Attempting to resolve between SiteGround vs Bluehost to host your web site?
SiteGround and Bluehost are two of the preferred net hosts for any kind of web site, and each additionally provide a number of helpful options for WordPress customers. Since you’ll see so many individuals recommending each hosts, it may be onerous to know which one is best for you.
On this put up, I’m going to enable you resolve between Bluehost vs SiteGround. This isn’t about selecting a single “winner”. As an alternative, I’m going to spotlight the important thing variations and make some suggestions to be able to decide the choice that most closely fits your wants and price range.
I’ll begin by evaluating them in three keys areas:
PricingPerformanceUser-friendlinessThen, on the finish, I’ll make some suggestions on when you need to decide SiteGround and when you need to decide Bluehost.

SiteGround vs Bluehost Pricing
Typically, when it comes to pricing and sources, Bluehost is extra reasonably priced than SiteGround. That is true for each the promotional costs (what you pay in your first billing cycle) and the common costs (what you’ll pay while you want to renew).
Listed below are Bluehost’s costs:
And listed here are SiteGround’s:
Past wanting on the pricing charts, there are a couple of different essential issues to take into account right here:
ResourcesBilling termsFree area nameWinner: Bluehost
Bluehost Provides You Limitless Assets
One other factor that makes Bluehost cheaper are the sources that you just get along with your plan. Apart from the most affordable Fundamental plan, Bluehost provides you:
Limitless websitesUnmetered storageUnmetered bandwidthSiteGround does offer you limitless web sites (excluding the StartUp plan) and unmetered bandwidth. Nevertheless, they impose strict storage limits. For instance, even the costly GoGeek plan solely will get 40 GB, whereas Bluehost nonetheless provides you 50 GB on a budget Fundamental plan (and limitless storage on all of the others).
Moreover, whereas SiteGround does provide unmetered bandwidth, they do promote a instructed go to restrict. This restrict isn’t a tough cap – it’s simply an estimate of what number of guests you’ll be able to have earlier than SiteGround’s different limits (like CPU seconds) kick in. In order for you to see the technical limitations of SiteGround’s plans, you’ll be able to:
Go to this pageScroll down to the bottomHover over the hyperlinks within the Server Assets sectionI additionally wrote a put up explaining the restrictions of SiteGround shared internet hosting.
Notice that, whereas Bluehost doesn’t meter any of your sources, they are going to nonetheless implement honest use insurance policies. So in the event that they really feel that you just’re abusing the boundaries, they could nonetheless limit your account:
Winner: Bluehost
SiteGround Solely Lets You Get the Full Promo Costs for Solely One 12 months
As a result of each Bluehost and SiteGround’s promotional costs provide such a giant low cost, it’s often a good suggestion to pay for as a few years as doable upfront. For instance, should you pay for 3 years upfront, you’ll be able to lock within the low-cost costs for all three years.
You used to have the ability to do that at each Bluehost and SiteGround. Nevertheless, as of 2020, SiteGround solely provides you the total promotional low cost in your first yr. For those who attempt to pay for 2 or three years upfront, you’ll nonetheless get a small low cost, however not the total marketed promotional worth.
For instance, let’s say you need the SiteGround StartUp plan, which is marketed as having a promotional worth of $6.99 monthly and an everyday worth of $14.99 monthly. For those who join a yr, you’ll pay that $6.99. Nevertheless, the costs for 2 and three-year plans are barely greater:
Two years – $9.99 per monthThree years – $10.49 per monthSo when you nonetheless get a reduction, the deal isn’t fairly nearly as good.
With Bluehost, it really works in the wrong way. The longer the interval you join, the larger the low cost you’ll get.
