20GB SSD storage, on demand backups, staging, Ultrafast PHP, and a collaboration tool.
• GoGeek (starts at $7.99/month) – can also host unlimited websites, get all the optimization tools like staging, private DNS, white-label panel for clients, and priority support.

SiteGround performance

SiteGround is regarded as one of the fastest providers we’ve tested. It showed impeccable results during our testing with a fully built WordPress site. We performed a stress test by sending 50 Virtual Users (VUs) to the site. In a result, it remained as fast as with 0 visitors.

In addition to this, SiteGround has multiple data center locations across 4 continents, which is more than what Bluehost offers. The server versatility also adds up to an exceptional SiteGround performance making it a great alternative.

All in all, SiteGround is a functional, reliable, and fast alternative option to Bluehost. It caters to all kinds of users, comes with blazing-fast speeds and performance, and is easy to use.

Best Bluehost alternatives compared

Provider	Hostinger	DreamHost	HostGator	A2 Hosting	SiteGround
Brand
Speed	511ms	231ms	525ms	597ms	217ms
Uptime	100%	>99.99%	>99.99%	99.99%	99.99%
Data center location	Yes, 8	US only	US only	Yes, 4	Yes, 4
Shared hosting	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
WordPress hosting	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
VPS or Cloud hosting	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Control panel	hPanel	Custom	cPanel	cPanel	Custom
Free SSL	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Free domain	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌
Customer support	24/7	24/7	24/7	24/7	24/7
Price range	From $1.79/mo	From $2.59/mo	From $2.52/mo	From $2.99/mo	From $2.99/mo
Review	Hostinger review	DreamHost review	HostGator review	A2 Hosting review	SiteGround review

Best Bluehost alternatives: final recommendations

Knowing Bluehost’s weak points helps to choose the best alternative for you. Maybe you’re looking for a lower price, more resources, or more power. Base your choice on your needs.

In the meantime, let’s take another look at the 5 best Bluehost alternatives and their strong points:

• Hostinger is overall a cheaper, faster, and more reliable Bluehost alternative. The host has many data centers to choose from, can handle heavy traffic and the renewal rates are very reasonable.
• DreamHost is a cheaper, more powerful, and reliable Bluehost alternative. The host offers very resource-rich plans that are reasonably priced for monthly as well as yearly billing.
• HostGator is a an affordable jack-of-all-trades hosting provider that offers excellent performance and a solid foundation for running any webpage.
• A2 Hosting is a performance-oriented provider that outruns Bluehost in terms of security and performance. Additionally, A2 hosting is very beginner friendly.
• SiteGround is a premium hosting provider that is speed-focused and has more data center locations available than Bluehost. Additionally, it has flexible and affordable plans.

What’s wrong with Bluehost?

Saying that something’s wrong with Bluehost is a little far-fetched. The provider can satisfy a relatively wide range of needs. The problem is that it can do that up to a point. A point that may not be enough for some people.

There’s even an expression saying that good is only good enough until something better comes along. And that applies beautifully in Bluehost’s case. So, what’s wrong with Bluehost?

High renewal fees

The Bigfoot jump Bluehost makes from the initial purchase price to the renewal fee is inconvenient, to say the least. The first time you buy a shared hosting plan, prices start at $2.65/month for Basic, $4.95/mo for Plus and Choice Plus, and $9.95/mo for Pro. How you get from those to $9.99, $14.99, $18.99, and $26.99, respectively, is beyond me.

Sure, I get it’s a tactic. Everyone does it. But a jump that high? Not cool, Bluehost! There are Bluehost alternatives that have cheaper renewal fees for sure.

Bluehost can handle relatively small traffic

Bluehost’s shared hosting plans don’t satisfy the needs of a popular, frequently visited website. To test how much traffic the provider can handle, I sent 50 Virtual Users (VUs) to the site for 5 minutes.

I should note that 50 new users each minute would result in a pretty intense monthly traffic of ~50 000 users.

This, however, was entirely too much for Bluehost's Basic plan.

Out of 4077 requests made, more than half (2690 reqs) have failed to get delivered. Simply put, the server took an out with no signs of life. To see how much it actually can handle, I ran the test again until the first signs of success.

That was at 15 VUs.

At this point, the provider did not fail once. And even though the response time could be better, you can still expect your site to handle up to ~15 000 monthly visits. A relatively popular blog, yet no large eCommerce.

Bluehost’s server location

While the host performs pretty well in the United States, that’s where its area of expertise ends. Bluehost’s data centers are located in the US alone. While this is no point of worry for anyone whose audiences reside in the US too, others might give this a second thought.

If your audience is far away from the server, where your website is located, the data to and from the server has to travel a long distance. The long distance equals a long wait time, and that means high bounce rates. So, if your audience is from Europe, Asia, Africa, or Australia (haven’t seen server locations in Antarctica yet), you should opt for a different host.

However, if you have visitors from the US as well as somewhere else, you can enable Bluehost’s free Cloudflare CDN integration. If you choose to use it, your content can be cached on over 200 servers worldwide. While this does not change the actual server, it still helps to perform faster in other regions of the world.

Bluehost’s customer support

When it comes to customer support, Bluehost is a bit of a hit or miss. One notably good thing is that you can expect to reach support agents 24/7 via live chat, phone calls, ticketing, or email. However, while some agents are very well trained, knowledgeable, and eager to help, others might not be so helpful.

In general Bluehost's support is easy to reach and fairly quick to reply to. Yet the biggest drawback is that if you want a guarantee that you'll get only the highest quality services, you have to purchase one of its Blue Sky plans. And those are not cheap, with prices starting at $24.00/mo.

In short, Bluehost's customer support, like most things where a human factor is involved, could be a hit or miss. At the same time, to make sure that you can receive useful help and support, you have to pay extra.

Overall, I have to say that all the drawbacks above are not significant enough to not use Bluehost altogether. It can be the right choice for beginners or small websites. However, if you want to take it up a notch, the provider’s alternatives above should be a better fit.

Final thoughts

While a popular host, Bluehost has developed quite a few cons that urge users to look for alternatives. Its competitors offer much better performance, resources, and great security features at a cheaper price.

Our top Bluehost alternative is Hostinger. Its prices start from just $1.79/mo, and you get a free domain, 100 email accounts, and an SSL certificate with each plan. Plus, our tests revealed great performance results, and you get to choose from 8 data centers.

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