Bluehost is a web hosting company loved by Bloggers. Like other top hosting firms, it has introduced several hosting servers priced between $5 to $400. The most popular plans of the company are these 4 – Basic, Choice Plus, Pro, and Plus.
Like Hostgator Hatchling and Baby plan, BH Basic and Plus subscriptions are great for people who have decided to launch a blog or website with Bluehost.
Choice Plus and Pro are suitable for people who already own a website and are looking for a rock-solid shared hosting plan that is not only reliable but also offers great performance at an affordable price.
Which server is best among the 4 for bloggers? To find out the best server, you should know the similarities and differences between the four shared plans of Bluehost.
Add-ons/premium services
The premium add-ons/services increase when the price of the BH shared servers increases. Let’s have a look at various premium services/add-ons Bluehost bundles with its shared web hosting plans!
BH Basic server ships with 2 add-on premium services which according to BH are priced around 70 dollars. These services are Free Speed Boosting CDN and Free Website Migration.
Plus includes premium add-on services that are offered with Basic server and the following two add-ons:
Bluehost SEO tools ($70 value): According to BH, their SEO tools will help website owners like you in boosting their site’s traffic.
Microsoft Office Email 30 days ($6 value): For those who aren’t aware, Microsoft Office Email is a top-notch email hosting service. You will get a business email ID and access to the inbox for 30 days.
The Choice Plus plan provides add-ons of Plus plan and the following add-ons:
Domain privacy: ($40 value) Domain privacy, when active, will hide your personal details on the web. If anyone uses a WHOIS tool to find out your details by simply entering your website URL, he/she will see the company’s details instead of your personal details.
Daily website backup ($7 value): Websites can be hacked if the website owner doesn’t take measures to protect his/her site. Creating the website database and files backup every day and storing it safely is one of the measures one can take to protect the site. If someone hacks your site, you can restore the original data with a few clicks of a button. The Daily website backup add-on will automatically create site backups every day.
Pro subscription offers everything that Choice Plus comes with and a dedicated IP address which is worth 70 dollars according to BH.
Pricing and number of sites
Basic is an entry-level shared hosting plan of Bluehost that is priced at $8.99/month. It enables users to host a single site only and provides a 45GB SSD. Users who purchase the 3-year plan will get a 60+ percent discount. If you choose the 3-year subscription, you will have to pay $2.95/month only instead of $8.99 per month. The 1-year Basic plan costs $4.95 per month.
Bluehost Plus costs 2.5 dollars more than the Basic subscription. It supports unlimited hosting (sites, storage is unlimited). The only difference between the Choice Plus and Pro shared servers are – premium add-ons and pricing. Choice Plus and Pro cost $5.45 and $13.95 per month (3 years commitment). The yearly plans are priced at $7.45 and $18.95 per month.
Ad credits
The Plus, Pro, and Choice Plus users are given free credits of $200 for advertising on Bing and Google. The users also enjoy the SpamExperts module which filters junk mail when users are using Bluehost’s cPanel based email service.
Databases
The Basic plan lets you create up to 20 databases. The databases can have up to 5000 tables and can use 5 to 10GB of storage memory. The Pro, Choice Plus, and Plus subscriptions support unlimited databases. The storage memory and tables users can create are the same as that of the Basic plans.
CPU performance
The performance of CPUs of Bluehost Basic, Plus, and Choice Plus servers will be standard and that of Pro server will be better. Does CPU matter? CPU performance matters for dynamic sites that have to do a lot of database work or calculations. WP sites only fetch post or page data from the DB and display the same when the page/post is requested. If you use CDN or a plugin such as WP Super Cache, no matter what BH plan you choose, the site’s performance will be great.
Which Bluehost plan is best – Basic, Plus, Choice Plus, or Pro? Frankly speaking, each plan is great and offers something different. Thus, you can go for any of the subscriptions that fit your budget and have features that you require.
