Are you having trouble choosing the best host between Siteground vs Bluehost? Finding many uneven reviews which makes you confused in choosing one? Don’t worry I have written a complete review to help you decide the best one. By the end of this article, you will be able to choose the perfect host depending on your requirement. I am going to tell you everything without holding back any Information, The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly sides of both SiteGround and Bluehost.

Siteground vs Bluehost -Unbiased Review

Choosing the right web host is really matters nowadays so if you are a business owner, aspiring blogger or there’s just somebody trying to bring website online then this article is for you in choosing the best host. A bad web host will give you headaches, will waste your money, cost our website to run slow and may even delete your website without notice.

There might be two probable reasons for your presence here.

One, you are in the early stage of blogging or online career and seeing a lot of reviews online you can come to find out that, are they really worth your Investment?

Two, Your Previous host disappointed you with the poor website performance and not responding when you need them the most. (It happened to me too)

If you said yes to one of the above, Then I promise you, Today you will make an Informed decision about SiteGround and Bluehost.

I’ve used both Siteground and Bluehost over the years and I’ve done a comprehensive comparison below using my experience.

About Hosting

Bluehost History: Bluehost is founded in the year. Bluehost is owned by a single company called Endurance International Group (EIG).

So what exactly is EIG?

EIG is a company and the way they operate is they acquire small independent web hosting solutions companies rather and they bring them under their umbrella. Companies such as Bluehost, Hostgator, a small orange and a ton of today’s most popular web has operated under this umbrella.

Siteground History: Siteground is founded in the year and is a non-EIG hosting company. They have more than one data center location. Locations are US (Chicago), Netherlands (Amsterdam), the UK (London) and Singapore.

First of all, I want to tell you that Siteground and Bluehost are officially recommended by WordPress. WordPress is a popular CMS platform and web building tool that powers over 30% of the websites online.

Officially they recommend 4 web hosting companies and Siteground and Bluehost are two among them.

Which is more popular hosting? Siteground or Bluehost?

See the graph which shows the popularity of both hosting companies over the years.

This is the latest graph search of 2019 and you can see Bluehost is trending over Siteground.

I will be writing the review considering important factors in choosing the web host. The points are:

Disclaimer: I will be earning a small commission if you plan to purchase from the links in this article. You won’t be charged extra.

Bluehost vs SiteGround: Prices & Plans Compared

Number 1 point that comes to starting a website the budget (the price) you can afford. So investing part is personal.

When it comes to my decision on choosing the host. I choose which is affordable to me and also had good reviews in the marketplace. Some don’t mind paying extra amount if they are getting more quality. Neither SiteGround nor Bluehost has any bandwidth limitations – so get as much traffic as you can.

My personal advice to you is don’t go for cheap hosting or free hosting services if you really want to take your website or blog seriously.

Coming to our review

Siteground: Siteground pricing is slightly higher but they offer a better service, customer support if you are having problems with the website.

Let’s check their plans.

• StartUp for $2.95 a month: Hosting for 1 website, 10GB of storage, no bandwidth limitations, 24-hour support, and their in-house caching system.
• GrowBig for $6.95 a month: Hosting for unlimited websites, 20GB of space, unlimited bandwidth, priority support, and an advanced caching system.
• GoGeek for $13.95 a month: Same as the previous plans, advanced backup solution, Git repository, and a staging area.

You can check  complete plan features here

Bluehost:
These are the prices for the Bluehost shared hosting:
Basic for $3.95 a month: Host 1 website, 50GB of storage and unlimited bandwidth.
Plus for $5.95 a month: Unlimited websites, unlimited storage, and unlimited bandwidth.
Choice Plus for $5.95 a month: Same as the Plus plan with the advanced backup solution.

Check this pricing guide for more information.

Renewal Cost of Siteground is pretty high compared to Bluehost.
If you want to get hosting at a cheaper price I suggest you purchase hosting for 2 or 3 years to get the maximum discount.

Note: Both hosting companies offer a good discount for the first year.

Winner: Difficult to predict the winner. Both are cheaper in the first year or if you purchase hosting for 2 or 3 years. However, my vote goes to Bluehost here.

Siteground have only the option to pay with Credit Card. You can try using your debit card if that is enabled for international transactions.
Whereas…
Bluehost has options to pay with Credit Card or Paypal which is very handy for those who don’t have the credit card.

Speed

The second thing that comes to my mind after pricing is Speed.
Yes, I guess you also have the same thought.

If your website or blog is slow then you will be losing a lot of business online. The recommended speed to load your website is less than 3 seconds.

Winner: I have seen a good speed with Siteground over Bluehost. Vote goes to Siteground when it comes to speed.

Ease of Use

Both Siteground and Bluehost have cPanel features and also having a lot of common features.

Siteground: Siteground cPanel is a bit confusing. That is first you need to enter your account, click on “My Accounts” section and then you have access to cPanel

My Siteground cPanel

Bluehost: Bluehost cPanel is very easy to use and navigate as well. I love the design and structure of the Bluehost cPanel.

Bluehost cPanel

Winner: I find Bluehost’s cPanel is easy to use compared to Siteground. My vote goes to Bluehost.

