Bluehost vs Hostinger: Which Is the Best Host for Your Needs

If you’re tired of clicking through generic, AI written garbage that doesn’t tell you anything that you can’t already see by simply going to either Hostinger or Bluehost’s website, then this article is for you.

What you’re about to read is a thorough analysisIf thorough analysis is not your thing and you prefer your information in digestible snippets, I got you covered too. Each major section starts off with a TL;DR so you can quickly get the main gist of everything., written by a real human – me! – with actual opinions and insights into what these two companies offer.

I’m not going to pull any punches. I will give it to you straight.

Since both Bluehost and Hostinger are primarily web hosting companies, I will focus heavily on their various hosting plans, but I’ll also touch upon their domain registrar services. Afterwards, I will break down what their customer support game looks like and how they perform on the battlefield when put to the test.

If there is a specific thing that you’re very interested in, please use the table of contents below to jump to it. Otherwise, let’s take it from the top:

Bluehost vs Hostinger: At a glance 🔎

BluehostHostingerNumber of plans offered15This includes 4 shared hosting plans (what most beginners use), 4 cloud hosting plans, 3 VPS plans, 3 dedicated server plans, and 2 online store plans (though one of these is also offered as an option in the shared hosting plans).12This includes 3 shared hosting plans (what most beginners use), 3 cloud hosting plans, 4 VPS plans, and 2 website builder plans. Many of these plans are re-branded under other sub-categories on the Hostinger website and featured more than once, but they are the same plans.Cheapest paid plan$1.99 / monthThis reflects the special promo price that we’ve secured for our readers. The contract term is one year and it comes out to $35.40. If you don’t use our link, it’s $2.95 / month.$2.69 / monthThis reflects the special promo price that we’ve secured for our readers. It’s available if you pay up front for either one year, two years, or four years (your choice). The one-year cost comes out to $32.29. If you don’t use our link, it’s $2.99 / month.Renews at$11.99 / monthThis reflects the standard renewal price. Occasionally, Bluehost will also apply a one-time reduced renewal rate (which varies) on an initial renewal, but all subsequent renewals default to $11.99 / month.$9.99 / monthThis reflects the renewal rate if you purchase the one-year contract. If you opt for the two-year, then you will renew at $8.99, and if you go for the four-year, it’ll be $7.99.Free domainFor the first year only. This is the standard industry promo length when it’s offered.✅✅Free SSL✅✅Storage10 GB100 GBStaging siteA staging site is a replica of a live website used for testing and quality assurance before updates go live.✅✅Customer support24/7 ChatAll plans higher than the entry-level plan also offer phone support.24/7 ChatHostinger does not offer phone support on any of their plans.Free email✅Bluehost offers a free 3-month trial to a Pro Email plan, but their customer support informed me that all shared hosting accounts also come with standard email hosting. The entry-level plan supports up to 5 email accounts with 100 MB of storage per account. The other plans offer unlimited accounts with unlimited storage.✅Each mailbox comes with 1GB of storage.Website backups❌Bluehost does not offer backups on its entry-level plans. Higher plans offer it, but it varies, and in some instances it costs extra.✅Daily backups are stored for seven days. Weekly backups are stored for seven weeks.

* The comparison of features above is between the two cheapest plans available with both companies.

Plans and prices comparison 🤜🆚🤛

Both Bluehost and Hostinger offer a range of hosting types and packages. These include…

Shared web hosting
WordPress
Ecommerce
VPS
Cloud
Dedicated server (Bluehost Only)

One thing you’ll notice if you spend some time on both of their websites, is that they re-use the same plans under different categories.

If you think that it’s somehow misleading for them to do this, let me assure you that it’s not. The fact is, that based on the specs of a particular hosting plan, it can be a great choice for multiple use cases. Having pages that reflect those use cases is perfectly normal and allows Bluehost and Hostinger to cater to the different needs of their potential customers.

Having said that, Hostinger is a lot more aggressive with their re-using compared to Bluehost. With Bluehost, the main plans that are copy and pasted are their shared hosting plans, which are featured on both their web hosting page and their WordPress hosting page. You can see this below:

Notice that as I clicked back and forth between the web hosting plans tab and the WordPress hosting plans tab that none of the details of the plans changed – not even their names.

