Bluehost vs. Shopify: Which Host Is Better for E-Commerce?
Shopify has lots of built-in ecommerce features that make it easier to start an online store, but if you want full control over your site, you might find it restrictive. Bluehost, on the other hand, gives you complete creative freedom. It’s also faster and cheaper, but is it the right host for you?
Bluehost vs. Shopify is a close matchup that only you can settle. I’ve tested both hosts and researched their performance and features extensively, but here’s the thing: whether one or the other is better depends on your specific needs.
Don’t worry: I’ll give you all the details you need to make an informed choice. Even if you’re not yet sure about the kind of eCommerce platform you want, this won’t be a problem. By the time you’re done reading, you’ll have a better idea of what you need, and where to get it.
Following my research, I can tell you right away that Bluehost is a better candidate for a simple business presentation website. It’s cheaper, it has better integrations with WordPress, and it’s overall easier to use. But that’s not the full story.
Don’t have enough time to dive into the full comparison? Here’s a summary of our research:
If you want to build an online store where you can actually sell products, you have to take a closer look at both Bluehost and Shopify. Shopify is one of the most popular hosting platforms designed specifically for eCommerce. It makes it super simple to start an online store, but there is a catch: if you want full creative freedom over your website, you might find it restrictive.
Bluehost has fewer eCommerce features built directly into its hosting platform, but it’s a more versatile service. For example, if you opt for Shopify, you’re limited to its proprietary content management system (CMS), whereas with Bluehost, you can use WooCommerce, PrestaShop, Magento, or any other popular eCommerce script.
So, is Bluehost or Shopify better for your online store? Let’s take a closer look.
Performance
You can’t overstate the importance of a speedy and reliable web host when it comes to eCommerce. If your website is slow, this has a direct impact on your sales. A lazy site that takes over 8 seconds to load can result in up to 60% fewer conversions, which means that you’re losing a lot of money.
Not only are users impatient when it comes to online shopping, but they are also less likely to trust a slow eCommerce store. If a website doesn’t load quickly, visitors begin to think that something is wrong. This, in turn, makes them wonder whether they can trust the platform to process their payments correctly. And at this point, you’ve already lost many of your potential customers.
Needless to state that uptime is just as important. You need your platform to be up and running at all times, because if a customer can’t buy your products, they will very likely turn to your competition. If your site is down and theirs is running, guess who’s going to make a sale?
And speaking of sales, you want a platform that can handle traffic spikes well. With an eCommerce store, marketing campaigns are likely to lead to periods of very intense traffic, and not all web hosts are up to the task. You don’t want your website to fail in the middle of a sales promotion, when you need it the most.
With that in mind, I’ve tested both Bluehost and Shopify for several months to find out which of the two can actually support a medium- to high-traffic eCommerce store. You can learn more about our testing and reviewing process for web hosts by visiting this page.
Bluehost vs. Shopify: Server Infrastructure
Whether you opt for Shopify or Bluehost, you can rest assured that your website will be hosted on a high-performance platform. Both hosts offer fast SSD storage in addition to a server stack that is optimized for speed and reliability. That said, there are a few differences between them.
For instance, Shopify doesn’t have its own hosting infrastructure. Instead, it uses servers from Google Cloud Platform, arguably the fastest cloud infrastructure in the world. When you sign up with Shopify, a server is provisioned for you, and the Shopify CMS is preinstalled. Most performance optimizations are also handled for you, although this might come as a disadvantage if you prefer to select your own cache plugins.
Bluehost, on the other hand, runs its own data center and offers proprietary hosting services. This doesn’t necessarily make it better, but since Bluehost specializes in web hosting, rather than eCommerce specifically, you can get a lot of additional information about your account. For example, you know exactly how much storage space and bandwidth is included in your plan.
Both Shopify and Bluehost have servers in the US only. If your online store addresses a US audience, you can expect outstanding loading speeds for visitors across the states. If, however, you have a more global audience or your shop targets non-US customers, this might be slightly problematic since you can’t choose a data center in any other region like you can with companies like SiteGround, for example.
That said, a content delivery network (CDN) can help you improve your site’s performance in other regions of the world. A CDN ensures that a cached version of your website is stored in dozens of local servers around the world. When a user tries to access your site, they are connected to the closest server, rather than your main data center.
