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Siteground or Bluehost?
Bluehost or Siteground?

Many people who do a bit of research will realize Siteground and Bluehost are the biggest names for shared WordPress hosting.

Bluehost being the bigger of the two. I don’t think any other hosting service provider can even compete with Bluehost’s presence online.

As I write this, the term “Bluehost” draws 4.1 million results from Google. “Siteground” draws only 3.4 million.

But this isn’t a popularity vote.

You want to know which one is objectively better. And even if it is better, should you choose it for your own website hosting needs. So this is going to be the most ultimate Siteground vs Bluehost review you will find online.

This comprehensive comparison between these two will save you countless hours reading biased reviews, and hundreds of dollars to get the right hosting package for your needs. So keep reading!

TL;DR – Siteground is the better choice, but if you have a small site that isn’t very demanding than Bluehost can be worth it if you sign up on a good price.

Bluehost vs Siteground. The ultimate review of both hosting services so you can make a sound business decision for your blog
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Quick facts

Bluehost was founded in 2003. It’s an American company that hosts more than 2 million sites. It was bought by EIG in 2010. This is a key piece of information because, EIG has bought countless hosting service providers over the years, and they’re not famous for being great.

But more about that later.

Siteground was founded in 2004, just a year later than Bluehost. It is based in Bulgaria and they too, host over 2 millions sites.

Security

I’m going to start this off by looking at the security aspects on these hosting service providers, because the most important thing a hosting service provider has to do, is keep your website safe on the inter web.

Siteground and Bluehost both come with all the fundamental security protocols such as SSL, SFTP and SSH. They both also provide an added on service of extra security.

Siteground’s is native (SG site scanner), while Bluehost’s option is from a third party vendor called SiteLock. Siteground starts at $1.5 per month, while SiteLock starts at $2.50 per month.

So on the surface, Siteground wins based on price alone, but they also win on value for money. Siteground and Bluehost sell shared hosting. What this mean is multiple websites are stored and managed on a single server.

This can mean trouble when it comes to mass server attacks or just server faults. One site getting hacked or being attacked could easily mean all the other websites on the same server being attacked as well.

But not on Siteground’s shared hosting solutions. They use CHROOT account isolation to effectively isolate each website on a server, meaning another website’s problem will never mean YOUR website’s problem.

And to make it better, Siteground was the first hosting service provider to provide this innovation back in 2008. So you can bet they’re security isolations are the best in the industry.

For the best security, Siteground wins.

Customer service / support

If you read my previous article on how to choose a good hosting service provider, than you’ll know I put a lot of emphasis on excellent customer service and support. And I think everyone shopping for hosting services should as well, because let’s face it, it doesn’t matter how much of a computer wizard you are, you’re going to need help when you accidentally messed up the settings.

The following are based on my own personal experience, but of course each time I have contacted support it was for different reasons and at different times of the company’s business situation. So this comparison won’t be measurably objective.

Bluehost provides 24/7 telephone support, chat support and ticket support. I have used their chat and ticket support before and my experience was not the best.

The people I spoke to were not able to solve or answer my problems right away. Most often then not, they will open a ticket and the problem will be solved over the next few days instead.

So access to support is good, and problems do get solved, but it is not instant or fast. Even while I spoke to support through chat, the speed of replying was a bit slow.

Siteground on the other hand has given me a very positive experience. Siteground has 24/7 chat support, 24/7 telephone support and 24/7 ticket support.

siteground support compared to Bluehost
Siteground clearly tells you what they provide, Bluehost is less direct

I’ve used their chat support on several occasions and only once has Siteground needed to open a ticket to follow up on an issue. My issues were always solved within a quick chat every other time.

I also enjoy the chat support because it feels like you’re talking to a real person. It isn’t systematic, you can tell the person on the other end isn’t following a script.

So unsurprisingly, Siteground wins if you’re looking for fast service and superior support.

Ease of use

Both providers provide a c-panel style solution to managing your website and accessing various features.

Siteground’s c-panel is structured to provide the website owner a high level of control in a very intuitive format that is all laid out on one page.

Bluehost’s c-panel is also very intuitive, but the sections and options are separated into different parts and not all laid out like Siteground’s. This can make it a bit confusing for beginners or less tech savvy bloggers.

But overall I think both are fine. I do prefer Siteground’s c-panel design better because I can easily scroll through all the sections to see the individual options within each.

