All about Bluehost Customer Service:- As the owner of a small business that is in the process of creating an e-commerce store, you may have chosen the Software platform. The software platform is not a hosting service, but you must provide your own web hosting for your store (for example, WooCommerce ). In this case, you are probably looking for a suitable and affordable hosting. Here comes a vital role of Bluehost.
Bluehost is one reputable and reliable company offering fairly powerful, but inexpensive web hosting packages. Bluehost is an American hosting known all over the world. Its users can access not only an understandable and logical site structure but also a convenient single tariff. 99.9% quality of work at any time of the day, as well as a modern and functional user panel. The company has been operating in the market since 2003 and has more than 2 million customers worldwide.
The power of hosting is striking: the company’s data centers occupy an area of over 50 thousand square meters. It has uninterruptible power supplies, several fiber-optic connections, as well as stand-alone diesel generators. All this, as well as the wide range of services provided, have made Bluehost one of the five world leaders. Bluehost can save you money and time when creating an e-commerce site. The goal is to create a fast, reliable online store, and Bluehost has plans for all of the above.
The first highlight of Bluehost is the fact that it is a hosting focused on WordPress sites (which can even be created via solutions ). Therefore, if you work with this CMS platform, it is worth considering the company’s offer in your projects. What helps reinforce Bluehost as a great option is the fact that WordPress itself recommends the service. Bluehost is like any other website hosting, but for WordPress. The user needs to choose his domain and then access Bluehost through his WordPress dashboard. The service ensures that the infrastructure of the website or blog is in an online location, that is, on a server, and then works fully.
Bluehost Data Center
One of Bluehost’s main differentials is its in-house data center. This means that the company’s entire technological infrastructure is integrated with the headquarters. Thus, from management to operation, all important areas are in the same place, which makes work much more dynamic. In practice, in this in-house construction, the support team is in the data center, that is, any instability problem with a user’s website can be quickly resolved. In this situation, considering the company’s operation, there are fewer orders for actions and more direct interference, since the servers are in the same location as the support team.
Bluehost Prices
Since Bluehost offers a wide range of offers, they divide them into specific groups of plans. The most common plans they sell are called shared hosting accounts, which means that you will share server space with other websites. This is a great starting point for companies that are just starting to work, and this is by far the cheapest option. You can see prices for shared hosting below:
- Basic – For $ 7.99 you get one website, 50 GB of space, one domain, five parked domains, and 25 subdomains. You also get free SSL to protect transactional information in your online store.
- Extra – For $ 10.99 you get an unlimited number of websites, unlimited SSD storage, a free SSL certificate. An unlimited number of domains, an unlimited number of parked domains, an unlimited number of subdomains, and anti-spam tools.
- Choice Plus – For $ 14.99 you get an unlimited number of websites, unlimited space, unlimited number of domains, unlimited number of parked domains. An unlimited number of subdomains, SSL certificates, anti-spam tools, domain privacy, and website backup.
- Pro – For $ 23.99 you get an unlimited number of websites, unlimited space, unlimited number of domains, unlimited number of parked domains. An unlimited number of subdomains, SSL, anti-spam tools, domain confidentiality, website backup, and dedicated IP address.
- Construction Plan – For $ 29.99 per month, you can get Jetpack Site Analytics, a complete marketing center. 100 free premium themes, daily backups, malware detection, and domain privacy are other features of this plan.
- Growth Plan – For $ 39.99 you get everything according to the previous plan, plus Jetpack Premium, real-time ticket support WordPress. 10GB video compression, integration with Jetpack Ads, SEO tools, and business analysis tools.
- Large-scale plan – For $ 59.99 a month, you get access to everything that was in the previous plan, plus Jetpack Pro, unlimited backup, and restore. Integration with PayPal, unlimited video compression, flexible search, and live chat support.
- Starter – For $ 13.99 per month, you get support for one online store, 100 GB of SSD storage, installation of a store theme, free SSL, domain privacy, marketing loans, and a free installation call.
- Extra – For $ 17.99 per month, you get an unlimited number of online stores, a permanent SSD store, installing themes in a storefront, free SSL, domain privacy, marketing loans, a backup tool, and a free installation call.
- Pro – For $ 31.99 per month, you get an unlimited number of online stores, a permanent SSD store, installing themes in a storefront, free SSL, domain privacy, marketing loans, a backup tool, Bluehost SEO tools, and a free installation call.
Keep in mind that Bluehost almost always holds promotions for its hosting, regardless of the package and type of hosting. Therefore, make sure that you are not deceived in a certain way just because the prices look attractive.
