When it comes to SiteGround vs Bluehost comparison, it can be tough to decide which company to choose. Here’s why:
Both web hosts offer helpful functionality than many other cheap shared hosting providers.
What should you consider when choosing between SiteGround and Bluehost? I have used both web hosts, so I’ll guide you in making a smart decision.
Is SiteGround better than Bluehost for hosting your website and blog? Which web and cloud hosting is more affordable? Shall we talk about it?
Let’s begin.
- 1. SiteGround vs. Bluehost At A Glance
- 2. Who Is Siteground Best For?
- 3. Who Is Bluehost Best For?
- 4. A Close Look At The Features Of SiteGround And Bluehost
- 5. Key Features Of Siteground
- 6. Key Features Of Bluehost
- 7. Siteground vs. Bluehost – Pros And Cons
- 8. Where Do I Get The Most For My Money?
- 9. Conclusion – Which Is Better: SiteGround Or Bluehost?
- 10. Siteground vs. Bluehost – FAQ
1. SiteGround vs. Bluehost At A Glance
Here’s how SiteGround and Bluehost compare at a glance:
   4.8 |   4.4 |
| Best Overall. Cleaner user interface. Beginner-friendly features. Easy-to-use. Free domain. Starts at $2.65/month. | Best for WordPress users. Customizable. Open-source eCommerce platform. Marketing tools. Try for free. |
| Try Bluehost | Try SiteGround |
SiteGround and Bluehost are two of the best web hosting brands in the industry. They’re probably the best rivals yet, but how are they different, and which one is better for your web hosting needs?
After thorough research and my experience using both SiteGround and Bluehost, here’s how they’re different:
SiteGround offers the best performance and shared hosting plans, with excellent 24/7 customer support. Its features are 1-click WordPress installations, site migration, and staging, while Bluehost is a cheaper web host for beginners, with Multi-Website Management, free domain name, and costs $2.65/month. SiteGround costs $6.99/month (StartUp plan).
2. Who Is Siteground Best For?
SiteGround is mostly used by WordPress users, online entrepreneurs, influencers, and subject matter experts — to host their websites and blogs without worrying about downtimes and poor customer support.
Bluehost is mostly recommended for individuals and businesses that want a head start on web hosting and building websites. Bluehost offers cheap WordPress hosting plans, a modern and clean user interface, and a wide range of value-added features.
3. Who Is Bluehost Best For?
SiteGround is mostly used by WordPress users, online entrepreneurs, influencers, and subject matter experts — to host their websites and blogs without worrying about downtimes and poor customer support.
Bluehost is mostly recommended for individuals and businesses that want a head start on web hosting and building websites. Bluehost offers cheap WordPress hosting plans, a modern and clean user interface, and a wide range of value-added features.
4. A Close Look At The Features Of SiteGround And Bluehost
So, how does SiteGround stack up against Bluehost? Let’s consider some of the key features in this table:
| Features | | |
| Allows for 1-click WordPress installation |  | |
| Website migration made easy | | |
| Reasonably-priced hosting plans | | |
| Equipped with ready-to-use templates | | |
| Allows for full website design customization |  | |
| Has website visitor analytics dashboard | | |
| Comes with a free domain name | | |
| Allows for eCommerce integrations | | |
| Allows for the creation of unlimited custom marketing emails | | |
| Has easy staging tools | | |
| Get started | Try SiteGround | Try Bluehost |
5. Key Features Of Siteground
I love SiteGround because it has both basic and advanced features for hosting any type of website. But is it better than Bluehost? Let’s consider the 5 key features:
# 1 Build A Starter Website
If you’re not a website designer, SiteGround offers some handy website builder and free WordPress installation. Unfortunately, SiteGround doesn’t give a free domain name when you’re designing your website. Bluehost gives you a free domain.
Weebly and WordPress are two popular site builders and CMS tools, so you can get started quickly. WordPress is the most commonly used CMS.
It’s ideal for sites that plan to scale over time. You get access to 1000+ free themes and plugins and a vibrant community of bloggers and publishers.
No matter the SiteGround shared plan you choose, there’s free WordPress installation included.
Weebly also uses a drag and drop editor. It’s best suited for first-time website owners. You can find lots of design layouts and functionalities such as contact forms, sliders, shops, etc.
#2 SiteGround Collaboration Tools
Web designers and agencies will love this feature. Being able to collaborate in real-time is one huge challenge that businesses fail.
Especially when working with a team.
With SiteGround, you get a ton of collaboration tools that let you manage your clients, collaborate on sites, and easily transfer ownership of newly built sites to your clients.
