Finds Bluehost Cloud solid for speed and uptime, but dashboard upsells and high renewal rates are frustrating.
51signal
203reviewsi
A score out of 100. Negative and mixed reviews take points off, and so does having only a few reviews, so a handful of glowing reviews can’t beat a product many people like.
7%9%84% Negative
Most customers describe poor support, from scripted replies and agents who cannot fix problems to staff accidentally breaking live sites.
What customers love, and what they don’tWhat customers noticed
Customer reviews (203)
Add your reviewShowing 40 reviews mentioning renewal price hike Show all
A Bluehost customer paid $80 for shared hosting but was asked for $400 after 12 months, with support unable to handle even an HTTPS redirect and emails landing in clients' spam.
A blogger on Bluehost for three years says the price went up every year and it isn't worth the hassle anymore.
After 19 years of unlimited space (almost 700GB), Bluehost capped them at 250GB for $22/month versus about $100 a year before.
Over the last year Bluehost had a bad upgrade, scripted support, high renewals and slow malware cleanup help across several accounts.
A former Bluehost customer says it starts very cheap and then increases fast after a year or two.
A long-time Bluehost customer says support got terrible after it was bought, fixes took days, and prices went up, so they left.
Four to five years on Bluehost: service is good, but renewals jump and storage is limited.
A Bluehost customer was pitched SiteLock at $200 a year each, saw hosting renew from $30 to $300, and found support not great.
Says Bluehost renewals are high, servers slow versus other hosts and support useless.
Bluehost raised the renewal to over $700 from about $250 for three years.
Bluehost raised their WordPress price roughly 10x on auto-renewal and would do nothing about it.
Stayed about a year after Bluehost jacked up the rate, then moved to another host.
Left Bluehost over the renewal bill but had no other issues with them.
A Bluehost customer since 2009 saw their renewal jump about 168%, and retention would not budge.
Intro price $65 for year one, renewal over $300, plus email and an annual $65 CodeGuard add-on billed without awareness.
At renewal Bluehost raised the price dramatically, more than a small hobby blog justifies.
They used Bluehost for two and a half years. They found support slow and prices much higher after the first year, but overall the service was alright.
Support could not say when the promo started or ended; a 6-year customer with 3 tiny sites walked over $200 renewal.
Nine-year customer paying $59.40/year was hit with $203.88, a 343% increase, and turned off auto-renew.
After almost 20 years, Bluehost became unreliable and a 50% cost increase is coming, so they are leaving.
A hobby site owner found Bluehost easy to start with, but after 11 months saw SSL and hosting jump to €260 a year, and it won't give them their cPanel login to transfer.
Prices rise, cancelling needs support, and daily backups fill the disk so the site crashes every day.
Live chat support got slower and price hikes are getting out of hand, so they are migrating away.
A 20-year customer: Bluehost doubled hosting costs, support gave inconsistent answers and blamed them; their new UK host does not do that.
Previously paid under $300 but the renewal was over $1k; migrating away.
Normally pays about $65/year; renewal quoted $200 then jumped to $755, and the site was taken offline.
A Bluehost customer since 2008 was told to pay $1000 a year to keep the same plan new customers pay $347 for, or delete their site and start over.
Somewhat satisfied with Bluehost speed, but the $5/month plan is going to $17/month and domains are $20 each.
They have been with Bluehost for decades on shared hosting and paid about $150 for a 2-year renewal. The new renewal quote is over $500, so they are leaving.
Bluehost wanted about £400 for another year versus about £200 at SiteGround.
Bluehost's renewal was about $200 after a $45 first year, auto-renew is on by default and no pricing is listed in the account.
Faced a high Bluehost renewal but chatting with them got the old price back.
A first-time site owner on Bluehost was surprised by a $150 renewal charge for WordPress Basic Hosting after a year.
A near-20-year customer says Bluehost wants $27/month for 3 years upfront, punishing loyalty.
A month-to-month Bluehost customer was silently charged $60 instead of $30 and told it was for upgraded servers.
They have been with Bluehost for a long time and the price increases have hurt, so they plan to move when their plan expires.
Bluehost doubled the price with no notice; migrating and cancelling.
Bluehost offered only a ten dollar renewal discount, so they left for Hostinger at about $40 per year.
A Bluehost customer with no bad experiences is leaving anyway over the exorbitant price after the introductory rate expires.
Common questions about Bluehost
What do customers say about Bluehost?
Most customers describe poor support, from scripted replies and agents who cannot fix problems to staff accidentally breaking live sites. Many also hit steep renewal prices, outages, slow sites, constant upsells and unexpected or hard-to-cancel charges. A few had good support or no problems.
Is Bluehost worth it?
Of the 87 reviews with a clear verdict, 7% are positive, 9% mixed and 84% negative. The praise mentioned most is helpful support. The most common complaint is poor support.
What do people like about Bluehost?
The praise reviewers mention most: helpful support (4 reviews), reliable (3 reviews) and easy migration (1 review). For example: Bluehost has been pretty good; moved from GoDaddy and Network Solutions for better price and service.
What are the most common complaints about Bluehost?
The complaints reviewers mention most: poor support (37 reviews), renewal price hike (17 reviews) and outages (13 reviews). For example: On the WordPress Grow package since 2019; PHP only up to 7.4 broke access and a ticket stayed open two months.
What does the signal score of 51 mean?
It's how well reviewed Bluehost is, out of 100. Negative and mixed reviews take points off, and so does having only a few reviews: a service needs plenty of them, compared with the most-reviewed services here, to reach the high 80s and 90s. It's worked out from reviews only, needs at least 5 of them, and updates as new ones come in.
What are the specs of Bluehost?
Category: Shared hosting.
Where do these Bluehost reviews come from?
203 are quotes from Reddit, each linked to the original. Customer reviews are checked for spam before they appear. Every review, written here or quoted, is read as positive, mixed or negative.