Bluehost started offering web hosting services in 2003. The company has been popular but not everyone will find them an ideal fit. It is important to realize that there are many alternatives to Bluehost that may better fit your needs.
My research on alternative web hosting services shows a progressive scene. Among them, a few providers really stand out and I’m sure one of them will be a fit for your needs.
Below are a few different Bluehost alternatives come out on top, let’s take a look:
TL;DR
| Web Host | Description | Pros | Cons | Price From |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hostinger | Affordable global hosting with consistent uptime. | Low prices, 99.9% uptime, 24/7 support, global data centers | No phone support, basic features in lower plans | $2.99/mo |
| GreenGeeks | Environmentally friendly hosting with excellent uptime and support. | Eco-friendly, 99.92% uptime, 24/7 support, malware cleaning | Higher renewal rates | $2.95/mo |
| A2 Hosting | High-performance hosting tailored for developers. | Good performance, multiple data centers, developer-friendly | Higher cost for advanced plans | $2.99/mo |
| Hostens | Budget-friendly hosting with excellent uptime. | Competitive pricing, 99.98% uptime, multilingual support | Limited storage options | $2.80/mo |
| HostPapa | Multilingual support with a focus on green energy. | 99.9% uptime, multilingual support, green energy | Expensive security packages | $2.95/mo |
| ChemiCloud | Reliable hosting with strong guarantees and daily backups | 45-day money-back guarantee, free SSL, daily backups | Higher prices, limited storage | $2.95/mo |
1. Hostinger
Website: https://www.hostinger.com/
Started in 2004, Hostinger is a formidable provider serving 29 million customers spanning 178 countries. The services offered include shared, cloud, WordPress, VPS, and Minecraft hosting. The 15,000 daily sign-ups are indications of its growing success.
Hostinger – The Cheaper Alternative To Bluehost
Hostinger boasts of global services with the lowest latency and highest reliability guaranteed with 99.9% uptime. Their 2020 Google Cloud Platform partnership has improved stability, reliability, and speed.
Global services are fast with seven data centers in the US, UK, Brazil, Netherlands, Singapore, Indonesia, and Lithuania. Servers are securely protected from unwarranted attacks with Bitninja and SpamAssassin.
Hostinger offers 24/7/365 customer support services with superb live response times of within 50 seconds. However, there is no phone support. Basic features include 100GB bandwidth, 10GB storage, website builder, and 1 email account.
Front-end features are easy to use, reliable, and developer-friendly. Page loading speed and website response times are above industry averages. The Zyro website builder is remarkable for website creation.
Find out more about the pros and cons of Hostinger.
Hostinger Pricing
Prices at Hostinger are some of the cheapest in the industry. Basic shared hosting rates start from only $2.99 while higher tiers are available at $3.99 and $9.99.
Hostinger Pros
- Very cost-effective - Lowest plan starts at $2.99/mo and support up to 100 websites
- Nine different data centers in four continents
- Good spread of hosting plans
- User-friendly control panel (hPanel)
- Wide range of payment options accepted
- Git environment available on shared hosting
- Additional 7% discount with coupon code "HOSTSCORE"
Hostinger Cons
- Price increase during the renewal
- Does not support Windows hosting
2. GreenGeeks
Website: https://www.greengeeks.com/
A global leader in eco-friendly web hosting services, GreenGeeks has 50,000+ customers and hosts 600,000+ websites from 13-year operations. Services offered include shared, WordPress, VPS, and reseller hosting. For those committed to environmentally friendly practices, go for GreenGeeks.
Why GreenGeeks Over Bluehost?
Exceptional web hosting services, environmentally responsible. Guaranteed 99.92% uptime. There is a good spread of 5 data centers in Chicago, Phoenix, Toronto, Montreal, and Amsterdam.
Server performance is rated A+.
Infrastructure is entirely powered by renewable energy (also read – How Green Hosting Works).
GreenGeeks helps you with malware attacks by cleaning your websites. Since 2019, it has achieved 99% success in cleaning 726+ websites.