A CDN is integrated with both Bluehost and Shopify, so you don’t have to spend a lot of time to set it up. With Bluehost, you get the free version of Cloudflare CDN, whereas Shopify uses Fastly. The two are equally impressive in terms of performance, although Fastly is slightly slower than Cloudflare according to CDNPerf.
CTA: Do you want full control over your server stack? Bluehost lets you customize every aspect of your account and website.
Page Loading Speeds
Bluehost is a web hosting giant with a track record of consistent loading speeds for websites of all sizes. So long as you choose a plan that is appropriate for the number of visitors you get every day, you don’t have to worry about a sluggish site.
Together with my colleagues, I have tested and retested Bluehost over several years. For your convenience, we have summarized the results of our extensive testing in our dedicated Bluehost hub. Throughout this time, my website has seen excellent page loading speeds of well under two seconds. I would trust Bluehost with my online store, especially since some of its plans are designed specifically for eCommerce.
But don’t get me wrong: Shopify is just as impressive. Google Cloud Platform might not be quite as old as Bluehost, but it’s certainly a super speedy network. It came as no surprise when my tests revealed great page loading speeds for Shopify. The platform makes good use of GCP, and uses several optimization tools of its own to further improve its performance.
My only hesitation with Shopify is that it keeps its caching system mostly hidden. On the one hand, this makes it easier for beginners to improve site performance without a lot of effort. But on the other hand, webmasters who want to take a peek under the hood and make their own optimizations can end up feeling frustrated with the platform.
With Bluehost, you have more freedom to customize your stack.
Uptime
Bluehost and Shopify promise a minimum of 99.9% uptime for your online store, which is pretty much the industry average. I’ve actually tested uptime for both services over a period of several months, and recorded an average of 99.96% for Bluehost and 99.99% for Shopify. Not bad at all.
The issue with both hosts is that there is no proper uptime guarantee. Most providers offer some kind of compensation for excessive downtime in their Service Level Agreement. A couple of good examples of companies that follow this practice include HostGator, one of Bluehost’s biggest competitors and Wix, an often underrated Shopify rival. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case with either Shopify or Bluehost.
Even so, glowing reviews for both hosts confirm that they each have a great uptime history. After all, when was the last time you heard that Google Search went offline? It just doesn’t happen.
Bluehost vs. Shopify: Which Host Has Better Performance?
In terms of speed and reliability, Bluehost vs. Shopify is too close to call. Both providers use high-performance infrastructures to offer the best possible hosting for online stores, and our tests confirm this. Although this is the first time we’re comparing Bluehost vs Shopify directly, we have monitored the performance of both hosts on many occasions in the past for some of our other comparisons and the results managed to impress us every single time.
If I had to pick a winner, I’d probably go with Bluehost because it gives me more freedom to configure and optimize my website. However, an eCommerce site can thrive on either of these two platforms, provided that you choose a plan with enough resources.
Pricing and Value
It’s surprising just how cheap web hosting can be these days, but you shouldn’t be fooled by attractive headline prices. Before you commit to a host for several years, you have to dig a little deeper and find out exactly what is included in your plan. Running an online store can be overwhelming – I get it. But you have to do the research if you want to avoid hidden costs later down the line.
When it comes to Bluehost vs. Shopify, I’ve already done it for you. I’ve compared their plans side-by-side, tested most features, and dove deep into Terms and Agreements for any hidden clauses. Here’s what I came up with.
Bluehost WooCommerce Starter vs. Shopify Basic
The features you get with these two plans are fairly similar. Both the Bluehost Starter and Shopify Basic plans offer a single online store, but Shopify also includes a blog. You can set one up with Bluehost too, but it’ll take a bit of extra work on your part.
In terms of storage space and bandwidth, Shopify claims that it imposes no restrictions on your website. While this is true in most cases, you have to be careful if your website is media-intensive. Shopify’s Terms of Use warn against using too many resources for your site, which can result in penalties.
With Bluehost, things are a bit clearer. You get 100GB of SSD storage on the Starter plan, and your bandwidth is unmetered. There are a few rules in place to prevent abuse, but if you don’t start a file sharing platform on your account, you’ll never have to deal with bandwidth limitations.
As for eCommerce features, Bluehost Starter comes with WooCommerce and the Storefront theme preinstalled. You can learn more about WooCommerce and its capabilities by checking out our Bluehost eCommerce review.
