SiteGround vs. Bluehost

Bluehost and SiteGround may be two of the oldest hosting services, but they’re just as relevant now as they were in the mid-2000s. Both providers are recommended by the WordPress foundation, and offer affordable hosting for a variety of needs.

So, are they different from one another? You bet. I signed up with the basic (cheapest) plan on both providers to find out more about what sets them apart. I also thoroughly researched the insides of the two platforms, down to the terms of the hosting agreement.

Having tested SiteGround and Bluehost in a number of areas, including performance, ease of use, and support, I’m surprised at how close they are. On the one hand, SiteGround’s features and scalability are better. But on the other hand, Bluehost has an edge in terms of initial prices and add-on services. Similar to our Bluehost vs DreamHost comparison, this one was also a fairly even match.

Don’t have enough time to dive into the full comparison? Here’s a summary of our research:

SiteGround

See Full REVIEW

➜

4.85 / 5 Overall Rating

Pricing 4.7/5

Support 4.9/5

Features 4.8/5

Performance 5/5

Best Performance

Visit SiteGround

Bluehost

See Full REVIEW

➜

4.80 / 5 Overall Rating

Pricing 4.9/5

Support 4.8/5

Features 4.7/5

Performance 4.8/5

Best Prices

Visit Bluehost

I’m excited to show you all of my findings in this Bluehost vs SiteGround comparison, especially those backstage details you usually find out about after signing up. What can I say, I’m a sucker for gossip.

Performance

Data shows that speed and responsiveness are two of the most important factors in driving traffic, improving conversions, and retaining users. Because the majority of consumers rely on mobile devices to browse the Internet, websites and applications must be cross-platform compatible.

Both hosts say your website will be really fast if you host it with them, but I know better than to take them for their word. I set up the same test site on Bluehost and SiteGround, and then ran several tests using our proprietary step-by-step process. Sometimes, data speaks more than words can. Let’s see how they did.

Full Page Load Time

There are a lot of metrics to consider when it comes to website performance. Without going into too much tech detail, I focused on the most significant aspects of website performance.

The parameter I looked at first is full page load time or, in other words, how long it takes to display all the content on a specific page. On GTmetrix, SiteGround did well. It took just under two seconds to fully load the homepage. Given that I didn’t use a CDN or performed any in-depth speed optimizations, that’s a solid result.

On the other hand, Bluehost passed the GTmetrix test with flying colors. Everything is green throughout and there were no improvements to be made. This is exactly what you want from your host. But even so, its fully loaded time was 0.2 milliseconds longer than SiteGround’s. It is important to note, however, that Bluehost has been consistent with these results, as can be seen in our Bluehost vs HostGator comparison. With SiteGround we’ve seen more fluctuations over the years, though things do seem pretty stable as of late.

Overall, I’d say the performance race is pretty tight, at least so far. Even though Bluehost displayed the main content of the homepage faster than SiteGround, its fully loaded time was slightly worse.

It could be that Bluehost got better results because SiteGround’s basic plan has NGINX set up as a reverse proxy, while Bluehost has NGINX and Varnish caching enabled by default. Basically, it’s two different things that speed up website performance versus just one. For advanced caching with SiteGround, you have to upgrade to a better plan.

There’s obviously more than meets the eye, so I decided to switch things up and try a couple of other testing methods to see if the results match the initial data.

Mobile Performance

A mobile version of your website is pretty much mandatory nowadays. It’s not just that most traffic comes from mobile devices, but also that search engines have started to more seriously take into account responsive web design in their search engine results page (SERP) rankings.

On Google’s PageSpeed Insights, Bluehost took the lead once more with a perfect score of 100. Displaying the main content took a little longer, and the full page load time followed suit. However, this is still an excellent result considering the lack of on-page optimizations, and Google seems to agree.

