I decided several years back to make the jump to doing business online, and it was one of the best choices I’ve ever made for both my career and personal life. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it was easy, or that the money came in quickly (affiliate marketing takes time!), but with hard work, I started seeing results, and I got a lot more control over my career, because it’s my business, meaning I’m the boss. I love just about every second of it.
You may be thinking of making the same jump yourself. And that means, like me, you may be thinking of using WordPress for your website. I personally use WordPress and I have no desire to use anything else in the near future. Of course, setting up a WordPress site is only half the battle. Finding a place to host your WordPress site can be a challenge. With so many WordPress hosting services, which one is best? One possible solution to this is BlueHost WordPress hosting. But is it right for you?
I’ll go over some of the important aspects of Bluehost WordPress hosting and my general opinion of it.
You Can Use BlueHost WordPress Hosting With Confidence
First off, I am very happy to report that BlueHost WordPress hosting is a 100% legitimate hosting service. In fact, it’s one of the most popular and well known WordPress hosting services you’ll find. You can do all the research you want about this company, look up the many, many user reviews of their service, and you’ll see for yourself that they are the real deal. They will not rip you off, they are not a scam, and if you do decide to go with BlueHost WordPress hosting, you’ll be going with an experienced company.
So, fortunately for you and anyone else unfamiliar with the industry, that’s one big worry taken care of. BlueHost WordPress hosting checks out as an honest, experienced, professional hosting service. You can do the additional research—as you should, if you’re a prudent entrepreneur—but what you’ll find is an established company, with a well-documented history of clients and customers.
Of course, there’s more to being the right company for you than just being legal and legitimate, so what else is there to BlueHost WordPress hosting?
Bluehost WordPress Hosting Service Reliability
One of most important areas you’ll need to consider when it comes to BlueHost WordPress hosting, or any other WordPress hosting service, is their ability to keep your site online, otherwise known as “uptime.” After all, you are paying a service to host your site. That means that when others go looking for your website, they should be taken right to a live site, that is ready to serve, rather than a get a message from their browser saying they are unable to connect, or that the website they are looking for is currently unavailable. What’s the point of having a service host your website if they can’t even stay online reliably for people to find you?
This is another area where BlueHost WordPress hosting manages to deliver. The uptime is quite solid with a reported 99%+ uptime, and many users find that even over a couple of years of usage, BlueHost WordPress hosting might only go down for an hour or two. And even then, that downtime is usually attributed to something major, such as fighting off a DDOS attack. Otherwise, once your website is on BlueHost WordPress hosting, it’s likely to stay there, accessible without any problems.
Some BlueHost WordPress Hosting Issues
So, if BlueHost WordPress hosting is both legitimate, and has reliable uptime, is that the end of the story? Should you just sign up and start creating your website on this service? For some people, the answer might be an easy yes. But I have an alternative, and it’s called WPengine. It’s the service that I prefer and the very same service I use to host ALL of my WordPress sites, including this site you’re on right now. But before I get into WPengine, I want to go over some of the downsides of BlueHost WordPress hosting.
One of the biggest, especially for people on a budget, is their pricing system. On the surface, the idea of paying just under $3.00 a month for their cheapest service seems quite reasonable, and it is. However, that monthly rate isn’t actually monthly. You can’t sign on for one month and pay the $2.95 asking price, because BlueHost WordPress hosting only has it bundled into a minimum three-year contract, just like the less savory offers from cellular phone companies.
The extremely low prices you can get through BlueHost is only good for their standard services, however. If you wish to sign up for their WordPress specific hosting services, which I highly recommend, the price starts at $19.99/mo with a minimum of 3 years, so your initial cost is over $700!
Another problem with BlueHost WordPress hosting is if you’ve already had an online business for a while and want to switch from your existing service to BlueHost WordPress hosting. There are additional fees involved to get them to migrate your website from the old host to BlueHost WordPress hosting. A migration fee of $149.99 is required to move your website over, and if you have more than five, you’ll have to pick which ones to leave behind, because five websites is their maximum migration limit.
Why I Prefer WPengine For My WordPress Hosting
I prefer WPengine for a number of reasons. The most important, of course, is that their uptime is even better than BlueHost WordPress hosting. This is a hosting service that feels like it just never goes down. So if you have a website where it’s important for you to make sure you’re always visible and available, there are no concerns here. WPengine will keep you up, online and always available.
One of WPengine’s specialties is the increase in site speed. Sites tend to load much faster with WPengine than with other hosting services including BlueHost.
One huge issue with most WordPress hosting services is the lack of quality customer support. In the many years I’ve been a customer with WPengine, the customer support has been unbelievable. From the 24/7 chat support to the U.S. based phone support, they’ve been beyond exceptional.
The other thing that I like about WPengine is that you have more options in terms of your subscription services. You don’t have to get locked into a multi-year contract if you don’t want to, WPengine has monthly plans for people that want to stick with the service on that basis. That gives me a much better sense of control, since I know I can leave when I want to, should the need arise.
Another nice thing is that website migration, if this is something that you need to do, is very easy. This is especially true if you’re on WordPress already, since they specialize in WordPress hosting. They also do this for free, a big change from BlueHost WordPress hosting, and they have software that is focused exclusively on helping you to make the migration with as few hassles as possible.
But the one thing that I really like about WPengine compared to BlueHost WordPress hosting is that they have a 60 day refund policy. That means that you can actually just try out their services for about two months, see how you like it, and if you don’t, you get your money back! It’s not as cheap as BlueHost WordPress hosting, but you get a lot more service and peace of mind for your money!
