Bluehost and DreamHost are the web hosting industry’s big guns. While they both provide comparable capabilities at an affordable price, each option has its own set of advantages and disadvantages to consider when deciding which is the best fit for your needs.
Bluehost’s advantages in terms of simplicity and customer support are unrivaled. There are numerous customization options available for creating visually appealing websites.
Bluehost vs DreamHost
Bluehost and DreamHost are both excellent in their respective fields, but there are dozens of other low-cost web hosting options available that may be a better fit for you. Our research team evaluated the best web hosting options based on a variety of features. Bluehost and DreamHost both made our list of the best hosting companies.
When uptime is the most important feature for you, SiteGround is an excellent choice, as our tests revealed that it provides unrivaled reliability.
Bluehost keeps things as simple as possible without sacrificing features for beginners who need drag-and-drop simplicity when building a website. When you sign up for Bluehost, you get a 30-day money-back guarantee as well as a free domain name.
Bluehost is an excellent choice if you want to make creating your next website easier than ever. We tested the free website builder and found it to be simple to use and highly customizable.
The builder integrates with cPanel to simplify navigation and maintenance. Furthermore, it performed above average in our customer support tests, with quick, friendly reps available 24 hours a day. If you’re ready to give Bluehost a shot, you can begin with plans as low as $2.95 per month.
If the idea of paying for three years in advance doesn’t appeal to you, DreamHost has the most affordable month-to-month pricing plans we’ve ever seen. It’s ideal if you want to test the waters of website development without committing to a long-term contract or avoid a hefty hosting bill every few years. It also has the best uptime in the industry, outperforming all of the other shared hosts we tested over a 30-day period. Monthly shared hosting plans start at just $1.99 per month.
Pros and cons of Bluehost vs DreamHost
We looked closely at DreamHost and Bluehost to show you everything that each web hosting platform has to offer. Compare their benefits and drawbacks to determine which is best for your company.
Pros of Bluehost
- Security: DreamHost and Bluehost are tied in terms of security. Bluehost includes SSL, SFTP, and SSH, which does not distinguish it from DreamHost but is useful for your site. HTTP2 is also provided automatically. If you pay $30 per year for Bluehost’s SiteLock protection, you’ll also get automatic malware detection and Google blacklist monitoring.
- Easy to use: Even beginners with no prior website building experience can use Bluehost’s intuitive and user-friendly cPanel platform, as we highlighted in our Bluehost review. It clearly displays all options, is flexible, and includes necessary features such as program installation, efficient backup management, and file organization. DreamHost’s customized control panel, on the other hand, is likely to have a longer learning curve, requiring users to spend more time trying to understand the platform.
- Customer support: Bluehost and DreamHost both provide 24/7/365 customer support, but there are some significant differences in how to obtain it. Bluehost provides more options for getting assistance when you need it. You can contact them via chat or phone, whereas DreamHost only allows you to contact them via online form or chat. The chat is only available during business hours, which makes it difficult if you have a problem outside of those hours or live outside of the United States in another time zone. Bluehost provides excellent, quick customer service, though you may have to wait a few minutes for them to verify your account. Having said that, they usually respond quickly and have knowledgeable representatives who know what they’re talking about.
Areas of Bluehost need to be improved(cons)
- Backups: Bluehost offers only three backup options: daily, weekly, and monthly. When you consider that many other hosts have about 20 backup options, that’s not much. If you want more, Bluehost will charge you for it. More backups are available, but not for free, which is unusual for most web hosting services. However, if backing up your website is important to you-and it should be-you can find other web hosts who provide more without charging you more.
- Speed: Bluehost’s shared hosting page load time is 1008 milliseconds on average. That’s not bad-it’s still well under the dreaded three-second mark-but it’s slow when compared to its competitors. Load times for other top shared hosting providers are around 650 milliseconds. Bluehost’s slower speed puts your site at risk of losing visitors to competitors with faster sites.
- Extra cost and upsells: Bluehost has a lot of cool features, but the company can be a little pushy about them. Their advertisements and marketing efforts clog the platform. If all you want to do is make a few site updates, the upsells may get in the way. Furthermore, when it comes to things like hosting plans and upgrades, Bluehost really wants you to buy more. Even if you’re content with what you have, they’ll try to convince you to upgrade when you don’t need to. You may end up wasting money that could be better spent on another aspect of your company’s growth.
- One server location: Bluehost only has one server, which is located in the United States. This can be a disadvantage for international users. However, you can rest assured that Bluehost’s customer service will be available to assist you at all times. Other web hosts, such as SiteGround, have more servers around the world, which may be a better option if you require international service.
