Bluehost vs IONOS: which is better for you?
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The hosting space is filled with companies offering excellent services for decent prices. This means that details really matter. BlueHost and IONOS both have two decades of experience.
Picking one of the two can be hard, so in this Bluehost vs IONOS comparison, I explore their pricing, ease of use, performance, security, and customer support to help you make an informed decision.
IONOS vs Bluehost in 2025: overview
When picking between IONOS and Bluehost, I believe IONOS is the better choice. While both companies are evenly matched, IONOS’ affordability, usability, and slightly more advanced security features make it the winner.
With a modern dashboard, unlimited data, websites, and traffic on its Plus plan, as well as useful additions such as a free Wildcard SSL for your domain, IONOS gives you more functionality for a lower price, making it our winner.
| IONOS | Bluehost | |
| ⭐ Rating: | ||
| 💵 Price: | From $1/month | From $1.99/month |
| 📑 Uptime guarantee: | 99.99% | 99.9% |
| 🔥 Coupons: | IONOS coupon 91% OFF! | Bluehost coupon 83% OFF |
| Storage space (from): | 10 GB SSD | 10 GB SSD |
| ✂️ Free domain (first year): | Yes | Yes |
| 🔒 Free SSL certificate: | Yes | Yes (first year) |
| ➡️ Site migration: | Manual migration or migration with the help of WordPress plugin | Free WordPress migration (1 site) or paid (up to 5 sites) |
| 💾 Automated backups: | Yes (daily) | Daily Website Backups (Free 1st year), not with Basic Plan |
| 📧 Email accounts: | 1 free account | Free (up to 10 accounts) |
| 👨💻 24/7 live support: | Yes | Yes |
| 💰 Money-back guarantee: | 30-day | 30-day |
Pricing comparison: IONOS offers more for less money
IONOS is cheaper than Bluehost, with its shared hosting plans starting at $1.00/month, while Bluehost starts at $1.99/month.
| Hosting type | IONOS | Bluehost |
|---|---|---|
| Shared hosting | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| WordPress hosting | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| WooCommerce hosting | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Cloud hosting | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
| VPS hosting | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| cPanel hosting | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
| Minecraft hosting | ✅ Yes | |
| CyberPanel hosting | ❌ No | ❌ No |
| Dedicated hosting | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Visit IONOS | Visit Bluehost |
Both companies offer an array of services at various prices. However, the main services are their shared hosting offers, which are relatively easy to use, and usually enough for small and medium-sized websites.
Both IONOS and Bluehost offer a similar package with a free domain, SSL certificate, and email, although Bluehost offers 10 email accounts while IONOS’ only 1.
IONOS has quite a unique offer, selling its higher-tier Plus subscription for $1.00/month for the first year and $12.00/month afterward. The plan includes unlimited storage, bandwidth, and websites, making it extremely attractive.
Bluehost offers a slightly higher monthly price for its Basic plan, which starts at $1.99/month for the first year, before transitioning to $11.99/month after the promotional period ends. The plan is limited to 10 websites, 10GB of storage, and 100 concurrent visitors.
Both companies offer three other hosting plans. However, none of Bluehost’s offers include unlimited websites, storage, or bandwidth, making the offer visibly worse than IONOS.
Bluehost vs IONOS performance
Bluehost and IONOS offer very similar performance metrics across the board, making it hard to pick a single winner outright. However, due to IONOS anti-DDoS mechanisms disrupting our tests, we’ll have to give the slight edge to Bluehost.
| Product | Uptime guarantee | Response time | Speed |
| IONOS | 99.99% | 914.43ms | 2.679s |
| Bluehost | 99.9% | 154.71ms | 1.664s |
Uptime and response time
Bluehost and IONOS offer 100% uptime with high reachability. Both are extremely reliable, and I haven’t seen any serious downtime in their respective testing periods.Bluehost really shined in terms of its response time, with an impressive average of 154.71ms. To help you visualize how fast that is, it’s quite literally just about a blink of an eye, as those are said to last from 100 to 150ms.
IONOS, on the other hand, provided identical uptime and reachability. However, its latency stats were a bit worse, coming in at 914.43ms, so just under a second. This is still very much an acceptable latency, although, with longer spikes above average, it can be frustrating to try and connect to the server.
This means that both companies have fulfilled their high uptime guarantee, with Bluehost providing impressive latency, while IONOS lagged behind with a result slightly over the industry standard of 600ms.
Website speed
In this test, we measured website speed by seeing how fast a webpage loads. The two metrics you should keep in mind while analyzing these results are:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – which defines how long it takes to load the largest element on the page (usually an image, video, or font). We expect results to be under 2.5 seconds here.
- Speed Index – this metric shows how fast it takes for the page to look usable, meaning that it has full functionality, even if a few assets need to load. The results should be under 2 seconds here.
- Time to First Byte (TTFB) – is the time it takes for the server to start loading the website.This can show whether the loading issues are caused by the server connection or, for example, a poorly optimized theme.