You can start working on your website as soon as you log in, so long as you don’t mind using WordPress. If you’d rather use a different CMS, it’ll only take a couple of extra clicks to set it up using Bluehost’s one-click installer.
With Shopify, you have instant access to the provider’s proprietary CMS, so it’s just as easy to start working on an online store. However, you won’t be able to use a different CMS, and you might not have access to all the features you want for your website.
Both Bluehost and Shopify offer free email, an SSL certificate, and a free domain for one year on all plans.
That said, the two plans couldn’t be more different when it comes to pricing. You can get Bluehost’s WooCommerce Starter plan for less than $7 per month using this special discount, while Shopify’s Basic plan costs four times as much.
You get more eCommerce integrations for the difference, but Shopify won’t give you anything you can’t set up yourself with Bluehost. So is it really worth four times the price? Not if you ask me. There’s a good reason why Bluehost is considered one of the cheapest web hosting providers out there.
Bluehost WooCommerce Plus vs. Shopify Standard
This is where things get interesting. For an extra $2, Bluehost Plus lets you host an unlimited number of websites. You also get unmetered bandwidth and storage space, so you can easily upload as many different product pictures and videos as you need. Just remember to optimize them in order to maintain good page loading speeds.
Shopify’s Standard plan gets expensive very quickly, at $79 per month. What do you get extra? You can create additional accounts for your staff to log into your dashboard, add more physical locations for your shops and inventory, and get better discounts for shipping with Shopify’s partners. It’s not a bad upgrade, but once again, the cost is quite high for the added value.
Also keep in mind that, regardless of the plan you choose, Shopify only lets you host one website (or online store) per account. If you want to create multiple storefronts, you’re out of luck. The service can be a tough sell due to this limitation, especially when there are several Shopify alternatives out there that are quite a bit more generous.
Bluehost WooCommerce Pro vs. Shopify Advanced
At this point, you’ll only want to consider Shopify if you have over 1,000 visitors per day and you need a powerful platform to carry your website through traffic spikes. Shopify’s Advanced plan comes with additional computing resources, more staff accounts, more physical locations, and a few added features like third-party calculated shipping rates. But all of this will cost you.
At $299 per month, Shopify Advanced is roughly 20 times more expensive than Bluehost Pro, so if you’re just starting out with your business, Bluehost is the only real option. If you opt for a long-term plan, Bluehost Pro will only set you back $12.95 per month. For this cost, you get absolutely everything that you need to run a successful online store.
The plan includes unlimited websites, storage, and bandwidth, a one-click installer for WooCommerce + Storefront and any other popular eCommerce CMS, domain privacy, a free SSL certificate, automated daily backups, free email, and Bluehost’s SEO suite.
Bluehost Pro is a low-cost, but complete offer for eCommerce, and it gives you plenty of time to develop your business before making a significant financial investment. It’s certainly not as powerful as Shopify’s Advanced plan, but it’s more than enough for a new online store. When you’re ready for an upgrade, you can always migrate your website to one of Bluehost’s VPS or dedicated servers.
When you first launch an online store, you don’t need an advanced web hosting plan to make it work. Bluehost gives you the option to start with a cheap shared hosting package, and upgrade on a need-to basis. This way, you don’t have to pay upfront for services you might not need later on.
A Cheaper Alternative: Shopify Lite
Shopify Lite costs just $9 per month, so it’s significantly cheaper than the Basic plan, although still more costly than Bluehost’s Starter. It’s also not a fully-fledged hosting service, because it only gives you the tools that you need to monetize an existing website.
More specifically, Shopify Lite comes with a simple, easy-to-use Buy Button that you can add to your website in order to quickly process payments from customers. If, for example, you own a popular blog and you want to start selling a few items on your website, Shopify Lite is a good way to do it without having to build an online store.
What Shopify Lite doesn’t include is web hosting, so you have to buy the plan in addition to a web hosting service from a third-party provider. Although it is convenient, it’s still fairly expensive, especially since you can easily integrate buy buttons from providers like PayPal for free. But if you do find Shopify Lite appealing, you can find a list of excellent hosting services you can pair with it by visiting this page.