SiteGround didn’t do so well. While the speed index is just half a second slower than Bluehost’s, displaying the main content of the web page took twice as much than it did with Bluehost. In this test, SiteGround performed better than WordPress.com but a bit worse than GreenGeeks. Meanwhile, Bluehost performed similarly to specialized providers like DigitalOcean, which is high praise indeed.

Again, the culprit may be the fact that Bluehost also caches dynamic content with the help of Varnish, while SiteGround’s entry-level plan only provides caching for static content. A free CDN would probably solve this.

However, if you ever upgrade to a better plan, it’s more likely that your SiteGround-hosted website will have significantly better performance, because you’ll benefit from SiteGround’s dynamic (GrowBig) and/or database (GoGkeek) caching. So far, so good. On to one final test.

Load Impact Test

The previous tests were done from the perspective of just one user trying to access the website. Both SiteGround and Bluehost did well for desktop visitors, but Bluehost pulled ahead in mobile performance. However, what happens when, say, 10 or 100 visitors using your website at the same time?

For this, I’ve used K6’s load testing tool, which is one of the best-in-class services for this purpose. The testing conditions simulated 200 users simultaneously accessing the same page over a period of roughly 5 minutes.

SiteGround performed admirably under heavy load. Even though it sometimes took up to five seconds to completely load the page, the average page load time throughout the test was a remarkable 2.4 seconds.

Server response time also held steady at around 0.2 seconds, which means there may be room for some website improvements.

Bluehost’s load impact test wasn’t as good as SiteGround’s. The longer it lasted, the slower it loaded the page. In a situation similar to the one seen in our Bluehost vs Namecheap comparison, as soon as the test began Bluehost’s server was responding slower than usual, indicating that its entry-level plan might not be the best for higher traffic conditions.

However, as the test progressed, it became obvious that there was no performance compensation to be seen. At 4.7 seconds, the average page load time was double that of SiteGround. It’s very likely that a higher-tier Bluehost plan would yield better results, but as far as the entry-level plans go, SiteGround won this round.

Uptime

Besides good performance, a web host also has to ensure decent service availability. It won’t do you much good that your website loads in less than a second if it’s offline for hours on end. In fact, it’ll do you a lot more harm than a slightly slower website that’s available (almost) all the time or, at the very least, during peak traffic.

Fortunately, Bluehost and SiteGround did quite well in this department. Over a testing period of six months, Bluehost’s uptime was a fantastic 99.98%, while Siteground’s was 99.99%. Both of these are within acceptable limits.

While the difference is quite small in terms of actual time (four extra minutes per month, on average), SiteGround does have an uptime SLA. What this means is that, if your service availability falls below 99.9%, you can apply to get 1 month of free hosting as compensation, and an additional month for each 1% under 99.0% according to the terms. Neat.

Bluehost vs. SiteGround: Which Host Has Better Performance Overall?

Even though Bluehost performs better than SiteGround for the mobile version, it starts falling apart during intense traffic.

There are two things to keep in mind. For one, accommodating 200 unique visitors at a time, for five minutes straight is quite a feat and not one that basic shared hosting services are (usually) designed for. Secondly, the results are likely to be much better on a higher tier Bluehost plan that has more resources and features.

SiteGround delivered the desktop version of the site just slightly faster Bluehost, and it fared much better during the stress test. This serves to show that cloud infrastructures are usually better suited for scaling in general.

SiteGround also has a much better data center coverage than Bluehost. This was the case even before the provider switched its infrastructure to the Google Cloud Platform. Although it’s close, the Bluehost vs SiteGround performance showdown is won by SiteGround.

Pricing and Value

There’s a good range of hosting services from the two web hosts, including domain registration, shared plans, managed hosting, and more advanced solutions like VPS or cloud VPS. If you’re looking to host a simple website with small to medium traffic, either SiteGround or Bluehost can be a one-stop-shop for you.

Bluehost is definitely more affordable than SiteGround for your initial term, but things are not so clear cut when it’s time to renew. Add to this the fact that SiteGround has a number of really useful tools in its plans. When you factor everything in, it might actually end up costing you less than Bluehost, especially if you’re using WordPress.