Customer support is available 24/7/365 with knowledgeable staff answering your queries via email, live chat, and phone support. Email support is through a form with a 15–20-minute response time. Live chat is also available 24/7/365 with phone support possible during working hours.
GreenGeeks has nailed it in performance and speed. Their website claims to use the latest web and database servers enabling fast performance. You also get lots of freebies here including Wildcard SSL certificate and a website builder.
Find out more about GreenGeeks hosting in our review
GreenGeeks Pricing
Shared hosting plans come in three flavors: Ecosite Lite, Ecosite Pro, and Ecosite Premium. You can sign on for any of these monthly, but for maximum savings go for 36-month terms. Prices start at $2.95/mo.
GreenGeeks Pros
- Returns 3x power consumed with renewable energy credits
- Affordable pricing
- Free daily backup for all shared hosting plans
- All plans support Perl, Python and Git
- Free website migration assistance
- Root access, control panel and cPanel/WHM included in reseller hosting plans
GreenGeeks Cons
- Price increase during the renewal
- Slightly lacklustre customer service
- Non refundable setup fees
3. A2 Hosting
Website: https://www.a2hosting.com/
A2 Hosting has been around for two decades now and over the years has steadily improved its product line. Today, the company presents a formidable range of robust hosting plans that suit almost any need imaginable.
Why A2 Hosting?
When it comes to performance, A2 Hosting servers have long demonstrated both good speed and resilience. This is true even on the cheaper shared hosting plans and something well worth the price you pay for them at this host.
Even great performance can be improved further though and that’s where A2 Hosting’s data center spread comes in handy. They offer a choice of servers in three strategic areas covering North America (Michigan and Arizona), Europe (Amsterdam), and Asia (Singapore).
Business websites often require reliability that goes beyond what most other sites offer. Because of this, A2 Hosting’s solid foundation gives it the capital to boast excellent business services. They even offer business-specific tools and support the widest range of CRM solutions in the market.
For companies or even individual developers that need to deploy and test web applications, A2 Hosting is also a rather unique option. It’s one of the few that supports developer environments even on their shared hosting plans.
Read our A2 Hosting review for more.
A2 Hosting Pricing
A2 Hosting has good lower-tier pricing including Startup ($2.99) and Drive ($5.99). For higher-tier plans such as Turbo Boost ($6.99), and Turbo Max ($14.99), the Turbo features are included in the plans, making them the better choice for business users. All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
A2 Hosting Pros
- Server locations in North America, Europe, and Asia
- Free website migration assistance
- Developer-oriented features even on shared hosting
- Custom performance optimizations tools available in higher shared plans
A2 Hosting Cons
- Steep price increase during the renewal
- Free site transfers mainly for cPanel installations
- HTTP/2 only on TURBO plans
- Lowest shared plan does not support automatic backup
4. Hostens
Website: https://www.hostens.com/
Started in 2003, Hostens offers shared, reseller, and VPS hosting with website builder services. The multi-lingual support ranging from Mandarin to Russian connects with over 120,000 global customers.
Why Hostens?
Hostens guarantees 99.98% uptime from its Tier III data centers in Vilnius, Lithuania, Washington DC, and Singapore. If you are concerned about page load disruptions, Hostens is the way to go.
Hostens has specific offers, as it does not believe in unlimited offers. What-you-see is what-you-get. The company offers transparent and simple shared hosting packages for one of the best prices in the market.
For website protection, SSL certificates and spam filters are offered. The SSL certificates come in three tiers, domain, organization, and extended validation at annual rates, $14.99, $149.99, and $199.99. The spam and virus filters consist of advanced spam and anti-virus protection software.
Hostens Pricing
The pricing plans for Hostens shared plans are now starting at $2.80/mo, making them competitive with other low-cost hosting providers. Despite the price increase, they still offer a budget-friendly option for those looking for affordable shared hosting solutions.
