If creating a website using WordPress is your plan, a strong web hosting service built around WordPress is necessary. SiteGround and Bluehost are two of our favorite options for web hosting for WordPress.
SiteGround is especially useful for creating an ecommerce site that uses WordPress. Bluehost is extremely easy to use, ensuring you can operate a basic website within several minutes. And both options have excellent starting price points, so you can build your site on a budget.
SiteGround and Bluehost Compared to the Best
Through our research to find the 10 best WordPress web hosts, we placed both Bluehost and SiteGround on our list. Our top pick, however, went to Hostinger, which we found to be the most affordable WordPress web hosting option that still offers strong features. If you sign up for Hostinger today, you receive a 30-day money-back guarantee, and you may be able to receive three months of hosting for free.
- Hostinger – Most affordable WordPress web host
- Bluehost – Best for creating your first WordPress website
- GreenGeeks – Best for eco-friendly website owners
- WP Engine – Best for hosting multiple WordPress sites with tons of traffic
- Nexcess – Best for effortless website staging
- SiteGround – Best for ecommerce websites with easy site migration
- Flywheel – Best if you want experts to migrate your site for you
- Kinsta – Best for managing unexpected surges in traffic
- Scala Hosting – Most freebies in every WordPress hosting plan
- Cloudways – Best for flexibility and extensive options
SiteGround vs. Bluehost High-Level Comparison
SiteGround and Bluehost have quite a few similarities. Both offer managed and unmanaged web hosting services, shared hosting, WordPress hosting, and dedicated hosting.
We believe both web hosting services are a good choice for a wide range of potential users. They both offer low initial hosting prices and rank highly on our list of the best web hosting providers.
At a high level is where they slightly differ, though. Bluehost is a slightly better choice for those who need top-notch customer service and built-in marketing tools, especially for novices. SiteGround caters nicely to those with pretty simple website needs while delivering easy-to-use site migration processes, especially for ecommerce websites.
Products and Services Offered by SiteGround and Bluehost
SiteGround has several different types of hosting available. Its WordPress hosting is especially notable, as it offers options specifically made to work with WordPress. You don’t have to download or configure WordPress on your own when you take advantage of SiteGround’s services in this area.
SiteGround also offers WooCommerce hosting, which is an ecommerce platform built on WordPress. Cloud hosting is another option available from SiteGround. To learn more about the services available, check out our detailed SiteGround review.
In addition to its WordPress hosting services, Bluehost’s claim to fame is low-priced website hosting through shared hosting. Bluehost has both managed and unmanaged shared hosting platforms, ensuring you can find the best option for your needs and budget. Bluehost’s various shared hosting plans are extremely versatile, allowing you to generate the perfect setup.
Another key service from Bluehost is its VPS hosting. You receive dedicated server resources, and you can select the amount of dedicated RAM, CPU, and disk space for your website from the virtual private server. Bluehost also offers a dedicated hosting plan, which is the top-end hosting service it has available. Our Bluehost review breaks down the various services available in even more detail.
Company Health and Stability of SiteGround and Bluehost
Both Bluehost and SiteGround are strong companies with a long track record of serving customers.
Bluehost began hosting services in 2003 from its headquarters in Orem, Utah. More than 2 million websites make use of Bluehost web hosting services. Bluehost partnered with WordPress more than 10 years ago, allowing it to provide high-end customer service to its WordPress hosting customers. Bluehost did have a hacking incident in 2015, but it recovered.
SiteGround was founded in 2004 in Sofia, Bulgaria, making it almost the same age as Bluehost. SiteGround maintains data centers worldwide, including in the United States, the UK, and Australia. SiteGround provides hosting for about 2 million domains worldwide.
As a Bulgarian company, SiteGround does not publicly disclose its ownership group. Endurance International Group owns Bluehost. Neither SiteGround nor Bluehost are publicly traded.
SiteGround vs. Bluehost Pricing Comparison
Both SiteGround and Bluehost offer a wide range of pricing options, helping you find the right features that fit your budget. Both services also provide extremely low introductory prices for the first year, but the prices increase quite a bit in the second year and beyond.
Both also offer some free benefits for subscribers in the first year, including a free domain and a free automated backup. You need to pick the right pricing tier if you want these extra benefits.
Pricing Structure of SiteGround and Bluehost
Bluehost offers WordPress, shared, dedicated, and VPS hosting. Once you select the type of hosting, you can then pick among a few pricing tiers within each hosting service. Bluehost offers a discount of about 35% to 70% for the first year of hosting before prices rebound to regular rates.
Within each pricing tier in Bluehost’s shared hosting plans, for example, you can select the specific number of websites you want to use, the amount of SSD storage, and whether you want to use multi-site management tools.
SiteGround offers web hosting, WordPress hosting, WooCommerce hosting, and cloud hosting. As with Bluehost, you can select among various pricing plans within each hosting service. Expect to receive a discount of up to 80% for the first year with your SiteGround package before it reverts to the regular price.
Within the pricing tiers in the web hosting plans from SiteGround, you can pick the number of websites available, the number of monthly visits, the amount of storage space you have available, and other items.
Cost Comparison of SiteGround and Bluehost
Both Bluehost and SiteGround have pricing plans ranging from those for clients planning to run a single, small blogging website to those running dozens of large ecommerce websites.
Because both SiteGround and Bluehost offer WordPress web hosting, we’ll compare those plans to give you an idea of how they each handle pricing for similar services.
