Do you want to host your website but you are finding it difficult to choose the right web host?
Would you opt for a popular or a reliable one? Well, this review compares NameHero Vs Bluehost.
Bluehost is a popular hosting option but they are not the best, NameHero is a clear winner.
In this comparison, NameHero has more features than Bluehost. But even though Bluehost is not as cheap as Hostgator, it is cheaper than NameHero.
Here’s a comprehensive breakdown of the differences:
NameHero Vs Bluehost: Overview
Both NameHero and Bluehost are good for individuals or businesses seeking hosting solutions. Bluehost has been around for much longer and has established itself as a reputed hosting provider recommended by WordPress since 2005.
NameHero, on the other hand, is a new player in the market that has created its place in the hosting industry. Established in 2015, they have quickly earned a good reputation due to their excellent services and features.
NameHero Overview
NameHero is an award-winning cloud-powered web hosting service, known for its excellent reliability and high website loading speeds. They host more than 500,000 websites already and have successfully built up a nice track record.
NameHero is particularly notable for its sophisticated technologies. For instance, while most web hosting service providers use Apache, NameHero uses LiteSpeed for better performance.
Pros Of NameHero
- Automated backup
- In-built malware scanning
- LiteSpeed web server (faster than Apache)
- Great customer service
- Unlimited SSD storage (and unlimited NVMe storage on Turbo plans)
- HTTP/3 support for even faster load times
- Fast response from customer service
Cons Of NameHero
- Very deceptive pricing. Set up fee charged
- Daily backups expire after 24 hour
- The automated fraud detection system is not perfect (can get a lot of accounts suspended)
- Data centers only in the US and Netherlands
Bluehost Overview
Bluehost stands out especially for WordPress users because they are a recommended hosting service by WordPress.org. They offer relatively cheap hosting plans, at lower prices as compared to NameHero.
Bluehost boasts a customer base four times larger than NameHero, powering more than 2 million websites.
Pros Of Bluehost
- Cheaper than NameHero overall
- Very Beginner Friendly – Ease of Use
- Free $100 in Google ads credits
- Officially recommended by WordPress.org
- Easy integration with WordPress
- Reliable uptime
Cons Of Bluehost
- No free backup options
- Aggressive upselling Tactics
- Only US-servers
- High renewal prices
NameHero Vs. Bluehost: Features
Ease Of Use
NameHero: Ease Of Use
NameHero is known for its clean and simple user interface that is beginner-friendly. If you aren’t very tech-savvy when it comes to managing a server, NameHero is certainly a good choice for you.
You can view your account status at a glance and you can easily access the required section through the quick shortcuts.
Bluehost: Ease Of Use
As mentioned previously, Bluehost is quite beginner-friendly too. They have an easy onboarding process that would enable you to get your website up and running quickly. Bluehost has combined its hosting management tools with cPanel to deliver the perfect mix of functionality and ease of use.
As soon as you log in to your Bluehost account for the first time, the platform will prompt you to create your website. All you have to do is fill up a simple form with information such as your website’s name, tagline, goals, etc. You can choose a website theme from the Bluehost Marketplace, and you’re good to go.
Bluehost takes care of all the technical aspects and the backend settings, allowing you to customize your website with ease. This is especially applicable to WordPress websites, as Bluehost can easily integrate with WordPress. Bluehost automatically installs WordPress and offers a free WordPress site migration too.
Winner: NameHero
While Bluehost has an easier onboarding process and will help you get started, NameHero is easier to use in general due to its interface.
Backups
NameHero: Backups
One of the best things about NameHero is its excellent backup and restoration system. Unlike most hosting providers, NameHero allows you to create and restore your backups for free.
Additionally, you can also enjoy an unlimited number of backup restorations. These features alone offer a major advantage and would help you reduce your costs.
However, NameHero goes beyond providing its clients with free backup and unlimited restorations. The hosting platform takes automatic backups on a nightly and weekly basis. Two different backups would grant you more flexibility when restoring the website to an older version.
NameHero uses JetBackup, enabling users to restore their backups themselves instead of having to contact support. The interface is quite easy to work with which means you won’t face any hassles in restoring the backups.
Bluehost: Backups
While Bluehost offers automatic daily backups too, the feature isn’t free. The Choice Plus and Pro plans include automatic backups, but these plans may be otherwise unnecessary for small businesses or individuals.
On the other hand, you’d have to pay $2.99 per month for automatic backups if you opt for the cheaper plans. Hence, unless you need one of the more expensive plans, you will have to pay additional charges for the backup addon.
A free version of the automatic backup addon is available with the cheaper plans, but it would allow you to back up the website only on Amazon S3. You’ll also be required to purchase a Pro subscription in case you need to restore the backup. Bluehost’s backup service is quite reliable too, and you can stay assured that your files will be safe.
Winner: NameHero
Undoubtedly, NameHero provides efficient and cost-effective backup service and they have a perfect system in place for backups.
Datacenter Locations
Datacenter Locations | NameHero | Bluehost |
US Central | Michigan | Provo, Utah Orem, Utah |
US West | Arizona | X |
US Midwest | Missouri | X |
Europe | Netherlands | X |
India | X | Mumbai, India |
NameHero has datacenters in 4 different locations in the US and Europe as well. Bluehost has datacenters only in the USA; however, if you need to host in India, you can visit Bluehost India for signing up.
Winner: NameHero
NameHero wins in this section as they have an additional datacenter in Europe.
NameHero Vs. Bluehost: Performance
Speed
NameHero Speed
With an average page loading speed of 1.2 seconds observed over several days, NameHero is fairly fast. This is largely due to the use of LiteSpeed web servers, which deliver significantly better performance than Apache.