Features of Bluehost
As you may have noticed in the pricing section, not all plans are suitable for online stores. A smaller shared hosting plan will work for a very, very small e-commerce store, but you usually want to overcome this as quickly as possible. It is recommended that you take a look at Bluehost’s e-commerce plans. If it seems like you can accomplish most of the tasks, then you might be better off skipping the higher price. However, you should keep in mind that you will lose free SSL. Here are the best features that mostly help in e-commerce.
1. Migrations, direct installations, and one-click installation
One of the best features of Bluehost is that you don’t need to know much about development or hosting to set up plans using e-commerce hosting. The company provides support for migrating an old site to Bluehost, and you can choose a plan that already has tools such as WooCommerce and ManageWP installed. Not to mention the fact that if you plan to launch your site on WordPress, the Bluehost backend has a convenient one-click install button, which speeds up the process to several minutes. After installation, you will receive your WordPress login credentials and you can start selling online.
As for online stores, all plans come with a popular plugin already installed on your host. Although installing the plugin is not so difficult, Bluehost will take care of this for you. This is especially useful if you have minimal experience with WordPress to get started. There are many other one-click installations or suggestions for a managed installation from Bluehost . All you have to do is go to your toolbar to see what the host can do for you.
2. Good Topics
WordPress themes are often required since most people do not plan to build a site from scratch. In fact, doing this does not make sense even for the developer. Bluehost has some plans that offer free theme installations for your website. For example, e-commerce pricing plans provide settings for the popular Storefront theme. This does not save you money (since this topic is free) but excludes one more step in the process of creating an online store.
If you need free access to premium themes, you should use the WP Pro hosting package. Suggestions tend to change, but Bluehost currently provides you with 100 premium WordPress themes with WP Pro. This is a great deal, given that you usually have to pay between $ 50 and $ 100 for each topic, and it comes with a fully managed WordPress site.
3. Ecommerce Security
If you choose one of the WordPress plans, you will automatically get access to any security plan. In the past, it was SiteLock, which is an advanced security platform for blocking site information and protecting details that pass through your site. Some plans (all e-commerce plans) also have SSL certificates that provide secure connections when customers provide their billing and personal information. Thus, you can be sure that your customer and business data are always protected.
4. Dedicated IP Addresses
A dedicated IP address is a good idea for most online stores. The reason for this is because novice online stores most likely run on shared servers. There are many other websites hosted on shared servers, so you may find that some sites on this server take up all the resources. Of course, Bluehost works to solve this problem, but a dedicated IP address protects you from these noisy neighbors since you no longer need to use the same IP address. In essence, this should lead to an increase in the productivity of your entire site, as well as to an increase in SEO and an improvement in the user experience.
5. Marketing and PPC Loans
Bluehost is known for handing out marketing and paying for clicks on almost all hosting plans. This is especially true for e-commerce plans, as many of them have between $ 50 and $ 200 in the form of marketing loans. PPC loans are designed to increase traffic to your site through advertising on search engines. You pay for advertising using your loans and try to promote something like a new product or product line. Marketing loans are also designed to inform about your company, so you should check how many marketing loans you get from each plan.
6. Domain Privacy
Once again, it depends on which plan you choose, but you always have the option to pay for domain privacy. E-commerce plans are good in that they all have built-in domain privacy. Whenever you buy a domain, your personal information is recorded online. This information includes things like your name, address, and contact information. The reason they do this is to improve communication between site owners.
However, many do not like this, as it causes spam. Consequently, Bluehost suggests hiding this information from other people and spambots. It replaces your details with Bluehost’s contact information. This usually means that if a legitimate message arrives on your site, Bluehost will let you know. However, most of this is spam, so you basically delete all of this from your inbox.
7. Enhanced dashboard for accessing files and processing domains and other items
The Bluehost CPanel pin-drop technique, or toolbar, stands out as one of the easiest on the market. Because it is organized into several tabs for things like domains, subdomains, hosting, files, CDNs, and security. If you have never used CPanel before, it can look intimidating, but it doesn’t take long to master things. Bluehost recently updated its dashboard interface with a beautiful, modern design.
8. CDN(Content Delivery Network)
A content delivery network can be integrated with Bluehost, CDN is one of the easiest ways to support increased traffic on your e-commerce site. With shared or managed hosting, your site’s files are stored and maintained on a separate server. This means that if your server is in Illinois, someone in Germany will have more time to see your site because the person is far away. CDN distributes how your site is delivered through a network of servers located around the world. This means that your customers are more likely to load your site faster, and because of this, your search engine ranking should improve.