For instance, let’s say you need the Bluehost Plus plan, which is marketed as having a promotional worth of $5.45 monthly and an everyday worth of $10.99 monthly. In order for you to get that full promotional worth, you’ll want to pay for 3 years upfront. For those who pay for a shorter interval, the month-to-month worth will likely be greater:
One yr – $7.45 per monthTwo years – $6.95 per monthThree years – $5.45 per monthWinner: Bluehost
Free Area Title
Lastly, Bluehost provides you a free area identify in your first yr, whereas SiteGround doesn’t. Moreover, if you’d like to buy your area through SiteGround, they’ll cost you $15.95 for a .com area, which is fairly costly. Bluehost may even cost you $15.99 to renew your area identify after the primary yr, although, so Bluehost’s costs are additionally pretty excessive.
In order for you to avoid wasting cash, you need to use a third-party registrar like Namecheap or Google Domains, which cost extra like $10-$12 for a .com area identify.
Winner: Bluehost
SiteGround vs Bluehost Efficiency
Whereas Bluehost wins when it comes to the pricing and sources, SiteGround is forward when it comes to efficiency.
Internet hosting Structure
One of many issues that specify why SiteGround is dearer is that SiteGround has been investing some huge cash into its infrastructure, which suggests higher efficiency for SiteGround prospects.
For instance, SiteGround just lately moved all of its internet hosting plans, even the shared ones, to Google Cloud internet hosting, which helps you to profit from Google’s community.
SiteGround additionally makes use of a mix of Apache (because the webserver) and Nginx (as a reverse proxy), which lets them provide server-level web page caching (however solely on the GrowBig and GoGeek plans). Server-level caching not solely eliminates the necessity for a separate caching plugin, nevertheless it additionally performs just a little higher than caching plugins as a result of your server can utterly skip WordPress when loading content material from the cache.
I do know that’s just a little technical, however the one factor you actually need to perceive is that this makes your web site load quite a bit sooner.
SiteGround additionally affords all of its prospects a free plugin referred to as SG Optimizer. SG Optimizer helps you simply implement all an important WordPress efficiency greatest practices together with minification, picture optimization, Gzip compression, browser caching, and extra.

SG Optimizer is each bit nearly as good because the WP-Rocket plugin and SiteGround prospects get it free of charge.
Lastly, on the GoGeek plan, SiteGround just lately added its personal Ultrafast PHP setup, which may additional increase efficiency.
Bluehost doesn’t utterly ignore efficiency – you do get some options like built-in caching. However usually, SiteGround’s internet hosting structure is extra optimized than Bluehost’s.
Winner: SiteGround
Efficiency comparability check:
In my efficiency comparability check, SiteGround is certainly a winner. Nevertheless, the worth distinction between two does not likely justify this win, and I used to be anticipating a significantly better consequence from SiteGround.
For this check, I’ve used Genesis theme + Cloudflare setup on a stay web site with similar set of plugins. Let’s take a look at the outcomes from the totally different exams:
TTFB Take a look at
Bluehost:
SiteGround:
Winner: SiteGround
Even within the web site response time, and cargo time SiteGround was a transparent winner.
Knowledge Heart Places
One other essential a part of WordPress efficiency is information middle areas. The bodily distance between your host’s datacenter and your guests will play a giant position in your web site’s web page load instances. You may cut back this influence through the use of a content material supply community (CDN). Nevertheless, you continue to need to at all times select a knowledge middle that’s as shut as doable to your audience.
One other side that doesn’t get as a lot focus is backend dashboard load instances. For those who’re additional away out of your web site’s datacenter, your WordPress dashboard may even load slower while you’re working in your web site, which will be irritating.
Right here, SiteGround affords much more choices. SiteGround provides you your alternative of six datacenters on 4 continents:
North America – Council Bluffs, Iowa (USA)Europe – London (UK), Eemshaven (Netherlands), Frankfurt (Germany)Asia – SingaporeAustralia – SydneyWhen you enroll, you’ll be able to select the datacenter that works greatest for you.
Whereas Bluehost does have a number of datacenters, they don’t allow you to select. Additionally they make it very onerous to even discover out which information facilities they provide as a result of they don’t checklist them on their web site.