On the other hand, if you want an affordable eCommerce platform with many of the same features, Bluehost’s WooCommerce makes more sense. Alternatively, you could go with Squarespace, which is just as easy to use as Shopify, but significantly cheaper. Get the details in our Squarespace vs. Shopify comparison.
Room to Scale: Bluehost VPS and Dedicated Servers
Online stores with thousands of daily visits are too resource-intensive to be hosted on a shared environment. As your eCommerce platform grows, you need your web host to grow with it. Bluehost does just that.
For just under $30 per month, you can get your own Bluehost VPS with dedicated resources, 2 vCPU cores, and 4GB of RAM. If you’re worried about the transition to a more advanced type of hosting, don’t be. Bluehost’s dashboard makes it super easy to manage your account, and you get the same one-click installer to quickly set up your favorite CMS.
If you need even more power, you can always go for a dedicated server. With Bluehost’s Premium dedicated configuration, you’re still paying about half as much as you would for Shopify Advanced. To be fair, Bluehost’s dedicated servers are not managed, so you might need an expert to take care of system operations unless you want to get your hands dirty.
Even so, you get your own, bare-metal server with full customization and improved performance: something that you can’t buy with Shopify, regardless of the plan you choose.
For enterprise-grade websites, Shopify does have a managed cloud Plus platform, but it comes at a rate of $2,000 per month. If you can afford it, you can basically let Shopify take care of all backend tasks for you, while you work on your business.
However, the jump in price from the Advanced to the Plus plans is significant, and it might be easier for you to make the transition with a service like Bluehost, which offers a wider variety of plans for all budgets.
Which Is Cheaper, Bluehost or Shopify?
Without a doubt, Bluehost is cheaper than Shopify, especially if you opt for a long-term plan. But there is a slight catch. Bluehost’s headline prices are only available for your first billing cycle. Once your first term is over, you have to pay Bluehost’s steep renewal fees, which can almost double the initial cost.
That said, you’re still not paying as much as you would with Shopify. If budgeting is important to you, Bluehost is, by far, the better alternative between the two. Even after renewal, it’ll still be cheaper to host your online store with Bluehost. And if you’re ready for an upgrade, the provider has equally affordable VPS and dedicated solutions.
For a complete rundown of Bluehost’s different plans, check out our in-depth Bluehost review.
Ease of Use
Both Bluehost and Shopify are designed with ease of use in mind. Their very purpose is to make it possible for a user with no experience in web development to set up an account, connect a domain, and create a beautiful online store that looks good across all platforms. You won’t have to deal with a steep learning curve regardless of the service you choose.
Even so, I would say that Shopify is slightly easier to use than Bluehost when it comes to eCommerce. With Shopify, everything you need to create an online store is already set up for you by the time you log in. You can just focus on building your website, without having to worry about plugins, speed, or security.
Shopify is PCI-compliant by default, so you can process payments directly on your website. In fact, there is a complete cart and checkout system built straight into the platform, so you don’t have to install any software yourself in order to make it work.
And here’s another important thing to consider: while Shopify does come with a CMS, the platform is much more than that. Think of it as a complete online business management system that includes website hosting and design, but also inventory management, order processing, social media integrations, and more.
Does This Mean Bluehost Is More Difficult to Use?
Not really, Bluehost is an entirely different kind of service. It’s still very easy to start and host a website on any of its WooCommerce plans, since WordPress, WooCommerce, and the Storefront theme are preinstalled. However, it might take a bit of extra time to find and set up all the right plugins, from the cart system to payment processing, and site optimization.
Of course, there is an upside with Bluehost in that you can customize your website to be exactly as you want it. You can use WooCommerce or any other ecommerce framework to build your site, and you can add any functions you might need so long as you don’t mind looking for the best plugin for the job.
At the end of the day, that’s the main trade-off in this Bluehost vs. Shopify comparison: Shopify is quicker to set up, but Bluehost lets you do more things with your online store. If you’re thinking about signing up with Bluehost, you may want to familiarize yourself with the service first by checking out our Bluehost beginner’s guide.