On the other hand, Hostinger’s plans are featured multiple times all over the place. For example, their Cloud Startup plan is shown on four different hosting pages!

I wanted to bring that to your attention so that you don’t think you’re losing your mind if you start browsing through their sites.

With that out of the way, let’s take a look at both companies’ hosting plans and compare their features and prices.

Bluehost shared hosting 🫱🏻‍🫲🏾

Bluehost‘s shared hosting plans offer a range of impressive features and tools. These plans are aimed at website owners who are setting up or already running small to medium-sized blogs and websites. The entry-level plan includes the following:

Supports up to 10 websites
10 GB NVMe storage space
AI site creation tools
Free domain in the first year
Free SSL from Let’s Encrypt
Free CDN from Cloudflare with Argo Routing
Web application firewall
DDoS protection
24/7 chat support
Free WordPress migration tool
Free malware scanning
SSH and WP-CLI
Caching tools
WordPress staging site

This plan is ideal for websites that are getting up to 40,000 visitors a month and it can handle up to 100 simultaneous visitors.

If you plan on launching a brand new site then these traffic limitations probably won’t be relevant to you in the beginning (unless you have a huge audience on social media that you plan to funnel over), but it’s good to keep them in the back of your mind as your site grows.

When that time comes, or if you anticipate it’ll happen quickly, then hopping over to the second tier plan will boost those numbers to 200,000 visitors per month, with up to 500 simultaneous visitors at any given moment.

The third tier supports the same but comes with additional benefits for ecommerce stores. Finally, if needed, the fourth tier supports up to 400,000 visitors per month and 1,000 simultaneous visitors.

Pricing 💰

In terms of pricing, you’re in luck. We’ve worked out a special arrangement with Bluehost to give our readers a discount on their normal rates. Check out the difference below:

All plans above reflect annual billing, meaning you pay the full amount up front for the year. So for the entry-level plan, with our readers’ discount, you’d pay $35.40 to get started.

After the promotional period is over, all plans renew at a higher rate.

The normal renewal rate on the entry-level Basic plan is $11.99 per month, which is what you can expect to pay. If you’re lucky, on occasion, Bluehost will reduce that price for the initial renewal only when using our promo link. For the second renewal and all others after that, you’ll be charged the standard renewal rate.

All plans also come with a 30-day money back guarantee which is a nice assurance in case you decide to change your mind for whatever reason.

Hostinger shared hosting 🫱🏾‍🫲🏻

Hostinger‘s shared plans are extremely competitive and give Bluehost a run for their money. The entry-level plan has a lot in common with its Bluehost counterpart in terms of features, but where it absolutely crushes Bluehost is in storage space and the number of websites you can build.

Compared to Bluehost’s paltry (in comparison) 10 GB and up to 10 websites, Hostinger hooks you up with ten times that amount!

You get 100 GB of storage space and you can build up to 100 websites. The craziest part is that without our readers’ discount promotion, the prices are virtually identical. Ten times the storage space for the same price and a very similar set of features is one heck of a deal.

Granted, this is only one factor of many to consider. I’m not trying to imply that Hostinger is the clear winner in this matchup based off of just this. However, if storage space and website capacity are deal-breakers for you, then the staggering difference may very well push you into the Hostinger camp.

Altogether, here’s a sampling of what you get on the entry-level Hostinger plan, which is designed to support around 25,000 visitors per month (across all websites on the plan):

Supports up to 100 websites
100 GB SSD storage
Free domain in the first year
Free automatic website migration
Free SSL
Free email
Free CDN
Website backups (daily and weekly)
WordPress vulnerabilities scanner
Unlimited bandwidth
WordPress AI tools
WordPress staging tool
Dedicated IP address
30-day money back guarantee

The free email and the website backups are notable standout features because neither of them are offered in the Bluehost entry-level plan.

Bluehost does give you a free three-month trial of their pro email service, but after that you have to pay extra to continue using it. That’s not the case with Hostinger.

As for backups, you can unlock them starting with Bluehost’s second tier plan, but it says they are free only for the first year. That turns it into another piecemeal feature that you’ll get nickel and dimed for with Bluehost, but not with Hostinger.

Overall, when it comes to features, Hostinger has an edge over Bluehost. Especially when you take into consideration the cost. Let’s talk about that next.

