BLUEHOST VS SITEGROUND: 9 TEST TO DECIDE "WHO IS THE BEST" IN 2021?
BLUEHOST VS SITEGROUND: 9 TEST TO DECIDE "WHO IS THE BEST" IN 2021?
Choosing the right hosting service is a nerve-wracking experience as hosting can make or break your website. You have to spend hours researching and trying to understand what sounds like gibberish. Next, you need to compare all of these companies to find the right one for your needs.
The good news is, in this Bluehost vs Siteground comparison, we'll demystify the jargon and reveal what's important. Of course, we'll also determine which of these two brands is best at what they do.
SiteGround Bluehost is an excellent choice for both small and large blogs. They are both leaders in their category, but they are also extremely popular, with approximately 2 million customers each.
However, these aren't the only comparisons and reviews we've done. You can check out many other hosting reviews including in this blog HostGator vs Bluehost ones comparisonsSiteGround Vs HostGator.
About our Bluehost vs Siteground comparison: We tested SiteGround and Bluehost by purchasing hosting plans on their servers in Chicago and Provo respectively. We installed WordPress 5.2.3 and used a complex theme with demo content from Mojo marketplace. Both hosting services have mainly been tested from Los Angeles, USA.
Bluehost vs Siteground Winner - Why SiteGround is Better Than Bluehost?
If you don't have the patience to read our in-depth review (or just don't need that much detail).
SiteGround is a better choice for hosting Shared, WordPress or Cloud websites as compared to Bluehost. While Bluehost offered low initial and renewal rates, SiteGround's performance (speed), reliability (uptime), and support are far better than anything Bluehost has to offer.
Our verdict, in a nutshell, is that SiteGround is just an overall better company to partner with and the services are head and shoulders above Bluehost. This conclusion is based on the many tests we have conducted, as well as our personal experience using the services of the two companies.
Here's an interactive infographic covering the main point.
Read Also : 8 Best Bluehost Alternatives (Compared & Reviewed) in 2021
-Low initial price,2x
renews-Starts at $ 2.95 / month for a basic account
COST
-Low initial price,3x
-Starts at $ 2.95 / for a
renews monthly basic account -Hosts over 2 million websites
-Popularity falling
POPULARITY
hosts will over 2 million websites
Popular Highly
Reliable
-99.97% Uptime registered
website speed
-Very Reliable
-100% Uptime included
-Average speed
UPTIME
-Heelsnel
-Useshetzelfde datacenter as used by Google.com, youtube.com and Apple.com -
Officially recommended by wordpress -
Cloud and WordPress plans are just an extension of their shared hosting.
WORDPRESS CLOUD
-Officially recommended by wordpress
Highly optimized WordPress packages
cloud - Uses cPanel-Custom
UA INTERFACE
control panel
level
-Security at medium -Uses third-party security tools
SECURITY
-Very secure
-The best security in the industry.
-Medium Support
-Long Waiting Time and Poor Support
CUSTOMER SUPPORT OPERATOR
-Excellent
-Won Stevie Award for Best Customer Support for the year 2020
-Good for Beginners
FOR BEGINNERS
-Excellent for beginners
-Free transfer installation wizard, and many beginner-friendly features.
- 1.5 / 5 (rated 1.5 out of 5)
- 600 ratings
TRUSTPILOT RATING
- 4.7 / 5 (rated 4.7 out of 5)
- 6,000 ratings
- Bluehost = 3/10
OVERALL SCORE
- SiteGround = 9/10
BuyBuy Siteground
SiteGround's Net Promoter Score (NPS) is 62 compared to 46 by Bluehost. Essentially, NPS measures how many customers are so satisfied with their interactions with the company that they are likely to promote it to people they know.
To put that in context, an NPS score above 50 means that many customers are so happy with the brand that they are likely to stick around because they see real value in that business. Moreover, this is the score of many leading companies such as Apple, Sony and Amazon. While Bluehost's NPS score of 46 is still good, it's not quite as impressive as SiteGround.
We also looked at another important metric - reviews and ratings from Trustpilot. Trustpilot is a trusted source for reviews with a total of more than 97 million reviews posted there.
