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Hostinger vs Bluehost: will the cheap overtake the popular?


Both Hostinger and Bluehost are top-rated hosting providers, and they improve their services daily to keep up with competitors. If you ever read articles on which of these two providers to pick, you'll likely find thousands of comments filled with many pros and cons. The providers are often pitted against each other in fierce competition.

I tested and compared the major features of the two hosting providers, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each. Keep reading my Bluehost vs Hostinger comparison 2025 to find out which one of them is the perfect match for your website.

Hostinger vs Bluehost: overview

When it comes to choosing between Bluehost and Hostinger, Hostinger takes the lead as the better option. While Bluehost prioritizes business-oriented features, it doesn't quite match up when it comes to performance and value. Hostinger, on the other hand, stands out with its unbeatable combination of affordability and high-speed performance.

With a sleek, customizable control panel, AI-powered tools, unlimited free website migrations for any CMS (including WordPress), and a stronger security package, Hostinger delivers more for less. It’s designed for those who want reliable, fast hosting without unnecessary costs. If performance, ease of use, and budget-friendliness matter to you, Hostinger is the clear winner.

HostingerBluehost
⭐ Rating:
4.9
4.4
💵 Price:From $2.78/monthFrom $1.99/month
📑 Uptime guarantee:99.9%99.9%
🔥 Coupons:Hostinger coupon 77% OFFBluehost coupon 83% OFF
Storage space (from):100 GB SSD10 GB SSD
✂️ Free domain (first year):YesYes
🔒 Free SSL certificate:YesYes (first year)
➡️ Site migration:Free unlimited migrations for WordPress and open-source sitesFree WordPress migration (1 site) or paid (up to 5 sites)
💾 Automated backups:Free (weekly)Daily Website Backups (Free 1st year), not with Basic Plan
📧 Email accounts:Free (up to 100 accounts)Free (up to 10 accounts)
👨‍💻 24/7 live support:YesYes
💰 Money-back guarantee:30-day30-day
Recent update
In the January 2025 update, Hostinger was placed as the winner. This is because, after a thorough fact check, performance testing, and overall provider analysis, the Cybernews research team and I concluded that Hostinger is more user-friendly, flexible, and performs better. Specifically, I updated sections like hosting management, website security, and customer support to reflect the new changes.

Pricing comparison

Hostinger is cheaper than Bluehost, with prices for shared hosting starting at $2.78/month, while Bluehost is priced at $1.99/month.

Hosting typeBluehost Hostinger
Shared hosting✅ Yes✅ Yes
WordPress hosting✅ Yes✅ Yes
WooCommerce hosting ✅ Yes✅ Yes
Cloud hosting✅ Yes✅ Yes
VPS hosting✅ Yes✅ Yes
cPanel hosting✅ Yes✅ Yes
Minecraft hosting❌ No✅ Yes
CyberPanel hosting❌ No✅ Yes
Dedicated hosting✅ Yes❌ No
Visit BluehostVisit Hostinger

The main and the most popular hosting type 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. Moreover, Hostinger and Bluehost offer unlimited bandwidth as well.

  • Hostinger's Premium plan ($2.78/month) comes with 100 websites and email accounts allowance, 100GB SSD disk space, and unlimited bandwidth
  • Bluehost's Basic plan ($1.99/month) comes with 10 websites, 10GB NVMe storage, unlimited bandwidth, and email accounts

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.

Hostinger has 1 cloud hosting and 2 shared hosting plans in total. The prices range from $2.78/month to $7.43/month. Server resource limits and extra features increase with price.

The cheapest Premium plan ($2.78/month) 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 from the Business or Cloud Startup plans.

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

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

Keep in mind that all Bluehost plans have a limited number of websites you can create, again the number of websites increases with the price. Choice Plus is a great option that adds some security by including daily backups and domain privacy for less than an additional $1/month.

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

Hosting management: ease of use

Managing hosting efficiently is crucial for website owners. In this section, we focus on the ease of use offered by hosting providers. We will explore the design and functionality of account management dashboards, compare popular control panels like cPanel and custom alternatives such as hPanel, and highlight additional hosting management features. These insights will help you understand which platforms provide the most user-friendly experience for managing your hosting needs.

