Bluehost vs. TMDHosting
TMDHosting is a name that doesn’t come up a lot in these sorts of comparisons but it really should because the company is extremely underrated. But is it better than the ever-popular Bluehost? Almost, but not quite there yet.
Despite having been around since 2007, TMDHosting is one of those hosting providers you don’t hear about very often. A lot of the time when that happens it’s because the company in question isn’t particularly good, but that’s not the case here. In fact, a lot of experienced webmasters claim that TMDHosting is just as good as Bluehost in most areas so we wanted to put that to the test. And what better way to do that than by putting together a Bluehost vs TMDHosting comparison?
Don’t have enough time to dive into the full comparison? Here’s a summary of our research:
If you’re familiar with our past comparisons, such as Bluehost vs HostGator for example, you already know that we like to break things down and analyze our competitors from several angles before finally drawing a conclusion. But if this is your first time reading one of our comparisons, you can click here to read more about our testing and reviewing process before you proceed. With that out of the way, let’s get into the meat and potatoes of this Bluehost vs TMDHosting comparison.
Performance
I think we can all agree that a slow website is annoying to deal with, both for the people who visit it and the ones who own it. That’s why performance should be a top priority when choosing your hosting provider. Unfortunately, most companies don’t give any concrete data about the speed of their services so we took it upon ourselves to do a bit of testing. What we learned is that both Bluehost and TMDHosting are pretty much on par in terms of performance, which is a bit surprising.
From our experience, Bluehost tends to perform very well when it comes to page loading speeds, as we’ve recently seen in our Bluehost vs GreenGeeks comparison. However, testing the server response times can yield some mixed results depending on the testing location. Bluehost’s biggest drawback at the moment is that the company only has a single data center. The data center is US-based so things will start slowing down if you’re visiting sites hosted by the company from abroad.
In the case of TMDHosting, the location is not an issue. Similar to big names like SiteGround, TMDHosting has multiple data centers spread across four continents. The average page loading speeds were slightly slower during our testing compared to what we saw with Bluehost, but the fact that the user’s location doesn’t have a big impact on performance can be an important advantage in some situations.
At the end of the day, both companies use CDNs and caching technologies like Varnish to improve their already impressive performance, so you can’t go wrong with either Bluehost or TMDHosting. You might be better off with TMDHosting if most of your audience is located outside the US, but we think Bluehost is a marginally better choice for US-based visitors.
Things are pretty even when it comes to the uptime as both companies got an uptime of roughly 99.99% during our testing. TMDHosting does have an uptime guarantee while Bluehost doesn’t, but you would only be able to take advantage of it in case the uptime drops significantly. Also worth noting is that only long-time customers (who have used TMDHosting for at least 12 months) can take advantage of the guarantee. While it’s definitely great that the company is willing to compensate customers for potential downtime, it is disappointing that the policy doesn’t apply to new users.
Pricing and Value
While some companies like Site5 charge unjustifiably high prices for their services, others do their best to make their products as cheap as possible. Case in point, Bluehost only charges $2.95 per month (with this special offer) for basic shared hosting, provided you don’t mind signing up for a multi-year plan. Coincidentally, TMDHosting’s cheapest plan will also cost you $2.95 with a multi-year contract. The plan also supports monthly billing – which isn’t available at Bluehost – but choosing that option would set you back $8.95/mo + a one-time setup fee of $9.95. That’s not a great offer in our opinion. If you’re looking for more affordable hosting services with monthly billing check out this article.
Shared hosting aside, you can get a wide variety of other types of hosting at both companies. Bluehost has relatively cheap unmanaged virtual private servers starting at $18.99/mo while TMDHosting’s VPS plans are managed but prices here start at $39.95/mo, albeit there is a sale currently going on that cuts the price in half for the first term. Things are looking similar in the case of dedicated hosting as well.
Meanwhile, TMDHosting also offers cheap managed WordPress hosting services starting at only $5.95/mo, significantly cheaper than Bluehost’s $19.95/mo equivalent. That said, Bluehost has a lot more experience when it comes to handling WordPress websites and is the #1 recommended hosting provider by the WordPress foundation. In other words, you would be paying for a high-quality tried-and-true service here.
Where TMDHosting definitely comes out on top in this comparison is in the cloud hosting department. Bluehost used to offer cloud hosting back in the day but that’s no longer the case so its competitors gets a point by default. TMDHosting’s cloud-based packages start at $5.95/mo, a fair price all things considered. We would recommend specialized providers like Vultr or DigitalOcean if you’re seriously thinking about trying cloud hosting, but TMDHosting is not a bad option either, especially if you’re looking for an easy to use service.
Before we move on to the next section it’s important to note that both companies have quite a few upsells, some of which are pretty questionable. While Bluehost’s paid add-ons include things such as SEO and website security tools, TMDHosting charges for things like sitemap generation, Google Search Console integration and Google Analytics integration. We’ve done dozens of comparisons in the past but this is the first time we’ve seen a company trying to sell something like this. You can easily generate a sitemap with a WordPress plugin and integrate with Google services without spending a dime. The fact that TMDHosting would have customers pay for these types of services is not a good look for the company.