 Let’s see what their plans look like side-by-side.

Bluehost Basic vs. SiteGround StartUp

These are the plans I’ve used to host the test website on each platform.

For an initial price of $3.49 (with this special offer), SiteGround’s StartUp is less than a dollar more than Bluehost’s Basic, for which you’d have to pay $2.95 per month as a first customer. The first difference between the two is that Bluehost asks you to make a three-year commitment for this price, while SiteGround’s is available for a one-year timeframe.

If you want to pay on a yearly basis with Bluehost, its entry-level plan is actually 50% more expensive ($4.95) than SiteGround’s.

Just to put things into perspective, HostGator currently charges $3.95/mo for a similar yearly plan while GoDaddy charges $6.99.

So, what do you get with each plan? SiteGround includes 10GB of SSD storage, unmetered bandwidth, unlimited email accounts, free CDN integration, free SSL, free automatic daily backups, and enough resources to decently accommodate 10,000 visits per month (roughly 330 unique visitors per day). This isn’t a limit, but rather an estimate of how much firepower you get.

Over on Bluehost’s end, you get 50 GB SSD storage, unmetered bandwidth, 5 email accounts, free CDN integration, and a free SSL. Although you do get five times more disk space, you should keep in mind that the average WordPress website doesn’t usually go over 1GB, let alone 5 or 10.

Furthermore, SiteGround includes managed WordPress services with its StartUp subscription. This means you benefit from automatic updates for the core WordPress software and any plugins you have running on it, expert support, and a performance-enhancing plugin created by the SiteGround team, among others.

Bluehost’s renewals are cheaper ($8.99) than SiteGround’s ($14.99). However, if you decide to commit to three years of hosting, SiteGround’s renewal will be just $1.5 more expensive than Bluehost’s.

Bluehost Plus/Choice Plus vs. SiteGround GrowBig

Bluehost’s Plus ($4.95/month) raises the bar with unlimited SSD storage, the possibility to host unlimited websites, and a one-year free trial to one Office 365 mailbox. It sounds great on paper, but things are quite different in practice. Bluehost’s terms clearly specify you can’t use more than 10GB in total for your databases… so clearly not unlimited websites.

On the other hand, SiteGround’s GrowBig will set you back $5.99 for the initial term. Like Bluehost, you can use it to host unlimited websites, while the storage is increased to 20GB and the resources can now accommodate roughly 25,000 visitors every month. The storage space may seem low when compared to what a lot of SiteGround alternatives are offering, but again, regular WordPress websites don’t use a lot of storage.

In addition to this, SiteGround now lets you 1-click create up to five backups of your site at a time. The entire account has access to dynamic caching, website staging, and the possibility to add collaborators.

For another dollar, you can upgrade to Bluehost’s Choice Plus which includes everything above, as well as automated backups for one year and free domain privacy. The backups are nice, even though the option is a trial.

Bluehost’s domain privacy is a great feature, in theory, since it prevents your personal contact information from being available to the public, but the fact is that SiteGround gives you the same kind of protection by default, due to EU data protection laws. Yay.

Bluehost’s Plus will renew at $11.99 ($16.99 for Choice Plus), while SiteGround’s GrowBig will charge you $24.99.

Bluehost Pro vs. SiteGround GoGeek

This is where things get serious. For an initial price of $9.99 per month, SiteGround’s GoGeek starts from everything included with the GrowBig plan and improves upon it. Storage space is increased to a sizeable 40GB and the environment can now accommodate up to 100,000 visitors per month.

In terms of features, SiteGround adds priority support, yet another level of caching, an “Ultrafast PHP” option, which greatly improves loading times for PHP-based websites, and white-label access. The latter basically means you can have other people access the websites you’re building without them knowing you’re using SiteGround’s services.

