SiteGround vs Bluehost 2023

Bluehost vs Siteground – I assume that you are searching for a good hosting provider or want to switch. Then you might have come across many hosting providers and many reviews.

In most of the places, you will find some of the common hosting providers like Bluehost, SiteGround, HostGator, etc. From there you will find most people are recommending 2 hosting providers, SiteGround or Bluehost. Then you might fumble to choose which one is good or what is the best one. So I come up with this SiteGround vs Bluehost post.

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So why not do an in-depth comparison between these two hosting providers. Before you go ahead and purchase a plan, let’s put these two web hosting heavyweights to test. Then we will find out who is the real winner.

SiteGround vs Bluehost Tests

Before going to the tests and find the best one, let me ask one thing. What are the most important aspects when you are going to buy hosting? Otherwise, what are the parameters you will take into consideration when you purchase a hosting plan?

If you are an absolute beginner, then you might not know how to evaluate a good host. It’s obvious.

Check Latest Offers on Bluehost.com or SiteGround.com

According to hosting experts, they evaluate a host in the following parameters. Popularity, Ease of use, Hosting features Speed, Uptime, Scalability, Security, Support, Pricing.

1: Popularity

Bluehost was founded in 2003 in Utah and powers more than 2M websites worldwide. The company hasn’t stopped growing since it first started.

SiteGround was founded in 2004 in Bulgaria and powers 2M domains worldwide.

To determine the popularity, there is a method. Google knows them for a long time and let’s ask it.

For this purpose let’s use the Google trends tool. If you are familiar with this tool then you might know that the tool gives you a popularity graph. And the cool thing is, you can compare two or more.

In this case, let’s compare SiteGround vs Bluehost.

Have a look at the graph. It is clear that there is no comparison between these two when it comes to popularity. Bluehost graph is way higher than the SiteGround graph. Because Bluehost is way more searched than SiteGround.

If you have a keyword research tool like Ahrefs or KWFinder then you may do another thing. Type both the keywords and see the search volume. You will find that Bluehost has a double search volume than SiteGround.

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But search demand and search volume is, of course, not everything in hosting.

SiteGround has been very popular for the last 2-3 years. But the popularity declined in the case of Bluehost in the same period of time.

Let’s analyze other aspects and find out whether Bluehost standstill or not.

2: Ease of use

Uses play an important role as customers have to use the service after perching. The User Interface that we get with the hosting plan is called the control panel. Both these hosting providers used to come with cPanel.

But SiteGround has made a significant change in its control panel in July 2019. They have introduced their own inbuilt custom made control panel called SiteTool. Existing users can keep using the old cPanel until they switch them to the new SiteTool.

SiteTool has a very clean user interface. Beginners can also use this new panel without any hustle. All the features are categorized in different categories and you will find it instantly.

The main goal of SiteGround is to provide users a good UI so that users can manage their site easily. They analyzed the traditional cPanel features and figure out what are the drawbacks.

Then they come up with their own SiteTool with good UI and many improved functionalities. After the release of thins new tool, they provide this interface with each hosting plan. You don’t have to pay some extra dollars for this tool. This is free and you will get it with your hosting plan.

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In the hand, Bluehost uses the traditional cPanel with its basic web hosting plans. cPanel is a popular tool that most of the hosting companies provide with their hosting plan.

If you are a beginner and you have two options to choose from, then you might choose the SiteTool. Because it is very easy to use and find your necessary features. Sometimes cPanel confuses new users and it is quite difficult to find a feature. But you will get familiar with the features after some uses.

3: Speed

This is one of the most important factors one should consider when you are in search of a good web hosting provider.

According to the latest Google Algorithm update, they have added site speed as a ranking factor. This means your site should loads fast in order to rank higher in the search result.

According to Google, if your site doesn’t load under 3 seconds, then 54% of visitors will leave your site. As a site owner, you would never want to leave visitors.

We have tested the speed of both the host in various tools. In this process, we have tested various test sites in speed test tools like GT Metrix, Pingdom. As you know the working process and the parameters vary from tool to tool. So you will not get the exact same data in all the tools. They may be nearer. The difference in this case in a millisecond.

We found that SiteGround loads very fast than Bluehost. In fact, Bluehost takes twice the time to load than SiteGround.

So, SiteGround is the winner in this speed segment.

Why SiteGround is Fast?

You might wonder how SiteGround manages to load in such a low time. Well, there is much reason.

First, SiteGround uses SSD servers in all the hosting plans. SSD drives are more expensive than HDD drives. But SSD drivers are faster and more reliable.

Both companies use Apache + NGINX web server technology in their server. Usually, NGINX uses for static files and Apache for dynamic files. But SiteGround has optimized it for better execution.

Another reason for the fast load time is the PHP version. SiteGround has started supporting the latest PHP 7.3 version.

PHP is a scripting language and server-side programming used in almost all interactive dynamic websites.

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Popular hosting provider Kinsta has conducted a test to analyze the effect of PHP version and request processing per second.

