Hostinger vs Bluehost: will the cheap overtake the popular?

In this Hostinger vs Bluehost comparison, I’ll analyze the most important features of both providers. I’ll talk about their prices, ease of use, performance, security, as well as customer support. These are the key things that will allow us to objectively tell which provider is better.

Both hosting providers are very popular, and they improve their services by day to keep up with the competition. So if you ever stumble across a post asking for advice on which of these 2 providers to pick, you’ll end up reading thousands of comments with tons of pros and cons. The providers are stacked against each other to fight to the death.

But I have a better way of solving this once and until the next service update.

If we tested and compared each major area of the two, we'd come out with a decent analysis highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each. That's exactly what I did. So read on my Bluehost vs Hostinger comparison to find out which one of them is the perfect match for your website.

Hostinger vs Bluehost: general info

Both Hostinger and Bluehost are popular choices, but the latter is more so because it’s an old and well-established company. Bluehost focuses on WordPress and business features but is not as performance-driven. Hostinger is known for low prices and beats the odds when it comes to performance.

Apparently, there are more differences than similarities. Here's a quick overview of what these two look like. The article ended up being pretty long, so if you're in a rush – skip to the conclusion altogether.

	Bluehost	Hostinger
⭐ Rating:	4.9 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★	4.6 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
💵 Price:	From $1.99/month	From $2.54/month
📑 Uptime guarantee:	99.9%	99.9%
🔥 Coupons:	Bluehost coupon 75% OFF!	Hostinger coupon 78% OFF
Storage space (from):	10 GB SSD	100 GB SSD
✂️ Free domain (first year):	Yes	Yes
🔒 Free SSL certificate:	Yes (first year)	Yes
➡️ Site migration:	Free WordPress migration (1 site) or paid (up to 5 sites)	Free Automatic WordPress Website Migration
💾 Automated backups:	Daily Website Backups (Free 1st year), not with Basic Plan	Free (weekly)
📧 Email accounts:	Free (up to 10 accounts)	Free (up to 100 accounts)
👨‍💻 24/7 live support:	Yes	Yes
💰 Money-back guarantee:	30-day	30-day

Pricing comparison

Hostinger is cheaper than Bluehost, with prices for shared hosting starting at $2.54/month, while Bluehost is priced at $1.99/month.

Hosting type	Bluehost	Hostinger
Shared hosting	✔️	✔️
WordPress hosting	✔️	✔️
WooCommerce hosting	✔️	❌
Cloud hosting	✔️	✔️
VPS hosting	✔️	✔️
cPanel hosting	✔️	✔️
Minecraft hosting	❌	✔️
CyberPanel hosting	❌	✔️
Dedicated hosting	✔️	❌
	Visit Bluehost	Visit Hostinger

The main and the most popular product of both providers is shared hosting. It's easy to use and usually matches the needs of both small and medium-sized websites.

Both providers include free SSL certificates, a free domain, and email accounts on the cheapest plans. But that's where the similarities end:

• Hostinger's Shared Premium ($2.54/month) comes with 100 websites and email accounts allowance, 100GB SSD disk space, and bandwidth for 25k monthly visits.
• Bluehost's Basic ($1.99/month) comes with 1 website, 50GB SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, and email accounts.

Hostinger is more straightforward about bandwidth allowance, but Bluehost offers it unlimited. Additionally, Bluehost does not limit how many email accounts you can create. With Hostinger, you can create up to 100.

As for storage space, both offers are generous, although Hostinger offers more websites and more SSD storage – for a higher price.

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Hostinger has 2 shared and 1 cloud hosting plan in total. The prices range from $2.54/month to $6.79/month, increasing server resource limits and adding extra stuff.

The cheapest Premium ($2.54/mo) is what most users would benefit the most from. It allows hosting up to 100 websites with 100GB storage and includes a free domain. If your websites remain relatively small, you might never need to upgrade. However, if you're looking to run a larger business site, you might benefit more from the Business or Cloud Startup plans.

As for Bluehost, it has 4 shared hosting plans ranging between $1.99 and $9.99 monthly. Each plan includes more server resources and extra features than the previous one.

Just like with Hostinger, the cheapest plan is nice but limiting. The options worth looking at are Plus and Choice Plus.

