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Bluehost vs iPage Comparison – Here’s the Winner!

Do you want to know who’s the best web hosting provider: Bluehost or iPage? Both Bluehost and iPage rock the web hosting vertical with their affordable hosting plans. Both of them also offer different hosting options, including VPS and dedicated servers. But one provider has to be better than the other, right?

In our UNBIASED comparison between iPage and Bluehost, we’ll help you figure out the best choice for your budget and needs. Let the battle begin!

Bluehost vs iPage – Overview

bluehost-wordpress-hosting

Bluehost is one of the most popular web hosting providers on the market. They’re also officially recommended by WordPress.org.

Bluehost was launched in 1996 and is currently powering over a million sites around the globe. While they offer a wide variety of hosting options, they’re most well-known for their cheap hosting services.

ipage

Just like Bluehost, iPage is also owned by Endurance International Group. It was launched in 1998 and currently serves over a million websites between 2 data centers located in the US.

iPage is well-known for the affordable pricing options for their web hosting services. iPage is the best choice for users who’re looking for a cheap-yet-reliable hosting service that doesn’t compromise on website speed.

Bluehost vs iPage – Speed and Uptime

Speed and uptime are the most critical factors you’ll need to consider when choosing a web hosting service.

Speed is important because nobody likes a slow website, and Google continues to emphasize page speed in their algorithm.

Similarly, uptime is important because your users expect your site to be available around the clock. Usually, uptime is expressed as a percentage of the total available time; “99.95%”, for example.

To test the website speed and uptimes for the web hosting services in our iPage vs Bluehost comparison, we signed up with both services and created a test site powered by WordPress. To mirror the live environment, we also installed a default WordPress theme, added dummy content, and uploaded some images.

We used the following tools to conduct speed and uptime experiments on our test sites:

  • Pingdom
  • Load Impact
  • Bitcatcha
bluehost speed test

According to Pingdom, our Bluehost site took 689ms to load when tested from New York City. That’s faster than 94% of tested sites.

ipage pingdom speed test

Our iPage test site loaded in less than 3 seconds and was faster than 60% of tested websites.

Just like the speed test, it’s important to analyze whether your hosting service can survive a traffic surge. For our traffic surge test, we used a popular testing tool, Load Impact. With Load Impact, we sent up to 100 virtual visitors at a time to our test sites to see how the servers would handle the traffic.

loadimpact bluehost

Bluehost’s performance remained intact regardless of the number of visitors.

ipage load impact

When it came to iPage, the response time was slow when there were about 50 users on the site. After that, the page speed remained stable despite having more live users.

bluehost server response tests

According to our Bitcatcha test, our Bluehost server responded in just a fraction of a second in the United States. While the response time was relatively high in international locations, it still responded in less than a second.

ipage server response time

Our iPage server responded in less than a second in all locations, excluding Japan. If your target audience is located mainly in Japan, then you may want to look for a server closer to that region.

Winner: Bluehost

Bluehost vs iPage – Ease of Use

Bluehost cPanel

Bluehost offers cPanel access to all users. With Bluehost’s custom cPanel interface, you can manage your website and hosting resources with ease.

To improve user experience, they revamped their dashboard, which makes it easier than ever to launch a website with Bluehost.

Just like Bluehost, iPage also comes with a 1-click WordPress installer to quickly launch a WordPress site. Unlike Bluehost, they also offer a basic drag and drop builder with their hosting plans. This is a good choice for users who want a quick and easy solution to build and design their website without hiring a developer.

iPage control panel

The main downside is that iPage doesn’t offer cPanel. Instead, they offer their own customized version of a control panel which they refer to as vDeck. However, if you’re accustomed to cPanel, which is the most popular web hosting control panel, then there’ll be a bit of learning curve to tackle before using vDeck.

Winner: Bluehost

Bluehost vs iPage – Features

Both Bluehost and iPage are likely to have the right hosting option for your website, regardless of the size and budget of your online business. Their hosting options run the gamut from cheap hosting to a full-fledged dedicated server.

With both Bluehost and iPage, you get a free domain name, free SSL, and a 1-click installer. However, in terms of features, iPage beats out Bluehost…

  • iPage comes with a free drag and drop builder whereas Bluehost doesn’t offer one.
  • Bluehost’s basic shared plan lets you set up one website. On the other plans, you can host unlimited sites. iPage allows unlimited website hosting with the basic plan.

