WordPress hosting with Bluehost
Let me start with Bluehost, only because I’ve had over 5 years experience with using them.
I actually started my blogging venture with Bluehost back in 2010.
It was one of the recommended hosting sites on the WordPress.org site, and it still is today.
Services Offered – Bluehost offers domains, shared hosting packages, cloud hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, WooCommerce hosting, and WordPress hosting with one-click installation feature.
Reliability & Security – So this is the part you need to read about. When I began using Bluehost back in 2009, they were without a doubt incredibly reliable. Easily the best in the business I might add.
Uptime was really good too. The first couple of years I experienced only 1 downtime, and that was when the company decided to install some new upgrades, but nothing much to complain about.
From around 2013 and onwards, uptime and the general quality of the service I received from Bluehost became something of an issue.
In the final year of using Bluehost for web hosting, myself including many other customers of Bluehost were experiencing very frequent and prolonged durations of downtimes.
On 1st April 2014, my website experienced downtime for 3 whole days, with actually no real explanation from Bluehost other than they knew about the problem and was trying to fix whatever issue was going on.
Many other customers were experiencing the same downtime issue, however, I can’t speak for them, I know.
That became the normal thing afterward, to be honest, they were frequently trying to solve some kind of downtime problem.
I used this tool to calculate the uptime I was experiencing from Bluehost over a 12 month period, minus all the downtimes.
It turned out that my site was experiencing an uptime score of 99.20%.
Most people would argue, well, that’s not too bad surely. Well, consider this, I’ve been with SiteGround for coming up to 4 years now, and I’ve yet to experience my website going down with them.
Asides from downtime, what else was wrong with Bluehost?
When it comes to security, Bluehost is still pretty solid in my opinion.
In my time using them, I’ve only experienced one occasion where an attempt was actually being made to hack into my site, which I guess really doesn’t have anything to do with Bluehost.
Luckily the Bluehost tech team were on the case before I could even bring it to their attention.
Uptime & page load response time
**View Bluehost page load speed and uptime for the last 8 months here.
Affordability – Bluehost is not the cheapest around, but still nevertheless reasonably affordable when you weigh up what you get.
According to their website, what you get is unmetered and unlimited everything.
Shared hosting starts from $7.99 per month ($3.95 with their current 2019 special offer) for a Basic plan, whilst their Prime plan will set you back $14.99 per month ($5.95 with their current 2018 special offer).
If you’re just starting out, then the basic plan will be ample enough for you.
Customer service and technical support – On all the occasions that I’ve used Bluehost customer service, they have been very responsive, well mannered, and ready to assist.
They answer chat requests fairly quickly and are pretty good at solving small issues and minor technical problems.
I found, however, that the more technical the issue was for the Bluehost team, they would struggle to resolve a problem.
On one occasion I remember, I was experiencing some problems with my site CPU throttling my hosting account.
The only option Bluehost had to offer me at the time was to upgrade and pay more money for a VPS plan. They insisted in fact.
I signed up to a VPS account paying a hefty $35 per month for almost 12 months…
I later learned, when I migrated over to SiteGround, that I didn’t actually need a VPS plan at all. All I had to do was optimize my site, delete a few plugins and clean up my database.
I thought that was pretty cheeky from Bluehost.
Bluehost offers 24/7 support via live chat, support ticket, and telephone. They also use Twitter to provide help and support.
Facts and stats about Bluehost – Here are some interesting things I found about Bluehost.
Bluehost hosts over 2% of all the domain names in use on the internet. – Source.
Bluehost powers over 2 million websites worldwide.
Final words – Despite being a popular web host provider, and based on my personal experience with them over the five years, Bluehost are not the best in the business, and again, that’s my personal opinion.
They’re not the worst either.
I would recommend Bluehost to anyone starting out for the first time, but I wouldn’trecommend anyone upgrade to them from another hosting provider.
With a brand new website, you can’t really go wrong with Bluehost. If you have a much larger site or blog, however, I’d be reluctant to recommend using them as a primary host provider.
All that being said guys and dolls, I haven’t used Bluehost since 2016 now, and who knows, perhaps they have improved, perhaps they haven’t.
Score?
I give Bluehost a respectable score of 3.6 out of 5.0. A bit more if it wasn’t for the frequent downtimes that I personally experienced during my time with them.
If you want to give Bluehost a try for your WordPress website hosting, click here to get started. (Disclaimer is located below this post).
WordPress hosting with HostGator
OK, so I’ve not used HostGator for as long as I’ve used Bluehost, I want to get that off my chest first.
I started a second blog project way back in 2011 called Online Income Journal, which was, of course, hosted on HostGator’s Hatchling Plan.
This was just a small personal blog project that really only lasted for about a year before I decided to kill it off.
It didn’t have much in the way of traffic either, around 20 visits per day at most.
During my short time with HostGator, I did experience a very good all-around service.
Services offered – HostGator offers shared hosting, cloud hosting, dedicated WordPress hosting, VPS and dedicated servers and domain names.
Reliability – Even though I was a customer of HostGator for only about 16 months, I was quite impressed with the reliability of their service.
I experienced zero downtime with my site during its short life, and so never really had the chance to use and experience their customer support properly.
