SiteGround vs BlueHost: Choosing the Clear Winner

Web hosting is an important thing for a business owner to consider. Which option offers the best host for small business owners?

To help determine the best host for small business owners, you should compare SiteGround vs BlueHost as the top choices for your web hosting needs. By reading on, you can learn more about which of these options is the best choice for your small business.

Table of Contents

About SiteGround

SiteGround is a popular choice because of its stellar web hosting plan options. You can get a wide range of services here including shared hosting plans and cloud hosting options. Because this is an official partner of WordPress.org, this is a great option for small business WordPress sites.

There are a few features about this option that really make it stand out from the other hosting plans. One of the most important things to know about this option is that it offers the speed and responsiveness that you want for your website.

Customers are impatient and will only wait a few seconds for a website to load before they move onto another site. You will get some of the fastest loading sites when you choose SiteGround for your small business.

Another major important consideration is security. If your website isn’t secure, the customers won’t trust you enough to do business with you.

These days, everyone is cautious about their personal data, and data breaches that get this data into the nefarious hands of hackers can be disastrous for your business.

SiteGround also excels when it comes to protecting your website. In addition to the different security features like HTTP2/2 technology, this company also runs regular scans on your site to check for malware and viruses and let you know if there are any issues you need to be concerned with.

Customer support is a top priority for SiteGround, which is especially great if you may not be as tech-savvy or if there’s an issue that needs to be resolved quickly. You need someone who is going to be there for you when you need them the most.

This is an area where SiteGround really shines. You have 2 options for customer support: self-help or 24/7 live help.

With self-help, you can try to resolve the problem yourself using this tool so that you don’t have to wait for help from a customer support specialist.

You can also get live help 24/7 from a real human through live chat, phone support, or submitting a help desk ticket.

This is a user-friendly web hosting option that will help you run a better website.
There are some pros and cons to consider with this product.

SiteGround

Pros

The speed and uptime offer some of the best numbers when compared to the competition. No site will be up 100% of the time, but you do get some of the most reliable numbers from SiteGround.
Load times and responsiveness is another great plus, as these sites can load within a few seconds. This ensures that you won’t lose business due to impatient customers.
There are multiple data centers around the world, giving you a server location that will work for your small business.
Daily backups are free, giving you the peace of mind that your data is safe and can be recovered should something happen.
You get some of the most state-of-the-art security, keeping your website and client data safe from cyberattacks.
You have access to 24/7 customer support, so you get peace of mind knowing that you can get the help you need when you need it the most.
Website migration can be a daunting task, but you get free WordPress migration with SiteGround.

Cons

There are data storage limits, which is to be expected with shared hosting plans. You need to be sure that you choose the right data storage option for your needs.
If you continually go over your monthly allowance for resource usage, this can negatively impact your site until the usage allowance resets.

Overall, SiteGround is an excellent option for WordPress web hosting for small businesses.

About BlueHost

BlueHost is a web hosting option that offers unlimited disk space as well as unmetered bandwidth, making it a great option for small business owners.

When you choose BlueHost, you get a free domain name for the first year with most plans as well as a 30-day money-back guarantee so there is no risk in trying out this website hosting option.

One area where BlueHost excels is when it comes to shared hosting plans. Unless you want complete control of your web hosting server or have a website with a lot of traffic, shared hosting plans are a great option for small businesses. It also does really well when handling WordPress websites as BlueHost is optimized for this purpose.

You can also get options for a virtual private server (VPS), giving you another option to help you get the right hosting services for your specific needs. This is an option that fits somewhere in between the shared server hosting options and a dedicated server, allowing you the ability to get any special configurations that you will need for your server.

If you want a dedicated server instead of a shared hosting option, then you can also find that here. These dedicated servers are a great option for small businesses that get a lot of traffic to their website.

This is a user-friendly web hosting option that can offer you an adequate amount of speed and uptime. However, these numbers aren’t as high as what you can expect when compared to other similar web hosting options available today. There are some pros and cons for you to consider about BlueHost.