SiteGround offers a larger initial discount with its WordPress web hosting services, but that discount lasts only 12 months. Bluehost’s prices are quite a bit lower when the prices revert to the regular price after the first year. If you are looking for a site host that you will keep for the long run, Bluehost is the better value. Additionally, Bluehost also has an initial three-year discount option that’s even cheaper than its one-year option.
Bluehost also has a more powerful top pricing tier than SiteGround. It offers 100 GB of SSD storage in its top tier versus 40 GB of storage in SiteGround’s top tier for WordPress web hosting.
Trials and Guarantees for SiteGround and Bluehost
Neither Bluehost nor SiteGround offer a free trial period for any of their web hosting services. However, both offer a 30-day money-back guarantee on the price of certain hosting subscriptions.
With Bluehost, your 30-day refund period only applies to the cost of the hosting service. If you subscribed to a pricing plan that included a free domain name, Bluehost deducts your refund amount by a domain fee. This ensures you maintain control of your domain name. If you cancel after the 30-day initial period, you cannot receive any refund of what you paid.
SiteGround offers a 30-day money-back guarantee for shared hosting plans and a 14-day money-back guarantee for cloud hosting plans. If you sign up for a plan that includes a free domain name, you cannot receive a refund for the cost of the domain name.
SiteGround vs. Bluehost Core Criteria Comparison
As we researched the best options for website hosting with WordPress, we settled on measuring each tool against several key criteria. Our research showed that these are the most common criteria that the majority of people need to have for success with their WordPress web hosting options.
We wanted to delve into the criteria beyond the obvious ones. We purposefully did not include website loading speed as a core criterion, for example, because any hosting service should excel in this area. The same goes for uptime for the website.
Check out our list for more information on how Bluehost and SiteGround stack up against our favorite web hosting with WordPress tools in these core criteria.
Multi-Site vs. Single-Site Hosting – Bluehost Wins
Although some people simply want a single website running from WordPress, you should think about your potential growth plans. You may end up needing to run multiple websites. If so, you will want a hosting provider that can accommodate all your different sites.
We like Bluehost for those seeking multi-site hosting at a great price. It allows you to create as many websites as you want at its Choice Plus pricing tier, which starts at $5.45 per month for the first year, which is almost three-quarters off the renewal rate of $19.99. Bluehost’s Choice Plus has a helpful multi-site management tool called Maestro and 24/7 customer service.
SiteGround is actually cheaper in its GrowBig tier, which costs $4.99 per month for the first year. However, its renewal rate is $24.99 per month, which eats up the first-year savings versus Bluehost in less than two months. SiteGround does have 24/7 customer service, which is helpful.
Customer Service – Bluehost Wins
Although most web hosting for WordPress tools is easy to use, you may find yourself needing to reach out for help on occasion. Finding a host that provides excellent customer service is important. Availability at any time of the day or night is also a key consideration because you never know when you may need help.
Bluehost offers 24/7 customer service via telephone or live chat. The phone number is easy to find, so you don’t have to waste time searching for it. Even though Bluehost focuses on unmanaged hosting, its customer service operates at an impressive level.
SiteGround’s customer service isn’t quite as easy to access, but it still performs well. The primary means of help is through a live chat session 24/7, but phone support is also available. However, you must receive a one-time verification code to use telephone customer service.
Managed vs. Unmanaged Hosting – Tie
Deciding whether you want managed or unmanaged WordPress web hosting is an important consideration. Although most web hosting with WordPress is unmanaged, you also have some managed site options. Sites run faster, have a higher level of security, and have more responsive customer service teams with managed hosting. However, they also cost more than unmanaged hosting.
Bluehost only began offering managed hosting options recently, but it jumped into this market with quick success. It works especially well when you want to use marketing tools with your website, like analysis of your site traffic and suggestions for SEO. SiteGround is one of the least expensive managed WordPress hosting options around. However, it is only useful for sites with limited traffic.
For unmanaged hosting, either Bluehost or SiteGround are good choices. They both deliver extremely low introductory prices before increasing in price in year two and beyond. You also continue receiving limited customer service capabilities with SiteGround and Bluehost in the unmanaged arena.
Site Migration – SiteGround Wins
It’s common to need to move an existing website to a web host with WordPress. Because this is so common, you might expect most WordPress web hosts to make this process easy. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Without a simple migration process, you may make an error or waste a lot of time migrating your old site.
SiteGround offers site migration as an important aspect of its service, and it excels in this area. Transferring your old site to SiteGround is easy, and SiteGround provides the help you need. Its migration tool is free to use.
Bluehost also allows you to migrate your existing site for free. It offers a dedicated tool for migrating the site, although we slightly prefer SiteGround’s tool. Should you need help from the Bluehost support team, you can reach out at any point during the migration.
Final Verdict – Bluehost Wins
Our research shows that Bluehost is the winner against SiteGround for WordPress web hosting. Both SiteGround and Bluehost hang their hats on low price points and ease of use, but Bluehost slightly outdoes SiteGround in these key areas. Additionally, Bluehost has built a large user base on the strength of its customer service, which is always appreciated when you need help.
Both Bluehost and SiteGround are strong options, as both made our list of the top web hosts for WordPress. But we give Bluehost a slight nod in this comparison.
https://www.quicksprout.com/siteground-vs-bluehost/
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