9. Integration with ManageWP
ManageWP provides a service for those companies that work with multiple WordPress websites. Jumping back and forth from the dashboard to the dashboard is very difficult, which is why it combines all WordPress dashboards into one. Most Bluehost plans no longer provide direct integration anymore, but still, have the ability to integrate a ManageWP account with a WordPress site.
10. Automatic Backup and Restore
The ultimate feature, which is undoubtedly useful for e-commerce sites, is the backup space. Imagine that you are building an entire site, accumulating sales, and then you notice that one day your site will fail or someone will hack it. You can lose data, so you will need a backup to recover lost information. Most Bluehost plans have a backup space for you to feel at ease.
11. Lightning Speed
The speed often depends on some tactics that you adopt such as cleaning files, optimizing images, minimizing plugins, and using caching plugins. It also depends on the amount of traffic you receive. However, Bluehost has the packages needed to permanently store your site. Collaboration plans do not have the bandwidth, and you can even get high performance with Business Pro.
The website space is reasonable and you have various upgrade options if your website traffic causes slow download speeds. First of all, some of the plans have content delivery networks that expand your capabilities around the world. They have a VPS hosting that provides two to four processor cores for maximum speed. Finally, dedicated hosting goes all the way up to 4 x 3.3 GHz CPU if your site is rapidly gaining momentum.
12. Customer Support
The Bluehost support team is always friendly and knowledgeable, which is good because they are usually available at any time. So, if you have a question at 3 am, just open a ticket or chat window to get an answer. There are also self-help resources you can complete your own research, and the company even has forums for communication with other users. Phone, chat, and email support are offered, and you can always send a ticket if you don’t mind waiting 24 hours for a response.
In terms of quality support, Bluehost is the best you can find, given that its representatives know what they are talking about and they never seem to send you to other people if they cannot understand the problem. The fact is that you can rely on the first person you started talking to.
Services provided by Bluehost
With the proposal of being a hosting service for small and medium-sized projects, such as institutional sites, blogs, and e-commerce with less access volume. Bluehost can guarantee a great selection of services. From the most basic to the ones that stand out, see below the main services that are provided by Bluehost:
1. Free domain
To start off well, Bluehost offers the free domain for the user’s website. As hiring a new service requires investments, especially if it is the beginning of a new project, having a domain without costs is very positive. The service does not charge anything to register the site in the first year, requiring the amount only after the first 12 months of the contract.
2. 24/7 support
Bluehost also guarantees that its users have full support if they need to answer questions or even face technical problems. The company’s support works 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and access is very simple, through a chat. The organization of tickets is simplified, which ensures that each demand is solved very quickly.
3. Mailbox
Email is essential for any website, especially because it is still a very basic channel and is sought by most people who use the web. With Bluehost’s most basic plan, you start with five email accounts available to use. The address, of course, takes the domain you registered, making the presentation more professional and more credible.
4. Free SSL
Security is an extremely important point and is seen in exactly this way by Bluehost. Therefore, the hosting service has included, free of charge, the SSL certificate, which can be even more attractive if the use in question is for online stores.
5. Wide page customization
In addition to being a hosting service, Bluehost also offers tools for building websites, all very accessible and simple. This creator works in an intuitive way, which helps even beginners to build complete websites, using ready-made templates offered and making the experience dynamic.
Advantages of Bluehost
The Bluehost relies heavily on data as well as the overall experience with its hosting and customer support resources. In summary, all Bluehost plans offer their customers live chat 24/7, unmeasured bandwidth, and five email accounts. Like many other website hosting companies, they also offer new users a free domain for the first year. Their plans start at $ 2.75 / month and include enhanced security, backups, and a free SSL certificate.
This helps to keep your blog or website safe and secure. Overall, its performance in the last 24 months has been good. Bluehost is clearly at the top compared to other web hosting services with its uptime (99.99%) and a fast load time of 405ms (0.4 seconds). The benefits of Bluehost thus are as follows:
1. Best uptime – 99.99% – over the year
Uptime is one of the most important aspects when choosing a web host after all if the site is down, users will not be able to access it. Therefore, good uptime should consistently be one of your top priorities. On an average, a good uptime would be 99.93%. This may seem quite high, but it is actually slightly below average.
Type these numbers into a calculator and you will quickly see that this translates to at least 26 minutes of downtime per month or just over five hours over the course of a year. The good news is that Bluehost easily overcomes this benchmark, comfortably keeping our testing site up and running 99.99% of the time for the past 24 months (2018-2020).