BlueHost

Pros

You can get the first term for a relatively inexpensive price.
You will get decent uptime with this web host.
There are plenty of storage options, which allow you to get the perfect data storage for your needs.
BlueHost offers unmetered bandwidth, meaning that there are no limits to the traffic on your website.

Cons

There are a lot of upsells that are pitched, which can get irritating.
BlueHost offers decent speeds, but these speeds may not be the fastest.
The servers are only located within the United States, which may not be ideal for a global reach.
The data backup solutions are not great with the cheaper plans.

BlueHost is a popular web hosting option that does well for small businesses that do require more traffic.

SiteGround vs BlueHost: Comparison

So which option is the best choice for you? This section will take a closer look at these options to help you get a clearer picture as to which one will work for your specific needs.

Ease of Use

When starting up, the first thing that you will notice is that BlueHost is the cheaper option. Both of these options have a 30-day money-back guarantee for their shared web hosting services only, not any of the additional items you can purchase.

But there are some other differences to consider here. One is that you get a free domain name for the first year of your term with BlueHost, whereas SiteGround offers this service at an extra cost.

Both BlueHost and SiteGround offer website migration, but with SiteGround you can get this service for free with their more expensive plans. With BlueHost, you will have to pay extra for this service, around $15 to migrate up to 5 websites.

As far as which option is the most user-friendly? SiteGround is a more beginner-friendly, user-friendly web hosting option. This host can integrate seamlessly with WordPress and other solutions.

It also has a drag and drop building tool for your website, which can make creating sites much easier for small business owners.

WordPress Website

Both of these options are officially recommended by WordPress.org, so you get easy 1-click WordPress installation. This also includes giving you great WordPress security, ensuring that your website is protected.

However, your WordPress site will be faster when you use SiteGround for your WordPress hosting needs. Aside from speed, these two hosting plans are pretty comparable. But SiteGround is the best choice for a responsive site.

Speed and Uptime

Your business depends on your website. This means that the speed and uptime of the website is one of the biggest considerations when deciding on the perfect host for small businesses. Both BlueHost and SiteGround use SSD drives for their plans, which offer faster speeds than hard disk drives.

One difference is when it comes to the data centers. BlueHost doesn’t have as much of a global reach with their servers. Most of their servers are located in the United States, but they don’t have complete transparency on where exactly these servers are located.

SiteGround has data centers across the globe on 3 different continents. This means that you can get a server location that is closest to where your customers are located.

What this means is that customers are going to have a faster response time to customers.

Another consideration is the uptime of these hosts. No matter which hosts you choose, you will never get 100% uptime. You will get a higher uptime with SiteGround, with a 99.99% versus the 99.98% of BlueHost uptime.

Overall, you will get the best speeds and uptime when you go with SiteGround.

Security

No matter what your website needs are, security is one of the most important things to consider. This is an area where there are some distinct differences between these two hosting options.

With SiteGround, you will get free daily backups and restores no matter which plan you have with them. You can also get on-demand backups for free when you pay for one of the more expensive plans.

BlueHost does daily backups, but there are limits to what they will back up. You can pay for regular backups, but SiteGround offers this for free.

You also can choose from 3 different levels of SSL certificates, 2 of which are free with every plan while you can pay for the EV SSL level for $499 a year with SiteGround.

SiteGround also does free virus and malware scans on every website. SiteGround is the clear winner when it comes to website security.

SiteGround vs BlueHost: Which is the Best Host for Small Business Owners

While both SiteGround and BlueHost are great options with their own pros and cons to consider, SiteGround is often the better choice for most small businesses.

You need to carefully think about the specific needs of your business, then decide which one of these will best meet the needs of your business.

SiteGround is typically the better choice for most websites because it offers the best security, customer support, and speed and uptime. BlueHost may be cheaper, but you will be better off with the great features SiteGround offers.