SiteGround and Bluehost are two of the most popular web hosting in 2020. In this article, we will tackle the "SiteGround Vs Bluehost" with performance oriented comparison which will primarily compare speed, reliability and customer satisfaction among various other components between these two companies. SiteGround Vs Bluehost: 9 Test to Decide “Who’s Best” in 2021?

Updated: July 18, 2021. 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.

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.

Bluehost or SiteGround: Which is Better?

SiteGround is an international hosting provider that manages more than 2 Million domains and 5PB(5000000 GB  of data).

They are one of the few web hosting companies that use Google cloud data centers for hosting their client’s website data. What this means is that your website is hosted on one of the fastest and most powerful networks which are used by big companies like Apple, Netflix, Youtube, and Gmail.

On the other hand, Bluehost is one of the oldest web hostings that started its operation in 1996. They are extremely popular, with around 2 million domains hosted. 

Bluehost mainly focus on small bloggers or beginners who are looking for an affordable, all in all, simple to use managed hosting solution.

 

To make it simpler, check out my video on Siteground Vs Bluehost comparison.

Below, you can see exactly how we reached our conclusions.

Breakdown of this comparison

1. Speed test
2. Popularity
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. 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.

As seen from the above image, SiteGround’s average load time was around 0.5S, which is exceptionally fast for any web hosting. In fact, it’s the fastest we have tested here.

When it comes to uptime(availability), it was up 100% of the time with no downtime.

For Bluehost, they loaded  5-6 times slower than SiteGround for the same exact website as seen from the below result.

#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.

As a matter of fact, SiteGround offers CDN included for free with all their plans.

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.

However, changing the server location with SiteGround is a paid service, as it requires a website migration service in reality.

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

Also Read:

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

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

SiteGround hosted only 500,000 websites in 2015, but they host over 2.6 million websites in 2021, a five-fold increase in size over the last 6 years.

On the other hand, Bluehost recorded no growth in the last few years. A little digging into data showed us that Bluehost hosted 2 million websites in 2010, and that figure has still not changed in 2021.

Bluehost is 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.

• 

3. Bluehost Vs SiteGround 2019 Pricing

All SiteGround’s hosting plans, including the StartUp, now come with Dynamic cache and Memcached options. You get a 50% – 500% faster websites with Dynamic cache enabled. 

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.

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

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.

SiteGround server quality test result

My Server Location: Ashburn, USA

SiteGround’s performance was rock solid. Their average response time was 500ms all the way to 100 concurrent users with no major spikes in load time.

Bluehost server quality test result

My Server Location: Ashburn, USA

Bluehost’s performance was lackluster. Response time increased as the traffic increased. Even at lower levels of traffic (40 users), the response time was very high.

As concurrent traffic increased to 60, the response time touched a high of 33.33s. Their performance was highly inconsistent with a significant variance from one second to another.

As evident from the tests, SiteGround’s performance throughout this test was fast and consistent. That is due to many reasons, one of them is their recent deployment of a new MySQL setup that allows a much higher number of parallel requests to be processed simultaneously. This has a great impact on the effective handling of heavy MySQL queries and leads to a significant drop in the number of slow queries on their infrastructure, subsequently increasing the load capacity and the speed of the servers.

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’s 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.

On the other hand Bluehost encountered multiple downtime during our testing period as shown below.

Even more, SiteGround compensates you with free hosting if your website falls below the guaranteed network uptime of 99.90%.

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

SiteGround is another big factor that differentiates SiteGround from Bluehost.

SiteGround has a Proactive Approach to Security. Their security team develops advanced custom solutions and proactively patch vulnerabilities:

1. In-house built server monitoring system performs server check every 0.5 sec, and is able to fix many issues automatically and much faster.
2.  AI-anti bot blocks between 500,000 and 2M brute-force attacks every day and stops malicious traffic from reaching their clients’ sites.
3. 24/7 security admin team watching over software vulnerabilities, writing WAF rules to protect servers and sites from hacking and breaches.

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.

 SiteGround. 

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.

The manual transfer service was discontinued recently, and now users have to use the free SG migrator plugin to conduct a migration from another host over to SiteGround by themselves.

Earlier, SiteGround used to do a free manual transfer of your website from other hosting to SiteGround. However, now it’s a paid service.

Website transfer costs for each web host.

1. SiteGround – $30 for manual transfer, free with SG migrator plugin.
2. Bluehost – 149$
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%. 

View SG Optimizer premium features

• 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.

Bluehost WordPress packages start at $20 per month. It offers similar performance to their shared hosting plans. 

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

So, which WordPress host is better for WordPress: SiteGround or Bluehost?

In terms of performance and what’s included in the offer, SiteGround is a better choice for your WordPress website.

