Studies 
Studies
Our studies cover a range of trending topics and deliver original, reliable data you can't get anywhere else on the web.
By: Ryan Frankel
Editor: Lillian Castro
Reviewer: Cristian Lopez
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★★★★★
Bluehost has long been a favorite of mine in the shared and WordPress hosting spaces. The company adheres to modern standards for hardware, and its customer service resources are now backed by hosting industry titan Newfold Digital. Bluehost’s shared hosting options will accommodate the vast majority of customers' needs. Independent proprietors, small business owners, and non-developers needn't look beyond the host's shared server (read: cheap hosting) plans. Once your website outgrows the traffic allowances of a shared hosting plan, however, Bluehost excels in the VPS hosting and dedicated server niches, too. Bluehost has revamped its user experience — beefing up the user-friendliness factor significantly in recent years. Users will find the web host dashboard and overall customer experience to be welcoming. Easily navigate installing popular apps, such as WordPress, Joomla, or Zen Cart, with the familiar cPanel control panel. The domain management panel makes it easy to add on domain services, should you choose to opt for an upgraded plan, where domain privacy and support for unlimited domain names come standard. If you’re looking for WordPress hosting specifically, whether on a shared, virtual, or dedicated server, you’ve come to the right host. Bluehost is one of the few providers endorsed by the WordPress Core team, ranked among SiteGround and DreamHost. Install the popular blogging platform in a single click via the web hosting control panel, or have the Bluehost pros take care of it for you by leveraging a managed WordPress hosting service. As previously mentioned, Bluehost also tops the charts in VPS and dedicated server hosting — offering fantastic performance at competitive prices. With two to four cores and guaranteed resources, your virtual or dedicated server will be performant, powerful, and online virtually 24/7. The Bluehost team leverages industry-leading open-source technologies, such as KVM and OpenStack, to eke out as much performance as possible, leaving you with the utmost flexibility and reliability. And in case you're not quite yet sold: Both the VPS and dedicated hosting plan options include instant provisioning because waiting for your server is so 2000s. Read on for more Bluehost reviews as we rate the web hosting company for affordability, reliability, ease of use, as well as the features offered in each hosting product category.
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★★★★★
It's hard to imagine something intangible, like a website, contributing to climate change. In fact, with millions of servers and thousands of datacenters drawing massive amounts of electricity, the web hosting industry is on pace to surpass air travel as one of the world's worst polluters. With that in mind, CEO Trey Gardner — an avid surfer, hiker, and skier, in addition to helping build seven other hosting companies — established GreenGeeks in 2008 to leave a positive energy footprint. The company purchases wind energy credits to restore more than three times the energy that the company consumes. The honorable quest is impressive enough, but GreenGeeks provides superb hosting packages that stand on their own. Powered by modern SSD storage and name-brand hardware, the company has grown to serve more than 55,000 customers and host more than 600,000 websites in 15 years of business. After putting the company's shared, VPS, and dedicated services through the wringer, in addition to testing the managed WordPress and site builder options, we were impressed by the multitude of tech-savvy features that ensure hosting happiness for both first-time site owners and experienced developers. We're suckers for SSD storage, and GreenGeeks up the ante with RAID-10 configurations and nightly backups. Around-the-clock knowledgeable support, coupled with free migrations and rapid provisioning, makes growing through the VPS and dedicated hosting ranks a breeze.
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★★★★★
#5 out of 10 in Cheap Hosting reviews Bluehost pricing is about as competitive as the industry offers. Sign up for a shared hosting plan for as little as $1.99 per month, and WordPress hosting packages are consistently priced; a VPS plan starts at around $31.99 per month; and the dedicated hosting rates are as little as $91.98 per month. The only way to feasibly sweeten this deal would be a free trial, which, unfortunately, the hosting company does not offer. However, the 30-day money-back guarantee is marketed heavily. The Bluehost customer support team promises complete service satisfaction or a full refund. Bluehost hosting has a reputation for affordability and usability, which both web novices and veterans can appreciate. Unlimited website hosting — from SSL certificates and email to disk space — is available with almost all plans. Even the most basic Bluehost plan sets users up for success with ample hard disk storage, unmetered bandwidth, and both a free SSL certificate and free domain registration for the first year of hosting service. Optional add-on services, such as automated backups, and complimentary marketing credits for select plan holders sweeten an already attractive hosting bargain. Some common freebies we love seeing include:
Due in part to its affordability but mostly the quality of service, most Bluehost reviews will rank the hosting company atop (or near the top of) lists of the best shared, VPS, and/or WordPress hosting services. You'll see similar results from our Bluehost review. We regularly recommend Bluehost hosting products that are geared toward beginners, including shared, WordPress, and WooCommerce hosting customers, where cost and ease of use are top priorities. Bluehost is a solid, reputable choice of hosting provider with competitive pricing, industry-standard hardware performance, and all the premium add-ons imaginable. The web host's low costs, coupled with its supremacy in the shared hosting arena, make this web host a bang-for-the-buck favorite throughout the hosting community.
