Web hosting plays an important role in ensuring optimal website performance. It’s crucial to choose the right hosting provider, so you get the best features for your site at a fair price.
However, since web hosting services are in high demand, there is an abundance of companies offering attractive services. So, choosing the right one for your business can get somewhat overwhelming.
To narrow down the search, we will compare two popular hosting providers — Hostinger and Bluehost. We’ll cover their plans, pricing, performance, and customer support.
Hostinger vs Bluehost: Shared Hosting Plans and Pricing
Shared web hosting is a popular option for beginners and professionals who want to build small to medium-sized websites. It’s cost-effective because multiple websites share the resources of a single server.
Plus, shared hosting is easier to manage than other hosting types, making it ideal for users who are just starting out.
Both Hostinger and Bluehost provide excellent shared web hosting services worth considering. Let’s take a detailed look at what they offer.
Hostinger — Powerful and Accessible
Hostinger offers three shared hosting plans. The lowest-tier plan, Single Shared Hosting, includes 30 GB of SSD storage, one email address, and 100 GB of bandwidth for $1.39/month. It’s ideal for small-sized websites with less than 10,000 visitors per month.
The Premium Shared Hosting plan offers 100 GB of SSD storage, up to 100 email addresses, a free domain name for one year, and unlimited bandwidth for $2.59/month. This shared hosting plan is perfect for small businesses or websites with growing traffic.
Also, both Single and Premium plans provide weekly backups to ensure your data is safe.
Consider upgrading to the Business Shared Hosting plan for $4.99/month if you need more resources. You’ll get 200 GB SSD storage, daily backups, and a free content delivery network (CDN) in addition to all the features included in the Premium plan. This plan supports up to 100 websites with up to 100,000 monthly visits.
All Hostinger shared hosting plans come with a free SSL certificate, WordPress optimization tools, Cloudflare DNS firewall, a 99.9% uptime guarantee, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Bluehost — Scales With You
Bluehost offers four shared hosting plans. Its Basic plan, at $3.95/month, provides 50 GB of SSD storage, five email addresses, and 100 MB of email storage space for one website.
Opting for the Plus plan at $5.95/month will give you access to unlimited SSD storage, email accounts, and MySQL databases. It also comes with a free Microsoft 365 Email Essentials license for 30 days.
At $6.95/month, the Choice Plus plan allocates the same amount of resources as the Plus plan. It also provides free domain privacy services and backups by CodeGuard for one year.
Meanwhile, the Pro plan includes all of the features mentioned above, a dedicated IP address, and free backups for the contract term. For $13.95/month, the Pro plan supports an unlimited number of websites.
All Bluehost web hosting plans come with a free SSL certificate, a domain name, a $100 Google Ads credit for users in the United States and Canada, and unmetered bandwidth.
Hostinger vs Bluehost: WordPress Hosting, VPS Hosting, and Other Plans
Shared hosting might not be a good fit for large-scale websites such as eCommerce stores. Most web hosting companies, including Bluehost and Hostinger, offer multiple web hosting plans to accommodate different project types.
WordPress hosting is best for users who want to build their site using this popular CMS. The tools and features included within the plan ensure optimal performance on WordPress.
With cloud hosting, you get dedicated resources from a network of servers. It’s easier to manage than VPS hosting and offers maximum scalability and uptime.
Unlike cloud hosting, VPS hosting allocates dedicated resources within a virtual private server, making it ideal for resource-intensive projects. It ensures excellent security, stability, and flexibility to scale your website and control the server’s configuration.
That said, managing VPS hosting requires advanced technical knowledge.
Dedicated hosting is the best choice for users working on large-scale projects with high traffic volume. In other words, it rents out a server to a single user.
While it costs much more than other hosting types, you’ll get maximum flexibility in managing server resources based on your needs.
Last but not least, eCommerce hosting provides an easy business solution for online stores. It comes with dedicated business management tools and integration with various payment processors.