Pricing 💰

Surprise, surprise! We managed to arrange a discounted rate for our readers with Hostinger as well. The discount isn’t quite as steep as it is with Bluehost, but you’ll still save some coins. Here’s the breakdown:

Like I said, not quite as generous as the Bluehost discount, but some savings is better than no savings. The nice thing about Hostinger is that the discounted rate applies across all of their contract terms (with the exception of month-to-month). So whether you decide to sign up for a single year, two years, or four years, you’ll pay the same rate.

However – and this is an important however – the renewal rates are lower if you commit to a longer contract.

Bluehost and Hostinger’s other plans 🤔

As mentioned earlier, both Bluehost and Hostinger offer a range of hosting plans that cater to different needs. I imagine that most people reading this article will be interested in the entry-level plans that I covered above, but I don’t want to completely omit the other plans either.

I’m not going to go into as deep of an analysis on these, but what I will do is provide you with some side-by-side information so that you can easily compare the two. I’ll add some light commentary as well.

Let’s start with the cloud plans.

Cloud plans comparison ☁️

If we compare the first tier of both companies, Hostinger once again has an edge here. And this time the edge is arguably even larger than with the shared plans. This is mainly due to the extreme price difference between the plans – with Hostinger being significantly cheaper.

Despite the massive price difference, they offer a lot of the same benefits. In some cases, Hostinger actually offers even more, despite costing less. Here’s a quick breakdown:

Bluehost Cloud 1 PlanHostinger Cloud Startup PlanPrice$29.99 per month$7.19 per monthContract Length1 yearBilled at $359.88. There is also an option to pay month-to-month, which costs $91.99 per month.4 yearsBilled at $345.17. There are also options for one-year and two-year contracts, as well as a month-to-month option. Those are all progressively more expensive.Renews at$79.99 / month$19.99 / monthThis reflects the renewal rate if you purchase the four-year contract. If you opt for the two-year, then you will renew at $22.99, and if you go for the one-year, it’ll be $23.99.Number of monthly visits200,000200,000Storage space10 GB SSD Storage200 GB NVMe storageMax number of websites1300Free domain WHOIS privacy protection❌✅DDoS protection✅✅Website backups✅Bluehost lists them as realtime backups, which presumably means on demand.✅Daily backups and on-demand backups both available.

* The comparison of features above is between the two cheapest Cloud plans available with both companies.

In my opinion, Hostinger has the better offer, but feel free to compare both sets of plans below:

VPS plans comparison 💻

When it comes to the VPS plans, it’s the same story as above it’s an absolute blood bath with Hostinger crushing Bluehost. The difference in the VPS plans in terms of cost-to-benefit ratio is so wide that we can call it extreme.

Just take a look at Bluehost’s cheapest VPS plan versus Hostinger’s most expensive VPS plan:

It’s tough to make any sort of case for Bluehost with these numbers. First, there’s the obvious fact that Hostinger’s most expensive plan is less than half the price of Bluehost’s cheapest plan during the promo period. Even the renewal rate is slightly cheaper than Bluehost’s initial promo price.

But then adding to that, is that you’re paying more to get less.

Hostinger’s plan gives you quadruple the amount of vCPU cores (8 vs 2 on the Bluehost side). It gives you eight times more RAM (8 GB vs 32 GB), and four times as much storage space (400 GB vs 100 GB).

What else is there to say, really?

Check out the full details of both lineups below:

Unique plans offered by both hosts 💡

One thing that both companies bring to the table is their own unique set of plans that the other doesn’t have. I can’t make any real comparison here like I did with the previous ones because they serve completely different needs. All I can do is present them to you so that you are aware they are available.

Bluehost dedicated server plans 💽

The first thing you might notice about dedicated server hosting is the price tag. It’s expensive, but that expense is justified. As it says in the name, you are getting an entire server just for yourself.

Are most of you reading this going to need an entire server all for yourself?

Probably not.

⚠️ These plans aren’t really meant for the average user with a blog, personal page, or even a small ecommerce shop. They are meant for larger businesses with high-traffic websites, resource-intensive applications, or those handling sensitive data.

When you use a dedicated server, it gives you exclusive access to all the resources of a physical server, including its CPU, RAM, storage, and bandwidth. This means your websites or applications can perform at their absolute best, without being affected by other users’ activities or resource consumption.

