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SiteGround Vs. Bluehost

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Here’s the TL;DR: Bluehost is the better WordPress hosting service compared to SiteGround.

That being said, both web hosting services are great for beginners. In fact, SiteGround has incredible uptime rates, while Bluehost comes with more features, more value for your money, and an overall better experience for launching and maintaining your website over time.

Read on to get all the details about what each one does well.

SiteGround Compared to Bluehost

It’s natural to feel anxious and overwhelmed when learning about the technical aspects and specificities of making a website for the first time. It can seem like a daunting task.

Bluehost makes the process simple with its easy-to-use drag-and-drop builder and one-click WordPress installation. You can have a website up and running in no time.

SiteGround is a provider that delivers shared WordPress hosting for individuals who don’t want to spend too much money. But that doesn’t make it too complicated, either—it’s simple to use and comes with walkthroughs that explain how to get started correctly.

You can start up your WordPress site on Bluehost’s shared hosting with ease and enjoy fantastic speed and uptime from the service.

Both services are great for beginners, but Bluehost offers more features, value, and performance.

More Top WordPress Hosting Providers

While these two web hosting services are great for beginners, they aren’t for everyone. If you need more control, power, and flexibility for your website, there are several other options that might be a better fit for your site.

To help you find out which one is best for you, we tried dozens of WordPress hosts so you don’t have to. See all of our top picks to learn more about the best WordPress hosting providers.

Where Bluehost Shines

Bluehost home page

Solid customer support: One area where Bluehost shines is in customer support. If you ever have any issues with your account or need help troubleshooting a problem, their customer support team is always quick to respond and ready to help, including 24/7 live chat when you need immediate assistance.

Knowledge base and video tutorials: Bluehost also offers a comprehensive knowledge base that has articles and video tutorials on everything from setting up your account to using WordPress. Their video tutorials are especially helpful if you’re new to web hosting or don’t have much experience with website creation and administration.

Free domain name and SSL: Bluehost offers a free domain name and SSL certificate with all of their hosting plans. This is a huge perk if you’re just starting out and don’t have a lot of money to invest in your website, since you can save a good bit of money by not having to purchase these separately.

Free SiteLock CDN: Bluehost’s SiteLock CDN is a great way to speed up your website and improve its security. This content delivery network stores copies of your website on servers around the world, so visitors can access your site faster no matter where they’re located. And their proprietary SiteLock features protect your site from malware and other online threats.

Customized cPanel interface: Bluehost’s user-friendly control panel distinguishes it from other web hosting companies. Their cPanel interface is easy to use, allowing you to manage your account, website, and email settings with no stress or confusion.

WordPress compatibility: Bluehost was one of the first web hosting companies to offer WordPress-specific hosting plans. They offer a managed WordPress hosting service that includes automatic updates, daily backups, and security features taken care of for you. 

Page builder: Bluehost’s drag-and-drop page builder makes it easy to create beautiful, responsive websites without any coding experience. Just select the elements you want to add to your page and place them where you’d like on your pages.

VPS hosting plans available: If you need more power than what’s offered in Bluehost’s shared hosting plans, they also offer VPS hosting. Their VPS plans come with more powerful CPUs and more allotted bandwidth and storage.

Where Bluehost Falls Short

No uptime guarantee: Bluehost doesn’t offer an uptime guarantee, which means there are no assurances that your website will be available to visitors 100% of the time. Even though the company does its best to keep servers up and running, there’s always a chance that something could go wrong.

Only one datacenter: Bluehost only has one datacenter, which is located in the United States. This can be a problem if you have visitors from other parts of the world, because they may experience slower load times.

Limited disk space: Bluehost’s shared hosting plans come with limited disk space, only 100 GB. If you have a lot of images or videos on your website, you may need to upgrade to a more expensive plan that offers more storage. Small sites rarely get to this amount, but it is something to consider if you’re planning to build a media-heavy website.

No free site migration: Site migration is the process of transferring your website from one host to another. If you’re planning to switch to Bluehost from another web hosting company, you’ll have to pay a $149.99 fee for their team to migrate your site over to their hosting.

Where SiteGround Shines

Siteground homepage

Fully managed WordPress hosting: SiteGround is a great option if you’re looking for a fully managed WordPress host. What does that mean? It means that the company will take care of all the technical aspects of running your WordPress site for you. That includes things like updates to the WordPress software, security, speed, and uptime. All you need to worry about is creating great content for your site.

SiteGround also offers a few features that are unique to their service, like their in-house caching solution and staging area feature. These make SiteGround an even better option if you’re looking for a no-stress WordPress host.

Ease of use: SiteGround’s Site Tools is far more user-friendly than the conventional cPanel for novices. Additionally, SiteGround supplies a wealth of information and tutorials to help new site owners navigate website creation and get the most out of it.