Account management dashboard

Hostinger provides a simple, functional, and customizable user dashboard that gives you access to all necessary website creation and management tools.

What I like most about Hostinger is that despite being free of clutter, it still provides access to numerous tools and plenty of information. You can also cuztomize the dashboard to include widgets that are relevant to you, for example resource usage, Performance Score, or security status.

Hostinger home dashboard
Hostinger's home dashboard

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

Bluehost’s dashboard is just as easy to use, although the design is a bit out-dated. Nevertheless, it gives you access to management tools, suggested setup actions, and some guidelines that will help you set up your website.

Bluehost management panel
Bluehost's home panel

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

If you don’t need more advanced tools, all the website management can be done via this user interface, making Bluehost intuitive. But, if you'd like to tweak your databases and access other advanced settings, the Advanced button will take you to the cPanel.

Overall, I found both Hostinger’s and Bluehost’s dashboards easy to use. Navigation was not an issue with either one of them. Nevertheless, I give Bluehost extra credit because it has 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. In the Websites section, you can install WordPress, and other content management systems, migrate websites, add domains, create subdomains, and access file manager. 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, and Security.

Additionally, Hostinger added a WordPress management area.

Hostinger WordPress management
Hostinger's WordPress management area

This dashboard allows you to log into the WordPress admin panel, turn on maintenance mode, manage caching, and update plugins in bulk.

Overall, I found Hostinger's control panel to be very straightforward, functional, and beginner-friendly.

Bluehost’s cPanel may be a bit more familiar to you, even with the colors that match 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 cPanel area
Bluehost's cPanel

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

For example, you won’t find one-click installations for WordPress and other apps in cPanel anymore. 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.

For me, having two separate dashboards to manage hosting doesn’t make a lot of sense. I would prefer being able to find everything I need in subsections of one dashboard instead of having to navigate back and forth.

It’s important to remember that Hostinger and Bluehost both made their user interfaces easy to use and navigate. You won't have a hard time no matter which one you go for.

Extra hosting management features

In my opinion, one area where Hostinger is better is the extra features that help manage websites. Bluehost includes site staging and marketing management straight from the control panel. Hostinger, however, can take pride in its account-sharing feature. Also, the WordPress staging tool has been introduced in Hostinger’s web hosting service.

You can add team members to your Hostinger 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.

Bluehost website staging tool
Bluehost's website staging tool

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 as Google Business Profile and Google Ads are integrated for ease of use.

Bluehost websites
Website management panel

On the other hand, Hostinger’s management panel includes useful and customizable widgets about the overall performance of your site. You can easily check the status of your website, see the overall performance score, and even run a page speed test.

Wrapping up
In conclusion, while both Bluehost and Hostinger offer user-friendly hosting management, Hostinger stands out with its better, modern design, all features in one dashboard instead of two separate areas, and useful performance metric widgets.

Hostinger vs Bluehost performance

In my performance comparison of Hostinger vs Bluehost, Hostinger is the clear winner. It was faster and handled more traffic. 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 100% uptime.

Hostinger uptime result
Hostinger response time and uptime

As for the response time, Hostinger scored a 175ms average response time. At the same time, the speed was quite stable apart from one bigger peak.

Bluehost had 100% uptime as well, which is a great result and is generally expected.

Bluehost response time and uptime
Bluehost response time and uptime

The average server response was just as good as the uptime, with the average being 154ms. This is higher than the industry average and slightly better than Hostinger’s.

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

Website speed

To test how fast the providers load websites, I've created two similar websites on both hosting providers and tested them both. The results show that Hostinger outperforms Bluehost.

When testing speed, we are looking at two things:

  • Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – it shows how fast the biggest chunk of the website's content is loaded. Up to 2.5 seconds is considered a good result.
  • Time to First Byte (TTFB) – this metric shows how quickly the server responds initially, helping identify if a slow page load stems from the hosting provider or the website's theme.

Hostinger is excellent in LCP and TTFB. With an LCP of just 1.73s and an impressively fast TTFB of 0.36s, it showcased exceptional performance. These results show that Hostinger’s servers are not only responsive but also optimized. There were no significant failures reported during this period.

A significant factor contributing to Hostinger’s speed advantage is its global network of data centers located in the US, Asia, Europe, and South America. By placing servers across multiple regions, Hostinger ensures high-speed website performance for users worldwide. This helps users achieve consistently fast loading times, regardless of their users’ location.