The Plus plan is the best option for the long term, as it does not limit the number of websites you can create. Choice Plus is a great option that adds some security by including daily backups and domain privacy for just $1 more than Plus costs.

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Overall, when considering pricing alone, Bluehost and Hostinger offer comparable rates for similar resources.. Bluehost’s entry price is lower, but Hostinger’s higher tiers are cheaper than Bluehost’s. Overall, it’s a draw.

Hosting management: ease of use

After using Hostinger and Bluehost, I noticed that they are both easy to use. They each have their own native, beginner-friendly dashboard. However, while Bluehost decided to integrate cPanel, Hostinger created its very own control panel. It’s called hPanel, and it’s just as intuitive and functional as cPanel.

Indeed, Hostinger and Bluehost have much in common when it comes to ease of use. However, their dashboards and control panels are different, and for a better understanding, I’ll talk about them individually.

All in all, ease of use and hosting management is a very tight battle between Bluehost vs Hostinger. Both providers offer user-friendly experiences, but their approaches differ significantly. Hostinger might be more straightforward, including a more traditional control panel. Bluehost puts main management features in its dashboard and also gives access to cPanel. Extra stuff considered, Bluehost is the winner with site staging and marketing management tools.

Account management dashboard

Hostinger provides a simple and functional user dashboard that gives you access to all necessary website creation and management tools. While Bluehost’s dashboard is just as effortless to use, I found it more functional than Hostinger’s.

In corner number one, we have Hostinger’s dashboard. It’s incredibly simple. The thing I like the most about it is that while it’s clean of any clutter, it somehow manages to give you access to many tools and plenty of information. It’s one of those less is more kind of situations.

The first time you log in, the dashboard is used to set up your hosting account – install WordPress, activate SSL, and finalize the domain registration. After that, it will be used to navigate the account – reach the main control panel or domain management area.

In corner number two, we have Bluehost’s dashboard. Not only is it easy to use and navigate, but I found it more functional than Hostinger’s dashboard. It gives you access to management tools, suggested setup actions, and some guidelines that will help you set up your website.

In fact, Bluehost's dashboard functions more like a control panel rather than a navigational area. You can manage the key things here – install WordPress and reach the management area of each website that you create, install SSL, add domains and subdomains, or access paid email accounts.

If more advanced tools are not needed, all the website management is done in this user interface, making Bluehost incredibly intuitive. But, if you'd like to tweak databases and other advanced settings, the Advanced button will take you to cPanel.

Overall, I found both Hostinger’s and Bluehost’s dashboard easy to use. Navigation was not an issue with either one of them. Nevertheless, I give Bluehost extra credit because it created a more functional dashboard than Hostinger.

Control panel comparison

Bluehost and Hostinger use different control panels. Hostinger uses hPanel, an in-house solution, and Bluehost combines cPanel with a native interface called My Sites.

Hostinger's hPanel is used for all the main website and hosting management tasks. This is where you can install additional WordPress or any other content management systems, add domains, create subdomains, access file manager, and more. That's the main difference when compared to Bluehost, which only uses the control panel for advanced management tasks.

hPanel is very clean-looking and functional. It's very easy to navigate it and find the tools you are looking for. Inspired by cPanel, it inherited that logical categorization of tools, putting them under such categories as Email, Software, Security, and so on.

Additionally, Hostinger added a WordPress management area.

You can use this dashboard to log in to the WordPress admin panel, turn on "maintenance" mode, manage caching, or update plugins in bulk.

Overall, Hostinger's control panel is very straightforward, functional, and beginner-friendly.

Bluehost’s cPanel may be a bit more familiar to many of you, even with the skin that matches the provider's branding. It gives access to more advanced hosting settings, such as access to file manager, phpMyAdmin for databases, and free webmail client management.

Bluehost tweaked its cPanel quite a lot, integrating it into its management area.

For example, it decided that standard cPanel one-click installations for WordPress and other apps are not good enough anymore and you won't find them in cPanel. You’ll have to navigate to either My Sites or Marketplace instead.

The same applies to domain management – it’s no longer available in cPanel. Bluehost created its tool for these tasks, which you'll find in the Domains section.