Features
We’ve already seen some of the most important features of both Bluehost and Shopify, but the two hosts have more to offer. While generous storage space and bandwidth are essential aspects, these have become fairly commonplace over the past few years. Now, it’s the extra features that best separate one service from another.
| Bluehost | Shopify | |
|---|---|---|
| Plan | Shared | Shared |
| Pricing | from $29.99/month | from $29/month |
| Storage | 60GB | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Free Domain | Yes | Yes |
| SSD Storage | No | No |
| IP Address | 2 | No |
| RAM | 4GB | n/a |
| Uptime offer | 0.999 | 0.99 |
| SSL Certificate | No | Yes |
| 24/7 Support | Yes | Yes |
| Email Accounts | Unlimited | n/a |
| CPanel | Yes | No |
| Built-in CDN | Yes | Yes |
| Root Access | Yes | No |
| 1 Click WordPress Install | Yes | Yes |
| Refund Policy | 30-day Moneyback | 14-day Free Trial |
| Ideal for | Small to Medium Enterprise | Ecommerce websites |
| Headquarters | USA | Canada |
If you go with Bluehost, you can expect these features to be included in your plan:
- Automated WooCommerce + Storefront installation
- Unlimited websites (for the Plus and Pro plans)
- Domain privacy and protection, which can deter both spam and hackers
- A free domain for one year
- Free SSL certificates
- Free marketing credits for Microsoft Advertising and Google Ads to help promote your new store
- Bluehost SEO Tools (for the Pro plan)
With Shopify, these are the most noteworthy features on offer:
- Shopify’s proprietary CMS and themes
- One website + a blog
- Collaborative tools that you can use to add colleagues or employees to your account
- Inventory management tools
- Abandoned cart recovery
- In-depth sales reports (on Standard and Advanced)
- Shipping discounts and labels
- Free SSL certificates
- PCI compliance
Just remember that even though Shopify comes with many integrated functions, it doesn’t actually offer anything that you can’t do yourself with Bluehost. For example, you can set up exit-intent popups with WooCommerce to recover up to 8% of abandoned cart sales.
In addition, there are things that the Shopify CMS simply won’t let you do. For instance, you can only offer three customization options per product. If you’re selling shoes, your customers can choose their style, size, and color, but if you also want to add a fourth option – such as shoelace color, for example – you’re out of luck.
Finally, if you want to use a third-party payment processing service like PayPal, Shopify will charge you a small fee for each sale. To avoid this, you have to use Shopify’s own payment system, which isn’t terrible, but certainly limits your options.
Customer Support
Both Bluehost and Shopify offer comprehensive 24/7 customer support through live chat, email, and phone. That said, you can’t know just how good support is until you actually test it. And that’s exactly what I did.
While building a website, I got in touch with both services often. I never had to wait long before an agent picked up my question, which was great. However, there were some drawbacks too. With both Shopify and Bluehost, the support agents were polite and willing to help, but if I ever asked a more technical question – such as, for instance, if I needed them to clarify a line of code – I didn’t get the information I was after.
This is more or less standard practice in the web hosting industry. Customer support is there to help with platform-related issues, but that’s about it. Only a handful of services offer additional assistance with web development, coding, and debugging, and they’re all pretty expensive. You can find such services at Bluehost and a few other companies but a lot of the time they’re only available to users who opt for one of their managed WordPress hosting packages.
There Was One Major Difference between Bluehost and Shopify
Overall, I had a pleasant experience with both hosts and most of my inquiries were resolved quickly. But there was one thing that set Bluehost and Shopify apart. When I signed up with Bluehost’s Starter WooCommerce plan, I got a two-hour setup call with a WordPress expert. The agent helped me get accustomed to the dashboard and the WooCommerce plugin, which saved me hours once I actually started to work on the site.
It’s also worth noting that Bluehost has a superior tech support tier called BlueSky. When you activate BlueSky, you get priority support and assistance with WordPress- and WooCommerce-specific issues. This level of support is not included for free, but it’s nice to know that the option is there.
Think you might need extra help with your online store? With Bluehost, you can buy specialized tech support for a modest fee. This can save you a lot of time and also allow you to launch your business without any technical problems.
Search Engine Optimization
Whether you go with Bluehost or Shopify, you don’t have to worry too much about SEO. Both providers make it a point to help you optimize your website as you build it, so you don’t have to put in a lot of additional work.
Shopify actually gives you an SEO-ready website structure, which means that most optimization tasks are automated. For instance, title tags with your store’s name are automatically generated, as are canonical tags that help prevent duplicate content from showing up in search results. Shopify also generates your website’s sitemap, and gives you an easy way to edit title tags, URLs, and meta descriptions.