The following section will cover the various hosting types Hostinger and Bluehost have to offer.
Hostinger Has a Plan For Everyone
Hostinger offers managed WordPress hosting plans at $1.99-$11.59/month.
The Starter plan provides the best value for money as it comes with 100 GB of SSD disk space, unlimited bandwidth, and a free domain name for $2.99/month.
The main differences between the plans lie in the amount of available disk space, backups, storage, bandwidth, and type of Jetpack plan.
They all come with a one-click WordPress installer, pre-installed plugins, and 24/7 customer support.
Other features include a free SSL certificate, a LiteSpeed web server, an uptime guarantee of 99.9%, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Cloud hosting plans range between $9.99-$69.99/month, depending on the CPU power, RAM, and SSD disk space needed. Hostinger manages server uptime, maintenance, and monitoring, making it a beginner-friendly solution.
All of our cloud hosting plans come with a free domain name, a dedicated IP address, an SSL certificate, daily backups, CDN integration, and 100 email accounts. Hostinger also includes a money-back guarantee for the first 30 days on each plan.
Hostinger’s VPS hosting plans range from $3.95-$38.99/month, depending on the RAM, SSD storage space, and bandwidth needed. Users get full root access and a dedicated IP address with IPv4 and IPv6 support.
Linux-based VPS hosting plans also include an auto OS installer with the most popular operating system templates, such as CentOS, Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse, and Debian.
WooCommerce hosting services are available at $3.99-$23.99/month for users looking to build an online store on WordPress.
The WooCommerce Starter plan offers 100 GB of SSD storage, up to 100 email accounts, Cloudflare DNS, and unlimited databases to support up to 100 websites. It also comes with a free domain, SSL certificate, migration, and managed WordPress.
With this web hosting service, you get to choose which data center to use for the best possible website speed. We also support WordPress multisite, making it easier to manage multiple websites from a single dashboard.
Hostinger also provides Minecraft hosting services at $8.95-$29.95/month, and email hosting powered by Google Workspace for $6/month per mailbox and Titan Mail for $0.99-$2.49/month per mailbox.
Bluehost Offers Dedicated Hosting
Bluehost offers two types of WordPress hosting ‒ unmanaged and managed. The latter caters to users new to WordPress, providing auto-updates, detailed analytics, and multiple SEO and business tools at the price of $9.95-$27.95/month. While the web host includes free daily backups in all plans, you have to get a domain.
The unmanaged WordPress hosting service provides more starting tools at a lower price at $3.95-$6.95/month. Users will get a free domain and SSL certificate in addition to WordPress tools and support.
However, this hosting type lacks the optimization and automation features that the managed hosting type provides.
Bluehost provides VPS hosting for $19.99-$59.99/month. Its highest-tier plan comes with 120 GB of SSD storage, 8 GB of RAM, and 3 TB of bandwidth.
All VPS hosting plans come with a free domain for one year and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Bluehost offers dedicated hosting services with prices ranging between $79.99-$119.99/month. The highest-tier plan provides 1 TB of storage, 16 GB of RAM, 15 TB of bandwidth, and five IP addresses.
All dedicated hosting plans include a free SSL, a one-year domain, and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Since this hosting type is unmanaged, the web host gives users full root access and dedicated customer support for better website configuration and management.
Like Hostinger, Bluehost offers WooCommerce hosting plans. The two options available, the Standard and Premium plans, cost $12.95/month and $24.95/month, respectively.
Some of the Premium plan’s features include a subscription system, online bookings, and tax management.
Email hosting with Microsoft 365 is also available for $2.99-$9.99/month. The plans include access to Microsoft Outlook Web and automatic updates.
Hostinger vs Bluehost: Which One Has the Best Performance?
A web hosting company should not only suit your project’s needs but guarantee optimal performance. The speed, uptime, and security of your web hosting services also affect your site’s visibility on search engines.
