Updated: June 10, 2019

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. 

Here’s why this is an interesting choice, for beginners and popular blogs alike. Firstly, these two web hostings are absolutely top of the line in their category. Secondly, they are extremely popular with around 2 million customers each.

So which brand is performing best at this level?

 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 SiteGround Vs HostGator.

Bluehost was founded in 1996, whereas SiteGround made its entry into hosting in 2004.

SiteGround Vs Bluehost tests

Which is the most valued aspect of a web hosting that should be considered before buying a web hosting?

There was a survey conducted at a popular blog for 6000+ respondent asking them to vote for the most important aspect of a web hosting and here are the results.

Each user may value these aspects based on their website requirement. A beginner may value ease of use above speed whereas a popular blog will value speed over ease of use. However, its accepted generally that support is the most important aspect of a web hosting and the above result proves that point.

Nonetheless, we have compared all the above-mentioned aspects of SiteGround and Bluehost in this review.

Here’s the end result of this entire comparison on which hosting is better among SiteGround and Bluehost.

Is SiteGround better than Bluehost?

Yes, SiteGround wins: 8/9

Whereas Bluehost only wins: 3/9

We have tested SiteGround and Bluehost extensively in terms of the aforementioned 8 essential factors of web hosting. SiteGround easily wins against Bluehost and is the best choice for hosting your Shared, WordPress, or Cloud websites. SiteGround’s performance, reliability, uptime, features, and support are far better than anything Bluehost has to offer.

Let’s see below how we came to the above results.

#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.

Popularity – Which host is more popular? 

Here’s a graph which shows the evolution of SiteGround’s and Bluehost’s popularity over the years.

SiteGround hosted only 500,000 websites in 2015, but now they host over 2 million websites, a four-fold increase in size over the last 3 years.

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

As you can see from the graph, Bluehost was growing rapidly until 2013, when they were finally 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. They grew only 10% in the last 3 years, compared to 100% growth from SiteGround.

Web hosting companies associated with EIG have a very bad reputation for support and reliability, as you can see from the below image.

Bluehost vs SiteGround – Performance, Reliability, Speed test and Security

SiteGround web hosting developed some highly innovative approaches and ideas, such as their own SuperCacher, the latest PHP releases and SSD Drives (Bluehost only recently started using SSD drives).

SSD drives are more expensive but have proven to be faster and more reliable than HDD drives. SiteGround and Bluehost use Apache + NGINX web server technology, running NGINX for static files and Apache for dynamic ones. This is a popular formula used by top web hosting companies. They use the NGINX reverse proxy caching solution in front of Apache to give your visitors a fast website.

Apache VS  NGINX Servers – Which are better?

SSD vs. HDD: What’s the difference?

SiteGround has already released PHP 7.3 RC. 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 is server-side programming and scripting language used nowadays for creating interactive dynamic websites, especially by WordPress. The version of PHP language used by your server determines the speed at your web page is loaded and executed. The latter the version, better is 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.

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. They also said that existing servers with the older PHP version would be updated eventually, however, they didn’t know when that would be.

@bluehost When are you going to add PHP 7.3, 7.2? 🧐#Bluehost #WordPress #PHP pic.twitter.com/JWiRNrQcrQ

— Harsh Agrawal (@denharsh) April 1, 2019

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 because of the free certificates offered by Lets Encrypt and due to the fact that Google has been openly promoting HTTPS sites. 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 it 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 don’t have to do anything.

SiteGround is among the first hosting companies to provide QUIC speed technology for their websites.  This technology help websites load faster in areas where internet connection speed is very low.

This protocol is a new technology that promises to improve performance and security and will become the standardized version of HTTP called HTTP/3.

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.

The most recent survey Siteground conducted among its customers shows a satisfaction score of 97% in 2017.

This score has steadily increased over the past three years, proving that SiteGround constantly strives to improve the quality of the services they offer.

1. Bluehost Vs SiteGround Speed Test – Which Is the Fastest Host?

TTFB or Time to First Byte refers to how quickly the host’s server sends the first byte of data when responding to a request. This is an important metric because it allows us to test the speed and quality of the servers independent of front-end issues.