On the other hand, Bluehost works with WooCommerce, which is a WordPress plugin for online stores. By itself, WooCommerce doesn’t have a lot of SEO features. It builds your website using SEO-friendly code, but if you want more than that, you have to install an additional plugin.
The good news is that because WooCommerce is so seamlessly integrated with WordPress, you can use popular SEO plugins like Yoast. With Yoast, you can do pretty much everything that Shopify does for you. Some tasks – like setting canonical URLs – are automated, while others – such as keyword research and optimization – you have to do yourself.
If you opt for Bluehost’s Pro WooCommerce plan, you also get the provider’s proprietary SEO tools for free. These include useful site statistics, as well as many of the features that you get with either Yoast or Shopify.
Security
Bluehost and Shopify offer similar levels of security for your website and admin area, but Shopify has the edge in this category thanks to its anti-fraud and credit card protection features. In addition, Shopify stores are PCI compliant by default, whereas with Bluehost, you have to apply for compliance and undergo a somewhat lengthy verification process before you can obtain your license.
Bluehost protects its clients with server-wide firewalls and free SSL certificates from Let’s Encrypt. You can also get a malware scanning and removal tool in the form of SiteLock Essentials, but it’ll cost you extra.
As for website backups, these are only included in the Plus and Pro WooCommerce plans. Still, you can schedule your own automatic backups using cPanel even if you opt for the Starter package.
With Shopify, SSL certificates and automatic backups are included on all plans. More importantly, there’s an anti-fraud system that flags potentially fraudulent orders for you to manually review. Your customer’s credit card information is always safe, so you don’t have to do anything (or pay for extra add-ons) in order to keep a secure store.
Overall, both Bluehost and Shopify have good security features. The only drawback with Bluehost is that you have to buy an add-on or two for proper website security.
Scalability
Bluehost and Shopify are both platforms that can scale with a growing business. The major difference between them is pricing. With Bluehost, you can access a wide range of web hosting services, from shared hosting to VPS and dedicated servers. The provider has several plans on sale for each type of hosting, so it’s easy to find one that suits your current budget.
Things are a bit different with Shopify, which can get costly very quickly. Shopify’s enterprise-grade solution is almost seven times more expensive than Shopify Advanced and about 20 times more expensive than Bluehost’s premium dedicated server setup. The managed services are certainly worth the cost, but if you’re a small or even medium business, you might not be able to afford it.
Then there’s the fact that Shopify only offers cloud hosting solutions, whereas with Bluehost, you can get a safer, single-tenant dedicated server. These machines are not shared with any other users, which gives you additional customization freedom and ensures that your account is better secured.
All in all, Bluehost has a far more suitable portfolio for small, but growing businesses. You can start with a cheap shared hosting plan for WooCommerce and scale up when needed. Unless your online store sees some overwhelming traffic to begin with, you won’t have to deal with massive increases in the cost of hosting from one month to the next.
To find out more, read our expert guide to Bluehost’s plans and pricing.
Key Differences
You can use either Bluehost or Shopify to host an online store, but there are a few key differences between them. Having looked at every important aspect of these two services, I’d like to focus for a moment on the features that really set them apart:
- Scope. Bluehost is a web hosting service with several ecommerce plans that make it easier to build and launch an online store. It’s primarily designed to work with WordPress, WooCommerce, and the Storefront theme, but you can integrate any other CMS at your discretion.
- Ease of Use. Bluehost gives you full control over your account and website. You can use your favorite CMS and plugins, and you can transfer your site if you want to switch to a different provider. That said, Bluehost doesn’t have as many built-in tools for ecommerce.
- Pricing. There are no two ways about it: Bluehost is significantly cheaper than Shopify. Especially if you’re just starting out, Bluehost is better because it doesn’t put as much financial strain on your online store.
- Shopify, on the other hand, can only be used with its proprietary content management system. That said, it provides a more complete solution for ecommerce by offering tools that Bluehost does not. These include inventory management, cross-platform storefronts, in-depth reports, and shipping discounts.
- Shopify has more features that are integrated directly into its dashboard. In addition, Shopify takes care of back-end things like SEO, security, and performance optimizations for you, whereas with Bluehost, you have to put in more time to get the same results.
