Clear And Unbiased Facts About Siteground Vs Bluehost

There are many web hosting companies on the internet today, each trying to garner as many customers as possible. For someone starting out, it might be a challenging task differentiating SiteGround vs Bluehost, which are some of the most popular hosting providers. 

Know what to look for in a web host, and it will be easy. You need to identify certain web hosting features before settling for a web host—most of these need to be aligned with your business goals.

I have been in this online marketing space for several years. And one thing I have taken note of is that SiteGround and Bluehost are some of the most popular web hosts out there in the hosting industry.

I wrote this guide to help you differentiate the two and make the right decision. 

Bluehost Overview

The web hosting company was started in 2003 in Utah to provide a reliable web hosting service to small businesses. It was taken over by EIG (the same company that owns Hostgator) in 2010 and now has a user base of more than 2 Million websites. It also employs more than 750 people across the world.

There are a lot of things that will cause you to either like or dislike Bluehost. By the end of the guide, you will have known a lot about the company. 

SiteGround Overview

SiteGround is a reputable web hosting company harbouring about a million domains and a workforce of more than 500 people. It was started in 2004 in Bulgaria and has grown to be one of the best web hosting companies in the world with advanced hosting features.

Let’s compare them based on the following factors: 

Siteground Vs Bluehost: Hosting Features Comparison  

Bluehost is the most popular and affordable web host. Come on; it has been around since 2004. SiteGround came in as the best when they revamped their plans and added more powerful features to their hosting plans.

Bluehost has a user base of about 2 million domains while SiteGround is around 1 million concurrent users. If you check out Google Trends for the two keywords, you will realize that many people are talking about Bluehost.

These are the essential factors when it comes to web hosting:

Bandwidth to Determine Load Times 

The major determiner to the traffic you receive is the amount of bandwidth you have. A larger bandwidth means you can avoid website crash, makes collaborations easier between your development teams, and boost productivity even when developing staging sites.

Who wouldn’t want to have unlimited bandwidth? Well, both SiteGround and Bluehost have unmetered bandwidth. Hence, your website won’t have crashing issues or slow response times.  

Storage to Determine Number of Websites   

Both web hosts use SSD as their storage devices. That means both of them are fast compared to web hosts that use traditional hard drives.

Depending on the plan, both hosting providers have different storage sizes. Let’s begin with Bluehost.

As you can see, the basic plan offers 50GB of storage space for one site.   

The plus plan and the rest of the pricing plans offer unlimited storage space for unlimited sites. Remember, this is for shared hosting.

SiteGround

Here are the plans and the storage spaces

• The Startup plan offers 10GB of web space for a single site
• The GrowBig plan offers 20GB of web space for unlimited websites
• The GoGeek plan 40GB of web space for unlimited websites

The winner is Bluehost. Its basic plan offers a lot of storage. However, just because they offer you that amount of storage doesn’t mean they are fast. I will later tell you why.

SSL Certificate for Customer Trust 

If your website doesn’t have an SSL, it’s highly vulnerable to hackers and other malicious activities. An SSL certificate adds a layer of security to your website and prevents any phishing attempts.

It also boosts your credibility online. No one would dare enter credit card information into a website that has no security layer. It’s easy for such sites to steal credit card information. So, customers would rather deal with websites that begin with the HTTPS address. 

Now that you know the essence of an SSL certificate, will our two web hosts give you that option of installing that? Well, they do. In fact, they give it for free once you purchase any of their plans. They don’t merely have SSL but also HTTP/2.   

Email Accounts

You will need a professional email account when you begin your online business. I know you have been using the .gmail or .outlook emails, but there comes a time to upgrade and appear more professional to your customers.

You will need an email like info@yourdomain.com or support@yourdomain.com these will go a long way in boosting trust and credibility. In addition, you can prevent your emails from landing in the SPAM folder.

Both SiteGround and Bluehost allow you to create these kinds of emails with your domain extension. Bluehost allows up to 5 email accounts for the basic plan with 100MB of storage. The rest of the plans come with unlimited email hosting and storage.

SiteGround offers unlimited emails but limits the storage to 2GB, 4GB, and 6GB, depending on your select plan.

So, it’s a tie here.      

Domains and Subdomains

The most important element in your website building process is the domain name. It should reflect your brand. In most cases, it should be the name of your brand. There are also subdomains such as yourdomain.com/sales

Bluehost offers a free domain and domain registration in all their plans. That means once you purchase any of their plans, you don’t have to worry about the domain name. As long as it’s available, you can add it to your hosting plan.

You will, however, be limited to 5 sub-domains and 25 parked domains with the basic plan. However, the other plans will be unlimited.

With SiteGround hosting, there isn’t a free domain name as it is with Bluehost. You need to purchase one separately. Domain name prices differ depending on the type of extension. The .com extension is about $15 per year. However, all domain names come with unlimited subdomains. You can also park as many domains as you want.

Bluehost is the winner here. You don’t have to worry about a domain name once you purchase any of their plans.