The speed with which the server delivers the first byte of data won’t be affected by the type of the website, it’s size or other similar factors. So, it’s an excellent way to figure out the quality of the hosting company’s servers.

SiteGround had a TTFB of 308 ms, while Bluehost’s was 401 ms.

From the above result, SiteGround is the winner by taking a slight lead in terms of TTFB. Their excellent servers are the main reason, but it might also have something to do with the number of data centers they have and their locations.

Here’s an interesting tweet from one SiteGround user. He pointed out that his website loaded 2 seconds faster after transferring to SiteGround.

That’s simply an amazing difference!

I know I've been @heartinternet bashing lately, but the numbers don't lie. Simply switching to @siteground and enabling SSL has shaved nearly 2 seconds off page load time. pic.twitter.com/0EDZxCm8pF

— Shaun G (@shaung75) November 18, 2018

Load time under a second for a webpage of 2.0 MB size is excellent even after optimization.

Even though SiteGround had a better TTFB, the difference was very less. Therefore, we used another test where we hosted a website with the same theme , images, page size and requests on both SiteGround and Bluehost and recorded their full load time.

The outcome of this test –

• SiteGround showed great performance everywhere except Singapore, where it loaded with high load time.
• SiteGround managed to load 2x faster than Bluehost everywhere else around the world, with load time from the USA 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, SiteGround website loaded under 3 second 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 have 5 major data centers across the world also helps. The physical distance the data has to travel also affects TTFB and overall load time.

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

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.

#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.

A CDN stores your website files across multiple servers located in different parts of the world, and then serves your traffic using the nearest server to their location.

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 still don’t know the location of your audience.

This feature is not available with Bluehost. Moreover, they don’t let us choose the server location even during the initial purchase process.

Here’s one of the reasons why location is not disclosed…

…they are obviously a big company, which has and does use different data centers to optimize their infrastructure. So, the situation is not so obvious. Especially after being acquired by Endurance International Group (EIG) — they have broadened their collaboration with other hosting companies and data centers to continue to look for optimal business solutions and to grow their operations.

★ Winner

SiteGround. Based on these tests, SiteGround offers faster websites than Bluehost.

I’ve been on live chat support with @SiteGround for maybe 3 minutes for a friend’s website, and all i can say is I will be immediately switching all my sites from @bluehost simply because of SiteGround’s A+ customer service.

Not to mention the load speed is easily 3X faster.

— Brennan Flentge (@BrennanFlentge) November 22, 2017

Also Read:

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

Speed Up WordPress Site Using Siteground + Asset Cleanup + WP Rocket

2. Bluehost Or SiteGround – Server Quality Test

To test how the servers of each host react to a large number of concurrent visitors, we used the Load Impact App. This test will determine the performance of each host server when there are 100’s of visitors coming to your site at the same time.

Each site features the same theme, the same number of images, page size, content and requests.

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

SiteGround 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 most basic 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

Bluehost Server Response Time

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 varied between 1,000ms and 3,500ms.

As concurrent traffic increased to 20, the response time touched a high of 10.61s. Their performance was highly inconsistent with a significant variance from one second to another.

Click here for the source and full test results from Load Impact for Bluehost

Based on the results of these tests, the conclusion is that SiteGround’s servers are twice as fast in terms of response time as Bluehost’s.

Visit SiteGround Visit BlueHost

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 which 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. Here is an example of a domain using the DNS of SiteGround and Bluehost.

Bluehost DNS Speed Test

Below is an example of SiteGround’s DNS speed test. As you can see from the result, SiteGround’s DNS is slightly faster than Bluehost. The difference in speed is very small, but when you compare all the other tests we have done in terms of speed, it’s quite evident that SiteGround is much faster than Bluehost.

SiteGround DNS Speed Test

3. Uptime Test – Which Host Offers Better Uptime?

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 provide 99.99% uptime guarantees. However, practice shows that Bluehost has significant and consistent issues with downtime, leading to an average uptime of less than 98% per month.

SiteGround, on the other hand, does not exhibit any major problems with downtime. In fact, over the past year, their average uptime exceeded 99.99%. This proves that their servers are highly reliable and some of the best in the industry. Additionally, they compensate you with free hosting if your website fall below guaranteed network uptime of 99.99%.

