If you are looking for a host for your website, some of the most recommended are Bluehost, DreamHost and SiteGround. These three are very popular hosting companies, and they offer various types of hosting packages for people with different needs.
In this article, we’ll be comparing these three hosting companies and see which one offers the best hosting service. By the end of this article, you’ll be able to decide which one is right for you. Below is a quick comparison chart to start with.
Contents
| Host | Bluehost | DreamHost | SiteGround |
| Â |  |  |  |
| Price | Check Price at Bluehost.com | Check Price at DreamHost.com | Check Price at SiteGround.com |
| Sites | Basic: 1 Plus: Unlimited Choice Plus: Unlimited Pro: Unlimited | Starter: 1 site Unlimited: Unlimited | StartUp: 1 site GrowBig: Unlimited GoGeek: Unlimited |
| Storage | Basic: 50GB Plus: Unlimited Choice Plus: Unlimited Pro: Unlimited | Starter: 50Gb Unlimited: Unlimited | StartUp: 10GB GrowBig: 20GB GoGeek: 40GB |
| Bandwidth | Unmetered | Unmetered | StartUp: 10,000 visits, Unmetered Traffic GrowBig: 25,000 visits, Unmetered Traffic GoGeek: 100,000 visits, Unmetered Traffic |
| Free Domain | Yes | Yes | No |
| Free SSL Certificate | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Emails | Basic: 5 email accounts Plus: Unlimited Choice Plus: Unlimited Pro: Unlimited | Starter: Available for Purchase Unlimited: Unlimited | Unlimited |
| cPanel | Custom cPanel | Custom Control Panel | Site Tools |
| Customer Support | 24/7 Chat, Phone, Email and Tickets | 24/7 Tickets, Chat and Email Optional paid phone callback | 24/7 Tickets, Live Chat, Phone and Email |
| Free Site Migration | No | Yes via plugin | Yes via plugin |
| Money Back | 30 days | 97 days | 30 days |
BlueHost Features
With Bluehost, you get good performance and basic features.
Bluehost offers many types of hosting, but in this article, we’ll focus mainly on their shared hosting service. They have four plans—Pro, Choice Plus, Plus and Basic. The Pro plan is the highest tier plan and it comes with the most features such as optimized resources, free domain privacy, free automated backup and more. The Basic plan, which is the cheapest, is the most limited when it comes to features.
Some of the standout features that you get if you choose Bluehost as your hosting provider are the following: $100 Google Ads credit, free domain (1 year) and access to their drag and drop site builder.
As for customer support, Bluehost offers 24/7 chat and phone, along with tickets and a fairly comprehensive knowledge base. Their support staff is decent and responsive enough.
Bluehost uses a custom cPanel instead of the industry standard cPanel. The UI is minimalistic and very easy to navigate when compared to the standard cPanel. It might take some time to get used to it, but when you do, it will be as easy as the standard cPanel.
DreamHost Features
Affordable prices and a generous money back guarantee are some of DreamHost’s main strengths.
Compared to Bluehost and SiteGround, DreamHost offers only two shared hosting plans—Starter and Unlimited. The cheaper Starter plan is limited when it comes to the number of hosted sites (1 site only), storage, databases and emails, while the Unlimited plan is not. If you are going to host your site with DreamHost, you should definitely pick the Unlimited plan as the price difference is not too big.
As for the features that come with DreamHost hosting, some of the notable ones are their 97-day money back guarantee, their Remixer site builder and their custom control panel. With their money back guarantee, you can test and see if they are the right host for you within 97 days. After that, if you’re unsatisfied, you can get a full refund.
DreamHost does not use the standard cPanel, instead, they designed their own custom control panel. This control panel is very minimalist in design and it is very user friendly. It is not as cluttered as the standard cPanel, while still providing you access to every important account and site settings and controls.
DreamHost’s customer support is good, but it could be better if they offered free phone support. As of now, they have a live chat, a ticketing system, email support, a knowledge base and an optional phone callback—that you have to pay extra for. When it comes to solving issues, their in-house staff is very responsive and helpful.
SiteGround Features
With SiteGround, you get good performance and top-notch customer support.
SiteGround’s shared hosting is one of the most recommended hosting solutions on the web, even though they are not as cheap as the competition. They offer three plans—StartUp, GrowBig and GoGeek. The best value plan among their offerings is the GrowBig plan, which features unlimited sites, 20GB of disk space, on-demand backups, 25,000 monthly visits and more.
When compared to Bluehost and DreamHost, Siteground’s features are simply more useful. Features such as one-click staging, on-demand backups, choice of data centers and speed boosting caching are all very useful when it comes to your site’s performance.
You can test out plug-ins, change themes and try out different layouts with their one-click staging before pushing those changes to your site. The ability to choose your preferred data center location is great if you are targeting a certain demographic for your site. Lastly, the speed boosting caching feature can speed up your site, and as a result, performance will be better.
As for customer support, SiteGround, offers 24/7 chat, phone support, tickets, email and a comprehensive knowledge base filled with tutorials and guides. Their support staff is also very responsive and overall, we’re satisfied with their performance.
Performance
All three hosts perform well when it comes to speed and uptime.
When it comes to performance, the two most important factors are uptime and speed. A reliable host will have an uptime of at least 99.95%, as it is the acceptable industry standard.
Bluehost performs very well when it comes to their uptime average and speed. They achieved a 99.95% uptime average, and a load time average of 600ms. Both of these numbers are very good, and they are on par with industry averages. The only downside to Bluehost when it comes to performance is their lack of any uptime guarantee.
DreamHost, on the other hand, has an uptime guarantee of 100%. As for their performance, their actual uptime average is 99.95%, and sites hosted on their servers have an average load time of 500-600ms. While 99.95% is not 100%, it is still very good.
As for SiteGround, they have an uptime guarantee of 99.9%. When we tested our sites hosted on SiteGround, we got an average uptime of 99.96%, which is slightly better than both DreamHost and Bluehost. As for load times, the average we got was 600-650ms, which is slightly worse than DreamHost’s, and on par with Bluehost.
Verdict
If you want the best combination of features and performance, SiteGround is the best option. However, if your most important consideration is price, DreamHost offers the cheapest plans.
If you want the best features and performance, you should definitely choose SiteGround as your host. The features that they offer can improve your site’s performance when it comes to speed, and they have the best uptime average as per our tests. Their support department is great as well.
For those on a budget, DreamHost offers the best value. Their shared Unlimited plan is the most affordable shared plan that offers unlimited sites, storage and bandwidth.
FAQs
Yes, they are one of the best hosts around. Performance-wise, they are a top-tier host that offer useful features for any type of sites.
SiteGround is a better host provider than Bluehost. SiteGround offers better features, better support and better performance. They are more expensive though.
Yes, they are great for beginners that don’t require specific features for their sites. Bluehost’s basic plan is priced reasonably, and they offer the basic features that every beginner will need, such as free domain for 1 year, unmetered bandwidth and more.
No, they use their own custom control panel.
