Latest posts by Noor B (see all)
- HostGator Vs GoDaddy(Apr 2018)-Why Never Use GoDaddy? - April 2, 2018
- SiteGround Vs Bluehost (April 2018) : 7 Tests, 1 Winner – IHB - April 2, 2018
- WP Engine Vs SiteGround(Apr 18)–Weighing the Pros and Cons - April 1, 2018
Updated: April 2 , 2018
Does choosing a hosting company give you nightmares?
Are you having trouble choosing between SiteGround and Bluehost because you haven’t found any unbiased reviews that you can actually understand?
Choosing the right hosting service is a nerve-wracking experience because hosting can make or break your website. You have to spend hours upon hours doing research, trying to understand what sounds like gibberish and then comparing all these companies. And biased reviews more intent on selling you something than being honest don’t make things much easier.
It’s not something you can avoid, though, because poor hosting can have your traffic dwindling to nothing – that’s if you manage to get any traffic in the first place. So, you have to put in the effort or watch your website crash and burn.
You have another option that will require less time and won’t be nearly as aggravating. I’ve done all the legwork for you and you’ll find a comprehensive SiteGround vs Bluehost hosting comparison below, along with many other hosting reviews and comparisons, including HostGator vs Bluehost and HostGator vs SiteGround.
Bluehost was found in 2003, whereas SiteGround made its entry into hosting in 2004.
SiteGround Vs Bluehost tests
- BlueHost Vs SiteGround – Uptime Test
- SiteGround vs Bluehost Server Response Time
- Bluehost vs SiteGround – Website Speed Test
- SiteGround Vs Bluehost: Customer Support
If you are too busy to read this entire review, here's an infographic that covers the main points.
SiteGround and Bluehost – Live review by current user
Lets start with live user review of SiteGround and Bluehost by current users, posted by them in twitter.
Tweets about @siteground support
Tweets about @bluehost support
These tweets are live tweets, that are updated every second. So, you can clearly see the satisfaction of SiteGround users and dissatisfaction of Bluehost users.
Bluehost vs SiteGround – Performance, Reliability and Speed test
While SiteGround web hosting developed some highly innovative approaches and ideas such as their own SuperCacher, free CDN by Cloudfare, NGINX web server technology and SSD Drives( Bluehost uses HDD drives) to beat the competition and provide maximum performance to its users, Bluehost has lacked a bit of everything for the last 2-3 years.
The SSD drives are more expensive, but are proven to be faster and more reliable than HDD drives. Only a few hosting companies can boast having SSD drives and SiteGround is one of them.
Apache VS NGINX Servers – Which are better ?
SSD vs. HDD: What’s the difference?
A recent yearly survey conducted on SiteGround shows that their clients are more than 95% happy with their services.
Look at this video to understand how SiteGround is able to secure our websites from all hackers and other security threats.
BlueHost Vs SiteGround – Uptime Test
Both Bluehost and SiteGround offer 99.99% uptime guarantees. In previous blog posts, I have mentioned Bluehost’s consistent downtime which give them an uptime of less than 98% every month.
I haven’t seen anything that shows a major downtime for SiteGround. Moreover, they were up more than 99.99% during the last year. They have pretty much the most reliable servers in the entire web hosting industry.
It is plain to see that SiteGround has a much better uptime percentage then Bluehost.
We were tracking around 150 websites hosted by Bluehost and SiteGround powered by Host-tracker, to understand a rough estimate of their uptime. To see different estimates for uptime percentage, you can plug-in various data points into the following interactive graph.
The above graph gives a rough estimate about the superiority of SiteGround over Bluehost when it comes to uptime. To make it more appropriate, we also had a chance to test a personal blog hosted on SiteGround and the uptime for that website looks really good for the last year. They had a whooping uptime of 99.99% throughout the duration of the whole year we tested it.
SiteGround uptime HistoryUptime Report of SiteGround



★ Winner SiteGround. These facts easily prove that SiteGround beats Bluehost in the uptime battle.