One of the other reason for such a high uptime is their Pro-active Server Monitoring feature, which not only fixes the current issue and fixes them, but is also able to foresee any future issue with the server and take appropriate measures to prevent them.

We used Host Tracker to monitor approximately 150 Bluehost and SiteGround websites to determine a more accurate figure for their uptime.

To see different estimates for uptime percentage, you can change the date variables for the following interactive graph using this Live hosting uptime tracking tool from Inlinehostblogger.

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

Uptime of test website

We also paid for separate accounts with SiteGround and Bluehost to collect even more independent data on uptimes. Below, you can see the results of our two test websites.

SiteGround. SiteGround is the clear winner, beating Bluehost by a significant margin in terms of uptime.

Thanks @SiteGround for the perfect uptime for our site and our clients’ sites. Never had a perfect 100% uptime with our previous hosts. pic.twitter.com/e9i1Z4u9tb

— TechHaven (@GoTechHaven) September 4, 2018

Visit SiteGround Visit BlueHost

4. Security – SiteGround is safer against multiple web threats and malware.

SiteGround has recently developed an anti-bot AI that protects their 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. In their recent release of Best of 2018 by SiteGround, they have mentioned the achievements of AI system in 2018. They are:

• Blocked 180 DDOS attacks.
• Stopped 7 million Brute force attacks,.
• Blocked 160 million bad bot requests.

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

• Failed Logins
• How many simultaneous connects are present to different URLs
• DDoS weaknesses that are already known in different apps
• Various request types associated DDoS attacks
• A constantly updating list of blacklisted user agents

When the AI determines that an IP is malicious, it blocks it and issues a challenge via a Captcha page. If the “puzzle” is solved, meaning that it’s actually a human and not a malicious bot, the address is whitelisted. And the AI learns from these situations so that it can reduce the level of false positives that occur.

Also, their Secure Account Isolation feature was one of the first in the industry which isolate your shared account from other accounts in the same server. This increases the security of your website, as well as protect your site from security threats from other sites on the same server.

Thus, SiteGround’s new security system is much more efficient at protecting customer websites.

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.

NOTE: A high-risk security vulnerability was discovered at Bluehost on January 15, 2019.  

A well-respected and popular bug-hunting specialist, Paulos Yibelo was able to take down any of Bluehost’s sites with ease. 

The vulnerability gives the attacker the permission to modify a user’s server file and inject it with malicious code. All this can be achieved if you just happen to click a link sent by the attacker.

As noted by Yibelo, this only shows that Bluehost’s aging infrastructure, outdated software, complicated backend crawling, etc, need to be overhauled.

When we contacted Bluehost, they confirmed it and said they are working on this bug.

More on this threat can be read here.

SiteGround wins by a long-shot because they’ve developed their own AI to thwart brute-force attacks and aren’t relying on a third party to protect their customers.

Bluehost Vs SiteGround For Beginners – Which Hosting Is Good For Beginners?

If you are new to hosting and building your website for the first time, you need a hosting that understands you are a beginner and lacks technical knowledge.

Read More: How to start a WordPress Blog with SiteGround? A Guide for Beginners.

No worries, Siteground and Bluehost’s excellent support will help you set up your website for the first time soon after your purchase.

However, that’s not all, SiteGround has a setup wizard which will help you set up your first website with just a few clicks. Its easy and anyone can build a website using that wizard no matter how poor he/she is when it comes to technical stuff.

Do you already have a website and want to transfer your existing website to your new hosting?

#Free migration for your website.

SiteGround offers free transfer of your website to their servers. Their experts will transfer your website without a single minute of downtime within hours of  purchase.

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.

Website transfer costs of each web hosting.

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

5. Bluehost Vs SiteGround – Is SiteGround and Bluehost good for WordPress and other CMS?

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.

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. This WP migration plugin will help you seamlessly transfer your WordPress website from another hosting to SiteGround in few clicks. Learn How to migrate your WordPress website using WP Migrator.

Their in-built SG optimizer plugin boosts the performance of your website by 200-300%. It comes with premium features like:

• Lazy image loading (reduce the initial loading time of your website by downloading the images as visitors scroll down the page.)
• Gzip compression, which compresses the webpage to save bandwidth.
• HTML, Javascript minification.
• Better browser caching.