As you can see below, SiteGround has a rating of 4.7 / 5, while Bluehost's result was disappointing with a rating of 1.5 / 5.
Major Update (May 2020): SiteGround has shifted its entire infrastructure to Google Cloud Platform. This means that our site is now hosted on the same servers used for Google's top services, such as YouTube, Gmail, and Google.com itself.
Kinsta also uses GCP and they are the fastest hosting service we have reviewed on this site. You can read more about that in this Kinsta Review and Kinsta Vs SiteGround comparison.
We have done an extensive comparison between SiteGround and Bluehost. Below you can see exactly how we arrived at our conclusions.
1. Bluehost vs SiteGround Speed Test - SiteGround is super fast.
Let's face it. In today's high-speed era, no one will hang around even a few seconds longer than they are used to loading a website. You could have the best content in the world, but unless you offer something really valuable (like diamonds) for free, nobody will stick around.
Check out how to slow down your website speed by 1-2 seconds with SiteGround, WP Rocket and Asset CleanUP PRO plugin.
With this in mind, we hosted 2 identical websites on Bluehost and SiteGround to understand their website speed.
This is the most accurate way to determine the speed of a hosting company's servers as both companies are served from the same location with the exact same web page. The small page size difference is due to server-level capture, as these hosts use different types of servers.
- Web page hosted on SiteGround loaded at 1.7 seconds.- The same webpage hosted at Bluehost loaded in 2.9s.
In this test, SiteGround loaded faster than Bluehost with 1.2S.
Additionally, we checked the web page load time difference after migrating from Bluehost to SiteGround. You can see the results below.
After the recent shift from SiteGround to Google Cloud data centers and their implementation of Ultrafast PHP, their websites are about 40% faster than before thanks to Google's high-performance servers.
Which hosting is faster worldwide?
While SiteGround had a better load time from the US, we wanted to know how SiteGround and Bluehost performed for the rest of the world. So we ran another test using the same website and checking the speed from multiple locations around the world.
The result of this test:
SiteGround performed well everywhere except in Singapore, where it showed high loading times.
SiteGround has managed to load 2x faster than Bluehost anywhere in the world, with the US loading time being the fastest.
It is clear from the above 2 tests that Bluehost has a good speed in the US, but their overall global speed is below average.
According to the latest Google survey, 53% of people will leave a page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. That said, the SiteGround website loaded in less than 3 seconds for 7 out of 8 locations in the above test.
Based on these numbers, it is clear that SiteGround is the winner in terms of speed. They have great servers, but the fact that they use the Google Cloud service, which has 24 servers around the world, also helps. The physical distance that the data must travel also affects the total load time.
SiteGround's Google servers are located in Chicago, London, Amsterdam, Milan, Frankfurt, Sydney and Singapore.
On the other hand, Bluehost does not disclose the location of all of their data centers, although some think they have one in Mumbai, another in Shanghai, and of course, their US locations in Provo and Orem, Utah.
more aboutSiteGround You can read the data center here.
As you can see below, SiteGround's performance is on par with premium hostings like Kinsta and WP Engine. However, those hosts will cost you an extra $ 10-20 / month compared to SiteGround.
#SiteGround allows you to change the server location of your website.
One of the most effective ways to speed up your website is to put your website 's files on a server that is close to your target audience.
For example, if your traffic is from Chicago, try partnering with a host that has its servers in Chicago. This is highly recommended unless you can afford to set up a CDN for your website.
Also read: Max CDN (Stackpath) vs Cloudflare - what's the fastest CDN in 2019?
If you host your website with SiteGround, you can change the server location with just 2-3 clicks from the account panel.
SiteGround makes it really easy to change the server location at any time. So don't worry if you don't know where most of your target audience is when you start.
Bluehost, on the other hand, does not let us choose a server location even during the first process.
We have seen so many people switch from Bluehost to SiteGround because of their excellent speed and support.
2. Popularity - SiteGround has quadrupled its customer base in the past 5 years.
SiteGround only hosted 500,000 websites in 2015, but they will be hosting more than 2 million websites in 2020, a quadrupling in size in the past 5 years.