In the opposite corner, Bluehost’s Pro has an initial price of $13.95 per month. In addition to everything included with the Choice Plus, you get more server resources so your websites can handle near-moderate traffic, automated backups for the life of your hosting, and a free dedicated IP. This plan is comparable to InMotion Hosting‘s third tier package but lags a little behind in terms of features.

While the dedicated IP is certainly a nice perk, especially for ecommerce websites, the value offer from Bluehost still feels a bit lackluster. The Pro and GoGeek will renew at $26.99, and $39.99, respectively.

Bluehost VPS vs. SiteGround Cloud

When your website’s traffic exceeds the resources of shared hosting plans, you might want to consider upgrading to a Virtual Private Server (VPS). Unlike with a shared architecture, the resources you get are isolated from other users, which means better performance, but also more security and stability.

Bluehost’s basic VPS plan, the Standard, costs $18.99/month if you sign up for a three-year timeframe and gives you access to 30GB SSD storage, 2GB RAM, 2 vCPU cores, 1 dedicated IP and 1TB of bandwidth. You can read our Bluehost VPS Review for more information regarding the servers and included resources.

On the other hand, SiteGround’s cheapest VPS-type of hosting is the Entry cloud plan. Although much more expensive than Bluehost ($80 per month), it includes fully managed services and plenty more resources. How much more? 1 more vCPU core, 10GB additional storage, three times the RAM, and five times the data transfer. That’s not all, though.

Unlike Bluehost’s unmanaged VPS, SiteGround’s managed cloud is completely pre-configured, which means you don’t have to spend time installing (and maintaining) web servers, operating systems, PHP versions, security and performance optimizations… you get the idea. If you’re looking for Bluehost alternatives, SiteGround’s managed cloud service should sit at the top of your list.

Which Is Cheaper, Bluehost or SiteGround?

Bluehost’s initial deals may be attractive, but SiteGround gives you more value through perks like managed WordPress services or automated daily backups. Bluehost’s managed WordPress infrastructure resembles SiteGround’s plans a bit more, but it’s loads more expensive.

Ultimately, the winner of the SiteGround vs Bluehost match-up comes down to your budget and needs. If you can afford the initial cost, SiteGround is a better overall solution. Otherwise, you might want to stick with Bluehost and trade some of the performance for better prices.

While both companies ranked highly on our list of best cheap hosting providers, SiteGround did score higher thanks to a limited-time offer that is no longer available. Without that offer, Bluehost does seem like a more appealing offer for users who are looking for a budget-friendly hosting solution.

Ease of Use

If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s the fact that both SiteGround and Bluehost are straightforward services. Signing up doesn’t take more than a couple of minutes and the same is true for connecting your domain name, in case you already have one. If you don’t you can easily register one with either platform.

Bluehost gets extra points in terms of user-friendliness for its Website Design and Launch checklist. It’s the first thing you see when you log into the platform, and it goes a long way towards helping beginners get online fast.

Creating a website on SiteGround isn’t that hard either. New users will have a big “Set Up Site” button when they log in for the first time. The system as a whole is not as foolproof as Bluehost’s solution, since Bluehost also advises you on what to do next, but it gets the job done.

If even the thought of a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress confuses you, SiteGround includes a drag-and-drop builder, Weebly, which you can rely on to quickly launch a site. You can also use the free version of Weebly on Bluehost, but you’ll have to first find it under Add-ons in the Marketplace and then install it to your account.

To be fair, you can use Bluehost’s premium WordPress support to offload the entire process of building your first website. I wouldn’t, though. It costs a lot and it’s WordPress – you can definitely handle it.

Features

Bluehost compensates for its slight lack of features with lower prices and you can make up for some of these drawbacks through add-on purchases. This defeats the purpose of a budget host, but it’s an option. With SiteGround, you’re less likely to need additional upgrades early on, but you also have to pay more upfront.