Bluehost Vs SiteGround – Server Response Time
The time taken by the server to respond to our queries helps us in determining the quality of servers used by web hosting companies. For that reason, we tested a set of websites hosted on SiteGround and Bluehost using Load Impact App.
Here are some of the steps taken to ensure that all tests were as fair as possible.
- Each site is a WordPress site of Installation 4 with the same theme installed and same number of images, page size, content and request.
- All the plugins and catching systems were disabled
- The test was conducted several times and the best results are displayed here.
- Server location of the Hosting companies are in Ashburn, VA, and Portland, Oregon.
The Green Line indicates the number of visitors and the blue line represents the adjacent response time as the traffic increases.
SiteGround server response timeSiteGround server response time
My Server Location: Dallas, TX
Hosting Server Location: Chicago, IL
Max Response Time: 1.6 seconds
Minimum Response Time: 669.9 milliseconds
SiteGround’s performance was rock solid, especially considering the $3.95 price tag for their lowest hosting plans. Their average response time was 650ms all the way to 50 concurrent users with no real hiccups.
Have a look at the source and full test results from Load Impact for SiteGround
My Server Location: Ashburn, VA
Hosting Server Location: Provo, UT
Max Response Time: 10.61 seconds
Minimum Response Time: 915.53 milliseconds
Bluehost’s performance was lackluster. Response time increased as the traffic increased. Even at lower levels of traffic (10 users), the response time started varying between 1000ms and 3500ms. As concurrent traffic was increased to 20, the response time touched a high of 10.61s. Their performance was highly inconsistent with high variance from one second to another.
Have a look at the source and full test results from Load Impact for Bluehost


This test can be used to conclude that response time of SiteGround server’s are 2X faster than Bluehost.
Bluehost Vs SiteGround – Website Speed Test
Thanks to their highly efficient servers, and static caching, speed is one feature that works great at SiteGround., The combination of features from Varnish caching, Memcache, SuperCacher and CloudFare Railgun, make your website increasingly fast.
Here is a speed test of a test websites hosted under SiteGround and Bluehost.
Note: For the authenticity of the testing, the two websites used are same. i.e, they have equal page size, same number of requests, elements and images.
Speed of sites hosted on SiteGround
SiteGround showed great performance in Europe and the US region whereas it loaded a bit slower in Melbourne.
Testing Location | Test 1 | Test 2 | Test 3 |
---|---|---|---|
New York | 0.9 | 0.7 | 0.65 |
Amsterdam | 1.3 | 1.2 | 1.2 |
Melbourne | 2.4 | 2.5 | 2.4 |
Speed of sites hosted on Bluehost
Bluehost performed exceptionally well in the US and Melbourne, but failed to put its mark on Europe.
Testing Location | Test 1 | Test 2 | Test 3 |
---|---|---|---|
New York | 1.1 | 0.92 | 0.87 |
Amsterdam | 1.8 | 3.14 | 1.57 |
Melbourne | 1.73 | 1.71 | 2.4 |
Here’s why SiteGround is very fast…
Visit SiteGround Visit BlueHost
Also Read : How to Improve the Loading Speed of Your Website: A Step-by-Step Guide
BlueHost Vs SiteGround – Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting is based on innovative technology that make use of multiple servers to accommodate your website files and softwares. It means that your website will be up and running even if one or more servers have some unaccounted problems.
Read more: What Cloud Hosting really is ?
Skip this part if you run a small business or unprofitable websites.
Why cloud hosting is better than shared hosting or VPS hosting ?
Unlike the old VPS solution, the Clouds do not need server restarts when more power is added to them or when a single major patch is applied.
So there is no downtime during such events which guarantees better uptime and a lot more power at one’s disposal.
Do you really need Cloud Hosting ?
This is difficult to answer as it depends on too many things like the volume of traffic, the scripts on the site and its optimisation. I think going cloud is lot better as Cloud machines are super powerful and scaleable.
For example, if more CPU power is ever needed as a result of sudden jump in traffic, more CPU cores can be added right away.