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

Also, their WP Starter plugin will help you set up your WordPress website in no time without you having to know any of the technical stuff.

Their servers use SSD hardware, to which they’ve added their proprietary SuperCacher that relies on NGINX tech to significantly boost speed. They also offer a free CDN and the servers support HTTP/2 and PHP7.

Bluehost WordPress packages start at $20 per month. Their servers are equipped with SSDs and offer similar performance to their shared hosting plans. 

They also provide access to the MOJO Marketplace, where you can easily find and install plugins and scripts with a single click. Finally, they also offer advanced CDN access, a customized cPanel suited for WordPress, and SiteLock Professional, along with SiteLock WAF for maximum security. 

So, which WordPress host is better: SiteGround or Bluehost? In terms of performance and what’s included in the offer, SiteGround and Bluehost offer practically the same thing. However, Bluehost does tend to overpromise and their performance is rarely on par with their marketing.

You can build a professional WordPress website with SiteGround in less than 5 minutes using this tutorial from SiteGround.

Joomla and Drupal are some of the other popular CMS hosting options provided by SiteGround and Bluehost. However, SiteGround’s servers offer better performance as they are individually optimized specifically for each type of CMS. Their Joomla Supercacher, Drupal Supercacher, and Drush enabled servers for Drupal hosting are some of the CMS-specific features that help them improve performance.

We couldn’t find any CMS specific features for Joomla and Drupal under Bluehost.

Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting is based on innovative technology that makes use of multiple servers to accommodate your website files and software. It means that your website will be up and running even if one or more servers experience unexpected problems.

Read more: What Cloud Hosting really is?

Skip this part if you run a small business or if your website isn’t meant to earn a profit.

Continue reading more on SiteGround Vs Bluehost Cloud Hosting.

1. Why cloud hosting is better than shared hosting or VPS hosting?

Unlike the old VPS solution, the Cloud doesn’t 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.

2. Do you really need cloud hosting?

This is difficult to answer as it depends on a wide range of variables like the volume of traffic, the scripts on the site, and its optimization.

However, the Cloud option is generally better because the machines are incredibly powerful and scalable

For example, if more CPU power is ever needed as a result of a sudden jump in traffic, more CPU cores can be added right away. Cloud Hosting is ideal for very popular sites with high levels of traffic.

3. Which Hosting Company Offers Better Cloud Hosting? SiteGround or Bluehost?

SiteGround’s Cloud hosting plan starts at a 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 tosolely to your project and on the most reliable technology.

SiteGround servers can be scaled up to 16 CPU cores and 16 GB of RAM, which is quite a lot of power and is on par with dedicated plans. Moreover, Cloud comes with the HHVM, a revolutionary tool from the Facebook team for faster PHP execution.

Meanwhile, Bluehost Cloud Hosting starts at a price of $8.95, as the price tag clearly shows ( they have the same prices for shared accounts). However, it barely differs from a shared solution as it uses a shared network of VPS resources. So, it’s not really the same dedicated power.

Therefore, SiteGround’s cloud hosting is more suitable for highly popular sites because they offer much more power.

Speed

• We used the Load Impact app like in the above test to send up to 100 concurrent visitors to a website hosted on both companies’ cloud hosting plans.

SiteGround Cloud speed test result

• There were just a few initial spikes, but then the graph was flat until it reached 100 concurrent users, with an average response time of 515ms.
• SiteGround servers were able to handle this traffic without too many hiccups or slowdowns.

Bluehost Cloud speed test result

• As you can see from the above results, once the concurrent traffic exceeded 40, the response time started jumping higher and higher. The highest response time was recorded at 16s and then the server stopped responding.
• Bluehost’s cloud servers were not able to handle concurrent traffic above 40 users.

★ Winner

SiteGround. While the differences in price are very high, if you need a lot of power, SiteGround cloud is definitely more reasonable because it actually works.

Signup at SiteGround Cloud Signup at BlueHost Cloud

6. SiteGround Vs Bluehost Pricing. 

SiteGround comes with a basic startup plan for beginners, which features a single domain and 10 GB disk space. The fee is $3.95 per month, even if your initial period is one year.