In addition, 80% of SiteGround's 2 million domains are sites built on WordPress, making them very experienced in handling a WordPress website.
On the other hand, Bluehost has not registered any growth in recent years.
Bluehost is owned by EIG ...
Bluehost grew rapidly until 2013 when they were acquired by EIG. After the acquisition, Bluehost, like any other EIG company, began to receive so many bad reviews that it eventually led to a significant decline in popularity and growth.
- Twitter responses to EIG companies.
3. Bluehost Vs SiteGround 2019 Pricing - Bluehost is cheaper in the long run
So, which plan is best?
Every website has different requirements depending on the content and the amount of traffic. Hence, choosing the right hosting plan for your site is very important as it can save you a lot of money and also help you with future performance issues.
We compared the performance and features of the Startup, GrowBig and GoGeek plan SiteGround separately, in another post, to help you choose the most suitable SiteGround plan for your website.
Customers who choose SiteGround's GoGeek plan will also receive Advanced Priority Support. This new support level gives access to highly experienced support agents. That's why you receive high quality support with very fast response times through the GoGeek plan.
Also read: How do you choose between shared, VPS, dedicated and cloud hosting for your website?
Backup and recovery
Most hosting companies do not provide regular backups unless you pay extra for the service.
However, that's not the case with SiteGround as they offer daily automatic backups. You can restore the backup at any time with just one click.
With SiteGround, we can also create an additional backup upon request. This is very important as you can back up all files just before making any major changes to your website.
Bluehost uses a third-party tool called CodeGuard for backup and recovery. It's a great tool, but it will cost you an extra $ 8 per month.
4. Server quality test: - Which hosting is better for websites with many visitors?
server quality serverThe server is where your website files are hosted and stored. High quality servers ensure a smooth experience for your visitors.
For this reason, we wanted to test the performance of each host server when hundreds of visitors approached them at once.
The green line indicates the number of visitors and the blue line indicates the adjacent response time as traffic increases.
Check out the SiteGround server quality test result.
Check out the Bluehost server quality test result.
Which hosting does the fastest domain name server use?
You've probably heard the acronym DNS (Domain Name Server) but aren't sure why it should affect your choice of web hosting.
First, I want to give a short answer to the question: what is DNS?
When you type a web address, eg inlinehostblogger.com, your Internet Service Provider (ISP) goes to the Domain Name Server (DNS) for that domain and retrieves the IP addresses associated with that domain. This IP address is where your website's files are located.
So DNS is basically like a phone book that allows your browser to find your website files.
Once you buy web hosting, most companies will manage your DNS as part of their service. That means they host your DNS information on their server.
Benefits of a better domain name server include
improved website speed.
Better protection against attacks.
Read more benefits of a better DNS here.
That's why we tested the DNS speed of both hosting companies using a tool called SOLVEDNS.
Check out Bluehost Vs SiteGround DNS speed test result.
5. Uptime Test - Do they meet their 99.99% uptime guarantee?
Uptime is the amount of time that your website is active for your visitors. Many factors can influence the availability of your website.
Included -
Hardware failure
Server maintenance
Electrical shutdowns of your hosting company.
Therefore, this test is very important as low uptime can negatively impact business results through loss of credibility, lost sales, drop in Google rankings and more.
Both Bluehost and SiteGround guarantee a 99.99% uptime guarantee.
Do they really meet this warranty?
We used Host Tracker to monitor about 150 websites to determine a more accurate figure for web hosting uptime.
Bluehost vs SiteGround uptime comparison for the past four months.
The chart above gives you a snapshot of how much better SiteGround is performing in terms of uptime compared to Bluehost.
But about two years ago, Bluehost's technical infrastructure had a major overhaul. Since then, Bluehost has been able to deliver a 99.99% uptime as you'll see in the month-to-month uptime stats below. In fact, SiteGround will reimburse you with free hosting if your website is below the 99.99% guaranteed network uptime. falls.
1 month of free hosting for every 1% uptime lost below 99.99%.
6. Security - SiteGround is more secure against multiple web threats and malware.
SiteGround has recently developed an anti-bot AI that protects its customers from brute force attacks .