Cloud Hosting is for most popular of sites , one that have very high traffic.
Which Hosting offer better Cloud hosting ? SiteGround or Bluehost?
SiteGround Cloud hosting plan starts at an high price of $80/mo. They use next generation LXC technology built on bare metal meaning that you get your own machines with resources dedicated to your project only and on technology that is proven to be the most reliable one nowadays. SiteGround servers can be scaled up to 16 CPU cores and 16 GB of RAM, which is quite a lot of power on par with dedicated plans. Moreover, Cloud comes with the HHVM, a revolutionary tool from the Facebook team for faster PHP execution.
Meanwhile, For Bluehost Cloud Hosting which starts at a price of $8.95, as the price tag clearly shows ( they have same prices for shared accounts ), it barely differs from a shared solution as it uses a shared network of VPS resources. So its not really the same dedicated power – therefore, SiteGround cloud hosting are more suitable for a lot more popular sites as they normally come with a lot more power.
Bluehost vs SiteGround Cloud – Uptime
Bluehost Cloud Uptime
Test website name: bh-inlinehosting.com
Testing website’s name server and hosting details is given below.
Uptime statistics for Bluehost Cloud
SiteGround Cloud Uptime
Test website name: sg-inlinehosting.com
Testing website’s name server and hosting details is given below.
Uptime statistics for SiteGround Cloud
- Both Bluehost cloud and SiteGround cloud recorded an uptime of 100%.
SiteGround vs Bluehost Cloud – Speed
- Same website used in the above test was used for this test as well.
- We used load impact app to send upto 100 concurrent visitors to website hosted under both these hosting. This test can be used to estimate of how much time, as experienced by a user, it would take to load your web page when your site was accessed by a certain number of concurrent users. That means , it can determine how many visitors can be handled by your website at same time if it’s hosted under these hosting servers.
- In most situations, it is correct to say that If you get a flat or falling graph, it means your hosting can handle the load comfortably.
- If there was significant slow down in how fast the site responded, It will show steadily increasing values as the load level increased.
SiteGround Cloud speed test result
- There was just couple of initial spikes, the graph was flat till it reached 100 concurrent users with an average response time of 515ms.
- SiteGround servers were able to handle this traffic without much hiccups or slowdown.
Bluehost Cloud speed test result
- As you can see from the above result, once the concurrent traffic reached above 40, the response time started jumping higher and higher. The highest response time was recorded at 16s and then the server stopped responding.
- Bluehost cloud server were not successfully able to handle concurrent traffic above 40 users.
Signup at SiteGround Cloud Signup at BlueHost Cloud
Prices, Plans and Features
SiteGround comes with a basic startup plan for beginners, which features a single domain and 10 GB disk space and can be ordered for $3.95 per month even if your initial period is one year.
The entry plan of Bluehost allows hosting unlimited domains and is advertised at $4.95 per month, but the price applies only if you start on a three-year cycle. If you choose one year as your initial sign-up period, the price will be $6.95 per month.
Features | SiteGround Startup | SiteGround GrowBig | Bluehost Shared | Bluehost Plus |
---|---|---|---|---|
Disk Space | 10 | 20 GB | 50 GB | Unmetered |
Traffic Allowed | 10000 Visits | 25000 | Unmetered | Unmetered |
Email Accounts | Unlimited | Unlimited | 5 | Unlimited |
Domains Allowed | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Control Panel | cPanel | cPanel | cPanel | cPanel |
1 Month | $3.95 | $6.45 | No | No |
12 Month | $3.95 | $6.45 | $4.95 | $8.45 |
3 Year Term | $3.95 | $5.95 | $2.95 | $5.45 |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Sign Up | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Sign Up | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Sign Up | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Sign Up | |
★ Winner Bluehost or SiteGround ( You decide) .
Check Latest SiteGround Prices Check Latest BlueHost Prices
Also Read: Which is the best web hosting service plans for your website ?