FTP & SFTP Accounts

You will need an FTP account to easily transfer files from a server to a client computer on a network. An SFTP is also essential. Both web hosts allow you to create unlimited FTP accounts.

When it comes to SFTP, SiteGround has no issues with that. You can create it with ease. Bluehost will only allow that with the main FTP account.

Integration With WordPress

We need to understand that WordPress recommends both of these web hosts. Yes, Bluehost, SiteGround, and Dreamhost are on their list of recommended web hosting providers.

WordPress powers about 30% of the websites on the internet; that makes it the most popular CMS. So, you should try out a WordPress site.

Both web hosts give options of installing Joomla or Drupal, but I would prefer WordPress because it’s easy to use and harbours a ton of useful plugins. In addition, most WordPress sites get higher rankings on Google because WordPress is optimized for speed.  

Bluehost

It offers WordPress hosting. Just purchase any of their plans, access your c-panel section, and there it is. Select WordPress by scrolling down and install it within a few clicks.

Here you can be able to install themes, plugins and publish your content with ease. In addition, you can pay for a WordPress installer right there on your dashboard if you feel installing it is an arduous task.

SiteGround

SiteGround allows for WordPress hosting, as well. It harbors plenty of cool tools, such as their proprietary plugin, which aids in WordPress migration.

They also have an optimizer plugin, which they claim can boost your website speed up to 300%. Plus, their SuperCacher plugin helps to boost speed since it relies on NGINX technology.

If you ask a web developer to optimize your website for speed, they will most often charge you a fee for installing caching and optimization plugins. You can have them for free with SiteGround.

Hence, SiteGround is better than Bluehost when it comes to WordPress hosting.

Caching, Sites Speed, and Uptime Guarantee 

The ultimate test of a web host is if it can load fast. Think about it; we live in times where people’s attention span is below 8 seconds. Yes, people want instant results. So, a slow website translates to a loss in customers and hence poor business performance.

In addition to speed, a web host needs to guarantee uptime. Imagine customers visiting your site and finding it offline. They won’t trust you again.

Bluehost And Their Server Locations 

They guarantee 99.9% uptime. That’s fair since you can’t expect them to provide a 100% uptime guarantee since things do happen.

They honour that guarantee, but not all the time. Sometimes, customers complain that their sites are having slow response times. This can be because the company hosts about 5 million sites.

Guess what?

They have only one server location – I mean, that’s what we know. And they aren’t willing to reveal the location of their dedicated servers. They will only say that they are in Utah.

So, if there is only one server location, there will be lots of requests from sites causing downtime and slow loading times.

Let’s do a test using Pingdom. I like Pingdom because it allows me to adjust the server locations and measure the average load time.

You can use Washington DC as your server location

Here are the results you should expect

SiteGround Speed Tests 

SiteGround hosting provides unparalleled loading speeds. Transfer your website here and notice it begin loading fast right away.

Guess what?

SiteGround has up to four server locations, six data centers, and a couple of cloudflares spread worldwide. Isn’t that awesome?

They have servers in

•         Amsterdam in the Netherlands
•         London, United Kingdom
•         Chicago and Iowa in the USA
•         Singapore

They also provide 99.9% uptime. No one has complained so far. And if there are a few unhappy customers, then the customer support will always comment and resolve the issue right away.

Let’s do a Pingdom test on SiteGround

As you can see, SiteGround has blazing speeds, which is essential for your online business success.

Website Security And Daily Backups

The security of your website is not negotiable. It’s your business’s most essential element. So, it needs to be secure and updated.

Therefore, if a web host doesn’t guarantee this, it’s better not to spend all your marketing resources on a website.

Luckily, both web hosts are secure.

Bluehost Tool 

If you check their FAQ page, you will find out that they guarantee the security of your site. Apart from installing a free SSL certificate on your site, and the free automatic backups on some plans, here are some more security features they provide:

• SiteLock Security
• Chalk brute force protection for you using VPS and dedicated hosting plans
• Two-factor authentication
• SSL access for specific users and email accounts if you are handling it with the whole team.
• SpamAssasin and Spamhammer to prevent spammers
• Content delivery network (CDN) to prevent various DDoS attacks on your website
• Hotlink protection for your images and content. With it, you can filter out potentially harmful IP addresses.
• Malware protection and domain privacy options

SiteGround

As with SiteGround, it also comes loaded with security features. Here are some of them:

• Two firewalls for maximum security and the ability to write firewall security rules
• A free let’s encrypt SSL certificate to add a layer of security to your domain
• SiteLock and HackAlert, which are features in their managed panel section, help to check your site regularly for malware and alert you
• A free Cloudflare CDN which improves loading speeds and prevents DDoS attacks on your site
• They are currently developing CHROOT account isolation for its shared hosting plans
• In addition, SiteGround has highly secured data centres with bulletproof lobbies and biometric systems to access certain parts of the data centres. They have powerful UPS to avoid any power loss interruption.