They found that PHP 7.3 processes 3x more requests per second than older PHP versions. This is one of the reasons why the SiteGround team uses the technology in their server to boost the processing requests that lead to a faster speed.

Sadly, Bluehost is in PHP 7.0 still. Moreover, they still use PHP 5.6 for all the old user’s hosting accounts. They also don’t confirm the release date for the latest PHP version.

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SiteGround is among the first hosting companies that use advanced technology to load faster in slow internet connection. They provide QUIC speed technology for their websites to boost the speed.

1: Uptime

Uptime is also another most important factor in hosting. Uptime means how much time your website is up and running.

This completely depends on the hosting company and the hardware they use and the maintenance also.

It is recommended that any uptime above 99.95% is good. You might be thinking that why it should not be 100%? Well, practically there is no hosting provider that can provide 100% uptime consistently.

As a site owner, you would never want to down your site just because of your downtime on the server. You will lose visitors and indirectly loss credibility lost sales, rank drops in Google and much more.

We have tested the uptime of both the hosting providers. SiteGround provides 99.99% uptime whereas Bluehost provides 99.99% uptime.

At this point, there is not a huge distance between the uptime. But we have to go through many forums and found that a lot of people have complained about the uptime of the Bluehost. Their servers are down for a period of time, without any cause.

Similarly, we got some good reviews on SiteGround and their uptime. We have also conducted some surveys to collect people’s opinions to choose the uptime winner.

We found that the majority of people voted to SiteGround. Bluehost has not the worst in the hosting space but we have to choose one of them.

Combining our tests and the survey results we choose SiteGround as the winner in the uptime category.

2: Pricing

Pricing also plays a great role in the hosting industry. There are various hosting plans and the pricing often defined based on that.

There are many types of web hosting and it’s often confusing to choose one for beginners. From shared hosting to dedicated servers the options are more.

Let’s see the pricing of shared hosting of both the hosting service providers to grab some ideas.

Note that, the pricing often fluctuates. I have listed the prices as when I am writing this article. This may changes when you are viewing the pricing.

SiteGround Shared Hosting Pricing

Let’s see the shared hosting pricing of SiteGround first.

As you see they have 3 pricing options.

• StartUp for $3.95 a month: Hosting for 1 website, 10GB SSD storage, no bandwidth limitations.
• GrowBig for $5.95 a month: Host unlimited websites, 20GB SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, and other features.
• GoGeek for $11.95 a month: Host unlimited websites, 30GB SSD storage, priority support, and other features.

Check their website for Pricing.

Bluehost Shared Hosting Pricing

Let’s see the shared hosting pricing of Bluehost.

As you see they have 4 pricing options.

• Basic for $2.75 a month: Host 1 website, 50GB of storage and unlimited bandwidth.
• Plus for $4.95 a month: Host unlimited websites, unlimited storage, and unlimited bandwidth.
• Choice Plus for $5.45 a month: Same as the Plus plan with some additional features.
• Pro for $13.95 a month: Same as the Choice Plus plan with some additional features.

Check their website for Pricing.

From the above comparison, you can see that Bluehost is cheaper than SiteGround. There is not a huge difference between their plans.

There are many other types of hosting that you can compare. Just for some understanding purposes, I have described the shared hosting plan.

To be honest, deciding the prices is very personal. Some people don’t mind to pay more if they are getting good quality and others prefer cheaper alternatives with (perhaps) less quality.

There is a commonly used word in the hosting space. Don’t go cheap with your hosting.

Then it’s up to you which one you would prefer.

In this pricing segment, Bluehost is the winner for its low cost shared hosting and WordPress hosting.

3: Scalability

Scalability is important when you are choosing a host. Your hosting provider should ready for your growth.

This means if you have a hosting plan that can’t handle your excess traffic, your host should read to scale it up. If you stay on the same low-level hosting then your site may be down and won’t handle the excess traffic.

If the SiteGround’s GoGeek plan (highest in shared hosting) isn’t enough for you, then they have a couple of options to choose from.

SiteGround cloud hosting: This starts at $80 a month. This starting plan contains 2 CPU cores, 4GB RAM, 40GB SSD storage and 5TB data transfer. Be aware that the bandwidth is limited to 5TB. But this is a lot as well.

There are four plans in this category and the highest one costs, $240 per month.

SiteGround dedicated servers: For those who need even more resources, then they can switch to a dedicated server. However, this isn’t cheap. The dedicated server plan starts at about $270 a month.

The base plan (Entry Server) has 480GB SSD, 16GB DDR3 RAM, 4 CPU Cores, 8 CPU Threads, Intel Xeon E3-1230 SSD, 3.20Ghz CPU Clock Speed, 8MB CPU Cache, and 10TB Bandwidth.

There are 3 plans in this category and the highest one (Super Power Server) costs $729 per month.

SiteGround Enterprise hosting: If your needs are so big then the final option would be Enterprise hosting.

If the Bluehost’s Pro plan (highest in shared hosting) isn’t enough for you, then they have a couple of options to choose from.