This is perhaps what helped Bluehost gain the edge over IONOS. Both its LCP and Speed Index was well below 2 seconds. This was despite taking nearly 1s to get the first byte. Eventually, Bluehost had a very fast full page load, despite being a bit slower to start downloading and rendering the page.
On the other hand, IONOS started rendering a bit quicker with a TTFB of around 0.6s, but fell off towards the end, with a rather unimpressive LCP of over 3s, and a Speed index of over 2.6s. This isn’t terrible by any means, but may frustrate some very speed-oriented users.
Stress testing results
As I mentioned in this section’s intro, stress testing is tough to gauge, given that we encountered trouble getting reliable results for IONOS. We suspect that the hosting provider treated our tests as DDoS attempts, shutting them down 15 seconds after reaching their peak. Keep that in mind as I present the results.
Our Bluehost test lasted 5 minutes and 12 seconds, and in that time we’ve sent 22 requests a second on average, peaking at 46 requests/second towards the end of the test. In that time, we only saw one HTTP failure. The response time was also rather stable, with only a few spikes which you can see on the cyan line. These indicate that Bluehost offers a stable hosting setup.
IONOS is tough to gauge, as after 15 seconds of the test starting, I saw that the failure rate started rapidly climbing. This is likely because IONOS’ servers shut down our requests, treating them as a DDoS attack, rather than a legitimate stress test. Given that it’s unlikely for anyone to be sending these many users from a single IP, it’s unlikely that your website’s users would suffer these errors if it was overloaded. It’s also an indicator of decent anti-DDoS security.
Hosting features and ease of use: IONOS is the winner
Usability is a category where it’s hard to pick a winner since it depends on your personal preferences. Both Bluehost and IONOS offer very similar features and UX, but in the end, IONOS edges it ever so slightly by providing a better interface and website builder.
Account management dashboard
Bluehost’s dashboard is simple, if a little outdated. It features all the functionalities I needed to manage my hosting. Bluehost’s interface is friendly to both beginners and advanced users, given its clear design.
You can control your websites, email, domains, servers, and security from the level of the dashboard, with advanced features available for users who need them. Overall, I haven’t found any functionality to be lacking, although a few more modern UX solutions would make the workflow better.
IONOS on the other hand offers a far more modern solution. Its sleek design offers far more functionality than Bluehost’s, although it does take some getting used to if you’re accustomed to the more classic hosting workflows.
Other than the standard website management functionalities, IONOS also features useful analytics, online marketing tools, and apps to help you build your website, making it essentially double as a control panel. It also features a tutorial flow to help you get accustomed to its design.
Control panel comparison
Bluehost’s and IONOS’ control panels serve different purposes. While Bluehost uses the well-established cPanel to manage hosting, IONOS integrates most classic control panel functionalities into their dashboard, leaving the control panel to advanced users.
Bluehost uses cPanel, a proprietary software solution that has been on the market since 1996. It allows users to manage their server’s email, database, files, and more. In addition to the classic cPanel functionalities, Bluehost also includes a WordPress manager from Softiculous in its panel.
cPanel has been on the market for as long as it has been for a reason. Its intuitiveness and usability are definitely a big advantage for Bluehost.
IONOS, on the other hand, has an advanced control panel that is mostly meant for their VPS and dedicated server users. It includes logs, interactive invoicing, and security features.
All of this makes the two products hard to compare in that aspect. I feel that they both give all the features you need to manage your hosting. That said, I appreciate that IONOS keeps most of its website management elements in one place, leaving the control panel to the power users, while Bluehost requires you to skip between a dashboard and a cPanel, which can be frustrating at times.
WordPress features comparison
Both Bluehost and IONOS offer WordPress-specific hosting plans with additional features meant to help you install and set up the world’s most popular content management system.
Bluehost focuses its marketing on its WordPress features, and I can see why. Its WordPress plans have a lot of very useful extras for the CMS, including free WordPress Migration, Yoast SEO, managed updates, and staging.
The WordPress installer also lets you choose between a simple install, an AI-powered builder, or migration from a different website. The AI builder asks you to write a prompt and recommends a basic website theme based on what you write.
Bluehost also offers WonderSuite, a WordPress-based website-building solution. Its biggest feature is WonderBlocks, a drag-and-drop website creator tool. It’s a welcome addition, but I find it limited compared to competitors like Elementor when it comes to advanced uses. Another issue is that because WonderBlocks is proprietary, it won’t work with other hosting providers, limiting your migration options and forcing you to pay the high renewal fees down the line.
IONOS isn’t as heavily invested into Wordpress as Bluehost, but still offers similar functionalities when it comes to installing the CMS. Just like Bluehost, it allows you to start a website from scratch or build one with AI. For migration, IONOS provides a guide for manual migration, or migration using a WordPress plugin.
The AI builder is a bit more detailed than the Bluehost offering. Rather than writing a single prompt, IONOS also gives you multiple guidelines to help pick the perfect template for your needs. I find that to be a good idea since a lot of users may not be familiar with AI prompting, and giving them a few baseline checkboxes will definitely help create the website they want.
