SiteGround Vs Bluehost: 9 Test to Decide "Who’s Best" in 2020?

Updated: September 17, 2020

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. Then, you have to compare all these companies to find the right one for your needs.

The good news is that in this SiteGround vs Bluehost comparison, we’ll demystify the jargon and reveal what’s important. Of course, we’ll also determine which of these two brands is the best at what they do.

SiteGround Bluehost are a great choice for small and large blogs alike. They are both leaders in their categories, but they are also extremely popular, with around 2 million customers each.

These aren’t the only comparisons and reviews we’ve done, though. You can check out many other hosting reviews and comparisons in this blog, including HostGator vs Bluehost and SiteGround Vs HostGator.

Our Verdict in a Nutshell

If you don’t have the patience to read through our comprehensive review (or simply don’t require that many details. Our verdict, in a nutshell, is that SiteGround(priced at $6.95/mo) is a better option than Bluehost(priced at $3.95/mo). SiteGround is just an overall better business to work with and its services(speed, reliability, and support) stand head and shoulders above Bluehost. This conclusion is based on the numerous tests we’ve run, but also our personal experience in using the services of the two firms.

SiteGround Vs Bluehost Winner – Why SiteGround is better than Bluehost?

SiteGround scores better on 6 out of 9 tests, compared to Bluehost, which only scored better on 1 test. The two brands came in equal in 2 tests. SiteGround is a better choice for hosting Shared, WordPress, or Cloud websites compared to Bluehost. While Bluehost offered low initial and renewal rates, SiteGround’s performance(speed), reliability(uptime) and support is far better than anything Bluehost has to offer.

Furthermore, SiteGround’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) is 62 compared to 46 by Bluehost. NPS by far is the most effective way to measure a brand’s customer loyalty and is the golden standard for customer experience metrics. In essence, NPS measures how many customers are so pleased with their interactions with the firm that they are likely to promote it to people they know.

To put that in context, an NPS score of above 50 means that a lot of customers are so happy with the brand that they are most likely to stick around because they see real value in that company. Moreover, this is the score of many industry-leading companies like Apple, Sony, and Amazon. While Bluehost’s NPS score of 46 is still good, its not as impressive as SiteGround’s.

We also looked at another important metric, namely reviews and ratings from Trustpilot. Trustpilot is a reliable source for reviews of popular businesses around the world with over 97+ million total reviews posted there.

As you can see below, SiteGround is rated 4.7/5, whereas Bluehost’s result was disappointing with a 1.5/5 rating.

Furthermore, we also did a quick search on Twitter to see what people have to say about Bluehost. We discovered precisely why so many people prefer SiteGround over Bluehost.

Kinsta also uses GCP and they are the fastest hosting service we’ve reviewed on this site. You can read more about that in this Kinsta Review and Kinsta Vs SiteGround comparison.

Left @SiteGround early this year cause I thought they were too expensive. After months of switching website host providers (from bad to worse) I have to admit – SiteGround's service is hard to beat. Worth every penny. So apologies and glad to be back with you.

— Dr Anna Jerzewska (@AnnaJerzewska) August 17, 2019

We did a comprehensive comparison between SiteGround and Bluehost. Below, you can see exactly how we reached our conclusions.

Breakdown of this comparison

1. Popularity
2. Speed test
3. Pricing
4. Sever Quality
5. Uptime
6. Security
7. WordPress and Cloud
8. Support
9. UA Interface

Also Read: SiteGround Review – Why we rated SiteGround #1 web host in 2020?

1. Popularity – SiteGround grew its customer base four-fold in the last 5 years.

This graph shows the evolution of SiteGround’s and Bluehost’s popularity over the years.

SiteGround hosted only 500,000 websites in 2015, but they host over 2 million websites in 2020, a four-fold increase in size over the last 5 years.

Moreover,  80% of SiteGround’s 2 million domains are sites built on WordPress, which makes them very experienced in handling a WordPress website.

On the other hand, Bluehost recorded no growth in the last few years.

Is Bluehost Owned By EIG?

Bluehost was growing rapidly until 2013 when they were acquired by EIG. After the acquisition, like any other EIG company, Bluehost started receiving so many bad reviews that it eventually led to a significant drop in popularity and growth.

2. Bluehost Vs SiteGround Speed Test – SiteGround is super fast.

Let’s be honest. In today’s high-speed era, no one is going to hang around even for a few seconds more than they’re used to for a website to load. You could have the best content in the world, but unless you’re offering something very valuable (like diamonds) for free, no one is going to stick around.

Check out how you can decrease your website speed by 1- 2 seconds using 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 figure out the speed of a hosting company’s servers as both firms are served with exactly the same webpage from the same location. The small difference in page size is due to server-level catching because these hosts use different types of servers.