Hostinger Offers a 99.9% Uptime and Fast Loading Speed
Pingdom showed that Hostinger has delivered over 99.9% uptime as promised. The average response time during the same period is 346 ms. Having data centers in several different regions across the globe ensures fast loading speed regardless of visitor location.
Additionally, Hostinger supports LiteSpeed Cache on the latest Cloud Linux server platform to increase efficiency, stability, and uptime. We also offer optional Cloudflare CDN to improve website loading speed further and protect the site against DDoS attacks.
Security-wise, all Hostinger web hosting services come with free SSL security, incremental backups, Wanguard anti-DDoS traffic analyzer, and a web application firewall on each server.
Bluehost Has a High Average Uptime
According to Pingdom’s log, Bluehost still delivers a high-average uptime despite not providing an uptime guarantee. However, it falls short in response time, averaging 737 ms.
Bluehost also has data centers around the world. However, the ones dedicated to Bluehost.com are focused on North America and Europe.
If your audience resides within Asia, you may have a faster response time with Bluehost India or Bluehost China ‒ the latter has data centers in the US, UK, Hong Kong, and India.
Like Hostinger, Bluehost also provides Cloudflare CDN to improve website security. The CPU protection system in shared servers monitors resources like RAM and CPU. This ensures that all users have the memory or bandwidth needed according to their hosting plan.
Besides Cloudflare CDN, the standard security features include SSL certificates, secure shell (SSH) access, and multi-layered spam protection. SiteLock and CodeGuard subscriptions are also available as an add-on, offering malware protection, database scanning, and backup features.
Hostinger vs Bluehost: Overall User Experience and Support
User experience is another factor to consider when choosing a web hosting provider. This includes the registration and upgrading process and the hosting control panel’s usability.
Having access to the tools you need will ensure a good hosting experience and effective website management.
Furthermore, you should also have access to a reliable customer support service, knowledge base, and tutorials.
Whether you’re just starting out or have some technical skill, it’s easy to set up your web hosting service with Hostinger. Multiple payment methods are available to accommodate different preferences, including credit cards, PayPal, and cryptocurrencies.
Hostinger developed its own control panel called hPanel. It’s simple yet intuitive enough that new users won’t have any difficulty navigating through the interface.
The hPanel also gives you access to the Zyro website builder if you don’t want to build a site with WordPress.
Hostinger customers can contact our multilingual customer support via live chat. Support tickets are available to non-customers with an active email address. In addition, we also have an extensive knowledge base and a vast library of tutorials for all skill levels.
Bluehost Offers Phone Support
While Bluehost doesn’t have live chat support like Hostinger, it offers chat and phone support for its users.
Like Hostinger, Bluehost also has a knowledge base full of tutorials, guides, and answers to frequently asked questions.
The web hosting company utilizes a customized cPanel on all of its hosting plans, accessible after logging in to the Bluehost account. The company also provides a website builder called Builder as an alternative to WordPress.
How to Move from Bluehost to Hostinger
If you already have a website but decided to change hosting providers, migrating your website to Hostinger is not complicated.
For WordPress site owners, the easiest way to migrate their website is to use Hostinger’s automatic migration tool.
However, it’s still possible to use a WordPress plugin if you prefer. If your site doesn’t use a MySQL database, you have to upload your website files to the public_html folder on the Hostinger server.
If you rather use a plugin, an excellent option is the All-in-One-WP Migration plugin by ServMask.
Remember that you need to delete any caching plugins you might have before starting the migration process to avoid conflict with Hostinger LiteSpeed caching software.
Then, install the plugin on both your Bluehost and Hostinger accounts.
Here are the steps to migrate a WordPress site from Bluehost to Hostinger using the All-in-One WP Migration plugin.
1.Open the WordPress admin dashboard in your Bluehost account and access All-in-One WP Migration -> Export.
2.Select Export To -> File, then download the backup file in the WPRESS format to your computer.
3.Navigate to the admin dashboard of your Hostinger account, then access All-in-One WP Migration -> Import.