IONOS doesn’t feature a block builder, but it does add an AI chatbot to help you troubleshoot your WordPress website, as well as a design gallery with various themes and elements to choose from. I also understand this bare-bones approach, given that IONOS’ cheapest WordPress plan is half the price of Bluehost’s.
Web builders comparison
Both IONOS and Bluehost offer web builders to help you create your webpage. Bluehost’s builder is based around WordPress and their Wondersuite, while IONOS has a standalone block builder.
To start off, Bluehost asks you to choose between building your website manually or using an AI prompt to create a baseline. Once done, you’ll be taken to their builder. Bluehost’s Wondersuite is essentially an Elementor alternative for WordPress. While I do appreciate the ease of use of an existing CMS, I feel like the builder is lacking because of its reliance on it. Many website builders are meant to be an alternative to the complexity of a CMS like WordPress or Joomla.
Bluehost forces you to learn WordPress, which can be a barrier for beginners. What’s worse, once you build the site, you’ll have to continue using Bluehost to maintain access to the Wondersuite, making migration harder.
Like Bluehost, IONOS also offers an AI website builder functionality, which is a bit more advanced, giving you control over the tone of your website through an additional checkbox. The builder generates 4 templates to choose from, with an option to regenerate if none are to your liking. If you don’t want to use AI, you can choose from preset templates.
Unfortunately, there’s no option to start from scratch, which can be frustrating for users who like to have full control over their design. The builder itself is quite easy to use; however, what’s really disappointing is that the most basic plan doesn’t even offer rearranging blocks within the template.
I find IONOS’ site builder great for personal and basic professional use, like a personal blog, portfolio website, or basic event website. While IONOS does offer eCommerce features on its higher-tier plans, I find them lacking compared to dedicated solutions. A big plus is that it’s standalone and doesn’t require any programming or CMS knowledge to build a good-looking website.
IONOS vs Bluehost security: IONOS wins
Both Bluehost and IONOS offer all the security you would expect from hosting providers, including SSL certificates, backups, malware scanning, and DDoS protection. However, IONOS offers a more advanced SSL Wildcard certificate, making it my winner.
Bluehost’s offer is pretty much the industry standard when it comes to website security. A free SSL certificate will ensure your users have a secure connection to your site without issue. Daily backups will secure your data in case of failure, and malware scanning will ensure you don’t expose your site and your users to dangerous files.
Similarly, IONOS offers the same features. However, their SSL certificate is a more advanced Wildcard SSL certificate, which will secure not only your main domain but also all subdomains, helping you scale your website whenever needed.
Customer support: draw
Both IONOS and Bluehost offer 24/7 support via live chat and phone, as well as an extensive knowledge base to help you answer any questions about the way they work. IONOS does score a few points thanks to their WordPress AI assistant, which will answer your questions about the CMS and help guide you through it whenever needed. However, given its limited scope, it feels more gimmicky than game-changing.
What is surprising in both cases is the absence of email support, making users who are used to that form of communication rely on phone calls and live chats to solve their issues. I feel this can cause frustration in some cases.
Nevertheless, both companies offer excellent and reliable support, and in my tests, I found them both to be responsive and helpful.
| IONOS | Bluehost | |
| 24/7 live chat | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Phone support | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Email support | ❌ No | ❌ No |
| Guides and tutorials | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| AI assistant | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
Bluehost vs IONOS: final recommendations
Bluehost and IONOS bring very similar offers to the table but, as always, differ quite a lot in terms of the details of their respective plans. Overall, if you’re looking for cheap, reliable hosting, IONOS is hard to beat. If you’re looking to pay more for a slightly better performance and WordPress-specific features, Bluehost should be your choice. However, if I were to choose, IONOS gives you more scalability and usability for the price, making it my winner.
| Feature | IONOS | Bluehost | Verdict |
| Pricing | While both providers offer excellent prices, IONOS takes the win with its excellent introductory $1.00/month offer | ||
| Ease of use | Both providers have excellent usability, but Bluehost loses points for its proprietary WonderSuite solution limiting future migrations | ||
| Performance | IONOS had a decent performance in our testing but fell short of Bluehost’s excellent speed | ||
| Security | Both IONOS and Bluehost offer excellent security but IONOS wins due to its Wildcard SSL offer | ||
| Support | Both companies offer solid and reliable support, yet the lack of email contact can be frustrating to some users in both cases |
Who is better than IONOS?
IONOS is one of Cybernews' highest-ranked hosting providers, however Hostinger has the best score.
What are the cons of Bluehost?
Bluehost’s biggest cons are its overreliance on WordPress and its WonderSuite site builder, which limits your future migration options.
Is Bluehost owned by GoDaddy?
No, Bluehost isn’t owned by GoDaddy. Bluehost is owned by Newfold Digital, which also owns HostGator. GoDaddy is a publicly traded company, with KKR, SilverLake and TCV holding the majority stake in its board of directors.
Is IONOS hosting fast?
Our tests show that IONOS reaches relatively normal industry speeds. However, it does boast a rather impressive Time to First Byte at below 0.6s.
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