2. Top 5 Site Loading Speed
A Google report found that the vast majority of mobile sites are very slow. This is a problem for two main reasons. Google’s first mobile index can elevate or hide your site from user searches based on loading speeds. Studies show that slow websites almost always translate to lower sales. Therefore, after uptime, host page load time is the second most important thing that can literally make or hurt your website’s success. The average page load speed of Bluehost is 405ms which makes them the 5th fastest website.
3. Ease of use
Many of the Bluehost users have recommended this host precisely because of how easy it is to use. This is one of the reasons why most small websites or people who are not very technical on the whole topic of hosting use it. It does not give you many complications when you subscribe and start using it.
4. Technical Support
This is another aspect that users of this host liked. Not only is technical support good, but apart from email support, it also offers support via live chat.
5. Speed
Most users report that this host is quite fast. If you integrate it with Cloudflare, this speed will be much better.
6. Low introductory price
If you check the starting prices of Bluehost, you will notice that the lowest advertised price is $ 3.95 / month. It’s a good deal, considering they’ve already reduced it from $ 7.99 / month originally. For that price, you get practically everything you need for a single website. This includes 50 GB SSD storage, unmeasured bandwidth, a free SSL certificate, and more. Therefore, you would get good value for the price, in addition to its consistent uptime and page load speed.
7. Good security options
Although Bluehost is one of the cheapest options on the market, they don’t cut too many corners or save on critical features like security. Bluehost provides many good security options by default, including the free SSL certificate for each plan. All plans also include a domain privacy feature that will help maintain the personal information used to sign up for a private domain.
This prevents hackers from finding and using these personal details for phishing scams to trick you or others into handing over confidential information. SiteLock is included to help prevent malware attacks, which are unfortunately quite common on WordPress sites. CodeGuard is another form of protection, which also provides daily backups so that you can revert to previous versions of a website if it is hacked.
8. Many integrations, applications, and e-commerce features
In addition to the security features included, Bluehost also provides access to a large number of different applications and integrations, so you can use the most popular services on the web. For example, they have a domain manager, if you prefer to buy and manage multiple domains through them. You can define daily, weekly or monthly backups just in case. You can install WordPress with a single click.
You can also install other popular content management systems (CMS), such as Drupal, Joomla, manage an e-commerce store, and more. In addition, Bluehost includes access to a content delivery network (CDN). They host your images and large files, taking work off their servers, to deliver them more quickly to users worldwide and keep your site fast at the same time.
9. 30-day money-back guarantee
Getting the best deal on web hosting usually means paying in advance for a few months, a year, or several years at a time. Bluehost is no different. But they do offer a 30-day money-back guarantee on their plans. You can try the service to evaluate their performance and still request a refund if you are not completely satisfied.
Disadvantages of Bluehost
Bluehost works very well in all aspects. However, there are some disadvantages of Bluehost as well. Such as:
1. Higher renewal rates (common in the web hosting industry)
The best way to get the lowest possible price for hosting is to pay in advance for one, two, or even three years in advance. On the one hand, the monthly price is low, but on the other hand, paying in advance for a longer period (between 12 and 36 months) means that you are not only committing yourself to a few dollars but about a hundred dollars.
Another thing to consider is the higher renewal rate after the end of the introductory period. In that case, paying $ 3.95 in advance for three years is a good deal, because you keep that rate low for as long as possible. However, at the end of that period, rates will return to normal rates. They range from $ 7.99 to $ 8.99 / month on the most basic shared plan, depending on how much time you pay in advance.
2. Website migrations are not free
Most of the web hosts migrate your existing website to their service for free. They see it as a friendly service that helps make new customers happy, to pay fees. Unfortunately, Bluehost does not do free migrations. They have a one-time fee of $ 149.99, which includes the migration of up to five sites, 20 email accounts, and any other database files from those sites. They say it will be fast and continuous, so you don’t experience delays or downtime. However, the fact that you have to pay for it and pay a lot is a big scam to consider.
3. Too many Add-Ons
Add-Ons are basically extensions or plugins that you can install on the platform. In Bluehost, so that you can take advantage of the best of the host, you must install too many plugins and it shows you that the panel by itself does not have much functionality. It will take you a long time to find add-ons that you can use for what you need, which is an additional step that not all hosts require.
4. Technical support
Although customer service is very good and at the same time you have two channels through which to communicate (email and chat). It also becomes a counter in the aspect of that an answer will take a long time after the hours of live chat. And this can make you lose a lot of money in case your site goes down at night or early morning and it takes a few hours to answer your request.
5. Many Upsells
For many users, it is very tedious to be receiving too many offers of new products, plans, add-ons, etc. Bluehost loves trying to sell Upsells too much, and for many, this can help improve the host experience. But for others, it can be awkward and more so if you are not interested in buying anything else or if you are trying to keep a budget.