Bluehost’s entry plan allows 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.

Regular Price	$ 3.95 per month	$ 5.95 per month	$ 11.95 per month	$ 2.95 per month	$ 5.95 per month	$ 5.95 per month
Plan Name	Startup	GrowBig	GoGeek	Basic	Plus	ChoicePlus
Visitors Per Month Unmetered -Hosting companies will provide you with enough resources to run your small scale website, but if you start using excessive resources, they might warn you to use less.	10,000	25,000	100,000	Unmetered	Unmetered	Unmetered
Web Space Web Space is the amount of website data that can be stored in hosting companies server.	10GB	20GB	30GB	50GB	Unmetered	Unmetered
Website Hosted The maxmium number of domains or websites, that you can host or run on this web hosting plan.	1	Unlimited	Unlimited	1	Unlimited	Unlimited
Data Transfer The amount of data that can be transferred in and out of your webserver.	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Free SSL The 's' in 'https' (which you see in the beginning of most website URL) is nothing but SSL, which provides a safe encryped connection between your browser and web server	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Sub Domains A subdomain allows you to create a seperate website under your domain name. For example, if your domain is inlinehostblogger.com, your sub domain will look like hosting.inlinehostblogger.com.	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	25	Unlimited	Unlimited
Parked Domains Parked domain lets you have multiple domain name pointed to your same website. For example, buying inlinehostblogger.uk , inlinehostblogger.us and inlinehostblogger.org, and pointing to inlinehostblogger.com	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	5	Unlimited	Unlimited
Free Included Domains Some web hosting companies give away free domain while purchasing their web hosting packages.	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
30 Day Money Back Guarantee If you cancel within 30 days of purchasing, you are entitled for full money back with no questions asked.	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Email Accounts The number of email accounts that can be registered under your domain name. For example, you can setup an email with whatever@yourdomainname.com .	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	5	Unlimited	Unlimited
Control Panel A web hosting control panel is an interface provided by web hosting to manage their servers and backend of our website.	cPanel	cPanel	cPanel	cPanel	cPanel	cPanel
Server Location Location of the server, where your website files are hosted.	London, Chicago and Singapore	London, Chicago and Singapore	London, Chicago and Singapore	Not Disclosed	Not Disclosed	Not Disclosed
Changing Server Location If your websites are hosted currently at chicago and you wish to transfer it to a London server for speeding up your website for london visitors, you can do it in couple of clicks	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Free CDN It loads your website much faster by storing the cached version of your website across different locations. When a visitor access your website, CDN delivers the nearest server to them.	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
HTTP 2 Severs HTTP 2 is the newest version of HTTP and helps in delivering the content faster than. HTTP 2 can send multiple requests in parallel, compared to a single request in HTTP.	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Free Site Backup Backup of your website is created automatically and stored for instant restore.	Everyday	Everyday	Everyday	No	No	Everyday
Free Backup Restore Lets you restore any backup you want for free.	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes
Backup On Demand Ability to take backup on your demand. For example, if you are gonna make some important changes to your website and want an instant backup, this feature will help you to do that in just few clicks.	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Power Backups Hosting company provides multiple failover option including backup UPS, enterprise-class UPS technology, power generator to protect your website from unexpected downtime.	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Server Monitoring SiteGround monitors and react by using Guardian by 1H system to prevent overload and outage problem.	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Operating System Operating system used for web hosting server. Linux based OS is more stable and easy to scale up resources in terms of high load.	Linux	Linux	Linux	Linux	Linux	Linux
SSD Storage SSD (Solid State Drive) equipped server will be faster in processing data and files compared to HDD(Traditional Hard Disk Drive)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Free Site Transfer Free site transfer helps you to transfer your website from your old hosting to the current one, instantly and seamlessly without having to worry about any technical aspects.	No	Yes	Yes	Pay $149	Pay $149	Pay $149
Staging Staging feature creates a copy of your live website with a single click. This way, you can design and develop your site on seperate environment. Just push it to live when you are done developing.	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
1 Click CMS Installer Popular CMS like Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, etc., can be created for your website with just few clicks.	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
In Built Caching System In built caching system to boost your website speed	Level Static Caching	Level 2 Dynamic Caching	Level 3 Database Query Caching	No	No	No
SFTP And SSH SSH encrpts and secure your connection to your acccount panel	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
24/7 Support 24/7 Support to instantly address and solve any of your issues related to hosting and features.	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Support Channel Availability of Support different channels like Phone, Email and Chat.	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Priority Support Some hosting companies provide priority support, due to the fact some customer need round the clock high quality assistance to solve their issue.	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
	Buy Startup	Buy GrowBig	Buy GoGeek	Buy Basic	Buy Plus	Buy Choice Plus