Hostens Pros
- Highly competitive pricing
- Support Ruby and Python in all shared hosting plans
- Daily backup included in all shared hosting plans
- Choice of 10 distributed data centers in seven countries
Hostens Cons
- Price increase during the renewal
- Limited storage in shared hosting plans
- Hosting upgrade to VPS only (lack higher hosting capacity)
5. HostPapa
Website: https://www.hostpapa.com/
HostPapa is a leading Canadian web hosting service provider with operations in 18 countries. Although priced within the beginner’s tier, HostPapa does not compromise on speed, support, and security.
Hosting 500,000 websites in Canada and the US alone speaks of its stellar performance. Green energy is used to power servers and data centers. The hosting services include shared, WordPress, VPS, and reseller hosting.
What Makes HostPapa the Better Option?
HostPapa has received an A rating from BBB and has a guaranteed uptime of 99.9%. It offers over 70 years of combined expertise in web hosting services. There is a 30-day money-back guarantee.
The paid security packages, Protection Power, SiteLock, and Backup are comprehensive but rates are expensive. Free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates along with wildcard alternatives are offered. SpamAssassin is used for anti-spamming.
The award-winning customer support includes 24/7/365 Live Chat, Phone, and Email. The support services in English, French, German, and Spanish are one of the reasons for HostPapa’s rising popularity.
Check out our HostPapa review for more.
HostPapa Pricing
Shared hosting services at HostPapa has four tiers – Essentials ($2.95), Growth ($6.95), Premium ($6.95) and Elite ($14.95). The Premium plan has several unlimited features as compared to the starter, making it a preferred choice.
HostPapa Pros
- Broad range of hosting plans
- Beginner-friendly
- Excellent support services
- Multi-language website
HostPapa Cons
- Few dev-friendly tools
- Limited features on lowest shared plans
6. ChemiCloud
Website: https://chemicloud.com/
A 2016 entrant, ChemiCloud has data centers in Dallas, London, Sydney, Frankfurt, Bucharest, Singapore, and Bangalore. The services offered include shared, WordPress, and reseller hosting, cloud VPS and website builder.
Why ChemiCloud?
ChemiCloud does not believe in the ‘unlimited’ disk storage space feature – which is reasonable, given their ultra-low pricing. All plans have very specific disk storage offers. For shared hosting, the disk storage space includes 15 GB, 25 GB, and 35 GB.
There is free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate protection for all users and daily backups services provide greater reliability. Customer support is via support tickets with response times under 10 minutes and instant replies for live chat.
ChemiCloud assures a 45-day money-back guarantee for shared web hosting, reseller hosting, and WordPress hosting. For cloud VPS hosting, it is a 15-day money-back guarantee. Some services such as domain name registration are non-refundable.
See ChemiCloud performance and user reviews
ChemiCloud Pricing
To be honest, ChemiCloud shared hosting plans are higher than the many on this list. However, they are well within tolerable prices for cheap hosting solutions. Shared hosting here starts at $2.95/mo for three-year subscriptions.
Chemicloud Pros
- Excellent reliability and speed
- Dev-friendly packages available
- Well-priced
- Impressive customer support
Chemicloud Cons
- Lack of other business services
- Limited knowledge base
Why Choose an Alternative to Bluehost
Bluehost is an established provider based on history and a sizable market share. The company is founded by Matt Heaton and Danny Ashworth in 2003 and acquired by Endurance International Group in 2010.
However, some factors need to be considered.
The renewal rates are expensive about three times from offer rates, a big jump for small timers.
Backups offered aren’t necessarily the best and if you’re using their service, you are encouraged to do your own additional backups. While better features are available, these come at extra cost – not something everyone is prepared to face.
In addition, if you’re moving to them from another host, be prepared to pay if you want them to migrate your site for you. While they started offering free migrations sometime in 2020, it’s only for qualified WordPress sites.
Here’s our Bluehost review – which include years of performance test results, updated pricing plans, and survey feedback.
Wrapping Up
Although relatively recent entrants, the eight alternatives reviewed have established a strong footing within the global small and medium business community. These are providers who will take care of your business needs and help grow your business for the long-term without causing a big dent in your finances.
