Hostinger vs Bluehost: are any of these providers worth it?
Our in-house experts conduct internal independent, hands-on testing and transparent reviews of web hosting providers by using custom-built tools or utilizing industry-recognized tools and methods to ensure impartial and evidence-based assessments.
Using the same criteria for all services, we share our detailed methodologies and practices to help customers make informed hosting decisions.
Learn more
Hostinger and Bluehost are both reliable and well-performing hosting providers, constantly improving their services to keep up with competitors. If you have ever looked for user reviews on these providers, you have likely seen both positive and negative reviews.
I’ve been using and comparing both Hostinger and Bluehost for over three years, and they’ve changed a lot since the first time this comparison was published. Both providers have made noticeable progress in performance and features. In this updated May 2025 version, I share the latest insights, break down their strengths and weaknesses, and give you a clear comparison of Hostinger vs Bluehost based on my experience and user feedback.
Hostinger vs Bluehost: overview
Our latest tests show that Hostinger is the winner when compared to Bluehost. Both services are solid options for hosting well-performing websites, but Hostinger delivered better uptime, stress testing, and speed results during our in-house tests. It also includes a wider feature selection, including AI-powered tools, unlimited free migrations, and a stronger security package. Bluehost prioritizes business-oriented features, but Hostinger stands out with its combination of affordability, performance, and ease of use.
| Hostinger | Bluehost | |
| ⭐ Rating: | ||
| 💵 Price: | From $2.69/month | From $1.99/month |
| 📑 Uptime guarantee: | 99.9% | 99.9% |
| 🔥 Coupons: | Hostinger coupon 78% OFF | Bluehost coupon 83% OFF |
| Storage space (from): | 25GB SSD | 10GB SSD |
| ✂️ Free domain (first year): | Yes | Yes |
| 🔒 Free SSL certificate: | Yes | Yes (first year) |
| ➡️ Site migration: | Free unlimited migrations for WordPress and open-source sites | Free 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: | Yes | Yes |
| 💰 Money-back guarantee: | 30-day | 30-day |
Our in-house research team and expert writers work hand in hand to regularly test hosting services and provide accurate and fact-checked information. Discover the ins and outs of how we test and evaluate website hosting providers.
What to know before choosing a hosting provider
You'll find both positive and negative reviews online, and it can get a bit confusing. It's best not to put too much weight on the negative ones, as people are more likely to share bad experiences than good. The good news is that both Hostinger and Bluehost offer a money-back guarantee, so you can try them risk-free and switch providers if they’re not the right fit.
Pricing: better value with Hostinger
Hostinger provides better value for its price, as its shared hosting starts at just $2.69/month and includes 25GB of SSD storage and support for 25 websites. Bluehost may be cheaper at $1.99/month, but it limits you to just 10GB of storage and 10 websites. For a slight price difference, Hostinger gives you significantly more resources, making it the clear winner in terms of value.
| Hosting type | Hostinger | Bluehost |
| 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 | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
| CyberPanel hosting | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
| Dedicated hosting | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
Keep in mind that the renewal prices for both providers are higher. This is a regular practice used to attract new customers to try out the service. Hosting companies also have rising operational costs, which can lead to additional costs. If you want to secure low pricing for a longer period, I recommend opting for a longer hosting period, such as 36 or 48 months. You can also switch to another provider when the renewal date approaches.
Both Hostinger pricing and Bluehost pricing differ in their initial deals and renewal fees, so evaluate your options when planning your budget.
Hosting management: ease of use
Managing hosting efficiently is crucial for website owners. In this section, I focus on the ease of use offered by hosting providers. I explore the design and functionality of account management dashboards, compare popular control panels like Bluehost’s cPanel and custom alternatives such as Hostinger’s hPanel, and highlight additional hosting management features. These insights help you understand which platforms provide the most user-friendly experience for managing your hosting needs.
Account management dashboard: Hostinger leads in ease of use
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 customize the dashboard to include widgets that are relevant to you, such as resource usage, Performance Score, or security status.
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 outdated. Nevertheless, it gives you access to management tools, suggested setup actions, and some guidelines to help you set up your website.
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 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.
Control panel comparison: a draw in functionality
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. I’ve used both control panels for a few years, and Hostinger’s hPanel has gone through several design updates since then. It’s now cleaner and easier to use than it was a few years back. Bluehost still relies on cPanel for advanced features, but it feels a bit clunky compared to Hostinger’s smoother navigation.
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 the 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 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.
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 a 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, 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.
Extra hosting features: Hostinger takes the lead
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. On the other hand, Hostinger 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.
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.
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.
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: Hostinger performs better
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. As for the response time, Hostinger scored a 60.30ms 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. The average server response was just as good as the uptime, with the average being 118.59ms. That’s higher than the industry average but not quite as fast as Hostinger’s.
Website speed: Hostinger is significantly faster
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 0.915s and an impressively fast TTFB of 0.349s, 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 visitors’ location.
Bluehost, in comparison, was slower. Its LCP stands at 2.001 seconds and TTFB at 0.362s. Bluehost is using old and reliable technology 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.
Stress testing: Hostinger is more reliable
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 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 gray line for the virtual users. The blue line remains flat most of the time, even when the number of visitors is increasing. Only a couple of bumps are visible, but nothing that would indicate a problem.
Similar 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, remained steady even when the number of visitors increased.
Website security: Hostinger provides more value
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
- Bug bounty program to catch security risks
- ISO/IEC 27001:2017 certificate, which means that Hostinger has a reliable, best-practice strategy to handle any data-related risks
Customer support: Hostinger stands out with AI
Reliable customer support and different ways to contact it are essential when picking a hosting provider. In the table below, I compared the support options offered by Hostinger and Bluehost.
| Hostinger | Bluehost | |
| 24/7 live chat | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Phone support | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
| Email support | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Guides and tutorials | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| AI assistant | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
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, email, 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.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve contacted Hostinger support multiple times. While they’ve improved their response times, I occasionally had to wait up to an hour. That said, they were usually helpful once the conversation started.
Hostinger also has Kodee, an AI assistant that Hostinger introduced in 2024. It 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.
Video review
If you’re still thinking about which provider is best for you, check out this comprehensive Hostinger vs Bluehost video comparison. In this, we dive into all the ins and outs of both hosting providers.
Hostinger vs Bluehost: final recommendations
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.
| Feature | Hostinger | Bluehost | Verdict |
| Pricing | Hostinger's prices start at $2.69/month while Bluehost charges $1.99/month for the cheapest plan. However, Hostinger gives you more for the price, including at least 25 websites and 25GB of storage. | ||
| 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's wait times to get connected are longer, but agents are more knowledgeable. Bluehost is very fast with friendly agents, but miscommunications happen. |
Hostinger vs Bluehost FAQ
Hostinger vs Bluehost for WordPress: which one is better?
Bluehost is better for WordPress. Plus, Bluehost offers impressive managed WordPress plans, and its WP interface is better than that of Hostinger’s.
Do I get a free domain name with Bluehost and Hostinger?
Yes, you get a free domain name with both Bluehost and Hostinger. All hosting plans from both providers claim to offer a free domain name, but it’s only for a year and applies to certain TLDs.
Do Hostinger and Bluehost allow their clients to choose a particular data center?
Yes, Hostinger allows you to choose your data center location during setup, with options in the US, UK, Brazil, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Singapore, India, Indonesia, and Lithuania. Bluehost does not — all websites are hosted on servers located in the US.