There’s also less upselling on Siteground compared to Bluehost. Where Bluehost actively tries to sell you add ons, Siteground takes a more passive approach.

I personally think Siteground wins, but objectively both have very easy to use c-panels that anyone would be able to easily navigate around.

Features

Honestly, you probably won’t need every feature available and if you do, then congratulations you must have a massive site like Amazon or Wikipedia.

Most websites just need the basics and a few extras to make everything run smoothly or make life easier.

But this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t compare features.

Here are all of Siteground’s available features:

Here are all of Bluehost’s available features:

Siteground has more features and many of them are not add-ons. The features are already included within hosting packages. Bluehost on the other hand charge separate add on fees for the same features. They also don’t have as many features available for you.

This instantly makes Siteground more appealing to anyone who makes serious money online. Anyone with more than one website would opt for Siteground because of the extensive WordPress specific features available.

These features can make your website perform faster, such as the supercacher, cloud flare DNS and priority on server resources.

But they do both cover the most important features in their basic plans. Free email, free SSL certificate and unmetered bandwidth.

Bluehost has many up sells and add ons which I don’t like, as mentioned before, extra security starts at $2.5 per month and the ability to backup your files is $3 per month.

Extra security might be optional, but backing up your site shouldn’t be a luxury.

Siteground wins hands down. Bluehost doesn’t even come close to wordpress specific features and its more expensive.

Performance

So when we talk about performance we’re talking about speed, downtime and the ability to scale.

Siteground is famous for providing fast hosting. They pretty much use every possible way to get your website running as fast as possible.

First things first, they use PHP7 and HTTP2 which follows the latest best practices on internet protocol. But they also use CDN and supercacher which makes the delivery of your files to the end user faster.

To top it off, Siteground uses SSD hard drives. These are the fastest performing hard drives available right now. You literally cannot get anything better.

The most comprehensive guide to siteground and Bluehost you will find. If you need to make a decision then you should read this first.
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Bluehost also uses SSD and has CDN, PHP7 and HTTPS options. You need to apply them manually instead of them running automatically once you sign up.

Bluehost does not have a supercacher, which is a minor flaw that can be easily corrected with a third party software.

Next is downtime, or uptime. Basically you want your site live and up as much as possible and down as little as possible.

Both perform very well in this department with average uptime over 99.95%. Though Bluehost has a larger range of results, meaning it is less stable compared to Siteground.

As for scalability, both provide white-label hosting solutions that go beyond the normal shared hosting plans they sell.

Most people won’t need to go beyond the basic shared hosting plans, but if you do than Bluehost is the cheaper option to get started with cheaper starting prices at $10 per month for cloud hosting. Siteground starts at $80 per month!

I don’t know the details to know if the big price difference is because of the difference in technology, but that big difference already makes Bluehost the more favourable one for scalability.

Siteground wins on speed and uptime, but Bluehost makes it cheaper if you ever need to scale your website to new heights!

Value for money

On the surface, Siteground shared hosting plans are more expensive, but once I take into account all the add-on fees I would need to pay for with Bluehost to get the same product and service, well Bluehost is actually more expensive.

Just a quick comparison:

Siteground’s basic plan is $3.95 per month for new customers. Bluehost’s basic plan is $2.79 per month for new customers.

But Bluehost’s basic plan doesn’t include backups for free, you need to pay $3 per month for this service. And this is a pretty essential service. This instantly makes $2.79 into $5.79.

But regardless of price, Siteground has some great WordPress specific features that don’t exist on Bluehost such as automatic updates and supercacher.

Siteground provides better value for money on its basic shared hosting plans.

Conclusion

Siteground is the better hosting service provider in almost every aspect compared to Bluehost. It has more features at a cheaper and easier to understand pricing schedule. The support is more responsive and quick, and hosting performance is also slightly better.

This doesn’t mean Bluehost is bad, it just isn’t the best option available and unless you plan to keep your site small, it isn’t a cheap option either if you need to grow. (although it may seem so, because the packages don’t reflect all the extra add-ons you will need to pay for as well)

But I really didn’t need to even go through all this to conclude Siteground is better, because Bluehost is an EIG company.

If you don’t know who EIG is or what they’re all about, you might want to read this.

If you want to get started with Siteground, then click my link to sign up and I’ll be happy to help you get setup. Just message me after signing up!

Other resources you need to check out:

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