Customer Support
Hosting companies live and die by the quality of their customer support, especially those like Bluehost and TMDHosting that attract so many novice webmasters. If you’re a novice yourself, there’s no need to worry because both companies have experienced support teams that are available 24/7 via phone, live chat, and a ticketing system. We have to note, however, that TMDHosting throws around the term ‘premium support’ a bit too much, going as far as listing it under each and every one of its hosting packages. Meanwhile, Bluehost has an actual premium support service known as Blue Sky that specializes in WordPress-related issues. It’s not free, though.
As far as self-help options are concerned, there’s little to nothing of interest to be found at TMDHosting. The so-called knowledgebase is essentially just a forum that hasn’t been active since May 2018 from what we can tell. Meanwhile, the company’s blog was unreachable at the time of this writing, so there’s no point in trying to find any help there, or on its social media pages, which haven’t seen any activity in more than a year. Bluehost’s knowledge base isn’t the best we’ve ever seen but it’s definitely very solid. Same goes for the blog and the company’s social media pages. There’s even a YouTube channel for those who are looking for video guides and tutorials.
Ease of Use
We’re going to keep this section fairly short because the ease of use features offered by Bluehost and TMDHosting are pretty much identical. All plans offered by both companies come with a standard cPanel and 1-click installers for all the most popular applications and content management systems, such as WordPress, Magento or Drupal. In addition, the two companies also give you access to Weebly should you want a simple and straightforward website builder.
It’s worth noting that this is the free version of Weebly we’re talking about. For more information about the full version of the platform, check out our Bluehost vs Weebly comparison.
Security
Bluehost and TMDHosting both have reasonably good security features, including SSL certificates, nightly backups, and basic malware protection. All of that is included for free with all shared hosting plans. Upgrading your basic plan will not give you access to additional security features at TMDHosting, unless you count the improved SSL certificate. At Bluehost, on the other hand, you get plenty of features if you upgrade to the highest tier, including domain privacy, a dedicated IP, and an automatic backup & restore tool. You can get domain privacy even if you’re on the cheapest Bluehost plan but it would cost you an annual fee.
TMDHosting doesn’t include domain privacy with any of its shared plans so in this case there’s no way to get it without paying the extra fee. Speaking of optional purchases, both companies also offer the SiteLock add-on. The add-on is cheaper at TMDHosting but that’s only because the company offers SiteLock Basic while Bluehost has one of the upgraded versions.
Features
Both companies are doing extremely well in terms of features. You can expect to get a lot of value for your money regardless of which provider you choose, however, there are some differences between the two. Here are the main highlights:
Bluehost
- Free domain name for 1 year
- Free SSL certificates
- CDN integration
- cPanel
- Unlimited SSD storage with all plans except Shared Basic
- Managed WordPress hosting
- Unmanaged VPS and dedicated hosting
- Nightly backups
- Unlimited emails
- Free domain privacy with some plans
- Free automated backups with some plans
- 30-day money-back guarantee
TMDHosting
- Free domain name for 1 year
- Unlimited SSD storage with all plans
- Free SSL certificates
- CDN integration
- cPanel
- Multiple data centers to choose from
- Managed WordPress hosting
- Managed VPS and dedicated servers
- Cloud hosting and reseller hosting
- Nightly backups
- Unlimited emails
- 60-day money-back guarantee
Bluehost vs. TMDHosting – Our Pick
This was by far one of the closest comparisons we’ve ever done. Ultimately, though, we have to give a slight edge to Bluehost when taking everything into account. TMDHosting is a great provider but it tries too hard to be like Bluehost without offering anything truly special. If you skipped over parts of this comparison, here are the main things you should keep in mind:
- Performance: The main takeaway here is that Bluehost is slightly faster for US-based users while TMDHosting has the potential to perform better for users outside NA.
- Pricing and Value: It’s pretty much a tie if we’re talking about shared hosting but the fact that TMDHosting charges a setup fee for monthly payments and tries to upsell services that should be free did leave a bitter taste in our mouths. We have to give this one to Bluehost.
- Customer Support: Both companies offer good 24/7 customer support via all the usual channels but Bluehost is the only one that also offers a solid knowledgebase and other self-help options.
- Ease of Use: Bluehost and TMDHosting are evenly matched here since both of them offer pretty much identical ease of use options.
- Features: Pound for pound, Bluehost has better features if you’re going with one of the more expensive plans. If you’re sticking to basic shared hosting, however, TMDHosting has slightly better features.
- SEO: Not a lot to say here except for the fact that Bluehost offers a paid SEO toolkit while TMDHosting doesn’t offer any help in this department.
- Security: You can expect similar security features from both companies if you’re using basic shared hosting. Once you upgrade to a higher tier plan, Bluehost starts to include additional features. The same cannot be said about TMDHosting.
- Scalability: If you’re interested strictly in shared hosting, Bluehost has better scalability. Otherwise, TMDHosting would be the better pick since overall it has more types of hosting and a slightly wider variety of packages to choose from.
Check out our reviews hub for in-depth looks at some of the most important hosting providers on the market.
Bluehost’s cheap starting prices coupled with its solid performance, fantastic customer support and robust set of features make it one of the best hosting providers on the market. There are a couple of downsides here and there but this is one of those cases where the pros heavily outweigh the cons.
