You’ve just reserved a domain name and are ready to start building your website. Congratulations! Now you may be wondering why you have to pay for web hosting. This begs the question: What is web hosting? And why do I need it?

How Does Web Hosting Work?

When you want to start a business in the real world, you need a physical location to set up, store, and sell your products. The same rules apply in the digital world when setting up a website.

When you set up an online business, you have a series of files, images, and HTML code that make up your website. These files take up space and need a place to live. Without an online home, your files would just sit on your computer and no one would ever see them. A hosting provider will provide a place on a webserver to store all of your files and are responsible for delivering the files of your website as soon as a browser makes a request by typing in your domain name.

When you pay for hosting services, you are simply renting storage space on the internet — just like you would rent a physical store for your business.

What is a Domain Name?

Before we go into more depth, let’s talk about domain names. When you first thought about starting an online business, you purchased a domain name. A domain name is your company’s address on the internet.
Think of it this way: if you are renting space at a physical location for your business, you give customers your street address so they can find you. If you are renting space on the internet, you give customers your domain name.
Whenever someone types in your domain name, it is converted into an IP address. The hosting company then locates all the files connected to your IP address and returns all of the pictures, videos, and words that make up your website.

Just like every street address is unique, so is every domain name. Whenever you start a new website, you get the opportunity to choose a name that perfectly reflects your brand.

Types of Web Hosting

If you are looking to host a website for your small business, Bluehost is a web hosting provider that offers a variety of hosting services to suit your needs. Once you have chosen your provider, you will need to create a hosting account and determine what type of hosting will work best for your site.

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is the most common type of web hosting and is suitable for most online business owners. With shared hosting, several customers share storage space on one powerful server. There are several advantages to shared hosting including:

  • Affordability — It’s much cheaper to share the space on a server than to rent the entire machine.
  • Ease of use — Your server is preconfigured, well-organized, easy to use, and your hosting company does all the maintenance and security updates for you.

Dedicated Hosting

Rather than sharing space, you get a server all to yourself if you choose a dedicated hosting package. Advantages to dedicated hosting include:

  • Customization — You can customize the software and hardware to meet your individual needs
  • Unlimited Resources — Since you don’t share the server with anyone, all the storage space is yours.
  • Full control — You can configure the setup however you’d like.

VPS Hosting

Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting includes all the features of a dedicated server, but at the price point of a shared server. Here are some of the top reasons VPS hosting might be a great fit:

  • Functionality — VPS hosting is built on a cPanel and supports easy navigation with several intuitive tools.
  • One-click features — You have access to one-click installs of WordPress, Magento, and Drupal.
  • Easy site navigation — The clean interface makes site management a cinch.

Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting is often considered the most reliable of all of the services. Rather than relying on the disk space of a single server, it pulls its power from several resources, making sure you never have any downtime. Other benefits include:

  • Scalability — You can add to your cloud space at any time.
  • Unmetered bandwidth — You don’t have to worry about your site going down due to a server failure.
Are Bluehost’s Pricing Plans Worth Your Money?

Bluehost offers six different types of hosting, with multiple plans and prices for each. Here’s a quick look at its cheapest starter and renewal prices for each hosting type:

All Bluehost plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee and discounts for new customers. In fact, you can save up to 64% per month with Bluehost’s promotional prices!

We’re going to break down each hosting type one by one so that by the end of this article, you’ll know exactly which plan is best for you.

Bluehost Pricing: Snapshot

  • Bluehost’s cheapest plans are its shared hosting plans, which range from $2.95 to $13.95 per month.
  • Bluehost’s most expensive plans are its dedicated hosting plans, which range from $79.99 to $119.99 per month.
  • Bluehost’s best value plans are its WordPress-specific plans, which range from $2.95 to $49.95 per month.

We’re going to be totally upfront: Bluehost’s prices aren’t the cheapest on the market. However, it does offer great value for money. 

When we tested Bluehost we didn’t just look at how much it cost. We examined its discount and renewal prices, any hidden costs, and went through a thorough checklist of the features available for each plan to calculate a value for money.

Bluehost impressed us with the number of features and free extras it includes, especially on its shared and WordPress plans. Bluehost offers a lot more on its basic plans than many of its competitors, which is why we awarded it a huge 4.6/5 stars for value for money.

To get real value, though, you need to pick the right plan for your needs – and that’s exactly what we’re here for!

Bluehost Pricing: How Much Does Bluehost Cost Per Month?


Bluehost offers six types of hosting: shared, VPS, dedicated, shared WordPress, managed WordPress, and WooCommerce hosting. Each of these comes with its own pricing plans and features – the more advanced the hosting, the more features you get, and the more it costs.

Take a look at the table below to get an idea of how much each hosting type costs:

Pricing PlanCheapest Plan: Discount PriceCheapest Plan: Regular PriceSubscription Length for Cheapest PriceDiscount Savings Per Month
Shared$2.95$8.9936 months
67%
Shared WordPress$2.95$8.9936 months
67%
WooCommerce$15.95$24.9536 months
36%
VPS$18.99$29.9936 months
36%
Managed WordPress (Pro)$9.95$29.9936 months
67%
Dedicated$79.99$119.9936 months
33%