4.Select Import From -> File, and locate the exported file. Click Finish once the process is complete.
5.Point your domain name over to Hostinger — we’ll explain how to do it later.
Alternatively, migrate your WordPress website manually via the File Manager on your hosting dashboard or a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) client like FileZilla.
Here’s how to manually migrate your WordPress site from Bluehost to Hostinger.1. Backup the Website on Bluehost
First, download your WordPress files to your computer using an FTP client. We’ll explain how to do it using FileZilla:
a-Connect FileZilla to your Bluehost account.
b-Access your WordPress root folder (public_html) and select all the files in it.
c-Right-click the files and select Download.
After retrieving your WordPress files, the next step is to back up your WordPress database. The following steps will show you how to export your MySQL database with phpMyAdmin:
a-Navigate to phpMyAdmin from your Bluehost control panel.
b-Select your WordPress database, then click Export.
d-Choose the export method Quick. Set the format to SQL.
e-Click Go to start the backup process.
2. Import Website Files and Database Into Hostinger
Follow these steps to upload your website backup files to Hostinger’s server:
a-Connect FileZilla to your Hostinger account.
b-Navigate to the WordPress root folder (public_html) in the Remote Site column.
c-Locate the backup file in the Local Site column. Right-click it and select Upload. Make sure to decompress the backup file first.
Next, import your database backup file.
a-Access MySQL Databases from your hPanel.
b-Create a new MySQL database and take note of the database name, username, and password.
c-Go to Databases -> phpMyAdmin from hPanel. Access your new database.
d-Select Import, then upload the database backup file. Don’t change the default import settings.
3-Click the Go button at the bottom to start the import process.
3. Update Configuration File
After uploading all the backup files, the next step is to update the WordPress configuration file, wp-config.php, with the new MySQL database details.
a-Navigate to File Manager from your hPanel.
b-Open the public_html folder, then locate the wp-config.php file.
c-Right-click the file, and select Edit.
d-Replace the following values with the new database details from Step 2:
DB_NAME ‒ database name.
DB_USER ‒ admin username.
DB_PASSWORD ‒ admin password.
DB_HOST ‒ add our MySQL host mysql.hostinger.com.
e-Once you’re done, click Save and Close.
4. Point or Transfer Your Domain to Hostinger
Finally, point your domain name to Hostinger to complete the migration process. The following steps will show how to do it by changing your domain nameservers:
a-Find the domain nameservers for your Hostinger account by accessing the DNS Zone Editor from your hPanel and type NS into the search box. Our default nameservers are ns1.dns-parking.com and ns2.dns-parking.com.
b-Access your domain registrar’s control panel, then navigate to the DNS Zone Editor.
c-Delete all values from the nameserver fields, if there are any.
d-Input Hostinger’s nameservers, then save the changes.
If you want to transfer your domain name to Hostinger, make sure it meets the following requirements:
You have full ownership and control over the domain name you are transferring to Hostinger.
The domain name is older than 60 days and is unlocked at the current domain registrar.
The domain was not transferred to a different registrar within the last 60 days.
Privacy protection is disabled.
You have a valid EPP code from your current registrar.
Your domain is pointing to Hostinger.
While transferring your domain name isn’t necessary, it will simplify the maintenance process later on since your site is already on Hostinger.
Conclusion
In this article, we’ve compared Hostinger vs Bluehost based on the hosting types, pricing, performance, user experience, and customer support.
Bluehost offers a great user experience with excellent uptime. However, this web host’s starting prices are higher, even on the shared hosting’s Starter plan. You have to commit to a long-term plan to get a discount. Its average response time is also slower than Hostinger’s.
On the other hand, Hostinger has an advantage in terms of support and server response time. Despite not having dedicated hosting like Bluehost, they offer more varied hosting options for their users.
Overall, Hostinger is an excellent choice if you’re looking for an accessible solution that still provides abundant features.
We hope this article has helped you decide between Hostinger and Bluehost services.
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