6. No free automatic backups
While offering fuses, the fuses are considered as a courtesy. So you cannot rely on your data being backed up every day so no guarantee here. You need to set up and run your own backup on the cPanel and on your own local device. Another bad feature is that any data they back up in the last 30 days is overwritten.
Their conditions make it clear that they do not take any responsibility for this. In other words, you can only access the most recent backup, even if it isn’t the one you need to restore your site. Site Backup Pro is a paid add-on. It creates regular and automatic backups of your site. But it’s a premium feature that you have to invest in.
7. Unlimited really means limited
The Plus, Choice Plus, and Business Pro plans offer an unlimited number of websites, stores, email accounts, and subdomains that are made available to customers. However, their user agreement, clause 7 usage guidelines, and definitions explain otherwise. It is only unlimited up to a certain level. Their unlimited plan is comparable to most providers (i.e. Bluehost is not the only web host that promises unlimited web hosting ).
8. No windows hosting
They only offer Linux-based servers. In other words, you cannot get Windows hosting. This is not a big problem since Linux is the most used and popular operating system for web servers. But for those who prefer Windows hosting, this is a problem.
9. No guarantee of availability
They do not offer an availability guarantee. When choosing a hosting provider, you want to achieve availability as close as possible to 100%. However, the network/server uptime agreement states that most problems are resolved in about 15 minutes. They have an average uptime of 99.94%. This failure means your website will be unavailable for 4.4 hours over a full year. Overall, the availability of Bluehost is reliable, but there is no guarantee that your website will be up and running most of the time.
Contacting bluehost customer service
Bluehost is a major international company with a huge number of clients with whom the company needs to maintain contact. In this way, they can express their opinions, make suggestions, raise doubts, inconveniences, request advice, and more. Having a good relationship with its users, as well as technical support trained to attend and solve any problem that their clients present within the application is extremely important to Bluehost. This is why its technical service presents first-class attention. If you want to contact Bluehost, you can use some alternatives to do so.
1. By telephone
Bluehost has various contact telephone numbers available to assist its users with any need that may arise. In this way, depending on where you are, you can use the technical assistance service at any time. You can find a phone number for contact within the United States and a number for international calls below:
- Bluehost Telephone to call from the United States
UNITED STATES TELEPHONE – +1 888 401 4678
- Bluehost Telephone for international calls
INTERNATIONAL PHONE – +1 801 765 9400
Any of these phones will be very useful for you to find a solution to your concerns and doubts regarding the operation of the platform. The staff is highly trained to take all your questions with first-class care, so you will notice that it is a very satisfactory service.
2. Bluehost chat
If you wish to receive technical assistance via chat, Bluehost also offers this possibility. Follow the method below:
- To be able to use it, you must enter the contact section within the official website of the platform.
- As soon as you enter the page in question, you will see a text that invites you to keep in touch with the platform through its contact number for international calls. Below this number, you will find two alternatives: Call now and Chat now.
- To chat with Bluehost technical support, you must select the second option. Doing so will open a new tab in which you will be asked if you are a new customer or an existing one. At the same time, you will be asked for your name, and if you are an existing user you can provide your domain, phone, or email.
- Next, you can select the topic of your concern, choose a description for it from among a series of established options, and explain the situation in detail.
In this way, you can start the chat with one of the trained Bluehost operators, who will assist you in everything you need.
3. Bluehost e-mail
Email contact with Bluehost is also possible. In this case, they have three email addresses for different situations. In this way, you can send your email to the one that best suits your needs, the emails of this company are the following:
- Bluehost email for press and media related issues- press@bluehost.com
- Bluehost email for an affiliate program- affiliates@bluehost.com
- Bluehost email for legal matters- legal@bluehost.com
4. Third-party application
Although the customer and technical support of Bluehost are reliable, but you may have to wait for a longer time until you get the solution for your problem. In such a case, if you want to contact the Bluehost customer service fast, then you can use a third-party application. One such third-party application is GetHuman. You can tell GetHuman about your previous problem and let them find someone to help you. GetHuman builds free tools and shares information among customers of companies like Bluehost.
For large companies that tools such as GetHuman Phone, allow you to call a company by skipping the part where you have to wait in the line listening to their call technology music. If you look at their GameStop Phone Number page, you can see an example of those free calling mechanisms and tips shared by other customers. They have created these shortcuts and apps to try to help customers like you. Navigate from the messy phone menus, hold times, and confusion with customer service, especially with larger companies like GameStop or Optus – Faults or Bluehost.