- Shopify is more suitable for larger online stores. It’s more expensive, and you have fewer plans to choose from, so you’re not as likely to find something that suits a beginner’s budget.
If, for some reason, you don’t want to go with Bluehost, there are several reliable alternatives that are just as cheap. Meanwhile, Shopify is more suitable if you already have a high-traffic eCommerce platform, and you want extra help to manage it.
Bluehost vs. Shopify: Our Pick
So listen: Now that you know everything about Bluehost vs. Shopify, you still have to decide which of these services is best for your needs. Who do I recommend? I’d go with Shopify only if I had a large online store with more than 1,000 visitors per day. For everything else, I’d stick with Bluehost:
- Performance: Bluehost and Shopify are dead even in terms of website loading speeds, uptime, and overall performance. So long as you choose the right plan, you can expect to have a blazing-fast website with either host.
- Pricing and Value: Bluehost is cheaper than Shopify, by far. I’d also argue that it offers similar value, which makes it the best choice for small and medium businesses.
- Ease of Use: Both Shopify and Bluehost are built with simplicity in mind. That said, Shopify has more features ready out-of-the-box, while Bluehost is more customizable.
- Features: Bluehost and Shopify have similar features, but Shopify is a more complete eCommerce solution. On the flip side, Bluehost lets you host an unlimited number of websites on most plans, whereas Shopify gives you just one store.
- Customer Support: Both hosts offer 24/7 customer support through live chat, email, and phone. With Bluehost, you can buy a support add-on for help with specific WordPress and WooCommerce issues.
- Search Engine Optimization: Shopify has SEO features built into the platform, but WooCommerce is also easy to optimize with the help of popular WordPress plugins like Yoast.
- Security: Both Bluehost and Shopify offer free SSL certificates and have built-in security measures, but Shopify stores are also PCI compliant by default.
- Scalability: Whether you go with Bluehost or Shopify, there’s plenty of room for your online store to grow. Just keep in mind that Shopify can get expensive very quickly.
Shopify is a powerful eCommerce platform that offers a lot more than web hosting, but its pricing makes it fairly inaccessible for small and medium businesses. In this Bluehost vs. Shopify comparison, I’ve focused on the service that is better for most users, and that’s clearly Bluehost. Not only is Bluehost more affordable, but it also has a wider range of plans designed to suit all budgets, and it’s far more customizable.
Bluehost works flawlessly with WordPress and WooCommerce, which makes it a strong candidate for any online store. You can start small with a shared hosting plan and switch to a VPS or dedicated solution as you grow. Since all Bluehost plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee, you don’t have to take any risks to try the service.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Bluehost Better than Shopify for Ecommerce?
It depends on your needs. Shopify is a great way to get online quickly because most of the tools you’ll need to build an ecommerce store are already integrated. However, it’s significantly more expensive than Bluehost, and it limits your choice of CMS. With Bluehost, you can use WooCommerce, Joomla, Magento, PrestaShop, or any other CMS you like. You have to put in more work to optimize your website, but you get full creative freedom over your store.
Can I Migrate my Store from Shopify to Bluehost?
Unfortunately, no. This is actually one of the big drawbacks with Shopify – it doesn’t let you migrate any website that you’ve created on its platform. You can back up and transfer your data (including orders, inventory, and coupons), but if you want to use a different host, you’ll have to build your website from scratch.
Can I use Shopify with Bluehost?
Shopify is a stand-alone ecommerce solution that offers hosting in addition to its storefront theme and ecommerce management tools. You can’t use it with any other host, not even Bluehost. On the other hand, you can use Bluehost with CMS like WooCommerce to get similar features.
Which has Better Performance, Shopify or Bluehost?
Both Bluehost and Shopify offer excellent loading speeds in the US, as well as pristine uptime. From this point of view, I’d say that Shopify vs Bluehost is a tie. However, Bluehost gives you more freedom to customize your stack and install your own performance plugins. If this is something you want to do, Shopify might feel restrictive.
Is Shopify Cheaper than Bluehost?
On the contrary: Shopify is significantly more expensive. If you expect your online store to sell quickly, then Shopify is worth considering. But if you’re just testing the waters and you need to keep costs as low as possible, Bluehost’s super affordable plans are a better option.