It’s easy to add new collaborators.
You can even assign user roles and access rights. These collaboration privileges are accessible in the GrowBig and GoGeek plans.
Each collaborator gets their individual log in to the Site Tools of any site your team is working on — and they can easily work on the project alone or maintain it for you. You can reset passwords, suspend, or delete clients.
Collaboration is enhanced in SiteGround. You can easily transfer a website from one Account to another within SiteGround, and even make recommendations about the right hosting plans, and other web management services they need to activate.
Burkhard Berger
SiteGround has collaboration tools for teams. I love the ease of use when working on a project (website) with others, where each collaborator can contribute and give helpful feedback. Bluehost lacks this essential feature.
#3 Site Migration Tools and WordPress Migrator Plugin
SiteGround makes it easy for users to move their websites over. If you’re able to move your website from your previous host to SiteGround, then you can benefit from all of the value-added features — especially the customer support that’s very responsive.
When it comes to migrating WordPress sites, you can choose to do it yourself. It’s quite easy.
Just install SiteGround’s WordPress Migrator plugin, then generate a token that initiates the migration from your SiteGround hosting account. It’s hassle-free and you can quickly migrate as many installations as you want.
Then generate a token to make your migration process successful.
If you don’t want to mess around or don’t have the time, SiteGround also offers Professional Migration services. This costs an additional $30/site.
When you take this path, you can relax and watch the experts take care of it. They will transfer your files and databases securely. SiteGround uses data centers on four continents which means your files are pretty safe.
Some of their content delivery network (CDN) is in Tokyo, Singapore, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, and others.
#4 SiteGround Uptime and Accessibility
So many factors play a key role when deciding on the right web hosting provider for your website.
Uptime is a buzzword and has almost become a cliche. But it’s important to consider it because when your website goes down, your business will be impacted.
SiteGround offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee. This is a huge claim but after hosting with them, I can say that the only downtime I ever experienced was about a year ago, which lasted for 5 minutes.
So why does SiteGround offer such an optimal uptime rate? It’s because it uses Cloudflare technology and server isolation technology on its shared hosting plans.
This distributes the load across multiple servers, thus preventing downtimes and also increasing the site speed.
#5 Siteground Customer Support
In dealing with a web host, customer support is critical. If you think it doesn’t matter, it might be too late when you desperately need to get your site up and running after a glitch or something.
There are so many times you’ll need customer support to step in and help you. Several issues from downtime to server connectivity and security, your only access to the host is via their support staff.
Essentially, this support team should be able to respond quickly and efficiently.
I can boldly say that SiteGround’s customer support is great. The company offers 365-day live chat support, and a ticketing system, and you can even call a phone line if you need help.
On more than 1 occasion when I reached out to the live chat support, I got a response within 15 seconds.
Truly, SiteGround is the industry leader when it comes to web host support. No other host comes close, not even Bluehost.
After getting all of your questions sorted, you’ll be excited to rate their customer support, I couldn’t ignore that.
SiteGround has the best customer support in the industry. You can read a bunch of reviews to verify this claim. The support team will answer your questions in seconds (via live chat) or get answers quickly when you call their phone.
6. Key Features Of Bluehost
What makes Bluehost a trusted, fast, and affordable web hosting service isn’t because the company started in 2003, but because of its amazing features.
There are a ton of features to consider — but let’s consider the 5 key features here:
#1 Free Domain Name and Site Builder
Today, everyone needs a website. Local or small businesses are also taking the center stage to get their websites launched. The world is changing rapidly, and you need to tap into this opportunity.
Not only does Bluehost offer one of the cheapest and most high-performance web hosting services, but it also gives you a free domain for the first year (12 months), and a site builder.
Once you sign up to Bluehost, you’ll be prompted to register a free domain or transfer an existing one.
The Site Builder gets me excited because you don’t need to be a skilled web designer to use it. There’s no coding required and no backend tweaking whatsoever. It’s WYSIWYG technology.
Bluehost helps you build your personal or business website with WordPress. The Site Builder comes with your Shared hosting package, VPS, or Dedicated plan.
There’s more. When building your website using the intuitive visual builder, Bluehost gives you access to the marketplace where you can find 100s of free and premium website themes. Just pick one that suits your brand and style — and start customizing.
You’ll love the freedom that comes with customizing a website. Being able to create and modify with such boundless creativity is one of the benefits you get from hosting with Bluehost.