Hostinger speed test in Virginia 2024
Hostinger pageload testing

Bluehost, in comparison, was slower. Its LCP stands at 1.9 seconds and TTFB at 0.99s.

Bluehost pageload testing
Bluehost pageload testing

Bluehost is using old and reliable tech without jumping into the newest stuff. That's why caching is only very basic, and PHP versions are updated slower than other providers. Moreover, it only has servers in the US. So if your audience is in Europe or Asia, it might not be an optimal choice for you.

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

Stress testing

To find out if websites hosted by Bluehost are stable when many visitors come in, I sent 50 virtual users to the site at once for 5 minutes and 12 seconds. This puts a lot of pressure on the server, highlighting all the problems that providers might have.

Bluehost stress testing
Bluehost stress testing

Bluehost handled 50 virtual visitors with little to no issues and just a few minor spikes in the overall server response time. However, it did have a single HTTP failure. 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 are visible, but nothing that would indicate a problem.

Hostinger stress testing 2024
Hostinger stress testing

Similarly to Bluehost, Hostinger passed the test perfectly. It handled 50 virtual users that were sent at the same time without a struggle and had no HTTP failures. The blue line, which shows speed, had a few bumps but remained steady even when the number of visitors increased.

Wrapping up
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 security features in their plans. However, Hostinger offers a more comprehensive security package than Bluehost. With Bluehost, if you want more than basic security, it will cost extra.

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
  • Web-app firewall and malware scanning
  • DDoS protection

However, Hostinger includes more comprehensive security features:

  • Secure access management
  • 24/7 server monitoring
  • Has a bug bounty program to catch security issues
  • Is ISO/IEC 27001:2017 certified, which means that Hostinger has a reliable, best-practice strategy to handle any data-related risks.
Wrapping up
All in all, Bluehost and Hostinger offer site security features, but Hostinger includes a more comprehensive security package that includes not only malware scanning or DDoS protection but also server monitoring, secure access management, and other features. On the other hand, Bluehost’s additional security costs extra.

Customer support

BluehostHostinger
24/7 live chat✅ Yes✅ Yes
Phone support✅ Yes❌ No
Email support✅ Yes✅ Yes
Guides and tutorials✅ Yes✅ Yes
AI assistant❌ No✅ Yes

If you need help, Hostinger offers 24/7 live chat while email support is available as well. Bluehost is also working 24/7 to ensure customer support via live chat, emails, and phone. Both providers have knowledge bases full of tutorials and documentation, too. However, I found that a lot of information in Bluehost’s database is outdated and no longer useful.

My experience with Hostinger support was mostly good; the only problem is that they can take up to an hour to respond.

Hostinger also has Kodee, an AI assistant that provides instant support, answers, and guidance across Hostinger’s major products and platforms. I could find Kodee in the hPanel, Hostinger Website Builder, WordPress admin dashboard, VPS hosting, and the Hostinger website. However, like every AI assistant, it still needs some improvement.

Wrapping up
All in all, neither of the providers is perfect when it comes to customer support. However, Hostinger offers an AI assistant and has a more updated knowledge center than Bluehost.

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 hosting providers.

Hostinger vs Bluehost: final recommendation

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

FeatureHostingerBluehostVerdict
Pricing
Hostinger's prices start at $2.78/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, Hostinger fits everything into one control panel and offers more AI features.
Performance
Hostinger wins every performance test, being more reliable, faster, and powerful than Bluehost
Security
In terms of security, providers are similar. However, Bluehost only offers basic features while Hostinger adds more advanced site security.
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 alternatives 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 HostGator. The company designed an incredibly beginner-friendly management dashboard that helps you with any hosting-related processes.

HostGator’s prices are affordable, as well. An entry-level shared hosting plan is $2.29/month, which is more expensive than Bluehost and Hostinger. Even so, the price is worth it when every process you go through comes with a bit of guidance.

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 is even better for tight budgets. The provider also has some excellent scalability options, such as dedicated and VPS hosting.

The reason 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 $3.00/month. Dedicated servers are cheap as well. The prices start at $58.00/month, which is a bit cheaper than what Bluehost offers.

Hostinger vs Bluehost FAQs

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