In this test, SiteGround loaded faster than Bluehost by 1.2S.

Additionally, we checked the difference in load time of a webpage after migrating from Bluehost to SiteGround. You can see the results below.

After SiteGround’s recent shift to Google Cloud data centers and their implementation of Ultra-Fast PHP, their websites are roughly 40% faster than before due to the high-quality servers provided by Google.

Which hosting is Faster around the world?

Even though SiteGround had a better load time from the USA, we wanted to know how SiteGround and Bluehost performed for the rest of the world. Therefore, we ran another test where we used the same website and checked the speed from multiple locations around the world.

Location	SiteGround Load time	Bluehost Load time
New York	1.7S	2.9S
Sydney	2.2S	3.2S
Los Angeles	2.2S	3.6S
London	1.7S	3.2S
Singapore	6.5S	6.6S
Amsterdam	3.2S	8.3S
Vancouver	2.3S	3.9S
New Delhi	1.9S	4.7S

The outcome of this test –

• SiteGround showed great performance everywhere except Singapore, where it exhibited high load times.
• SiteGround managed to load 2x faster than Bluehost everywhere else around the world, with U.S. load time being the fastest.
• It’s clear from the above 2 tests that Bluehost has good speed in the USA, but their overall worldwide speed is below average.

According to Google’s latest research, 53% of people will leave a page if it takes longer 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 figures, it’s clear that SiteGround is the winner in terms of speed. They have great servers but the fact that they use Google Cloud service which has 24 servers around the world also helps. The physical distance the data has to travel also affects overall load time.

SiteGround’s Google servers are located in Chicago, London, Amsterdam, Milan, Frankfurt, Sydney, and Singapore.

On the other hand, Bluehost doesn’t reveal the location of all their data centers, though some believe they have one in Mumbai, another in Shanghai, and, of course, their US locations in Provo and Orem, Utah.

More on SiteGround’s data center can be read here.

As you can see below, SiteGround’s performance is on par with high premium hostings like Kinsta and WP Engine. Those hosts, however, will set you back an additional $10-20/month compared to SiteGround.

I tested all major WP managed hosting services & DNS services last year, and @wpengine, @LiquidWeb, @SiteGround, and @kinsta had the best results. Surprisingly, SiteGround had great results for their pricing.

I essentially took my site and hosted it on each service for a week.

— Eugen Oprea (@eugenoprea) July 11, 2019

#SiteGround lets you change the server location of your website

One of the most effective ways to speed up your website is to place your website’s files on a server that is located near your target audience.

For example, if you have most of your traffic coming from Chicago, try to work with a host who has their 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 – Which Is The Fastest CDN in 2019?

SiteGround makes it very easy to change server location anytime you want. So, don’t worry if you don’t know where most of your target audience is located when you start out.

In contrast, Bluehost doesn’t let us choose a server location even during the initial process.

We have seen so many people switching from Bluehost to SiteGround due to their excellent speed and support.

Also Read:

How to Improve the Loading Speed of Your Website: A Step-by-Step Guide

3. Bluehost Vs SiteGround 2019 Pricing – Bluehost is cheaper in the long run

So, Which SiteGround plan is the best?

Each website will have different requirements depending on its content and the amount of traffic. Therefore, choosing the right hosting plan for your site is very important as this can save you lots of money and also help you with future performance issues.

We compared the performance and features of SiteGround’s Startup, GrowBig and GoGeek plan separately, in another post, to help you choose the most suitable SiteGround plan for your website.

Also, customers who opt for SiteGround’s GoGeek plan are offered Advanced Priority Support. This new level of support gives access to highly experienced support agents. Therefore, you will receive great quality support with very fast response times through the GoGeek plan.

4. Server Quality Test:- Which hosting is better for websites with high traffic?

The server is where your website files are hosted and stored. High-quality servers will ensure a smooth experience for your visitors.

For this reason, we wanted to test the performance of each host server when 100’s of visitors are thrown at them at the same time. 

The green line indicates the number of visitors and the blue line represents the adjacent response time as the traffic increases.

Which Hosting Uses the Fastest Domain Nameserver?

You’ve probably heard the acronym DNS (Domain Name Server), but aren’t quite sure why it should affect your choice of web hosting.

Firstly, let me provide a short answer to the question: What is DNS?

When you type in a web address, eg. inlinehostblogger.com, your ISP (Internet Service provider) goes to the domain name server (DNS) for that domain and fetches the IP addresses associated with that domain. This IP address is where your website’s files are located.

So basically, DNS is like a phonebook that helps your browser locate your website files.

Once you buy web hosting, most companies manage your DNS as part of their service. That means they host your DNS details on their server.