Here’s what you get on SiteGround’s shared plans:

• Unlimited traffic and websites on most plans, but not unlimited storage,
• Free unlimited email accounts with great storage,
• Managed WordPress services,
• Free version of Weebly,
• WordPress setup wizard,
• CDN available on all plans,
• Free automatic backups throughout,
• Domain Privacy by default,
• Built-in NGINX (static and dynamic caching) and Memcached, but not on all plans,
• Ultrafast PHP option to speed up page loading times (only on the most expensive shared plan, as well as on all cloud plans).

On the other hand, Bluehost’s shared plans include the following:

• Unlimited space, bandwidth, and websites on most plans,
• Free email hosting, but limited aliases (and email storage) on the basic plan,
• Free domain name for one year when purchasing yearly plans,
• Free version of Weebly builder available,
• Handy website creation and launch checklist,
• CDN available on all plans,
• One Office 365 mailbox (trial version),
• Free automatic backups (only on the most expensive plan),
• Domain privacy included with higher-tier plans,
• Built-in Varnish and NGINX caching on all plans,
• Optimized servers for high-traffic websites (for the most expensive plan),

It’s a close fight, to be sure, but SiteGround is ultimately better in terms of features. If you add automatic daily backups as a separate add-on with Bluehost, its initial price will actually be higher than SiteGround’s.

Customer Support

While downtime might not be such a big deal for a starter website, it can cost eCommerce businesses a lot of money. For instance, Amazon likely lost anywhere from $72 to $99 million for the one hour of downtime it experienced during Prime Day 2018.

Responsive customer support is your only hope when your site goes down because of reasons other than infrastructure availability. Bluehost and SiteGround offer 24/7 phone and live chat support. To this, SiteGround adds has a ticketing system.

This is pretty much standard nowadays, so what I actually wanted to know is if there will be someone to help you out when something goes wrong. I tested both hosts to find out.

I tried Bluehost’s live chat support dozens of times, and it always put me in touch with a real human in minutes. On the other hand, SiteGround’s platform will sometimes experience large queues. On occasion, I had to wait up to half an hour for the chat to start.

That said, SiteGround’s basic support is more hands on. They’ll reinstall an SSL or CMS for you if you messed something up, while Bluehost will point you to a knowledgebase tutorial.

Search Engine Optimization

If you’re a hosting beginner, search engine optimization (SEO) comprises everything you do to increase the quality and quantity of traffic to your website. Now, I realize this might not be your first concern when you’re just trying to launch a simple site, but hear me out.

Because we’re so reliant on search engines to point us in the right direction, you need to take care of your site’s SEO to the best of your ability. As the saying goes, if you’re not on Google’s first page for search queries relevant to your business or services, it’s as if you don’t exist.

Aside from ensuring a speedy and secure infrastructure, some hosts go the extra mile and offer SEO tools. While neither Bluehost, nor SiteGround has a dedicated SEO toolkit in its plans, you can purchase one from Bluehost’s marketplace. Fair warning, though, it doesn’t come cheap.

SiteGround may not give you access to such a paid feature, yet its knowledgebase articles on improving your site’s SEO are a goldmine. Overall, I’d say Bluehost vs SiteGround isn’t much of a contest in terms of SEO.

Bluehost has an edge with its marketplace add-on, although you could also use a free plugin like Yoast SEO.

Security

Another important part of web hosting is security, and encrypted connections are slowly becoming the norm. Fortunately, both Bluehost and SiteGround include free SSL certificates with all of their plans. This is great news.

Moreover, the host’s infrastructure is monitored by security experts and reinforced against DDoS attacks. However, that’s about all you get with Bluehost. If you want spam and malware protection, not to mention automated backups, you’ll have to pay for them.

On the other hand, SiteGround includes a custom Web Application Firewall (WAF), spam protection, and automatic daily backups free of charge. It also helps that all critical software is pro-actively patched and upgraded by the team.

Moreover, all of the provider’s servers are PCI compliant by default. This means that you’ll be able to set up credit card payments through your SiteGround website, provided that you also follow PCI compliance laws when building it.

SiteGround’s risk-averse policy may cost them more, but it really pays off. Conversely, Bluehost has had its share of data breaches.