Read more: - What is a brute force attack and how can it destroy your website in minutes?
The new bot prevention system has produced amazing results as it blocks a whopping 2 million attacks on their servers. The AI system not only protects customer websites, but also frees up server resources that can now be used by customers.
The AI system monitors all SiteGround servers simultaneously and analyzes the data. Based on the results, automatic action is taken to stop malicious bots.
Another great thing is that with their recent shift to Google Cloud data centers, you get the benefit of a security model that is highly regarded as one of the best, securing products like Gmail, Google Search, YouTube, etc.. In fact, your website can ask for nothing better.
Bluehost relies on Cloudflare to protect its customers from DDoS attacks. They also provide other security features such as spam protection, password-protected directories, and an option to blacklist certain IPs.
Bluehost vs SiteGround for Beginners - Which Hosting is Right for Beginners?
Read more: How to start a WordPress blog with SiteGround? A guide for beginners.
# Free migration for your website.
SiteGround offers free transfer from your website to their servers.
I started a free transfer request with SiteGround for one of my test websites. They successfully transferred the site within 24 hours even though it was a non-working day.
SiteGround transferred a very large website for free in just 24 hours.
However, SiteGround has discontinued this feature for the StartUp plan in the May 2020 update. This professional transfer is now only available on the Grow Big and Go Geek plan. As a result, StartUp plan customers must use their free WordPress migrator plugin for this purpose.
Website transfer fees for each web host.
SiteGround - Free
HostGator - Free
Kinsta - Free
GoDaddy - Not available
7. Bluehost Vs SiteGround - WordPress is easy with SiteGround and Bluehost
Choosing a web host with managed WordPress plans has many benefits, such as pre-configured WordPress technologies, which allow you to use SSL and CDNs without hassle, and better overall performance.
In addition, security is also better as the host can configure the server to provide protection against WordPress-specific threats.
#Bluehost and SiteGround are officially recommended by WordPress.
WordPress is a popular CMS tool for building and websites that powers more than 30% of the entire internet. Officially, they only recommend 3 hosting companies, and SiteGround and Bluehost are two of them.
Additionally, SiteGround's WordPress hosting (same as regular shared hosting plans) is available at very attractive rates. It includes some great WordPress tools, including automatic updates and free WordPress migrations using their own plugin.
Learn how to migrate your WordPress website with WP Migrator.
Moreover, their SG optimization plugin promises to improve the performance of your website by 200-300%, these features will cost you a premium fee from other plugin developers.
They have added their own SuperCacher to their server which relies on NGINX technology to increase the speed significantly. They also provide a free CDN.
Bluehost WordPress plans start at $ 20 per month. It offers comparable performance to their shared hosting plans.
So, which WordPress host is better for WordPress: SiteGround or Bluehost?
In terms of performance and what's included in the offering, SiteGround and Bluehost offer practically the same thing.
Moreover, Joomla and Drupal are some of the other popular CMS hosting options offered by SiteGround and Bluehost.
Cloud Hosting - Bluehost cloud is nothing but an extension of their shared hosting.
Cloud hosting is based on innovative technology that uses multiple servers to house your website files and software . It means that your website will stay up and running even if one or more servers encounter unexpected problems.
Read more: what Cloud Hosting actually is?
Skip this part if you are running a small business or if your website is not meant to make a profit.
Which Cloud hosting is better?
Bluehost vs SiteGround - Which Hosting Uses The Latest Technology?
Bluehost and SiteGround use Apache + NGINX web server technology, running NGINX for static files and Apache for dynamic files. They use the NGINX reverse proxy caching solution for Apache to give your visitors a fast website. If you don't know what this means, ignore it, just know that this is a popular formula used by major hosting companies.
Additionally, SiteGround has shifted its entire infrastructure to Google Cloud Platform, where the infrastructure is built on virtual machines rather than bare metal servers. This fact aids in easy auto-scaling of resources at peak times. What this step also means is that your website will be hosted on one of the fastest and most powerful networks used by major companies such as Apple, Netflix, YouTube and Gmail.
Apache VS NGINX Servers - Which Are Better?