Benefits of a Better Domain Name Server Include

• Improved website speed.
• Better security against attacks.
• More benefits of better DNS can be read here.

Therefore, we tested the DNS speed of both these hosting companies using a tool called SOLVEDNS.

5. Uptime Test – Do they fulfill their 99.99% uptime guarantee?

Uptime is the amount of time your website is up and running for your visitors. A lot of factors can affect the availability of your website.

Including –

• Hardware failure
• Server maintenance
• Power shutdowns of your hosting company. 

That’s why this test is very important because low uptime can negatively impact your business’ bottom line through loss of credibility, lost sales, Google rank drops and more.

Both Bluehost and SiteGround guarantee 99.99% uptime guarantees.

Do they really fulfill this guarantee?

We used Host Tracker to monitor approximately 150 websites to determine a more accurate figure for web hosting uptime.

The above graph provides you with a snapshot of how much better SiteGround performs in terms of uptime compared to Bluehost.

But around two years ago, Bluehost’s tech infrastructure had a major overhaul. Since then, Bluehost was able to deliver 99.99% uptime as you will see below in the month to month uptime stats.

• View Bluehost’s month-month uptime coverage

  Bluehost’s average uptime for the last one year is 99.98%.

  • May 2019 average uptime: 99.83%
  • June 2019 average uptime: 100%
  • July 2019 average uptime: 100%
  • August 2019 average uptime: 100%
  • September 2019 average uptime:99.99%
  • October 2019 average uptime: 99.99%
  • November 2019 average uptime: 100%
  • December 2019 average uptime: 100%
  • January 2020 average uptime: 100%
  • February 2020 average uptime: 100%
  • March 2020 average uptime: 100%
  • April 2020 average uptime: 99.97%

Even more, SiteGround compensates you with free hosting if your website falls below the guaranteed network uptime of 99.99%.

6. Security – SiteGround is safer 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 delivered amazing results as it blocks as many as 2 million attacks across their servers. Not only does the AI system protect customer websites, but it also frees up server resources that can now be used by customers.

The AI system monitors all of SiteGround’s servers simultaneously and analyzes the data. Based on the results, it takes automatic action to stop malicious bots.

Another big advantage is that with their recent shift to Google Cloud data centers, you get the benefit of a security model that has been highly regarded as one of the best, which secures products like Gmail, Google search, Youtube, etc,. In fact, your website couldn’t ask for anything better.

Bluehost relies on Cloudflare to protect its customers from DDoS attacks. They also offer 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 Good 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 of your website to their servers.

I initiated 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.

However, SiteGround in its May 2020 update has discontinued this feature for the StartUp plan. This professional transfer is now available only for Grow Big and Go Geek plan. As a result, the StartUp plan customers need to use their free WordPress migrator plugin for this purpose.

Website transfer costs for each web host.

1. SiteGround – Free
2. Bluehost – 149$
3. HostGator – Free
4. Kinsta – Free
5. GoDaddy – Not available

7. Bluehost Vs SiteGround – WordPress is easy with SiteGround and Bluehost

Choosing a web host with managed WordPress plans has a lot of benefits, such as pre-configured WordPress technologies, which allow you to use SSL and CDNs with little hassle and provide better overall performance.

Moreover, security is also better as the host can set the server up to protect against WordPress-specific threats.

#Bluehost and SiteGround are officially recommended by WordPress.

WordPress is a popular CMS and website building tool that powers over 30% of the entire web. 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 features a number of great WordPress tools, including auto-updates and free WordPress migrations using their proprietary plugin.

Learn How to migrate your WordPress website using WP Migrator.

Also, their SG optimizer plugin promises to boosts the performance of your website by 200-300%. 

These features will cost you a premium fee from other plugin developers.

To their server, they’ve added their proprietary SuperCacher that relies on NGINX tech to significantly boost speed. They also offer a free CDN.

Bluehost WordPress packages start at $20 per month. It offers similar 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 offer, SiteGround and Bluehost offer practically the same thing.

Additionally, Joomla and Drupal are some of the other popular CMS hosting options provided by SiteGround and Bluehost.

Cloud Hosting – Bluehost cloud is nothing but an extension of their shared hosting.

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 ones. They use the NGINX reverse proxy caching solution in front of 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 shifted its entire infrastructure to Google Cloud Platform, where infrastructure is built on top of virtual machines, instead of bare metal servers. This fact helps in easy auto-scaling of resources during peak times. What this move also means is that your website is hosted on one of the fastest and most powerful networks which is used by big companies like Apple, Netflix, Youtube, and Gmail.

Apache VS  NGINX Servers – Which are better?