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

SiteGround For Cloud	Bluehost For Cloud
Rating: ★★★★★	Rating: ★★★
Rank: #1 in Cloud	Rank: #4 in Cloud

SiteGround’s Cloud hosting plan starts at a high price of $110/mo. They use next-generation LXC technology built on bare metal, meaning that you get your own machines with resources dedicated solely to your project and on the most reliable technology.

If you are not familiar with cloud hosting, check out my other post about Cloud hosting and its uses.

Moreover, SiteGround servers can be scaled up to 16 CPU cores and 20 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, auto-scaling option, white-label hosting, collaboration tools, etc.

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.

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 cache static delivery in order to speed up performance. 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.

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.

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.

– Chrome stats report on the increased HTTPS usage for the last 3 years.

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.

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.

8. 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.

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

Which hosting offers better support? 

• 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 minutes for their ticketing system.
• Likewise, Bluehost offers the same features. They have an attractive chat box which is available 24/7. However, their support isn’t quite as fast nor do they have the expertise to solve some high-end issues promptly.

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.

 

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, and 12 employer awards.

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.

SiteGround won the Stevie customer support of the year award

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

 SiteGround.  The best support in the industry with very fast and knowledgeable team.

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

Twitter is full of complaints regarding Bluehost’s support team. There were around 6 unhappy customers expressing their dissatisfaction in just 6 hours.

9. User 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.

SiteGround control panel called Site Tool

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.

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 User Review

Here are some reactions from Twitter users regarding their experience using SiteGround and Bluehost.

SiteGround’s Twitter user reviews and reactions.

Bluehost’s Twitter user reviews and reactions.

 

SiteGround Or Bluehost – Who’s the Best in 2021?

SiteGround is the perfect choice thanks to their performance, reliability, and excellent support systems.

Our verdict, in a nutshell, is that SiteGround is just an overall better business to work with and its services 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’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) is 62 compared to 46 by Bluehost. In essence, NPS measures how many customers are so pleased with their interactions with the firm.

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, it’s not as impressive as SiteGround’s.

Moreover, In 2020, SiteGround achieved a 97.7% customer satisfaction rate in their annual survey.

SiteGround is best for you and here’s why.

• High uptime record of over 99.99% over the last five years.
• 30-day money-back guarantee. You get your money back in full if you don’t like them.
• Quality servers mean high-speed websites.
• Timely automated backups.
• Effective security team capable of protecting sites from attacks.
• Knowledgeable and efficient customer support team.
• 60% discounted price for the first billing cycle.

The EU recently passed a new law that helps to protect the privacy and personal information of people living in the European Union known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Thus, any website that receives visitors from the EU must comply with the new law.

Both SiteGround and Bluehost are in full compliance with the GDPR.

Set up your web hosting with SiteGround now.

Bluehost Vs SiteGround FAQ

• Do SiteGround and Bluehost Offer Free trial?
  • Bluehost and SiteGround offer 30 Day Full Money Back Guarantee.
• What Does SiteGround do to Speed up your website?
  • Uses SSD drives for shared and cloud hosting platforms.
  • Uses Latest PHP versions.
  • Nginx used in conjunction with server software to cache and speed up the delivery of static content.
  • Uses Cloudflare CDN.
  • Comes with Supercacher plugin for Joomla and WordPress.
• What payment methods do Bluehost and SiteGround Accept?
  • For SiteGround: VISA, MasterCard, American Express, Discover and PayPal
    For Bluehost:  Credit Card, PayPal, Check or Money Order, Purchasing Order and Mailing Address.
• How long does the account activation take for SiteGround?
  • Shared server – Immediately
  • Cloud server – Up to a minute
• How does SiteGround protect you from hackers?
  • Their Unique account isolation, Anti AI bot and Cloudflare CDN will make it impossible for hackers to penetrate your site.
• Are Siteground and Bluehost servers PCI compliant?
  • SiteGround and Bluehost servers are PCI compliant by default.
• How often is my website backed up by SiteGround?
  • SiteGround Keeps a cloud backup for 30 Days, you can restore with just a single click from the control panel.
• Which Hosting is better for ranking higher in Google?
  • SiteGround website loads very fast. Speed is one of the important factors of ranking on Google.
• Which SiteGround plan is best for you?
  • SiteGround GrowBig is the most popular plan for WordPress websites. However, if you want more power, SiteGround GoGeek is ideal.
• Which Bluehost plan is best?
  • Bluehost Choice Plus is the most popular plan used by Bluehost customers. It has all the features required for setting up an average website.
• Does SiteGround charge monthly?
  • Yes, monthly payment is possible with SiteGround. Higher billing cycle comes with bigger discounts.
• How do you switch from Bluehost to SiteGround?
  • SiteGround offers free migration with its SG Migrator plugin. Once you purchase their hosting, contact their support and they will manually transfer your website from any hosting to SiteGround.