SiteGround has already released PHP 7.4. Conversely, Bluehost has not yet given their customers access to PHP 7.2 and they are still running PHP 7.0. And support for #PHP 5.6 and PHP 7 will end after December.
PHP 7.4 was released on November 28, 2019 and was available on SiteGround as early as December 14. SiteGround and Kinsta are the only two hosting companies currently offering PHP 7.4.
Why is the PHP version important? And more about SiteGround and the PHP version of Bluehost
In the past 2 years, most sites have rapidly adopted HTTPS and HTTPS usage has increased from 40% to over 90% in the past 3 years according to Chrome statistics.
- Report Chrome statistics on the increased HTTPS usage over the past 3 years.
However, a major problem with people going to HTTPS sites is the slight increase in load time as a result. This was addressed by SiteGround using the latest TCP 1.3 and OCSP stapling method.
Moreover, SiteGround is one of the first hosting companies to provide QUICK speed technology for their websites. This technology helps websites load faster in areas with slow internet connections.
This protocol, known as HTTP / 3, is in fact a new technology that promises to improve performance and security and will become the standardized version of HTTP.
On the other hand, Bluehost is much slower across the board in terms of updates and new features, which puts them quite far behind SiteGround in terms of advanced technology.
8. Customer Support
Customers are very important in dealing with everyday issues related to websites, including issues with downtime, server connectivity or security.
A reliable and fast customer service team is what you should look for to resolve these issues quickly, without affecting your website.
That's why I've tried reaching out to both SiteGround and Bluehost live chat teams for support one after the other and here are the results.
Bluehost took 2 minutes to connect, while SiteGround managed to reply within seconds of connecting.
SiteGround's support is A +
SiteGround is best known for their excellent support in the web hosting industry, which is why many users choose to partner with this company. This was evident when they won theSupport Stevie Award for Best Customers For the year 2020.
However, there were some complaints about long wait times in April-June 2020. This was explained by SiteGround as one of those rare cases due to COVID, pushing it to a higher level of activity by all website users as online presence became much more important for many businesses.
SiteGround won the Stevie Award for Customer Of the Year
SupportBluehost, on the other hand, is outsourcing their support to third world countries and teams that have little knowledge about Bluehost and web hosting in general. Their live chat usually routes chat requests to a higher authority, which means it takes another 48 hours to get a response. This can be quite frustrating and lead to many days of downtime.
Support waiting time for each host.
SiteGround 0-6 Seconds
Kinsta 0-1 Minute
Bluehost 2-3 Minutes
HostGator 3-5 Minutes
GoDaddy 5-10 Minutes
The Bluehost customer service team is pathetic most of the time.
Twitter is full of complaints about Bluehost's support team. There were about 6 dissatisfied customers who expressed their dissatisfaction in just 6 hours.
9. User Interface
The user interface is what we call a control panel. Both hosting companies used to come up with cPanel.
However, starting July 2019, SiteGround hosting will use their own built-in custom control panel called SiteTool, replacing cPanel. Existing customers will continue to use cPanel until they switch to the new panel.
SiteGround Control Panel Called Site Tool
According to SiteGround, cPanel limits their ability to extend and integrate new technology to give you a safe and reliable website. Additionally, SiteGround has carefully analyzed years of data that cPanel features most users rely on, and incorporated those features into their new panel.
Plus, they've added a lot of cool features like the ability to add contributors to your site. You can use the collaborator feature to give or revoke access to your site to developers and customers without having to share your credentials.
Here's more about the SiteGround Control Panel.
Bluehost uses cPanel user interface
cPanel, the easiest and most common control panel in the blogosphere.
In addition, cPanel comes with over 52 one-click installers for popular scripts such as WordPress, Joomla, Weebly, etc. This is a great benefit for newbies who may not be familiar with the coding aspects of a website.
Bluehost cPanel: Try Demo
SiteGround Staging Tool
SiteGround provides a great tool to help customers test changes and new features without breaking their live website.
Basically, this tool creates a development copy of WordPress and Joomla sites, on which customers can experiment to their heart's content.
Using the SiteGround Staging environment means that any changes will not affect the live website, allowing customers to determine in advance if what they are doing will help or harm their site.
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