Scalability

Let’s say you started off with a shared hosting plan and now you’re looking for a more powerful environment to accommodate the growth in traffic. Beyonce re-tweeted you and everyone is checking out your blog. Which has better scalability, SiteGround or Bluehost?

In the end of the Pricing section, I’ve covered the basics of Bluehost’s VPS vs SiteGround’s Cloud. It’s a good overview, but it doesn’t say the full story of what it means to upgrade from a shared hosting plan to an isolated environment.

In this respect, there are two major differences between SiteGround and Bluehost:

• SiteGround offers managed cloud hosting.
• Bluehost offers unmanaged VPS hosting and dedicated hosting.

What this means is that SiteGround takes care of not only setting up but also maintaining the hosting environment (web server, operating system, database technology, vital security, etc.) for your account. On the other hand, Bluehost does none of this.

Unless you have a good grasp of systems administration, you’ll have to hire a professional (or spend a lot of time) managing your dedicated or VPS Bluehost resources. With SiteGround, you can continue to grow your website(s) as if it were a shared account.

SiteGround’s auto-scaling feature makes it easy to weather those traffic spikes, but you can also manually add more resources. When your website goes beyond that, you can sit down with the team and discuss a custom solution that best fits your needs.

SiteGround is more expensive, for sure, but at the end of the day, it has much better scalability than Bluehost.

Key Differences

Having considered the SiteGround vs Bluehost match-up from the most important areas of hosting, here’s a summary of what sets them apart:

• Infrastructure. Bluehost uses a regular shared hosting platform with good caching built-in for all accounts. Still, it has few datacenters, its scalability is limited, and there are no managed services for higher-tier hosting.
• Managed Services. Bluehost has managed WordPress services, as well as advanced support for WordPress, but they cost a lot. VPS and dedicated environments are completely unmanaged.
• Value. Bluehost’s plans are cheaper, but they offer less value. Unlimited storage and websites might look better on paper, yet they’re of little use in real-life hosting situations.
• SiteGround uses cloud infrastructure and, while basic accounts have limited access to caching, higher-tier ones do not. It’s easier to scale than Bluehost, and likely to offer better performance under load.
• SiteGround includes managed WordPress services in its basic plans, while its cloud VPS infrastructure is fully managed. Top-tier shared hosting plans also benefit from priority support.
• SiteGround’s plans are more expensive, but they also come with a lot of features that are not available on Bluehost, like managed WordPress services, on-demand backup copies, staging, and more.

Bluehost vs. SiteGround: Our Pick

Whether you choose Bluehost or SiteGround, each provider has its strengths and weaknesses. SiteGroud is better than Bluehost in several crucial areas. However, Bluehost might be a better choice if you’re on a tight budget:

• Performance: SiteGround and Bluehost are neck-to-neck for individual tests, but Bluehost’s performance starts to falter under serious load.
• Pricing and Value: Bluehost is definitely more affordable than SiteGround, yet the latter offers more value.
• Ease of Use: Both providers are easy to use, but Bluehost has a slight lead with its website design and launch checklist.
• Features: Bluehost covers the basics, while SiteGround goes the extra mile with managed services, automated daily backups, and more.
• Customer Support: Bluehost’s customer support is easier to get in touch with, but SiteGround’s agents are more knowledgeable.
• SEO: Neither host includes SEO tools by default, but Bluehost has a paid-for add-on you can use. On the other hand, SiteGround has better knowledgebase tutorials on the topic.
• Security: Both providers offer good basic security, but SiteGround offers advanced protection that Bluehost charges extra for.
• Scalability: SiteGround’s cloud is easier to use and has more features than Bluehost’s VPS, but it will also cost more.

Even though it costs more than Bluehost, SiteGround wins the value match-up through more WordPress features, improved stability in high-traffic situations, and easier scaling, among others.

If you enjoyed this comparison we encourage you to visit this page where you can find a lot more like it.