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★★★★★
Perfect for small business owners, bloggers, or web developers, GreenGeeks offers an impressive blend of features that appeal to all types of site owners. More experienced customers will appreciate the unlimited domain names, SSD RAID-10 storage, and unmetered data transfers, along with nightly backups and built-in caching programs. First-timers, however, will enjoy the free website builder, marketing and SEO tools, and hands-free migration service. Additionally, GreenGeeks offers an array of components at prices very competitive with other top hosts relying on SSD-powered infrastructure. Plans powered by newer, more-performant solid-state drives tend to be a few dollars per month more expensive than the most affordable hosting plans that utilize traditional hard-disk drives. Instead of simply touting the SSD upgrade, however, GreenGeeks includes a comprehensive suite of services that combine cutting-edge technology with sheer usability. Customers can manage their GreenGeeks hosting account using the company's intuitive and recently updated online interface, which provides simple paths to requesting domain or site transfers, registering a domain, or changing billing information. From there, users can access hosting resources using the most recent version of cPanel, the industry's leading control panel. Backed by the industry's standard 99.9% uptime guarantee, 24/7/365 responsive support, and 30-day money-back guarantee, GreenGeeks hosting plans are a worthwhile hosting investment long before the environmental benefits kick in.
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★★★★★
#6 out of 8 in Dedicated Hosting reviews Built on modern technology, with a minimum of four CPU cores per dedicated server, Bluehost offers reliable and flexible dedicated hosting options at an extremely reasonable price. We continually praise the company's shared hosting options for having fantastic hardware and a great management console, and the brand's dedicated server offerings are no different. Designed and maintained in house, Bluehost servers rely on only the latest technologies. The hosting company leverages open-source platforms, such as OpenStack and KVM, to boost flexibility and performance. All dedicated machines boast at least four CPU cores, 1TB of RAID-1 storage, and at least 4GB of available RAM. Each dedicated server is provisioned instantly and can be upgraded at any time with essentially just a few clicks. Bluehost prides itself on the always-available customer support staff. The experienced support agents work directly with engineers who have their hands on your machine, so to speak. As a former Bluehost customer, I've always found the support technicians to be incredibly responsive and helpful.
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★★★★★
The free site migrations offered by GreenGeeks makes sticking with the company a worthwhile venture as your website or application grows to new levels of hosting. The company's elastic platform allows for easy resource upgrades to make sure your growth is supported. All of the GreenGeeks dedicated server hosting plans come with five IP addresses, up to 10TB of data transfer, and server-grade Intel processors. DDR3 memory ranges from 2GB to 16GB across the four dedicated hosting options. Disk space ranges from 500GB to 1TB, which is pretty standard for the industry. Interestingly, however, dedicated servers are the only GreenGeeks hosting plans that don't include SSDs. The strange decision, coupled with the lack of upfront information about features, add-ons, and support, gives us pause when considering GreenGeeks for dedicated hosting. The company's prices outpace many mainstream competitors, placing them among luxury boutique hosts, without clear justification. The company's excellent offerings in the shared and VPS tiers give us confidence in the dedicated servers, but we'd recommend some more research instead of blindly signing up for service. GreenGeeks connects hosting infrastructure with Gigabit speeds, using Juniper and Cisco for network switching and routing. Customers can choose in which of the company's four datacenters their data is provisioned: Chicago, Phoenix, Toronto, or Amsterdam. In addition to the name-brand and energy-efficient hardware, GreenGeeks houses its equipment in datacenters designed to be environmentally friendly.
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★★★★★
#8 out of 9 in VPS Hosting reviews We love recommending Bluehost for its lifetime customer growth potential, meaning you can start with shared hosting and seamlessly scale to VPS hosting plans and beyond. The price versus performance is pretty unbeatable in the virtual hosting space, and Bluehost's engineering team will kick off the customer relationship by instantly provisioning your server. Bluehost’s VPS offerings boast several benefits compared to standard shared hosting and other VPS providers. The first is speed; Bluehost offers your choice of two or four cores and 4GB to 16GB of RAM with guaranteed resources, so you have the power you need when you need it. The second perk is security; Bluehost offers redundant storage and optional SiteLock protection to secure your data. For those new to VPS hosting who may not know exactly what is needed, Bluehost makes it incredibly easy and seamless to switch between plans to find the perfect package for you. The company's enhanced cPanel interface enables users to instantly adjust computing resources. If you have questions or need some advice, Bluehost's wonderful support staff is standing by to assist 24/7.
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★★★★★
Geared for rapidly growing businesses and enterprise-level companies, GreenGeeks VPS plans provide the computing resources and scalability required to support and adapt to your growing traffic. Virtual servers are deployed in less than 60 seconds, and we appreciate the included cPanel and WHM licenses, root access, and site migration. The GreenGeeks storage capacity range of 50GB to 150GB is on the lower end of the spectrum, especially given the company's relatively high prices, but GreenGeeks goes above and beyond with the combination of super-speedy SSDs and RAID-10 configurations that provide added redundancy and performance boosts. GreenGeeks VPS containers come with ConfigServer Security and Firewall, along with Login Failure Daemon and added protection from ModSecurity and well-tailored Apache configurations. The company backs up customers' files every night and stores backups for 48 hours. Unlike many hosts that tout free backups, GreenGeeks will restore a site for free once a month. Additional restorations, if needed, are very reasonably priced. Reseller plans are fully loaded with the impressive GreenGeeks features, including site transfers and a free website builder, that you can pass along to your customers. The 100% white-label platform allows for a custom logo and private nameservers. VPS and reseller customers will receive a free eNom domain reseller account, and resellers enjoy unlimited cPanel accounts along with a free ClientExec license to automate customer invoicing, support, and provisioning.