Ease of Use Comparison 

Which of the web host is easier to navigate and enhances a good user experience?

Well, that depends on several things; first, it is the dashboard. A web host needn’t have a clunky dashboard full of fluffy words and elements. A straightforward one can do.

Whereas Bluehost gives you access to a c-panel section, SiteGround has a custom panel with all features you need to set your business up for success. Their panel is super easy to navigate around and contains a Cloudflare feature.

Bluehost has a c-panel section, which harbours features such as file manager, softaculous WordPress installer, FTP accounts, email accounts, and other cool features.

If you have ever used a c-panel, you will not find it hard navigating through the Bluehost c-panel section. However, in my experience, SiteGround managed panel is more intuitive. In addition, Bluehost kind of interrupts you with upsells such as Weebly and ConstantContact.

The Customer Support And Site Migration 

You will need a lot of customer support when setting up your site or migrating it from another hosting provider.

Here is how their user support differs:

SiteGround

SiteGround has a super active customer service. They offer 24 hours support through live online chats, phone 24/7, and tickets.

SiteGround even features their support staff in their posts. That ensures you know the people you are talking to when on calls or chats online.

How cool is that?

You will be like, “Hey, Dezzy, congrats on being the best customer care agent of the year.”  

And even after talking to you, they usually send an email of the whole conversation such that you can always refer to it anytime.

Bluehost

They provide separate phone numbers depending on the type of help you need from their customer service. Inquiries range from general inquiries, WordPress assistance, and VPS and dedicated hosting assistance.

They have a YouTube channel that has about 150 videos showing you how to handle different technicalities. They also have a FAQ section full of resourceful how-to guides and blog posts.

And just like SiteGround, they have online chats right there on the screen. So, you can send out tickets whenever you need a migration service or any other kind of need.

When To Go For Bluehost

When should you choose Bluehost as your web host?

For someone new to blogging and who wants a low cost of entry into the online business world, go for Bluehost. You may not get the blazing speeds and powerful web hosting features that SiteGround offers, but they are way better than other web hosts.

Thus, I recommend Bluehost to someone who is merely testing out the waters.

When To Go For SiteGround

SiteGround is geared for speed and higher business performance. I dearly needed that when I ventured into the online marketing world.

It’s the best choice for top bloggers, entrepreneurs, and businesses that carry out heavy operations on its website. If you are also looking for top-notch security and privacy, go for SiteGround. It harbours a ton of essential features that help you to achieve that goal.

Prices Comparison

Since most people often go for shared hosting, let’s compare the web hosts based on this parameter.

BlueHost Pricing

If you check out the screenshot, Bluehost has three hosting options. There isn’t a big difference between the plans except for essential features anytime you upgrade.

Here are the plans:

The basic hosting plan at $2.95/month

It’s the cheapest plan of all and geared to beginners. It allows you to create one website, access 50GB of web space, a free domain, and a whole lot of other features.

Plus plan at $5.45/month

With this plan, you can create unlimited websites, no storage limits, get one domain name for free, and get other essential features for free.

Choice plus plan at $6.95/month: 

This plan also is almost similar to the plus plan, only that it gives you free domain privacy (people can’t find your name when they search your name) and free automated website backup for a year.

Pro plus plan at $13.95/month:

It’s the final plan. It includes all the common features in the previous plans but adds free automated daily backup and a free dedicated IP.

Take note that these introductory prices might differ for dedicated, VPS, and cloud hosting. In addition, when renewing any of the options, the prices will not remain the same; they will be higher.

SiteGround Hosting Plans

SiteGround also has different hosting plans to cater to different users. Here is the initial price of three of their hosting plans:

Startup plan at $4.99 per month

The plan hosts one website for you, gives you access to 10GB of webspace, free SSL, and other essential features. You will need to purchase a domain name, though.

GrowBig at $7.99 per month

It’s an upgrade from the previous plan. It allows you to create unlimited websites, increase the storage to 20GB, create unlimited email accounts, and introduce other advanced features.

GoGeek at $14.99 per month

The storage space is doubled to 40GB, and other features are added on board.

You just need to compare these plans based on your needs. If you are someone who needs more than one website, don’t go for the Startup plan. The GrowBig or the GoGeek plan can be your best bet.

Conclusion

Picking a web host can be difficult and overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. If you know what to look for in your hosting provider—features that align with your business goals—this will make the process much easier.

I hope this guide has helped you identify features of Siteground and Bluehost hosting providers which are right for your needs so you can pick Webhosting for your website now!

Thank you again for reading this post!”

Some Frequently Ask Questions

Let me answer a few questions I saw people asking on various forums:

Affiliate Disclaimer: I hope you liked our Siteground Vs Bluehost review. Please note that some of the links inside this article may be affiliate links to Siteground and Bluehost. That means that if you click on one of the links and sign up, I may be compensated for it. If you do happen to click, we appreciate it! Any money we make keeps this site running smoothly and allows us to keep writing these high-quality reviews.