Features

There are many things come into your mind when you think about the hosting features like Storage, Speed, Bandwidth and so on..

I also have the same things in my mind. So let’s see the differences.

Storage – How much space you’ll need?

Web storage is one of the essential factors to take into consideration while purchasing hosting.
To give you an idea 10gb storage is far enough until and unless you have loads of media files and videos to upload.

Bluehost basic plan has more storage than Siteground’s hosting plan. But Siteground used SSD as their storage drives which is more expensive and faster than Bluehost storage.

Winner: Bluehost is the winner when it comes to storage space. If you need a reliable and lot of space then Bluehost is the best option.

Downtime

First of all, let me tell you what is downtime. Downtime means your website will be down every other moment and you can imagine how much business you will be loosing if your website is down.

[Image Source: www.websitetooltester.com]

A good sign of good hosting is having at least 99.95% of uptime. I was impressed with the Siteground’s uptime compared to Bluehost. I used to have many issues with Bluehost’s uptime in the past. But in recent years, they have improved a lot.

Winner: Even though Bluehost is improved my vote goes to Siteground because they offer more security.

Backups:

Anything wrong can happen with your blog. In this time having a backup would be the best option which will be a lifesaver.

Siteground: Siteground is having a free backup option in their plan. Daily backups for the last 30 days of your site are present in the cPanel.
Bluehost: The basic plan though has a backup option which is limited to some functionalities like no individual restores.
Winner: My vote goes to Siteground here.

Site Migration

Maybe your not happy with the present host or the support is not good you need to migrate to a new hosting company. Many hosting companies offer FREE website migration as an add-on to their services.

Siteground: Siteground recently removed their free migration service in the basic  StartUp Plan, now you need to pay 30$ per site migration. Free migration is available in the other premium plans GrowBig and GoGeek plan
Bluehost: Bluehost don’t have the migration service addon. You need to pay 150$ to migrate 5 sites and 20 email accounts.
Winner: My vote goes to both hosting as in the basic plan Siteground doesn’t offer migration.

SSL

First, let me tell you what is SSL?
SSL is an encrypted certificate used to protect your website from hackers and enhance security. Nowadays it is mandatory according to Google and in terms of SEO, it is one of the 200 ranking factors.

Winner: Here both Siteground and Bluehost are the winners as they provide FREE SSL.

Scalability

As you grow your blog gradually your host should also be able to handle the traffic of your blog. If your hosting fails to accommodate your traffic you may lose many visitors instantly and business as well.

As a beginner, I recommend you to with any of the hosting companies. Both Siteground and Bluehost are perfect for beginners who don’t have much traffic.

But when your traffic is more you need to scale your blog to a reliable plan than the basic.
Both Siteground and Bluehost have the option to upgrade your plans. Siteground rates are high compared to Bluehost hosting.

Winner: Both Bluehost and SiteGround offer similar advanced solutions (e.g., dedicated servers). Equal Vote for both!

Note: Being honest, I’ve never had to use anything other than shared hosting. So I can’t tell how good or bad Bluehost and SiteGround’s advanced solutions are. So I am not explaining more details here.

Customer Support:

Siteground: Siteground hosting customer support is super fast and knowledgeable as well. Many times I got a chance to use their customer support and they were just amazing.
Bluehost: Bluehost hosting customer support was very slow but in recent years they have drastically improved a lot and knowledgable but many times they offer paid add on’s as a solution to the problem.
Winner: No hosting company can beat the customer support compared to Siteground. They are super fast.

Email Accounts

Having a custom email account is a must for your business to bring credibility to your business.
Like robert@discountcage.com adds more credibility than robert@gmail.com.
You can also setup forwarders and aliases for your business emails.

Both Siteground and Bluehost use providers like Horde, RoundCube and SquirrelMail to manage and access your emails.

Siteground: Siteground has unlimited email accounts with storage limit with a minimum of 2GB.
Bluehost: Bluehost has 5 email accounts with 100MB storage limit in their basic plan.
Winner: As they restrict storage and email accounts both are equally good and one vote for both the hostings.

Real Customer experience from Facebook Groups

The reviews below I have collected polls from some groups which I am a member and also used some for knowledge purpose.

Siteground has emerged the number 1 hosting company in recent years.

Let’s have a look

Best managed WordPress hosting 2018 Facebook Poll

Other poll
As per the above facebook polls, we can clearly say Siteground is the winner.

SiteGround or Bluehost – Which one should you choose?

What did I choose?

I have both the hosting companies with me but I am slightly impressed with Bluehost because of their better value for money. Bluehost also offers 4 tailored plans, you can choose based on your requirement.

My Final Verdict:

Both web hosting companies are tough competition with each other and managed to occupy the customer base with their excellent features, latest technologies, and other many factors.
I guess I have explained the differences between Siteground vs Bluehost in a detailed manner but if you want me to suggest hosting I would say go with Bluehost. Only thing is to take hosting for 2 or 3 years at once because the renewal rates are higher for both Bluehost & Siteground.

What’s your favorite and Why? If you still have questions, leave a comment and I’ll try to help you.