If you happen to have these unique needs, then you might be wondering how good Bluehost’s plans are, relative to the market.

All things considered, I would say that Bluehost’s dedicated server pricing appears to be about market rate or slightly above, but justified by the high-end specifications (especially the CPU cores, RAM type, and NVMe storage). It’s positioned as a premium offering rather than a budget option.

Check out Bluehost’s plans below:

The pricing is competitive for businesses needing high-performance dedicated hosting, though it may be on the higher end for smaller businesses or those with less demanding requirements. If you wanted something cheaper, InMotion has some great deals on their dedicated servers.

Now let’s look at Hostinger’s unique offerings.

Hostinger AI website builder plans 🤖

In some ways, the use case for Hostinger’s AI website builder is on the other end of the spectrum of someone who would be interested in dedicated servers.

While dedicated servers cater to advanced needs, the AI website builder caters to beginners who want to get started quickly. And not just quickly, but easily – with the help of AI.

If you have an idea you want to get off the ground fast and you don’t have much experience in building websites or a willingness to learn, then this is a great solution. And at a great price no less!

Check out the details below:

Domain registrar services 🌐

Although both Bluehost and Hostinger are primarily hosting providers, they also offer domain registration services. In the interest of making a comprehensive comparison between them, I’m going to briefly show you what they have to offer. I’ll also explain how you might want to consider using their registrar services in a strategic way to save money.

Bluehost RegistrarHostinger RegistrarTLDs offeredTLD stands for top-level domain and refers to the last part of a domain name, after the dot. So for example, yourwebsite.com, the TLD is .com.About 300A little under 80Free WHOIS privacy protection❌This is a paid add on feature for $11.88 per year.✅.com first year price$12.99$4.99Renews at$21.99$16.99Pair domain with email$2.08 / monthThis reflects the monthly rate if you pay up front for one year. It comes with 25 GB of storage space, 25 email aliases, and anti-spam / anti-virus checks.$0.99 / monthThis reflects the monthly rate if you pay up front for four years. It comes with 10 GB of storage space, 50 email aliases, and anti-spam / anti-virus checks.

I already said that in general I wouldn’t recommend using either Bluehost or Hostinger solely for the purpose of domain registration. The reason is simple: they are overpriced compared to other registrars.

To give you an idea of what I mean, if you check out Cloudflare’s domain registration services, they sell all of their domains at cost – meaning they don’t make any money on them. The Cloudflare price for a .com domain is $9.15 per year. Compare that to the ongoing, post-promo rate with Hostinger – $16.99 – and Bluehost – $21.99.

Not very attractive, right?

But!

Where Bluehost and Hostinger outshine Cloudflare is that they also offer all of those lovely hosting services that we just talked about in the previous sections. Cloudflare does not offer hosting (other than for simple static websites). And with their hosting plans, both Hostinger and Bluehost give you a free domain in your first year.

So if you’re going to use either Bluehost or Hostinger to buy hosting anyway, you might as well take advantage of the free domain deal.

After the first year is over, if you want to save some coins, you can transfer your domain to Cloudflare and just point your nameservers back to either Bluehost or Hostinger (whichever one you’re hosting with). Bluehost even has a tutorial that shows you how to do it (including the updating nameservers part).

And there you have it.

Now let’s switch gears from plans and services to talk about customer support a bit. As you’ll soon see, this is one area where Bluehost generally does better than Hostinger.

Customer support comparison 💬

Both Bluehost and Hostinger provide support for new and existing customers, but for those who prefer immediate help from humans, Bluehost is the only one that delivers. Here’s the breakdown:

Bluehost customer support explained ☎️

Bluehost provides a variety of support options to help cater to everyone’s needs. So however you like to troubleshoot a problem, you will find Bluehost to be very accommodating. Here are its support options…

Knowledgebase – Bluehost offers an extensive and searchable knowledge base, consisting of how-to tutorials and guides, videos, instructions, and more.
Phone support – 24/7 phone support is available on all plans higher than the entry-level shared hosting plan.
Live chat – Always a favorite of mine, live chat is not only available 24/7, but on the numerous occasions I have used it, the response time has been pretty much immediate.

If you are someone who needs a high level of support, Bluehost does not disappoint. So how does Hostinger’s support compare?