The signup process was fairly straightforward with HostGator, that I will say.
And, once you’re in, you have access to a similar setup as with Bluehost, with cPanel and smart web developing tools, and of course that one-click install feature for first-time WordPress users.
Uptime and page load response time
**View HostGator page load speed and uptime for the last 8 months here.
Affordability – HostGator is one of the most affordable web host providers around.
Their prices start from $3.95 per month for a Hatchling Plan for shared hosting on a 36-month plan.
There’s also a Baby Plan and a Business Plan as well, all with unmetered bandwidth.
In addition to already being cost-effective, HostGator frequently hosts special offers throughout the year.
Customer service and technical support – As I said I’ve never had to contact customer support regarding their service or any issues with my personal blog project.
That being said, HostGator offers support via Live Chat, phone or fax. You can also write to them directly using conventional mail should you wish.
Facts and stats about HostGator – Here are some interesting facts about HostGator.
- HostGator was given the Best Customer Service award in 2010. Source.
- HostGator was given the Best Small Business Hosting award in 2011. Source.
Final words – Just to be clear once again, I haven’t been a customer of HostGator for long enough to really score them properly.
I’ve heard mixed feelings about the quality of the service they provide over the years from people I have connected with in my blog community.
However, from my short time with them, HostGator have been a great host and I would recommend them to anyone starting out with a small website or personal blog project.
I give HostGator a respectable 4.2 out of 5.0.
WordPress hosting with SiteGround
So we come around to SiteGround.
SiteGround is the hosting provider which I’m currently using for Magnet4Blogging, and I have been since May of 2014. I switched from Bluehost as I mentioned earlier.
So this is how SiteGround got onto my radar, it’s really quite interesting, well I think anyway.
Someone at SiteGround had noticed my mention on Twitter about my frustration with Bluehost and downtimes, and what they did was sympathize with me and offered me a better option.
After a quick friendly chat with one of their sales team member, I ended up signing up for 12 months contract with SiteGround, and they even migrated my site over for me all within a day.
How about that for service?
Services offered – SiteGround offers shared, cloud and reseller hosting, dedicated servers and domain names, website migration.
On their shared hosting plan they offer three tiers. StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek.
Currently, I am on a GoGeek myself, however, if you’re developing your blog or website from complete scratch, the StartUp plan will give you plenty enough resources.
Reliability – SiteGround claims to provide 99.9 percent server uptime on their website.
Well, I’m happy to report, however, that in the last 4 years of using them, I’ve actually experienced 100 percent server uptime!
So, if you were to ask me – “Are they reliable?”
My answer would be 100%. No pun intended there 
As for performance and security, SiteGround thrives on the robustness and secureness of their service, with SDD, latest speed technologies, free SLL, auto updates, firewall rules and monitoring with daily backup added to their service
Uptime and page load response time
**View SiteGround page load speed and uptime for the last 8 months here.
Affordability – SiteGround, again like Bluehost isn’t the cheapest web host providers on the web. But, what is affordable or cheap to one person is completely another thing for someone else, right?
Like I said, you’re either willing to pay peanuts for a poor service, or a higher premium for a more reliable service. And I know that sometimes you can pay MORE and expect a reliable service, but actually, end up getting rubbish service.
The StartUp plan with SiteGround will set you back $9.95 per month (Currently there’s 60% off deal with SiteGround, which means you pay only $3.95 per month) for a 12 month period.
The Grow Big plan will set you back $14.95 per month (Current offer is $5.95 per month), and the GoGeek plan will set you back $29.95 per month (Current offer is $11.95).
Click here to learn about the latest SiteGround Sale deals.
Customer service and technical support – SiteGround provides customer service and technical support through means of phone, chat or ticket.
I’ve only ever had to contact SiteGround technical support once, still to this day! And we’re now in 2018…
The reason for contacting them was regarding CPU throttling problems that I was experiencing on my account at the time.
Unlike Bluehost, they didn’t tell me that I needed to upgrade my account or pay more money to get a better service, phew…
What they did was help me to identify where the problem was coming from, although they didn’t succeed in finding a solution.
I was later able to identify a simple setting in the WP theme I was using at the time, which was causing the high CPU throttling.
I give SiteGround customer team and technical support a big thumbs up, simply for the fact that they were willing to help me out before telling me that I needed to pay more money for improved service.
With SiteGround you also get access to a host of resources, including tutorial videos, webinars and there’s even a setup wizard for new folks.
Facts and stats about SiteGround – Here are some interesting stats about SiteGround.
- SiteGround have data centers in three Continents. USA, Europe, and Asia.
- From my own findings, I’ve managed to achieve 100% uptime from SiteGround in the last 48 months. Woop, Woop!
Final words – I’ll remind you that SiteGround isn’t a cheap option, and if you join them at a discounted rate, don’t expect that discount to continue through when you renew your hosting service with them in a year’s time. I certainly noticed how my hosting bill went up by a whopping $80 in the second year.
That being said guys and dolls, I recommend them wholeheartedly!
If you don’t mind paying a little extra more for peace of mind and reliable web hosting, then get with SiteGround.
Let them take care of hosting your site securely so that you can get on with what’s more important, building your blog or online business.
I personally give SiteGround a respectable 4.8 out of 5.
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