Daily backups: SiteGround includes daily backups as part of their starter plan. You don’t have to worry about losing any data on your site if something goes wrong. Just contact customer support and they’ll be able to restore your site for you.

Speedy CDN: SiteGround includes a free CDN (content delivery network), which is a network of servers that deliver content to visitors based on their location. The benefit of using a CDN is that it can help improve the speed and performance of your website. 

Focused on security: To start, every SiteGround plan includes a free SSL certificate. An SSL certificate is used to encrypt data that is sent between your website and visitors’ browsers. This is important because it helps protect sensitive information like credit card numbers from being intercepted by hackers.

In addition, SiteGround’s proprietary AI technology blocks more than 5 million assaults every day. Security experts at SiteGround have applied more than 300 bespoke rules to its Web Application Firewall to protect against software flaws in the last year alone.

Easy collaboration: Users can collaborate on your site through SiteGround’s WordPress collaboration features, which are designed for organizations with numerous employees or teams. You may create user roles and assign access rights to give workers the ability to contribute to and manage your site. 

You can also migrate a website from one SiteGround account to another, allowing designers and developers to collaborate with clients more easily. Users can register clients and give them white-label access to their website site tools under the GoGeek plan, giving a professional appearance while ensuring customers have constant access to the work that is being done.

Access to SQL databases: If you need to access your site’s SQL databases for any reason, you can do so through SiteGround’s phpMyAdmin feature. This is a web-based interface that lets you view and edit your database tables and data. It’s a handy tool if you need to make changes to your database but don’t want to use the command line interface.

Where SiteGround Falls Short

Limited memory: One downside of SiteGround is that they limit the amount of file space and memory you can use on their shared hosting plans. This can be a problem if you have a lot of images or videos on your website. Be sure to keep an eye on your file usage and upgrade to a higher-tier plan if necessary.

Inconsistent PHP: Another issue with SiteGround is that their PHP integration doesn’t always work. This means that if you’re using a CMS (content management system) like WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, you may have to set up your site manually.

No VPS hosting plans: SiteGround is a Linux platform and they don’t offer any VPS hosting plans. Even though SiteGround is a cloud hosting provider, their focus is on shared and WordPress hosting. If you’re looking for a VPS host, you’ll need to look elsewhere.

High renewal prices: Be aware that the prices for SiteGround’s hosting plans are higher when you renew your contract. If you’re thinking of signing up with SiteGround for the long haul, be sure to factor in the price increase upon renewal when budgeting for your hosting costs.

The Final Verdict on SiteGround Compared to Bluehost

Both SiteGround and Bluehost are both great web hosting companies with a lot to offer. But overall, we recommend Bluehost as the best option for most people.

Bluehost pricing plans

Starting at $2.95 per month, Bluehost’s Basic plan allows for one website and comes with a free CDN and a free SSL certificate for the first year. Bluehost also offers a free domain name when you sign up for an annual plan, which is a great perk.

Bluehost features AI-driven design templates and blog post management, making it an excellent choice for those who want to build a beautiful website without having any coding experience.

On the high end, $13.95 per month gets you optimized CPU resources, unlimited websites, free automated backups, and a free dedicated IP in Bluehost’s Pro plan. Keep in mind that $13.95 is a discounted amount and that it typically costs $28.99 monthly.

If you need more than what’s offered with Bluehost’s shared hosting plans, they also offer VPS hosting.

SiteGround costs about the same. Starting at $2.99 per month for the StartUp package, you get unlimited databases, a free CDN, out-of-the-box caching, free SSL, daily backups, WordPress auto-updates, and free WordPress setup and migration.

Siteground web hosting pricing

If you move up to SiteGround’s top-tier plan, GoGeek, you’ll spend $7.99 per month and receive on-demand backup copies, 30% faster PHP, white-labeling for clients, a free private DNS, and priority support for when you need it most.

However, keep in mind that this is special pricing and this plan is usually priced at $39.99 per month.

When deciding between Bluehost and SiteGround, the reality is that both of them are great hosting providers for WordPress beginners. 

The bottom line is that SiteGround shines for its high uptime rates, but Bluehost still has the edge in almost every other category. Bluehost is perfect for beginners, and it’s robust enough to handle your needs as your site grows over time.

If you are not just starting out or you have a high traffic website, then there certainly are other web hosting services you should look into as well. Check out our list of the best web hosting services to see the other top options to choose from:

  1. Bluehost – Best overall
  2. HostGator – Best for scaling small business sites
  3. Web.com – Best website builder for simple business websites
  4. Hostinger – Best for websites that need lots of storage
  5. DreamHost – Best for simple, straightforward hosting
  6. SiteGround – Best for keeping uptime above 99.99%
  7. InMotion – Best price for hosting two websites
  8. Nexcess – Best for experienced WordPress users
  9. A2 Hosting – Most dependable hosting for global traffic

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