Bluehost Speed
Bluehost offers blazing-fast performance too, with an average page loading speed of 1.8 seconds. Even if you opt for shared hosting, you can expect your website to load fast if you have not designed it excessively heavy.
At times the server might take a while to respond, which might be a concern.
Buying a Pro plan will give you access to one of Bluehost’s very high-performance servers with Dual Quad Processors. These servers are ideal for hosting eCommerce websites with heavy web pages, files, and databases.
Winner: NameHero
NameHero dominates the speed with LiteSpeed servers. You can expect good website speed with all the NameHero hosting plans.
Server Technology
Have a look at how different types of servers affect server performance:
NameHero Servers
NameHero uses several sophisticated server technologies that deliver improved performance. Not only are the LiteSpeed web servers especially fast, but they also make an excellent combination together with LS Cache.
It’s hard to come across a hosting provider that offers both of these technologies, which is why NameHero is especially notable when it comes to performance.
NameHero also offers MariaDB as an alternative to MySQL, which improves website performance by fixing redundancies and improving the replication speed.
Bluehost Servers
Bluehost’s technologies aren’t bad either, but some of these aren’t as sophisticated as NameHero. For instance, Bluehost uses Apache, like most web hosting providers. Hosting packages at Bluehost include Cloudflare CDN which helps in boosting website performance.
Winner: NameHero
NameHero emerges as a clear winner here! Speed, performance, and security are crucial aspects taken care of by the LiteSpeed servers offered by NameHero.
Uptime
NameHero Uptime
NameHero offers 99.9% uptime, and glitches are extremely rare. Not only do they guarantee flawless performance, but they also publish third-party uptime monitoring reports every year for maintaining transparency. Thereby, NameHero is considered to be one of the most reliable web hosting providers.
Bluehost Uptime
Source: Pingdom
While Bluehost has a 99.9% uptime too, they do not guarantee it. Moreover, they do not have an uptime status page either. This might make one a little doubtful about choosing Bluehost. However, Bluehost is a fairly reliable hosting provider that rarely faces complaints regarding uptime.
Storage
NameHero Storage
The advanced NameHero plans include NVMe storage, which is faster than conventional SSDs in almost every aspect. NVMe storage offers faster read/write speeds, quicker data transfer, and lower latency. NameHero also uses Raid 10 SSD for improved storage performance.
Bluehost Storage
Bluehost uses SSD storage, like most web hosting providers. While the storage performance is still quite good, it’s nowhere close to that of NameHero. Unlike NameHero, Bluehost offers limited storage space on their cheapest plan.
Winner: NameHero
NameHero emerges as a better hosting option here as they use NVMe storage for a faster website performance.
NameHero Vs Bluehost: Security
NameHero Security
NameHero offers high-end security features for free, unlike most hosting providers. Their proactive and AI-driven security and monitoring technologies keep your website safe. These include:
- Real-time malware scanning
- Firewall
- and Immunify360 – a malware detection system.
As every account stays in a separate virtual container, any malicious activity in a neighbouring account won’t affect yours either. Other notable security features include automatic security patching, machine learning defence, file hardening, etc.
Bluehost Security
Bluehost offers security features like DDoS protection, SSL certificates, firewall, etc. However, most of these security features aren’t covered in their plans, which means you’ll have to pay additional charges for security addons.
Winner: NameHero
Considering that Bluehost does not offer any exceptional security features, NameHero is a clear winner here.
NameHero Vs. Bluehost: Support
NameHero Support
Despite NameHero being a cheaper hosting service, they make no compromise in providing the necessary customer support. The customer service team is extremely helpful and tends to respond promptly.
Bluehost Support
Bluehost users get customer support through various channels like tickets, phone, email, and even a 24×7 live chat service. The hosting provider also offers a knowledge base where users can look for relevant information.
However, the customer support team is often slow to respond to each question you ask them, especially when they are busy talking to too many customers.
The hosting company’s quality of service isn’t the best, as they don’t use their in-house team for customer support. Rather, they outsource their customer service to India and fail to properly train the support team.
Winner: NameHero
NameHero has consistently maintained good customer support throughout the years. You can expect quick solutions when you are hosted with NameHero.
NameHero Vs Bluehost: Pricing
NameHero Pricing
The price of hosting services at NameHero starts from $2.69 per month to $11.98 per month. Note that the initial plan purchase price is discounted and the renewal rates are higher – ranging between $8.95 and $29.95.
Bluehost Pricing
With plans priced between $2.95 and $13.95 and renewal rates ranging from $9.99 to $28.99, Bluehost is a cheaper option. While they do not put up misleading prices like NameHero, Bluehost does follow certain dodgy checkout practices.
For instance, some of the paid addons are checked by default on the checkout page, and you’ll end up paying for them unless you uncheck them first.
Winner: Bluehost
Bluehost is a winner in terms of pricing as they are more transparent about their pricing structure and do not charge any setup fees.
Conclusion
Bluehost has only one advantage over NameHero – cheaper and more transparent pricing. Besides this, NameHero beats Bluehost hands down in every other aspect.
Use NameHero If:
- If you are looking for a good web hosting option with fast servers.
- If you are looking for a web host where you don’t have to purchase addons like backups and security.
- You must use their service if you are a newbie or a small-scale business.
- If you have been planning about switching the web hosts for improving the website load times.
Use Bluehost If:
- If your website visitors are majorly from the USA.
- If you are a beginner, mid-level marketer, or blogger.
- If you are a new website owner or you want to host small business websites.
- If you want to host a small-medium project – for example – a bakery website, that isn’t expecting a lot of traffic.
If you have any suggestions or if you want to add your experiences with NameHero or Bluehost, you can mention them in the comments section.