SiteGround has already released PHP 7.4. Conversely, Bluehost has not yet provided their customers with access to PHP 7.2 and 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 to offer PHP 7.4 right now.

Upgraded my @kinsta site to PHP 7.4 and it is like 10x faster. Woot!

— Ronald Huereca (@ronalfy) December 2, 2019

• Why PHP version is important?, and more about SiteGround and Bluehost’s PHP version

  PHP is a server-side programming and scripting language used nowadays for creating interactive dynamic websites, especially by WordPress. The version of PHP used by your server determines the speed at which your web page is loaded and executed. The later the version, the better the speed and reliability.
  

  Kinsta tested PHP 7.3 with a WordPress installation and here are the results.

  PHP 7.3 was a clear winner,  processing 3x more requests per second than previous PHP versions.

  

  Yet Bluehost still uses PHP 5.6 for all the old hosting accounts. When contacted, their support responded by insisting we cancel our current account and start a new hosting account with them to take advantage of their new servers with PHP 7.2 or pay 150$ for them to do it for us. And, they also said that existing servers with the older PHP version would be updated eventually, however, they didn’t know when that would be.

  

  This can expose their clients to potential vulnerabilities and high-security risks. Based on this, I doubt Bluehost’s commitment towards security and performance.

Over the last 2 years, most sites have adopted HTTPS at a fast rate and HTTPS usage has increased from 40% to over 90% in the last 3 years according to Chrome stats.

However, one main issue with people moving towards HTTPS sites has been the slight increase in load time as a result. This was addressed by SiteGround using the latest TCP 1.3 and OCSP stapling method.

• How does SiteGround’s TCP 1.3  and OCSP stapling method will make your website faster?

  Each time you access an HTTPS website, the encryption certificate is validated by Certificate Authority (CA) on each request. This creates a slight delay in accessing your website. However, with SiteGround’s TCP 1.3 and OCSP stapling method, this check gets handled by the web hosting server, and your visitor’s browser doesn’t have to do anything.
  

  

Furthermore, SiteGround is among the first hosting companies to provide QUIC speed technology for their websites. This technology helps websites load faster in areas with slow internet connections.

In fact, this protocol known as HTTP/3 is 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 sets them pretty far behind SiteGround on the cutting-edge technology front.

SiteGround’s support is A+

SiteGround is mainly known for their excellent support in the web hosting industry, which is why many users choose to work with this company. This was evident when they won the Stevie Award for Best Customer Support for the year 2020.

However, there were some complaints regarding long waiting times during April-June 2020. This was explained by SiteGround as one of those rare instances due to COVID, leading to a higher level of activity by all website users as online presence was becoming much more important for many businesses.

Bluehost, on the other hand, outsource their support to third world countries and teams who have little knowledge about Bluehost and web hosting in general. Their Live chat mostly transfers chat requests to a higher authority, which means it will take another 48 hours to get a response. This can be quite frustrating and lead to downtimes lasting many days.

Support waiting time for each host.

1. SiteGround 0-6 seconds
2. Kinsta 0-1 minute
3. Bluehost 2-3 minutes
4. HostGator 3-5 minutes
5. GoDaddy 5-10 minutes

Bluehost’s customer support team is pathetic most of the time..

9. User Interface

SiteGround Interface	Bluehost Interface
Site Tools ( Custom made)	cPanel (Third party)
Rating: ★★★★★	Rating: ★★★★★
Rank: #1 in Interface	Rank: #1 in Interface

The User Interface is what we call the control panel. Both these hosting companies used to come with cPanel.

However, starting from July 2019, SiteGround hosting will use their own inbuilt custom-made control panel called SiteTool, replacing cPanel. Existing clients will keep using cPanel until they switch them to the new panel.

According to SiteGround, cPanel limits their ability to expand and integrate new technology to give you a secure and reliable website. Moreover, SiteGround has carefully analyzed years of data on which cPanel features most users rely on and incorporated those features into their new panel.

On top of that, they have added many cool features, such as the option to add collaborators to your site. You can use the collaborator feature to give and revoke access to your site to developers and clients without having to share your login details.

Here’s more on SiteGround Control Panel.

Bluehost uses cPanel User Interface

cPanel the easiest and most common control panel across the blogosphere.

Additionally, 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 might be unfamiliar with the coding aspects of a website.

Bluehost cPanel: Try Demo

SiteGround Staging Tool

SiteGround offers an amazing tool to help customers test changes and new features without breaking their live website.

In short, this tool creates a development copy of WordPress and Joomla sites, which customers can experiment on to their heart’s content.

Using the SiteGround Staging environment means that any changes won’t affect the live website, enabling customers to determine, beforehand if what they’re doing will help or hurt their site.

Bluehost Vs SiteGround FAQ