SiteGround Vs Bluehost: Customer Support
Customer support is very important in dealing with day-to-day problems associated with websites including downtime issues, server connectivity issues or security issues. A reliable and fast customer support team is what you should be looking for if you wish to solve these problem quickly, without affecting your website.
- SiteGround customer service offers 24/7/365 days live chat, a ticketing system and a toll number for support. They have a wait time of less than 5 seconds for their live chat and less than 10 minutes for the ticketing system. In contrast, I have waited more than 5 minutes on some other leading hosting companies live chat. They have enabled a feature which allows users to study the bio of each support representative’s skills, work experience and user ratings. Moreover, they boast less than a 10 minute wait time for their ticketing system.
- Bluehost offers the same features, they have friendly representatives and an attractive chat box. Their support team doesn’t have the urgency and expertise in solving some high-end issues instantly. Moreover, they often transfer small issues from their live chat team to the ticketing system, which creates more wait time for users.
I tried reaching both SiteGround and Bluehost live chat teams for support one after the other and here are the results.
Bluehost took 5 minutes to get connected whereas SiteGround managed to reply within few seconds of connecting. This easily proves the superiority of SiteGround customer support.
Bluehost Live Chat Waiting time: 5 Minutes
SiteGround Live Chat Waiting time: 0 Minutes
Bluehost customer support team is pathetic most of the time..
User Interface
User Interface is what we call the control panel. Both these hosting companies come with cPanel. Know that cPanel is the easiest and most common control panel across the blogosphere.
Their cPanel comes with more than 52 one-click installers for popular scripts such as WordPress, Joomla, Weebly, etc. This is a great advantage for newbies who will most probably be unfamiliar with coding aspects of the website.
SiteGround cPanel: Try Demo
Bluehost cPanel: Try Demo
★ WinnerTie.Bluehost Vs SiteGround User Review
One of our technicians posted a question on a popular WordPress forum regarding the best choice between HostGator and Bluehost web hosting, surprisingly 90% of people suggested we look at SiteGround even though we never mentioned SiteGround in the question. That’s how much people love SiteGround.
Here are some reactions from twitter users on their experience of using SiteGround and Bluehost.
SiteGround's twitter user reviews and reactions... Bluehost's twitter user reviews and reactions...
#Free migration for your website.
SiteGround offers free migration of your website to their servers. Their experts will transfer your website without a single minute of downtime within hours of a purchase.
I initiated a free transfer request of SiteGround for one of my test websites. They successfully transferred the site within 24 hours even though it was a non-working day.
Bluehost charge $149.9 for the same service.
SiteGround Vs Bluehost Final Analysis
Their performance, reliability and excellent support systems make SiteGround a perfect choice. Bluehost previously led in Performance. However, that’s no longer the case as SiteGround has invested heavily in superior speed, security and customer service, which has helped them become ranked as our No.1 web hosting company. If you really want a great website, in the long run, I would suggest you use SiteGround.
Here’s what a new user, who dont have much knowledge about hosting a website had to say about Bluehost web hosting…
"I signed up with Bluehost one week back and 4 days of it I couldn’t access my account. So frustrating trying to get it resolved and they definitely don’t want to honour the money back guarantee. I’m new to the blogging world and I definitely wouldn’t recommend them to anyone starting new"
Which hosting is best for you ? SiteGround or Bluehost? Yes, it’s SiteGround and here’s why ..
- High uptime record of over 99.99% over last five years.
- 30 days money back guarantee, you get your full money back if you don’t like them.
- Their quality servers enable them to provide high-speed websites for our traffic.
- They conduct timely automated backup, and their security team is successful in protecting our site from attacks.
- They have an innovative and speedy customer support team.
- It comes with cPanel, the most accessible and used control panel in the world.
- Plans for all requirements at a decent rate.
- 60% discounted price for a limited time.
Set up your web hosting with SiteGround now.
SiteGround Coupon Code
SiteGround provide a limited time 60% discount coupon code.