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★★★★★
#2 out of 9 in WordPress Hosting reviews Bluehost's WordPress hosting packages are aimed at first-time site owners and personal bloggers. These services come at a premium compared to the standard Bluehost web hosting (basic shared hosting) plans, but the WordPress optimization and platform-specific resources are arguably worth the cost. The shared WordPress hosting plans are arguably the most popular. Equipped with the web's famous MOJO Marketplace, enjoy single-click installations of popular apps and tools, including WordPress. Bluehost is on a short list of providers officially endorsed by the experts at WordPress.org, so, when faced with WordPress-specific issues, you can reach out to the customer support team with confidence. Bluehost's managed WordPress hosting service is based on the hosting company's VPS offering. Though not as customizable as others, this managed hosting service focuses on simplicity and speed. The account management interface is easy to navigate, and the instant provisioning allows for speedy setup. Integrated features, such as the MOJO Marketplace and ManageWP, are nice touches as well. Though simple by design, Bluehost doesn't skimp on WordPress fan favorites:
Formed in 2003, Bluehost has long been one of the foremost shared hosts on the planet, and the hosting company now powers more than 2 million websites. With an experienced team, competitive pricing, and always-there support, Bluehost is an industry veteran when it comes WordPress hosting.
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★★★★★
The GreenGeeks comprehensive suite of added features resonates particularly well with the company's managed WordPress hosting plan. Modeled after the GreenGeeks shared hosting package, the managed WordPress services will resonate with a wide cross-section of the ultra-popular content management system's enthusiasts. Effectively hosting WordPress can be challenging for lower-tier hosting providers, but GreenGeeks has both the technical know-how and high-powered infrastructure to optimize the experience for both customers and their site visitors. In addition to the unlimited storage and data transfers, the company's SSD RAID-10 storage configurations are perfect for hosting the resource-heavy CMS. GreenGeeks utilizes the one-click Softaculous installer for WordPress, but plans come pre-installed with Git and WP-CLI. Customers have SSH access to their hosting account and can select which version of PHP to use. On the security front, GreenGeeks isolates each managed WordPress hosting account and automatically updates WordPress core files. The company actively scans for vulnerabilities and blocks attacks, even including built-in DDoS protection. GreenGeeks maximizes WordPress performance with server-grade, name-brand hardware, and optimized HTTP and MySQL. Customers can add the Cloudflare CDN with just one click while they sit back and enjoy server-side software and hardware caching to accelerate page loads.
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★★★★★
#5 out of 9 in Website Builder Hosting reviews With Bluehost, new site owners have the drag-and-drop simplicity of the WordPress website builder at their fingertips. This makes launching a new online brand, store, or personal site from scratch relatively painless. Sure, site building has its headaches for newbies, but the Bluehost team is ready and willing to assist you every step of the way. To help prime your site launch for success, Bluehost offers a plethora of unlimited freebies:
These freebies, coupled with several options for site-building services, is everything a new website owner needs to get started, and the cost is hard to beat. If WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) isn’t for you, perhaps a CMS (content management system) option sounds appealing. Choose from the most popular content management and blogging software, including Joomla, Drupal, and WordPress, and download and install the application(s) with a single click. Most Bluehost hosting plan options have even been customized to cater to WordPress — and Bluehost is one of three hosts officially endorsed by the WordPress Core developers. For quick, cheap, and easy website building — backed by one of the web’s most reliable web hosts — you can’t go wrong in choosing Bluehost.
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★★★★★
Shared hosting customers can easily request access to the GreenGeeks website builder through the account management portal. Our site builder installation was ready to go within 40 minutes, and we appreciated the clear instructions on how to get started. Users can choose from among 16 responsive templates or hundreds of free and premium options. We have a soft spot for site builders that let users switch to a different template without losing content, like the GreenGeeks platform does, but we wish the themes were easier to sift through when looking for a particular feature or design conducive to a particular industry or project. The drag-and-drop interface will seem very familiar and comfortable to customers. While intuitive enough for the earliest of beginners, the GreenGeeks site builder also enables more experienced developers to adjust and tweak the HTML and CSS code. In addition to the standard color adjustments, image uploads, and navigation settings that come with most website builders, customers can add functionality through the use of widgets that cover a variety of tasks, such as embedding forms, YouTube videos, and maps. Adding an ecommerce component seems easy, until clicking on the button to upgrade redirects you to the GreenGeeks homepage. When you're ready to go live, the site builder will let you preview your designs on desktop and mobile. All in all, GreenGeeks offers a solid, if not exciting, site builder option — great for beginners, perhaps a little clunky for developers.
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