Which Bluehost Plan To Choose? Which Plan Is Best?
You have already decided to start a blog and you have chosen Bluehost as your desired web hosting. But suddenly you feel stuck. You don’t know what to do next.
You are finding it difficult to decide what Bluehost plan to choose for your upcoming blog or website. You don’t know which Bluehost plan is the best for you. You start feeling overwhelmed.
If that sounds like you, stop right there.
You have nothing to worry about.
In this article, we are going to show you which Bluehost plan to choose depending on your needs and budget.
We are also going to link you to our article that shows you how to start a WordPress blog on Bluehost from scratch.
Let’s get started.
Why Choose Bluehost Hosting?
Matt Heaton and Danny Ashworth in Provo, Utah founded the Bluehost web hosting company in the year 2003. Since then the company has grown significantly and they presently have a staff of 750 people who work round the clock.
If you are a beginner who is just about to start his or her first WordPress blog, Bluehost is one of the better web hosting options available for you.
Here’s why.
Cheap Web Hosting
Bluehost is one of the cheaper web hosting options out there. Bluehost’s cheapest web hosting plan starts at $2.95 ($3.95 without the offer) per month. So it is a great web hosting option for all those who have a limited budget, to begin with.
Recommended by WordPress
Bluehost is one of the few web hosting solutions that are recommended by WordPress itself. So that means Bluehost knows what it is doing when it comes to hosting websites for WordPress.
1 Click Installations
Bluehost offers 1 click automatic WordPress installations with all of their hosting plans. So you don’t have to worry about the technicalities involved (which isn’t rocket science either) in installing WordPress on your domain name or setting up the blog. Everything’s taken care of for you.
Free Domain Name
Yes. You get a free domain name when you are signing up for a new Bluehost web hosting account. Domain names can otherwise cost you upward of $8 to $10.
Free SSL Certificates
You get free SSL certificates for all its client’s websites and blogs. So you don’t have to spend extra dollars to get a new SSL certificate for your blog.
Marketing Credits
You receive a $100 for Microsoft Advertising and $100 for Google Adwords when you spend your first $25 on a new Microsoft Advertising and Google Ads account.
This is a great bonus for all the new bloggers who want to test the waters before jumping into the world of paid advertising.
Other Bluehost Features
You also get access to other Bluehost excellent features when you sign up for a new web hosting account with them, like the 24/7 support, free website builder, ability to list your local business online to quickly connect with customers in your area with the help of Google My Business and more.
Bluehost Plans Compared
Bluehost offers a variety of web hosting solutions that cater to different groups of bloggers and webmasters.
The Bluehost plans that we recommend for newbie bloggers are the shared hosting plans. These hosting plans are cheap and are the perfect fit for brand new blogs.
These hosting plans are perfect for hobby blogs, personal blogs, and even small business blogs and websites. Bluehost shared hosting plans are offered in four different categories.
First, let us look at the plans themselves and then let’s see which Bluehost plan to choose. The 4 shared hosting plans are the Basic plan, Plus plan, Choice Plus plan, and the Pro plan.
The Basic Plan
The Basic plan on Bluehost comes with the following features.
- It supports 1 website. So if you are planning to have multiple websites or blogs in future, the basic plan isn’t for you.
- The basic plan offers 50 GB SSD storage for your files and unmetered bandwidth.
- Free SSL Certificate
- This plan has servers resulting in a standard performance
- 1 domain is included with the purchase
- 5 parked domains can be added with this plan
- And you can add 25 subdomains to your basic plan
The Plus Plan
The Bluehost Plus plan offers the following features to its customers.
Unlike the basic plan, the Bluehost Plus plan supports unlimited websites. Also, it offers unlimited SSD storage, unlike the basic plan where you get only 50 GB SSD storage.
You get free SSL and standard performance servers with the plus plan. This plan also supports unlimited domains, subdomains and parked domains.
The Bluehost plus plan also gives access to the ‘Spam experts’ feature and 30 days free access to 1 Microsoft Office 365 Email Essentials license.
Choice Plus plan
The next level of Bluehost plan offered under shared hosting packages is the Choice Plus plan. The choice plus plan has all the features of the Plus plan in addition to the domain privacy and protection feature and the site backup feature provided by CodeGuard Basic.
Pro Plan
The Pro plan is the highest level of plan you can get under Bluehost shared hosting packages. This plan has all the features of the Bluehost choice plan in addition to 2 spam experts feature. The pro plan also offers dedicated IP and high-performance servers.
Also, the SSL offered with the Pro plan is the Comodo PositiveSSL whereas all the other plans offer Let’s encrypts free SSL.
Understanding the Bluehost pricing options and which Bluehost plan to choose
The Bluehost pricing options can be a little tricky to understand like the pricing structure of most web hosting companies these days.
At the first glance, when you look at their pricing structure it looks like the basic, plus, choice plus and the pro plans under shared hosting packages are offered at $3.95/month, $5.95/month, $6.95/month and $13.95/month respectively.
But what you need to understand here is that these hosting prices are only applicable when you purchase the Bluehost hosting packages for 3 years.
If you decide to sign up for 1 year or 2 years the pricing structure will be different. Strangely, for some reason, the Pro plan was an exception for this rule, as you can see below.
Here’s how the pricing varies depending on your billing cycle.
Plans | 1 Year | 2 Years | 3 Years |
The Basic Plan | $5.95/month | $4.95/month | $3.95/month |
The Plus Plan | $7.95/month | $6.95/month | $5.95/month |
The Choice Plus Plan | $8.95/month | $7.95/month | $6.95/month |
The Pro Plan | $16.95/month | $12.95/month | $13.95/month |
Which Bluehost Plan to Choose?
Now to the ultimate question.
Which Bluehost plan is the right one for you?
If you are a beginner who is starting a blog for the very first time, we recommend you sign up for the plus plan. As it supports unlimited websites, you can use the same hosting plan to start your second blog in the future.
The plus plan should be more than sufficient for a blog/website traffic of up to 10,000-20,000 per month. So till you reach that point, you should be very comfortable with the Bluehost Plus plan.
It will cost you $3.95 per month if you decide to sign up for a 3-year billing cycle. Click the link below to see the new updated pricing structure and discounts, if any.
Bluehost monthly plan
Bluehost currently doesn’t offer any monthly plans. So if you want to pay monthly, you will have to look somewhere else.
What Next?
Visit this link to access the article we have written for beginners, which explains how to start a WordPress blog on Bluehost starting from scratch. It is a great guide to start your first blog on Bluehost and doesn’t require you to have any special skills or coding knowledge. We have explained everything, step by step.
You will learn how to register the domain name, how to install WordPress, how to install plugins, how to change the WordPress theme and more. We will see you there.