Winner: iPage

Bluehost vs iPage – Support and Documentation

Bluehost’s friendly support team is available 24/7 via live chat and phone. They discontinued ticket-based support to focus solely on providing personal, direct support via live chat and phone. This decision can be frustrating to users with more advanced issues that may take a bit longer to resolve.

iPage, on the other hand, provides 24/7 support via phone, email, and live chat. You can also rely on their documentation, which explains everything you need to know about starting a new website.

Winner: iPage

Bluehost vs iPage – Pricing

Without a doubt, iPage simply rocks the cheap hosting vertical with their affordable pricing options. You can start a website on iPage for as low as $1.99 per month.

However, except for shared/cheap hosting, Bluehost blows iPage out of the water with their affordable hosting plans.

Here’s a complete head-to-head comparison between the cost of starting a website on Bluehost and iPage:

SharedWordPressVPSDedicated
Bluehost$2.75 / mo.$2.75 / mo.$19.99 / mo.
$79.99 / mo.
iPage$1.99 /mo.$3.75 /mo.--

Winner: Bluehost

Recap: Bluehost vs iPage

After our comparison, we believe Bluehost is the best hosting option you could choose for your website. Not only does Bluehost offer fast web hosting, but their hosting panel is super intuitive so you can quickly build a website even if you’re an absolute beginner.

Bluehost also offers more hosting options than iPage, including managed WordPress hosting and WooCommerce hosting. Plus, they’re recommended by WordPress.org, which increases their credibility as a WordPress host.

On top of that, Bluehost continually upgrades its server infrastructure to boost performance and improve user experience.

You’d also like to read our experts’ opinion between:

We hope this article helped you choose between Bluehost and iPage. If you enjoyed this article, you might also want to read our complete Bluehost review and full iPage review.

BlueHost Review
Bluehost Rating
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star Full   4.9 / 5.0
Visit Bluehost »
iPage Web Hosting
iPage Rating
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star Empty   4.0 / 5.0
Visit iPage »

Overall Hosting Comparison

BlueHost Review
Bluehost Overall Rating
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star Full   4.9 / 5.0

Bluehost Review.. read more +

Bluehost is one of the oldest and largest brand names when it comes to web hosting. They’re an officially recommended hosting provider by WordPress.org.

We believe Bluehost is the best cheap hosting service thanks to their affordability, reputation, usability, and the ability to grow with your business.

With Bluehost shared hosting plan, you get a free domain, free SSL, and more. Once you outgrow the traffic allowance on shared hosting, you can easily upgrade to their VPS and dedicated server options.

You can also save on Bluehost plans by paying annually.

Added to that, with Bluehost, you can also create custom email accounts for your business or brand. This is available for all Bluehost hosting plans.

On that note, you’ll be interested to know that Bluehost offers different hosting options including shared, dedicated, VPS, WordPress, and reseller hosting.

Bluehost complies with all the modern standards for hardware and software. They consistently strive for excellence by regularly improving their server hardware infrastructure as well as overall hosting experience. In an effort to make it extremely easy for beginners to start a website, they’ve revamped their user dashboard. They use industry-leading technologies like KVM and OpenStack to make sure your website is as fast as it can get.

Whenever you need web hosting assistance, you can get in touch with Bluehost’s 24/7 support team via live chat, or phone.

Bluehost is a regular contributor to open source projects like WordPress. They offer one-click installers for WordPress as well as other popular website builders and blogging platforms. If you’re just getting started, then you really can’t go wrong with Bluehost.

  • Free domain name registration
  • 1-click WordPress install
  • Unlimited Disk Space and industry-leading hardware
  • Regular price $9.99/ mo. but our users pay $2.75/ mo.
  • 24/7 Chat and Phone Support
  • Get started with Bluehost now!
DomainFree (1 Year)
Disk SpaceUnlimited
Money Back Guarantee30 Days
iPage Web Hosting
iPage Overall Rating
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star Empty   4.0 / 5.0

ipage hosting review.. read more +

iPage was founded in 1998 by Thomas Gony, and it now hosts over a million websites around the globe. In 2010, iPage was acquired by Endurance International Group (EIG). It now has offices in 6 worldwide locations and 2 data centers in the US.

iPage is an EPA green power partner, meaning the data centers and web servers are powered by wind energy, reducing their carbon footprint.

iPage provides low cost and reliable web hosting. They offer the best lock-in savings with longer-term deals. Regardless of the size of your business, you can easily find the right hosting plan that meets your budget and needs. iPage’s excellent support team is available 24/7 throughout the year whenever you need it by telephone, live chat, or email. Their documentation is pretty straightforward and helps walk you through every aspect of web hosting.

iPage also made to our list of the best free web hosting companies.