Burkhard Berger
Bluehost gives you more control when building your website. You can choose from a collection of stunning website themes, and just customize it as you want. SiteGround also has a site builder but it’s not as intuitive as Bluehost’s site builder.
#2 Built-in Site Security
Bluehost takes security seriously. Because websites and customer data are important when running an online business. They even have Bluehost SiteLock security to protect your malicious malware.
As a popular hosting service company, hundreds of thousands of Bluehost customers expect top-notch security. They want to have peace of mind when hosting with Bluehost.
The free SSL certificate renders your website and its pages secure and protected. This is the first signal to visitors that your site can be trusted.
There’s also built-in malware protection, which aims to block every external malware from having a feast with your domain and website.
The automated security updates and 24/7 expert support all are designed to help secure your website, whether you’re using WordPress, Joomla, or any other CMS.
When you’re in doubt about the security of your site, Bluehost has features that help you do a File Integrity Check, confirm your Malware security, and ensure that your SSL certificate is intact.
Simply navigate to your “Sites” tab at the left panel on your Bluehost dashboard:
#3 Fast and Responsive Web Pages
Every Shared Hosting plan from Bluehost will help you take control of your site’s speed.
The Shared Hosting plan offers flexibility, responsiveness, and fast response time, and adds a layer of security that your website needs to thrive in this ever-crowded online marketing environment.
Bluehost uses Cloudflare CDN with server centers across different continents and locations. The goal is to serve your website quickly to users closest to it. This technology can tremendously increase the speed of your website.
Website speed is critical to your long-term success. Studies show that a website visitor will not leave your website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
Bluehost assures that your website’s performance and speed stay optimal and unaffected even if there are thousands of other websites on the shared server.
#4 Marketing Tools For Growing Your Website
All Bluehost plans come with additional marketing tools to grow your website — this greatly helps your SEO and other ranking goals.
It’s no longer enough to start a website, get a reliable hosting like Bluehost, and then hope for your website or eCommerce website to attract visitors and customers.
Those days are long gone. The competition is getting stiffer, and you have a choice to either market your website effectively or go home.
That’s why Bluehost is offering a ton of marketing tools and resources.
Once your website is launched, you can optimize for organic search using your target keywords.
What about advertising? How do you go about it if you’re tight on budget? Well, Bluehost offers $100 Google Ads credit when you spend your first $25. This offer is valid for new Google Ads advertisers who live in the United States or Canada.
Apart from this Google Ads credit, you can also list your local business online. Bluehost makes it easy to add your business location, hours of operation, and other information — and effectively claim your Google My Business profile.
It’s now easier than ever before to reach customers near you, while also expanding your reach to the global audience.
#5 Hosting Tools for WordPress Sites
Bluehost is a reliable hosting option for WordPress. It’s even endorsed by WordPress.org. If you’re a WordPress user (you should be), the new Bluerock platform that Bluehost offers uses a WordPress-focused control panel.
It offers one of the best-integrated experiences for WordPress users and WordPress websites.
Bluehost makes it exceptionally easy to install WordPress from its cPanel. You have a few options to do this — either go through the 1-click automatic WordPress installation process or simply get your WordPress site installed on an account set up when you register.
The Bluerock platform is powerful, as it delivers WordPress pages 3X faster than the previous technical stack, and it uses the updated NGINX page caching functionality.
Some of the latest performance and security features that every WordPress site will benefit from are: Free SSL certificate, Unlimited GB SSD storage, PHP7, Free Cloudflare CDN, and more.
7. Siteground vs. Bluehost – Pros And Cons
SiteGround is a reliable and popular web hosting company, offering basic and advanced hosting features and tools to help you start a new site, install WordPress, or migrate your existing website to their server.
Let’s consider the pros and cons:
WordPress:
| Pros | Cons |
| Affordable shared hosting plans for beginners | Limited Managed hosting features except you upgrade to GoGeek or GrowBig plans |
| A free SSL certificate secures your websites all the time | Higher renewal fees |
| Free Cloudflare CDN to speed up your website | Limited storage space (10GB – 30GB) |
| 1-Click WordPress installation (and officially endorsed by WordPress) | A shared hosting plan is more expensive than Bluehost |
| It offers a 30-day money-back guarantee | |
| Easy staging tools for WordPress and Joomla | |
| Free daily backup and restore (with enhanced server Restore Technology) | |
| 99.9% Uptime (my site has never been down) |
Bluehost currently hosts 2,000,000+ domains on its server. Does this make it the perfect web hosting provider for your business? Here are the pros and cons:
Bluehost:
| Pros | Cons |
| The user interface is clean and simple | Customer support isn’t as responsive as SiteGround’s support (phone support could be better) |
| Bluehost is cheap ($2.65/month) | The pre-designed themes and templates can be more responsive |
| 99.9% Uptime rate | The renewal rates are a bit higher (with hard-to-find discount codes) |
| Free domain name and free SSL with websites | Lacks advanced hosting features for more experienced site owners |
