Since so much is at stake, choosing a web hosting provider should never be an impulsive decision. Are you struggling to make an informed choice when opting for a web hosting provider?
Perhaps you have Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Bluehost in mind? You’ve come to the right place. Here is our take on AWS vs Bluehost to help you decide. This guide will enlighten you about the following:
- What is AWS?
- What is Bluehost?
- What are the key differences between AWS and Bluehost?
- What to choose for hosting between AWS vs Bluehost?
Overview of the Two Hosting Providers
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
AWS is a full-fledged and fast-evolving cloud computing platform offered by Amazon.
Launched in 2006 from Amazon’s internal infrastructure that was designed to handle its retail operations, AWS offers a myriad of services and solutions like compute power, content delivery services, database storage, and more, to software developers and enterprises around the world.
Most of the cloud services broadly fall under one of the three cloud computing categories, namely Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).
Its services portfolio comprises more than 100 services, including those for computing, infrastructure management, security, databases, and application development.
AWS is also among the first organizations to come up with the pay-as-you-go model that will scale based on the storage, computing, and workload needs of businesses.
The services are widely used by private, government as well as non-profit organizations.
AWS Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Very Easy to Use | Cost is higher |
| Predefined templates like WordPress | Difficult to understand Billing |
| Encryption And Security | |
| The Flexibility of Choosing a Server |
Bluehost
Bluehost is among the largest web hosting service providers around the world. Based in Utah, US, we found the leading hosting provider in 2003 and currently power around two million websites around the globe.
It works as a traditional low-cost web hosting provider with a Standard ControlPanel interface and basic features. It offers shared hosting, VPS hosting, hosting for WordPress, and dedicated hosting. It’s a great choice for anyone looking for a highly affordable hosting plan for WordPress-specific support.
Bluehost Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Initially Cheap | Renewal Cost is high |
| Reliable uptime of servers | Servers only available in the US |
| Storage capacity is good | Backup is limited and poor |
| Superb Bandwidth | Entry Level plans have a lot of limitations |
Should We Compare AWS With Bluehost?
Well, if you’re comparing these two companies, you’re a rare breed. They are for completely different customers and their needs.
If you have an in-house development team or are working with an outsourced team for hosting setup, AWS is for you. It will provide you with incredible options, pricing, and scalability.
But if you’re just an average user with no technical or development skills, not even the simplest AWS products like Amazon Lightsail would be suitable for you.
Non-technically oriented users that are only looking for a reliable host for support should consider Bluehost. Depending on your specific needs and budget.
We also recommend checking out comparable options like SiteGround, A2 Hosting, and WP Engine. These should make a more logical comparison with Bluehost than an AWS vs Bluehost comparison.
Now that you have a basic understanding of the two hosting providers, let’s take a deep dive into how they compare in various aspects:
Differences between AWS and Bluehost
To keep things simple, we’ll compare the two cloud platforms based on the most critical aspects, including, hosting types, hosting features, pricing, customer support, and uptime/downtime.
AWS Vs Bluehost: Types of Hosting
While you’ll find a diverse range of services for every sector on AWS, its most sought-after range is cloud computing. For small, non-technical markets, its Amazon Lightsail is designed to give a strong head-start.
When you want to use AWS for building real-time applications for your company, you can safely rely on Amazon ElastiCache. This promises millisecond performance at a Cloud-scale, along with data sync and authentication features.
On the other hand, Bluehost provides VPS hosting, shared hosting, Reseller and managed web hosting plans, and dedicated hosting plans with varying options. If you’re interested in WordPress hosting, host WordPress on Bluehost, which enables you to integrate the CMS with a single click.
If you manage an eCommerce site, Bluehost also offers WooCommerce hosting, letting you integrate various plugins and tools as well as providing different affiliate features too.
AWS Vs Bluehost: Hosting Features
When it comes to hosting, AWS provides you with virtual cloud storage as well as scheduled backups, which prove valuable when something goes wrong. Hosting solutions on AWS also support several other platforms like WordPress, Joomla, Magento, and Ruby.
AWS also enables you to use Linux and Windows hosting options, guaranteeing an uptime percentage of 99.9%. You get complete functionality and great reliability with the hosting features. So, if you’re asking “Should I host my website on AWS?”, you should have got the answer.
Bluehost also provides a wide range of features in its hosting plans, which support diverse coding types like Flash, PHP, Perl 5, and JavaScript. To help you expand your website, most hosting plans also provide an unlimited number of email accounts and infinite disk space.
If your business is growing rapidly, you should also benefit from the unlimited number of domain names that it offers.
AWS Vs Bluehost: Pricing Comparison
There exist significant price variations for different hosting products offered by AWS. The Amazon Lightsail option, which is the simplest plan for business owners, begins at $5 per month. The pricing for this solution is relatively simple. Clients also get a free one-month trial for Lightsail.
AWS has different price models, based on the service the customers are billed. You should be able to upgrade or switch features with ease for reasonable prices.
On the other hand, Bluehost’s price structure features standard multi-tiered plans, encouraging you to pick the middle option.
Shared hosting plans start from $3.95 per month, providing you with a website with 50GB of available space, five email accounts with 100MB of storage space each, and a standard performance guarantee.
Besides, there’s also a VPS plan on Bluehost. Starting at $29.99 per month, it provides you with 2 CPU Cores, 2GB storage, and 30 GB SAN. The plan we choose has the facility of a money-back guarantee of 30 days. This allows you to test the service quality without having to pay for it.
Keep in mind that canceling within 30 days will only get you a refund for the hosting service. Just one thing to keep in mind, for domains purchase, the money-back flexibility is not applicable.