Bluehost VPS: Their VPS plans of Bluehost starts from $18.99 per month. It includes 2 Cores, 30 GB SSD Storage, 2 GB RAM, 1 TB Bandwidth, 1 IP Address.

There are three plans. The highest plan (Ultimate) costs $59.99 per month.

Bluehost dedicated server: If VPS is not enough then you can switch to Bluehost’s dedicated server. The base plan (Standard) costs $79.99 per month. It includes 500GB (Mirrored) Storage, 4 GB RAM, 4 cores @ 2.3 GHz, 5 TB Bandwidth, 3 IP Addresses.

There are three plans. The highest plan (Premium) costs $119.99 per month.

If you are searching for a cloud hosting service then Bluehost doesn’t provide this hosting. You can choose the SiteGround in this case.

Both SiteGround and Bluehost offer advance scalable solutions. So it is a tie in scalability.

4: Security

Security is the most important thing in the online world. There are various regions that instruct site owners to secure their websites.

In your hosting provider end, they should provide enough support and security in their end.

SiteGround cares about your security and comes with SSL, SFTP and SSH access. They also use PHP 7 by default in their servers so it is a more secure version. They also monitor your traffic to block brute force attacks.

Recently they have developed an anti-bot AI to protect websites from brute-force attacks. After the release of this system, it has worked efficiently.

They recently published the report on the achievement of the Anti-bot AI system.

• Blocked 160 million bad bot requests.
• It has blocked 180 DDOS attacks.
• Stopped 7 million Brute force attacks.

They have also introduced an industry’s first Secure Account Isolation feature. This system works in shared hosting servers and isolates your shared hosting account from other accounts on the same server.

This increases the security of your website and protects your site from security threats. If other sites on the same server got hacked or fall in security hazards, then other sites will be kept secure.

This system also frees up server resources that are not used. It can now be used by customers. In this way, the servers became more efficient and running smoothly.

On the other hand, Bluehost is worst in case of security. I think they don’t care about the customer’s security and keep their server necked.

We have collected some news and found that Bluehost was attacked brutally many time in the past.

On January 15, 2019, a high-risk security vulnerability was discovered at the Bluehost server. Some security specialists said that they can take down any site in a few minutes.

Some sources also claimed that Bluehost still relies on old infrastructure and software. They still use Cloudflare to protect their customers from DDoS attacks.

When we asked Bluehost about the problem and the action taken, they said they are working on it. This is not the first time they faced serious security flaws. In the past, they have faced many times.

Insecurity, the winner is SiteGround. Because they care customer’s websites and developed their own anti-bot AI to prevent brute-force attacks. In this way, they are not relying on third-party security service providers to protect their customers as Bluehost does.

5: Support

Support plays a great role in hosting. Make sure that your hosting service provider should always ready to provide you support.

Everyone needs support at a certain point in time. Whether it may be a technical issue or a major issue in performance or anything regarding hosting.

Assume a situation when your site is down because of some technical issues. You have tried many things and just wanted to contact the support team. As they are providing many media to connect to them, you tried one of them.

If they don’t respond instantly or take some time to resolve the issue then it would be bad for your site. Whenever you will resolve the issue then your site would be live again. In that period, you will lose traffic and can’t achieve your business goal.

SiteGround provides the best level of support. They provide 24-hour support via phone, email (ticket) and live chat.

Their support team is always ready and friendly to me. They are very knowledgeable and given a solution really fast.

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In addition to that, they provide “Advanced Priority Support”. This feature is available for GoGeek plans and higher. Customers having these plans receive priority support and their queries are routed to the most experienced team members. In this way, a customer can get the best level of support as possible.

SiteGround also has tutorials and webinars, and a vast knowledge base of useful information on almost every topic you want. You can check your queries there and get valuable information. In this way, you can also know more things.

In other had Bluehost has not a good record of customer support. We have also checked some Facebook groups and conducted some polls as well.

We found that customers having the worst experience with their support team. So users also complained that they have to wait for a long time to get the response.

You can reach the Bluehost support team via email tickets, chat, and phone.

On average, Bluehost took 2 minutes to connect, whereas SiteGround took a few seconds to connect with the support team. Simply they take more time to give responses than SiteGround.

So the winner in this category is SiteGround.

Overview

As of now, we have discussed many aspects regarding both hostings. I have also described the winners in each aspect and why one is the winner. Now let’s take a tour and find out who is the winner in each category.

SiteGround vs Bluehost Comparison 2023

With 5/8 wins SiteGround is the best among the two.

Conclusion

So, these are the thing you should know when it comes to SiteGround vs Bluehost. SiteGround is a better option than Bluehost.

I would recommend SiteGround if you need the best performance, advanced features, excellent support, high-level security and much more.

You can go with Bluehost if you want more storage, performance doesn’t matters to you, want a cheap hosting and can manage the medium support.

We have discussed in-depth about both the hosting providers and analyses all the aspects that can help you to choose the right host.

Again there are many aspects that can be varied depending upon your needs. For example, not everyone wants to spend some extra dollars on hosting in exchange for some good features.

So, if you ask me then I would choose SiteGround. Then it’s up to you.