BlueHost is one of the older shared hosting service providers in the business and today has grown into a highly commercial giant. Acquired by Endurance International Group (EIG) in 2020, the company also has become the proverbial octopus, with tentacles in almost every aspect of the web development and marketing business.
Learn more in our full BlueHost review
A2 Hosting, on the other hand, doesn’t have such a distinctive history but instead has come across my attention time and again as an excellent host with a sterling reputation.
Learn more in our full A2 Hosting review
Pitting the two together plan to plan, it doesn’t really come to the fore that there is anything remarkably different. BlueHost shared hosting plans start out at a modest $2.95 per month with 50 GB SSD storage and a free one-year domain. A2 Hosting, on the other hand, starts off at $2.99 per month with 100GB SSD storage without the free domain.
With a paltry dollar or so as a difference in sign-up pricing, A2 further pulls ahead with its Anytime Money-back Guarantee; while BlueHost edges off with slightly lower renewal prices at the end of contract ($9.99 vs $10.99 per month for basic shared hosting).
| Features | Basic | Plus | Choice Plus | Pro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Websites | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Email Accounts | 5 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Website Space | 50 GB | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Bandwidth | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Free Domain | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SubDomains | 25 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Free Migration | No | No | No | No |
| Free SSL Certificate | Auto SSL | Auto SSL | Auto SSL | Auto SSL |
| WordPress Integration | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Git Support | No | No | No | No |
| Backup | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| MySQL Databases | 20 | Unlimited* | Unlimited* | Unlimited* |
| Signup Price | $2.95/mo | $5.45/mo | $5.45/mo | $13.95 |
| Renewal Price | $8.99/mo | $11.99/mo | $16.99/mo | $26.99 |
| Features / Plans | Startup | Drive | Turbo Boost | Turbo Max |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Websites | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Storage | 100 GB | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Databases | 5 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Rewind Backups | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Turbo Server | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Free Migration | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Free SSL | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Price /mo | $2.99/mo | $5.99/mo | $6.99/mo | $12.99/mo |
Both A2 and BlueHost offer a rock-solid combination of powerful performance and flexibility in very competitively priced packages. The performance of sites on their plans regularly clock in at sub-600ms speeds with a good uptime track record.
Feature-wise, there are a lot of similarities between A2 Hosting and BlueHost at similar price points. Yet the devil, as they say, is in the details. There are some critical shortcomings in BlueHost plans that unfortunately makes it fall behind in performance compared to A2 Hosting.
The first reason for A2 Hosting’s speed advantage is its Turbo server option which it claims can help sites load pages up to 20x faster. It also has unique customized in-house optimization and lets its users have flexibility in server locations. This can make another big difference, especially for sites that are regional-specific or targeted.
These are major features in an industry that must compete neck to neck on technology points. You might say one has NVMe storage and another has not for example, but there no real way to overcome a tried and tested feature such as custom optimization on Turbo A2 Hosting servers.
| Features | Startup | Drive | Turbo Boost | Turbo Max |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SSD Storage | 100 GB | Unlimited | N/A | N/A |
| NVMe Storage (3x Faster) | N/A | N/A | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Physical Memory | 700 MB | 1 GB | 2 GB | 4 GB |
| Core | 1 | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| Server Locations | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| HTTP/3 (30% faster) | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| A2 Optimized | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Server Rewind Backups | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Signup Price | $2.99/mo | $5.99/mo | $6.99/mo | $12.99/mo |
Personally, I feel that if you aren’t too fussy with performance and are only seeking some form of simple online presence, then either one of the affordable shared plans by BlueHost or A2 Hosting can be considered.
For anything else I would strongly recommend you look at A2 Hosting.
This is not to say that BlueHost is a terrible provider, especially since it’s officially still an officially recommended WordPress.org host. However, when it comes to a comparison between these two big names in the business, I can find no option but to recommend A2 Hosting.
 | Save 80% Grab Deal > |
 | Save 75% Grab Deal > |
 | Save 72% Grab Deal > |