AWS Vs Bluehost: Customer Support
Your AWS account enables you to contact AWS support. You’ll find an option to create a case in the support console. Simply choose your contact option and click ‘submit’. Alternatively, you may use the ticketing system or live chat.
With Bluehost, you can access customer support via mail, phone, or chat, which are available 24/7. If you require information about website development and hosting plans, you may also turn to its comprehensive knowledge base.
AWS Vs Bluehost: Uptime/Downtime
Uptime/downtime reports for cloud computing services give some indication of quality. While AWS’s service health dashboard (which can be viewed anytime) does just that, Bluehost provides nothing similar to it.
In terms of server uptime, AWS is the true industry leader. Since AWS relies on the same network of servers that are used for Amazon’s online retail platform, every time the company invests in technology to improve its online shopping store, the same improvements trickle down to the AWS servers.
The benefit of AWS is it has automatic backups along with redundancy because of which there is almost no downtime. Service availability is backed by 99 availability zones in 30+ geographic regions around the globe such as California, Tokyo, Singapore, and Sao Paulo.
On the other hand, although Bluehost does promise great overall quality, its marketing pages don’t include any claims related to uptime. To help keep your cloud service up and running, it employs a powerful server combination and UPS power backup system.
Bluehost customers may also add SSH and SSL encryption to their websites to establish a stronger connection and enhance security. Clients utilizing Bluehost services state that their service stays up and running 99.9% of the time.
Thus, you shouldn’t face any downtime issues with either hosting provider, but if you don’t feel like taking any chances, prefer AWS over Bluehost.
AWS Vs Bluehost: performance
It is not ideal to compare the performance between AWS and Bluehost. But still for users looking for web hosting only and who want to have better performance then the first option is Bluehost. But for anybody looking for web hosting as well as other things like data analysis and processing the only option is AWS.
AWS Vs Bluehost: Speed
With respect to speed-related websites, the performance of Bluehost is better than that of AWS. It’s safe and cost-effective as well.
The same website hosted on both platforms performs better in Bluehost, that being said it doesn’t mean AWS doesn’t do good. It’s comparable but Bluehost is better.
AWS Vs Bluehost: Different Plans
This is the most important point that needs to consider before choosing any of the hosting platforms for the websites.
AWS has the option for Linux as well as Windows servers for you. They have a set of servers with different processing speeds and plans which at their best go up to 32 GB of memory, 8 core processors, 640 GB SSD, and 7 TB of transfers ($160 per month) but the cheaper option starts with 512MB memory, 1 core processor, 20GB SD card, 1 TB transfer ($3.50 per month). Customers can select the one that suits their requirements.
Whereas Bluehost has four plans. Every plan comes with features and facilities bundled with the package. Bluehost has set up the pricing in such a way that it suits small businesses and let us not forget about the freebies it gives along with that. Let us check it out:
- The basic plan is $2.95 with a discount and the renewal cost is $7.99 per month.
- Plus plan is $5.45 with a discount and $10.99 per month.
- Choice Plus plan is $5.45 with a discount and $14.99 per month.
- The pro plan is $13.95 with a discount and $23.99 per month.
So what is our final pick?
Customers have to choose based on their needs, so we can separate it into two broad categories. They can choose the one which suits the best as per their requirement as below:
- Wants to host just a website, they can go for Bluehost. It provides a better and more flexible package better performance and speed with a lot of free offers.
- Wants to host not just a website but along with that they need other features like data analysis, machine learning, and many more that can go for AWS.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
There’s no significant pricing difference between AWS and shared hosting. When compared with AWS Lightsail, however, the fact that shared hosting prices tend to vary makes it unpredictable.
Since Amazon Lightsail’s prices are fixed, you won’t need to face an unexpected bill at the end of the month.
Q2: What Is The Key Difference Between AWS And Bluehost?
The major difference is that AWS is built for professional developers, while Bluehost provides basic features and a standard Control Panel Interface that most people should be familiar with.
Q3: Which Hosting Is Better Than Bluehost?
If all you need is excellent WordPress-specific support with some free features, Bluehost is a reasonable option.
But if you need an intuitive cPanel control panel and higher uptime, HostGator should make a better choice. And if you’re an established firm interested in the best option, go for no less than AWS.
Q4: Is WordPress Hosting provided by AWS?
Yes, AWS Provides WordPress hosting. To see how to do it please refer to the article https://stepstocloud.com/hosting-websites-on-aws/
Also, read below AWS article.
- What Is AWS Lambda
- AWS Vs Google Cloud
- AWS Redshift Vs Snowflake
- (Amazon Web Services) AWS Vs Azure
- Hosting Websites On AWS For Free
- How Secure Is AWS And How Does It Work
- Overview Of AWS Cloud Management Tools And Usages
- How To Reactivate Suspended AWS Account
- How To Delete AWS Account [Suspended | Partner | Training]
- Introduction To IAM AWS And How It Works
- Introduction To VMWare AWS Hybrid Cloud?
Conclusion
By now, you should have developed an in-depth understanding of how AWS and Bluehost compare in terms of hosting types, hosting features, pricing, uptime/downtime, customer support, and pricing.
Hope we gave enough information to choose the best for your needs. Look into your internal business needs and match them with the cloud computing services you’d get from each of the two hosting providers. Choose wisely the best tool that suits your business needs.
Keep Clouding!!
I am an Amazon Web Services Professional, having more than 11 years of experience in AWS and other technologies. Extensively working in various AWS tools like S3, Lambda, API, Kinesis, Load Balancers, EKS, ECS, and many more. Working as a Solution Architect and Technology Lead for Architecting and implementing the same for different clients. He provides expert solutions around the world and especially in countries like the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, etc. Check out the complete profile on About us.