What is important to remember here is that both Hostinger and Bluehost made their user interfaces easy to use and navigate. No matter which one you go for, you won’t have a hard time.

Extra hosting management features

One area where Bluehost steps up is the extra features that help manage websites. Bluehost includes site staging and marketing management straight from the control panel. Hostinger, on the other hand, can only be proud of the account-sharing feature.

Hostinger has been promising to add a website staging tool for quite a while now, but it's still not there. However, it does have an account-sharing feature. You can add team members to your account and provide them with their own login credentials. Also, you can give them varying privileges. For example, you can allow them to use billing details to purchase services or not. You can also restrict their access to specific websites if you manage more than one.

This is a great tool when it comes to privacy and security. It can even be implemented to suit agency needs. For example, you can host your clients' websites and give them separate access to the control panel.

Bluehost’s staging feature lets you create an exact copy of your website to test changes in a private environment, hidden from visitors. Once you're satisfied with the updates, you can easily apply them to your live website.

Everything is managed from the WordPress admin panel itself via the Bluehost plugin. It requires only a couple of clicks to create a copy and a couple of clicks to make the changes visible on your live website.

Additionally, Bluehost allows you to set up marketing for your website directly from the dashboard. Such tools like Google My Business and Google Ads are integrated for ease of use.

• Google My Business will list your website on Google Maps and will help rank on queries such as "Pizza near me."
• Google Ads is a simplified ad manager straight in your dashboard.

While these tools are not advanced, you get to manage crucial marketing aspects in one place. It's very easy and helpful if you're a beginner business owner.

Altogether, Hostinger is not as extensive with extra functionalities as Bluehost. It focuses more on your account security, while Bluehost helps with web development and marketing.

Hostinger vs Bluehost performance

In the performance comparison of Hostinger vs Bluehost, Hostinger is a clear winner. It was faster, handled more traffic, and had better uptime than Bluehost. Bluehost, on the other hand, was quite average.

Uptime and response time

The research team and I monitored Hostinger's and Bluehost's uptime and response time for around 2 months to see how reliable these providers are.

In 2 months' time, Hostinger had 0 outages resulting in 99.9% uptime.

As for response time, Hostinger was quite mediocre, scoring 511ms average response time. At the same time, the speed was quite stable apart from one bigger peak.

In the same period, Bluehost had a 99.63% uptime, which is still a very good result and generally expected.

The average server response was not as good as uptime, with the average being 971ms. This is higher than the industry average, and not as good as with Hostinger.

Overall, both providers proved to be reliable, and that is what matters here the most.

Website speed

To test how fast the providers load websites, I've created similar websites and ran them through the test. Hostinger results were more than 2 times better.

When testing speed, we are looking at two things:

• Largest Contentful Paint – it shows how fast the biggest chunk of the website's content is loaded. Up to 2.5 seconds is considered a good result.
• TTFB shows how fast the server reacted initially – it might tell us if it's the provider, or the theme at fault if the page is loading slowly.

Hostinger was quick in all aspects. With the Largest Contentful Paint of 849ms, the provider demonstrated exceptional performance. The server reacted very fast initially too, with TTFB being at 207ms. This indicates that the server's responsiveness is excellent.

Bluehost was quite significantly slower here. Its Largest Contentful Paint stood at 1.8 seconds.

As for Bluehost, it's using old and reliable tech without jumping into the newest stuff. That's why caching is only very basic, and PHP versions are updated more slowly. Also, it has servers only in the US. So if your audience is in Europe or Asia, it won't be the optimal choice for you.

Altogether, both providers show good results when it comes to speed, but Hostinger is still significantly faster.

Stress testing

To find out if the websites are good if many visitors come in, I sent 50 Virtual Users to the site at once. This puts a lot of pressure on the server, highlighting all the problems that providers might have.

Bluehost handled 50 virtual visitors with little to no issues and just a few minor spikes in the overall server response time. To understand the graph, look at the blue line for speed, and the grey line for the virtual users. The blue line remains flat even when the number of visitors is increasing. Only a couple of bumps, later on, are visible, but nothing that would indicate a problem. Similarly to Bluehost, Hostinger passed the test perfectly.

All in all, Hostinger is the frontrunner in almost every performance-related aspect of this comparison. It is the most efficient host with 100% uptime, fast page loading, and powerful servers. However, Bluehost does not fall very far behind and still stays one of the best-performing hosts on the market.