| 1-Click WordPress installations, with a ton of free tutorials | |
| A ton of video tutorials for newbies | |
| Professional website themes and templates to choose from | |
| Ability to view and analyze visitor data from your Bluehost dashboard | |
| Automatic WordPress updates (stay in the loop) | |
| Gain access to a variety of add-ons for building your site |
8. Where Do I Get The Most For My Money?
Here’s a breakdown of the pricing structures of SiteGround and Bluehost (with screenshots).
Siteground Pricing Plans
SiteGround offers fast load time & secure web hosting services to help you launch a successful personal or business website. There are 3 pricing plans:
- StartUp ($6.99): This basic plan package is a good starting plan for personal websites. It allows 1 website, 10 GB of web space, 10,000 monthly visits, free SSL, free email accounts and CDN, and so on.
- GrowBig ($9.99): This hosting package is a good starting plan for personal websites. You can build unlimited websites, 10 GB web space, 25,000 visits monthly, Managed WordPress, Unlimited Databases, daily backup, plus other features in StartUp
- GoGeek ($14.99): The GoGeek hosting plan is for successful businesses that want to scale with unlimited websites, 40 GB of web space, 100,000 visits monthly, staging + Git, speed-hosting caching, and more.
Bluehost Pricing Plans
The Bluehost web hosting plans come in 3 distinct packages to suit your business. Let’s take a look:
- Shared Hosting ($2.65/month): If you’re just getting started with your first website or blog, you might want to use Bluehost’s Shared Hosting package. It’s WordPress-friendly, so you never have to worry about your choice of CMS. Get free domain name, free migration, etc.
- VPS ($19.99/month): This Virtual Private Server (VPS hosting) is recommended for growing sites that need to scale and take control of their hosting capabilities. It comes with added features and tools to power successful websites.
- Dedicated ($79.99/month): After your site has grown and now generates a lot of traffic, the dedicated plan should come to mind. This plan will assure ultimate speed and performance like you’ve never experienced before. It also has 24/7 dedicated hosting assistance.
9. Conclusion – Which Is Better: SiteGround Or Bluehost?
Choosing the right web hosting solution can make or mar your business. Both SiteGround and Bluehost are well-respected hosting companies — so you should be in good hands if you choose either of them.
For a more user-friendly dashboard, Bluehost wins. That’s why it’s highly recommended for beginners who want to quickly host their websites.
Additionally, Bluehost is cheaper than SiteGround. It also comes with a free domain name. This makes it the perfect choice if you’re on a tight budget.
SiteGround can be relied upon for performance and excellent support. In our page load tests, SiteGround outperformed Bluehost in site speed — a critical factor when you’re looking to offer the best user experience.
So SiteGround is the clear winner if you’re looking for the best performance and a support team that will listen and responds in 20 minutes or less.
10. Siteground vs. Bluehost – FAQ
Are SiteGround and Bluehost worth the money? Which of them is better for your website? With so many questions being asked, it can be difficult to take the next step in your online business.
So let’s quickly answer some of the frequently asked questions (FAQs):
Is SiteGround a good hosting company?
Yes, SiteGround is a great alternative to Bluehost. A good hosting company serving more than 2,000,000 domains. It offers one of the best shared hosting plans — with excellent support, improved performance, and advanced options such as staging.
Is Bluehost good for blogging?
Yes, Bluehost is widely used by bloggers and even businesses as a hosting platform for their promotional and knowledge base contents. It has amazing features such as 1-click WordPress installation, affordable pricing, extensive documentation and support, reliability, and speed. Beginners to blogging can quickly get their WordPress blog installed and launched in 30 minutes or less.
Is SiteGround good with WordPress?
SiteGround is a trusted web hosting solution for WordPress. It assures excellent performance, clever WordPress features (e.g., 1-click WordPress installation, auto-update scripts, migration plugins, speed optimization tools, staging areas), and friendly support.
Can Bluehost handle high traffic?
Yes, Bluehost can handle high traffic to your website. If you’re expecting traffic spikes as a result of your marketing efforts — through blogging, social media marketing, or paid advertising, Bluehost’s unlimited bandwidth and storage capabilities can accommodate any level of traffic.