Pros of DreamHost
- Backups: DreamHost provides you with eight backups. It’s not the best deal available, but it’s nearly triple what Bluehost offers before you have to pay extra. DreamHost even offers on-demand backups. The only issue here is that DreamHost servers will not keep your backups indefinitely, as BlueHost will. You must download them to your hard drive to ensure access and the ability to restore your site if necessary.
- Bandwidth: DreamHost provides unlimited bandwidth for all plans and hosting types. Bluehost, on the other hand, offers unlimited bandwidth for shared hosting but limits it as you scale up, for example, to VPS hosting. With DreamHost, you’ll never have to upgrade your plan solely on the basis of bandwidth. That means that high traffic will not cause your site to go down, and you will not have to pay more for your company’s growing success.
- Storage: All DreamHost plans include unlimited storage. That is not something you will find with every web hosting service. Many, such as Bluehost, have tiers where you can get a certain amount of storage and only get unlimited storage with higher tiers. Bluehost, for example, offers 50GB of storage with its Basic plan and expands to unlimited storage with higher-tier packages. However, DreamHost provides unlimited space from the start, whether you choose shared, dedicated, or VPS hosting, so you never run out of server space.
- Pricing: DreamHost’s pricing is lower than that of many other hosting companies, including Bluehost, which we mentioned in our DreamHost review. Get three years of hosting for just $2.59 per month, or skip the long-term commitment and get it for as little as $1.99 per month. You can only select from two tiers-half as many as Bluehost provides-but both of these tiers provide a plethora of features at an affordable price. DreamHost also provides more unlimited features for the same price as most other hosting services, such as unlimited storage.
- Scalability: DreamHost offers WordPress, dedicated, VPS, and shared hosting packages. It also offers cloud storage, which Bluehost does not, giving you more options for hosting across multiple servers and improving the security of your site. Bluehost tries to upsell a variety of hosting plans and features, whereas DreamHost provides them upfront so you don’t become overwhelmed while working on your site. It also provides numerous upgrade options. If you begin with shared hosting, you can easily progress to dedicated or VPS hosting as your company grows.
- Uptime: With a 99.99% uptime, DreamHost is among the best. It outperforms Bluehost, which averages 99.94% uptime. That may not seem like much until you consider that it equates to several hours of downtime per year. DreamHost comes close to being perfect on this one, which means your site will almost never be down, and if it is, it will be back up quickly. When it comes to running a business website, performance and uptime are two of the most important factors to consider. It keeps your site running, which keeps visitors on the page. It ensures that customers can find what they need quickly, makes items available to them, and improves your company’s reputation by establishing a trustworthy online presence.
- Security: DreamHost’s security is comparable to Bluehost’s in that you receive the same basic security features, such as SSL, SFTP, and SSH. DreamHost provides HTTPS2 and PHP7 support. It also supports multi-factor authentication and includes a firewall. For $3 per month, you can get DreamShield, which provides additional protection with malware removal and keeps unwanted eyes away from your site at a low cost.
- Page speed: The three-second rule is met by DreamHost. In the best-case scenario, its pages load in about 1.5 seconds, making it more than twice as fast as Bluehost. It means that instead of searching elsewhere, people are more likely to stay on your site and get the product or information you’re offering. The average page loading time for DreamHost is 2.35 seconds, which is nearly a full second faster than Bluehost’s.
Areas of DreamHost need to be improved(cons)
- User friendliness: DreamHost’s platform may present some difficulties at first due to its custom control panel. If you stick with it, you’ll discover that it has similar usability to Bluehost, but you’ll have to put in some effort first. If you don’t mind that or are technologically savvy, this may not be a disadvantage for you. However, unless you’re already familiar with it, it won’t matter if it looks nicer and has fewer advertisements-the interface will still take some time to figure out.
- Server location: DreamHost has two server locations in Virginia and Oregon, which puts it behind Bluehost because both are still in the United States. This may be difficult for international users, especially since DreamHost does not provide 24/7 chat support. In other words, just because it has two servers doesn’t mean it offers more than Bluehost’s single server.
Bottom Line
Bluehost and DreamHost are both excellent choices for websites of all shapes and sizes. They each provide plans and packages to meet a variety of business needs, priorities, and budgets. Both web hosts are top contenders for a reason, and when compared side by side, they’re fairly evenly matched.
One of the best things about Bluehost and DreamHost is their versatility. They made both our list of the best web hosting services and our list of the best shared hosting plans.
Bluehost and DreamHost are both solid web hosting options, whether you’re just starting out or expanding your business. DreamHost is best if you want quality performance without having to commit to a year or more upfront, whereas Bluehost provides great customer support and an easy-to-use platform right away.
Finally, you know what your company requires the most. You can choose whether that is something Bluehost or DreamHost provides or something you will find in another web hosting service.