Hostinger customer support explained 📟

To be blunt about it, Hostinger’s support doesn’t compare to the service Bluehost provides. However, if you are someone who needs relatively little support, or you are okay with talking to an AI chatbot or finding what you need by searching their knowledge base, then Hostinger support will suffice. Let’s take a look at what is on offer…

Knowledgebase – The Hostinger knowledge base has a selection of very useful and easy to follow tutorials and how-to articles. A particularly helpful “getting started” section ensures that those new to Hostinger have all the information they need for a smooth set up.
AI chatbot – Hostinger provides an AI chatbot as a frontline support tactic. On the one hand, it’s a bot, which means that dealing with a complex, very specific issue might not yield the best results. On the other hand, I’ve used it several times and compared to other AI bots I’ve used, I have to admit that it’s really good. For simple questions, I actually prefer it to Bluehost’s chat, because the bot only takes seconds to respond.
Live chat – Hostinger offers 24/7 live chat, which is helpful if you want a more real-time communication method, but you can’t get to it without dealing with the AI chatbot first.

Unfortunately, Hostinger does not offer telephone support, which may be difficult if you have an issue that needs immediate assistance and want to talk to a real person.

Performance analysis 📈

And that brings us to our final section of this comparative analysis. But let’s be clear: just because it’s the last section, by no means is it the least important.

Quite the contrary.

The performance of a web host is one of the most important aspects to consider when choosing a hosting provider. If your website is slow to load, or repeatedly suffers downtime, not only will your visitor numbers be affected, but crucially you will lose leads and sales. Poor performance can also affect your site’s SEO, making it harder for your content to show up in search results, thus reducing your overall exposure.

How we test hosting companies and what the results say 📊

Here at Themeisle, we’ve invested our own money to purchase hosting setups with many of the top hosting companies in the business. We do this for the benefit of our readers so that we can get real world experience with what we’re talking about, and also, so that we can track the performance of these companies.

When we talk about performance, we’re primarily concerned with two sets of metrics.

The first is loading time and the second is uptime.

Loading time

This measures the speed at which a webpage loads its content following a user’s request. In simple terms, when you clicked on the link that took you to this article, the loading time is how long it took between you clicking and this page loading.

We monitor these constantly and update the results for our readers on a monthly basis.

Here are the loading time averages for Hostinger from last month:

And here they are for Bluehost:

Since the data is updated monthly via a shortcode mechanism, I can’t write a definitive conclusion here based on what numbers I’m seeing at the moment because those numbers are going to continuously change.

However, what I can say from having done this for a while, is that while both Hostinger and Bluehost generally perform well, Bluehost tends to have an edge. The results for Bluehost, on average, tend to be faster across the locations we test.

Again, that may or may not be the case when you are reading this, but it’s the case more often than not.

Uptime

This represents how long a website stays active without disruptions. An uptime above 99.9% is ideal, ensuring constant site accessibility for your website’s visitors.

For uptime specifically, we publish the running average for the previous three months. We also keep a live log that you can check out right now, using the links below.

Unlike loading time, for uptime, the data is neck and neck virtually all the time. Both Bluehost and Hostinger frequently maintain an immaculate 100% uptime rate. It’s rare that either one goes down. It’s not to say that it never happens, but it’s not common.

Final thoughts on Bluehost and Hostinger 💭

I hope you appreciated the raw commentary and that you found it useful. It’s rare these days to find genuine opinions from real people that actually care about what they are writing about. I know that when I come across them, I am always grateful and that’s what I try to do when I write as well.

In case you’d like more information on either Hostinger or Bluehost, we’ve also got detailed reviews on both of them.

For the Hostinger one, I interviewed three of my colleagues who all have their own accounts with Hostinger and the review is a compilation of their personal experiences along with my analysis. Check it out here: Hostinger review. Or, 👉 go to Hostinger directly.

For Bluehost, one of our long-time external collaborators, Colin Newcomer, did a thorough review that was updated earlier this year. Check it out here: Bluehost review. Or, 👉 go to Bluehost directly.

We’ve also collected some other solid cheap hosting options if you’d like to learn about other quality web hosts in this price range.

Thank you for reading.

Do you have any additional questions about choosing between Hostinger and Bluehost? Let me know in the comments and I’ll be happy to offer my two cents.

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