Website security

When it comes to security, both Hostinger and Bluehost include basic features in their plans. None of them goes the extra mile in this department. Any security enhancements you may want for your website must be purchased.

Here is what you get in terms of security from both providers:

• Free Let’s Encrypt certificate installation and upgrades
• Easy one-click Cloudflare installation
• Basic spam protection
• Server-level security enhancements

If you want to look for differences between the two providers, you have to take a look at more advanced features.

All in all, Bluehost and Hostinger don’t offer comprehensive security packages and stay with the basics. If you need more advanced security features, you either must pay extra or opt for more expensive plans.

Customer support

	Bluehost	Hostinger
24/7 live chat	✔️	✔️
Phone support	✔️	❌
Email support	✔️	✔️
Guides and tutorials	✔️	✔️

If you need help, Hostinger's main option is 24/7 live chat while email is also available. Bluehost is also working 24/7 to ensure customer support via live chat, emails, and phone. Both providers also have knowledge bases full of tutorials and documentation.

My experience with Hostinger was usually good; the only problem is that they can take up to an hour to respond. By contrast, Bluehost was impressively fast and also offered a phone support line.

All in all, neither of the providers is perfect when it comes to customer support. However, Bluehost is significantly faster at responding and unlike Hostinger, offers a phone line.

Video review

Still thinking about which provider is best for you? Check out this comprehensive Hostinger vs Bluehost video comparison where we dive into all the ins and outs of both contenders:

Hostinger vs Bluehost: final recommendation

The Hostinger vs Bluehost comparison is a close race since both providers have their strengths. Nevertheless, based on my testing and evaluations, Bluehost is the winner. It offers adequately priced plans with plenty of features, an extremely easy-to-use interface with useful functionalities like staging, excellent customer support, and an overall good performance.

Feature	Bluehost	Hostinger	Verdict
Pricing	★ ★ ★ ★ ★	★ ★ ★ ★ ☆	Hostinger's prices start at $2.54/month while Bluehost charges $1.99/month for the cheapest plan.
Ease of use	★ ★ ★ ★ ★	★ ★ ★ ★ ☆	Both providers are very easy to use. At the same time, Bluehost includes more useful tools such as staging.
Performance	★ ★ ★ ★ ☆	★ ★ ★ ★ ★	Hostinger wins every performance test, being more reliable, faster, and powerful than Bluehost.
Security	★ ★ ★ ★ ☆	★ ★ ★ ★ ☆	In terms of security, providers are similar – they offer basic features, and for more advanced security you need to pay extra.
Support	★ ★ ★ ★ ★	★ ★ ★ ★ ☆	Hostinger wait times to get connected are longer, but agents are more knowledgeable. Bluehost is very fast with friendly agents, but miscommunications happen.

Alternatives to Hostinger and Bluehost

While Hostinger and Bluehost offer affordable and reliable hosting services, you may be curious to see what other Hostinger and Bluehost alternatives are out there that can provide you with what you need. HostGator, for instance, is very popular with beginners, and InterServer delivers reliable shared and advanced hosting solutions.

HostGator

If you’re a beginner, you may be interested in what HostGator has to offer. The company designed an incredibly beginner-friendly management dashboard that will help you with any hosting-related process so that everything is smooth sailing.

HostGator’s prices are affordable, as well. For an entry-level shared hosting plan, you’ll pay $3.75/month, which is more than you pay for Hostinger hosting. Even so, the price is worth paying when every process you go through comes with a bit of guidance.

Visit HostGator Review

InterServer

InterServer can be what you’re looking for if you need reliable shared hosting. It’s more expensive than Hostinger and Bluehost. You get an initial discount at $2.50/month but after the renewal, this increases to $7/month. However, you can choose monthly billing which can be even better for tight budgets. The provider also has some excellent scalability options, such as dedicated and VPS hosting.

The reason why InterServer is such a good alternative to Hostinger and Bluehost is that it features cheap but highly customizable VPS hosting, and all that for only $6/month. Dedicated servers are cheap as well. The prices start at $70/month, which is a bit cheaper than what Bluehost offers.

Visit InterServer Review

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