As an alternative, the datacenter that your web site will get relies on which Bluehost service you enroll with. For instance, should you enroll on the North American Bluehost web site, your web site’s server will likely be in Utah, USA. However should you enroll on the Indian Bluehost web site, your web site’s server will likely be in Mumbai, India.
In complete, Bluehost has information facilities within the following areas:
North America – Utah, USAEurope – London, UKAsia – Mumbai (India), Hong Kong (China), Shanghai (China)However once more, be sure to enroll through the native Bluehost web site in your area (or the area that you really want to goal) since you can not select your personal datacenter like you’ll be able to with SiteGround.
Winner: SiteGround
SiteGround vs Bluehost Dashboard/Consumer-Friendliness
Bluehost and SiteGround are each very user-friendly hosts. On this part, I’ll undergo their internet hosting dashboards and a few key options.
Internet hosting Dashboard
Each SiteGround and Bluehost provide customized internet hosting dashboards to make it simpler to handle your web site.
As of 2020, SiteGround has utterly moved away from cPanel to its personal Website Instruments dashboard. The Website Instruments dashboard makes it straightforward to set up WordPress and carry out different key actions to handle your web site.
Bluehost, however, makes use of a hybrid mixture of its personal customized dashboard, whereas nonetheless providing you with entry to cPanel if you’d like it. This mix is good to have – learners can carry out most essential actions from Bluehost’s customized dashboards, whereas extra superior customers can nonetheless entry the total cPanel dashboard if wanted.
Winner: Tie
Options
Each hosts additionally offer you handy options to enable you handle your web site.
With both host, you’ll get:
Computerized WordPress updatesFree one-click SSL certificatesFree electronic mail hostingStaging sitesOne essential space the place SiteGround wins out is backups. On all plans, SiteGround mechanically backs up your web site every single day and shops 30 days of backups. Bluehost, nonetheless, solely affords computerized backups on the most costly Alternative Plus plan.
Nevertheless, take into account that SiteGround shops the backups in your web site’s server, so that you’ll need to periodically obtain them to your native pc to remove a single level of failure.
SiteGround vs Bluehost: Which Ought to You Use?
SiteGround and Bluehost are each common hosts for a purpose. That’s, they every have their strengths and weaknesses and there’s not one “higher” host for each single particular person.
Use Bluehost If…
Typically, Bluehost is sweet for a newbie wanting to get began for affordable. Bluehost’s pricing is about as low-cost as doable, and also you additionally get a free area identify in your first yr which brings the price down even additional.
Moreover, Bluehost does a terrific job of constructing it easy and straightforward to launch a web site. Whereas SiteGround can also be fairly straightforward to use, Bluehost’s onboarding wizard is without doubt one of the greatest and makes it very easy for a beginner to stand up and working.

Use SiteGround If…
Then again, SiteGround is sweet for individuals who need to stage up their internet hosting to get higher efficiency. With its new costs, SiteGround is certainly dearer than Bluehost – there’s no means to keep away from that.
Nevertheless, the upside is that you just get higher sources and helpful instruments for WordPress efficiency. For instance, SiteGround makes use of Google Cloud infrastructure on all its plans now. On the GrowBig and GoGeek plans, they even implement server-level caching which affords wonderful efficiency and means you don’t want a caching plugin.
SiteGround prospects additionally get entry to the free SG Optimizer plugin, which may rival premium efficiency plugins like WP Rocket in its characteristic set. 

Nevertheless, so as to get that improved efficiency, you’re going to pay just a little extra and also you’ll even have to cope with restricted sources. For instance, there’s no extra limitless storage and, whereas SiteGround doesn’t put a hard-limit on site visitors, their plans do have “instructed” go to counts.
Once you’re simply getting began, you most likely don’t want that further efficiency, which is why Bluehost makes a superb possibility. However as soon as your web site begins rising, it may make sense to put money into a bunch that gives higher efficiency, like SiteGround.
For extra element, we even have full opinions of each suppliers:
Do you’ve got any questions on Bluehost vs SiteGround and which host is true in your wants? Depart a remark under!