Each website will have different requirements depending on its content and the amount of traffic. Therefore, choosing the right hosting plan for your website is very important as this can save you lots of money and also help you with future performance issues. So,  we compared the performance and features of SiteGround’s Startup, GrowBig and GoGeek plans separately, in another post, to help you choose the most suitable SiteGround plan for your website.

#SiteGround offers less freebies than Bluehost.

Freebies offered by Bluehost –

1. $100 Bing Credit
2. $100 Google Ad credit
3. Free Domain for one year. ( Costs $15/year)
4. Free SSL

Freebies offered by SiteGround –

1. Free SSL

SiteGround GoGeek plan users are offered with Advanced Priority Support, this new level of support gives access to highly experienced support agents. Therefore, ensuring great quality and speed for the support requests made through the GoGeek plan.

★ Winner

Bluehost and SiteGround prices and features are somewhat similar (SiteGround’s renewal price is higher). Now, it’s up to you to decide which is more affordable. (You decide).

Check Latest SiteGround Prices Check Latest BlueHost Prices

Also Read:  Which is the best web hosting service plan for your website ?

Backup & Restore

Personally, this is one of the most important features that I consider when choosing a web host.

Why is the backup of your site important?

• Protects from cybercrime like hacking.
• Protects a broken site as a result of an accidental human error or the wrong software updates.
• Helps in restoring a site infected with malware or other viruses.

Most hosting companies don’t provide regular backups unless you pay extra for the service.

However, that’s not the case with SiteGround, as they provide daily automated backups. You can restore the backup anytime you want with just one click and a wait time of around two minutes. 

Also, SiteGround lets us create an additional backup on demand. This is very important as you can back up all the files just before making any major changes to your website.

Here’s how SiteGround’s backup and restore tool looks and works. It can be accessed by just one click from cPanel.

However, Bluehost uses a third-party tool called CodeGuard for backup and restore. It’s a great tool, but it will cost you an additional $8/mo.

7. Customer Support

Customer support is very important in dealing with day-to-day problems associated with websites including issues associated with downtime, server connectivity, or security. Its the most valued aspect of a web hosting company with 17% of the respondent at the above-mentioned survey valuing support over any other aspects.

A reliable and fast customer support team is what you should be looking for to solve these problems quickly, without affecting your website.

• SiteGround customer service offers a 24/7/365 day 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 chats. 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 a wait time of less than 10 minute for their ticketing system.
• Bluehost offers the same features. They have an attractive chat box. Their support team, however, isn’t quite as fast nor do they have the expertise to solve some high-end issues promptly. 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 2 minutes to connect, whereas SiteGround managed to reply within a few seconds of connecting. This easily proves the superiority of SiteGround’s customer support.

SiteGround is mainly known for their support in web hosting industry. Many users choose SiteGround due to their excellent support. This can be evident in twitter where are there so many people praising their support. Their support is based in Bulgaria, and they extensively train their support team to achieve great results and customer satisfaction.

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

@SiteGround you have some of the best chat customer support I've ever experienced. Each time, I'm wowed by the completeness of answers, helpfulness of your reps, and their expertise. Thank you!

— LearnToRV.com (@learntorv) May 31, 2019

Support waiting time of each hosts.

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..

SiteGround. Highly experienced, very fast and has some unique features that make them the best support team.

Visit SiteGround Visit BlueHost

Noor B

Noor is a well-known webhosting blogger and industry analyst. Since 2006, he has tested a wide variety of web hosting services and posted the results on his popular blog, InlineHostBlogger.com. For each review, he extensively tests each web hosting company personally, or with his hand-picked team of technicians.