Disclosure: This site is run by a group of like-minded webmasters, whose mission it is to provide the public with honest web hosting reviews to ensure they meet our expert criteria. We do receive compensation for all the products that we review, which in turn helps us finance our work and provide users with honest reviews. All the products mentioned on our site are tested and evaluated before any reviews are written.
I believe key advantages of Siteground over bluehost and the others is the custom server set up and the instant asssistance. I recently started using siteground web hosting and I am glad to say that yes they have best 24/7 customer support as well as excellent WordPress hosting features. I have got my website setup in no time and all the hurdles manage by Sitegound’s very technical team. There cpanel interface is awesome.
Thank you for this review.
Your commentary about how Bluehost has been surpassed by SiteGround in the past couple years helps me make sense of the advice I have seen from so many bloggers who give advice on starting a blog.
Thanks for your great review! I’m starting my blog and have seen different bloggers strongly recommend one of these over the other and I needed insight. Your article made it a no brainer! Thank you, a fellow Noor 😉
Hi, I’m now with BlueHost thank you very much!!!
Woah! that is an Professional Article about Webhost.I do Agree with you about siteground.
I also feel that siteground is better than bluehost. I like above screen shot you added of live chat response time.
If you are in trouble that is the time to check customer centric approach of these company. It is useful to have those screen shot in this comparison.
I have a bluehost account with about a dozen websites (folders under the main account). My only problems are having to wait too long for chat and they no longer have a trouble ticket system. They have had some major down times but honestly most of them have been from outside problems.
What I am wondering is how difficult would it be to move all my wordpress sites and the DB’s associated with them to site ground. It always makes me nervous to do whole moves like that.
I had been through the ringer so to speak with other hosting companies. I was with Hostmonster as a starting hosting company for my web site and was always having down time and spent HOURS chatting with tech teams and such to get my site up and running on a regular basis. With their team you never knew if you were getting someone knowledgeable in the area or not. I’m trying to grow my business and take care of my children at home – I don’t have time for that. So after a major outage (for the 3rd time in the year and no refunds were being issued) I had enough and moved on.
From their I went to Arvixe. They were about in the same price range and seemed nice. But with all the trouble going through a site transfer and down time after a promise it wouldn’t happen – that was a bad start for me and could see where it was going. So I took a deep breath and thought I’d be stuck going back to Hostmonster. Then I found Site Ground.
Site Ground is more expensive (I use the Cloud service) BUT you get what you pay for. I’m paying TWICE as much, but my site is really up 99% of the time – compared to being down 40-50% of the time. The service to get things repaired are quick – usually within 1 hour, but generally about 15 minutes for me. Many times the tech team already has an issue discovered and is working on it before I contact them! That’s something I didn’t get from either of the above service providers. Maybe the other guys work for small town sites with hardly any visitors, but I get quite a bit of traffic and run a large site so performance and a good tech team is a MUST. If anyone wants a RELIABLE service, go with SIteGround. I’ve been with them for about 6 months now and have been nothing but happy with them.
Down time and technical difficulties will happen with anyone – they’re computers and that’s the downfall, but the less the better. With Siteground you get more service, faster site speed and a great staff to help! I never felt so passionate about writing a review (without being compensated) as I am for this company.
Thank you for your insightful review! I was vacillating back and forth between the two hosting companies. I actually was with Bluehost but having to commit to a 3 year deal to get the savings was out of budget. I ending up leaving. I started reading chatter about Bluehost not being the same as it was. I witnessed first hand of a site that was hosted by Bluehost and I noticed the lull in loading time.
Anyway, I am thrilled to finally have decided. I’m still deciding if I should start with lowest plan or the grow big. I’m just starting. However, I am tech savvy and I’m planning to build other sites. Thanks for any feedback!
Thank you Noor.
Quite nice comparision
Hi Noor,
Congratulations for your professional work. You really help me to decide ( finally, it’s near 6 months thinking) about a correct and professional Hosting company. We go definitely for SiteGround as our Hosting company. One thing to remark is about the difference on the disk space ( SG max. 20 GB and BH unlimited) It is a little bit strange
Again, many thanks
B. rgds from Spain
Albert