  • Free domain for a year
  • Host unlimited domains
  • Over $500 in freebies
  • 24/7 phone and chat support
  • Regular price $7.99 / mo. but our users pay $2.95 / mo!
  • Get started with iPage now!
DomainFree (1 Year)
Disk SpaceUnlimited
Money Back Guarantee30 days

Cheap Shared Hosting Comparison

BlueHost Review
Bluehost Overall Rating
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star Full   5.0 / 5.0

bluehost shared web hosting.. read more +

Bluehost’s cheap hosting also known as shared hosting is a perfect option if you’re just starting out and are only expecting low traffic volume. In a shared hosting server, your website shares hosting resources with other websites hosted on the same server. This is what allows hosting companies to keep the costs low.

While shared hosting providers often say unmetered bandwidth, if your website starts attracting a high load of traffic, then your hosting provider will ask you to upgrade to a higher plan that is faster and more reliable than shared hosting. Cloud hosting utilizes multiple servers, so in the case of a high traffic surge, the automatic failover process will switch you to another hosting server to ensure fast performance.

With every shared hosting plan, you get dozens of free website scripts to easily launch your website, blog or an online store, including WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal with one-click installers.

You’ll also get a free domain name and free SSL certificate to protect your website from data interception and misuse. This reassures your customers that their data is being sent over a secure connection, which can also entice your customers to do business with you.

As part of Bluehost’s shared hosting plan, they also offer free marketing bonuses to help you get your website off the ground. We highly recommend them for all small businesses.

In case you’re not satisfied, you can always take advantage of their 30-day money back guarantee, but it’s highly unlikely that you’ll need that!

  • Free domain and site builder
  • 1-click WordPress installs
  • Unlimited Disk Space and industry-leading hardware
  • Regular price $9.99/ mo. but our users pay $2.75/ mo.
  • 24/7 Chat, and Phone Support
  • Get started with Bluehost now!
DomainFree (1 Year)
Disk SpaceUnlimited
Money Back Guarantee30 Days
iPage Web Hosting
iPage Overall Rating
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star Full   5.0 / 5.0

ipage hosting review.. read more +

iPage offers the cheapest hosting plans in the shared hosting vertical. When you subscribe to iPage’s cheap hosting plan, your site will share server resources with many other websites, which keeps the costs low.

Although iPage offers the cheapest hosting service in existence, there’s nothing to be concerned about your their hosting because your files and data will be secured in the server, and only you’ll be able to access your site files.

iPage only has a single shared hosting plan. They offer the best lock-in savings with a longer-term deal. When subscribing to a 3-year plan, you only have to pay $1.99 per month.  For the 2-year plan, the price is $2.49 per month, and, for one year, it’s $2.99 per month.

Keep in mind that the introductory prices are just for the first term of service.

Regardless of your payment tier, you’ll get all the hosting features, including unlimited storage, scalable bandwidth, 1-click WordPress installer, and more.

  • Free domain for a year
  • Host unlimited domains
  • Over $500 in freebies
  • 24/7 phone and chat support
  • Regular price $7.99 / mo. but our users pay $1.99 / mo!
  • Get started with iPage now!
DomainFree (1 Year)
Disk SpaceUnlimited
Money Back Guarantee30 days

Dedicated Server Hosting Comparison

BlueHost Review
Bluehost Overall Rating
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star Half   4.7 / 5.0

bluehost-dedicated-hosting.. read more +

With Bluehost dedicated hosting, you’re renting a physical server exclusively for your website. The best part about dedicated servers is that you don’t share resources with any other sites, so the server can be configured specifically for your needs.

Built on OpenStack technology, Bluehost offers reliable dedicated hosting at a reasonable price. You can choose from three different pricing plans, and each plan comes with an enhanced cPanel that allows you to easily upgrade your storage space on the fly without admin intervention.

With Bluehost dedicated hosting, you get a minimum of 4 cores per server, 1TB of RAID storage, and between four and 16 gigs of available RAM. You can even have more than one hosting service in a single account, including shared, VPS or dedicated hosting.

Unlike other dedicated server hosting which takes hours or days to set up your account, Bluehost has the ability to instantly provision their dedicated servers, so you can get started immediately.

Because Bluehost owns their own data center, they regularly invest in top-notch hardware and infrastructure to ensure their dedicated servers are top of the line. Bluehost does an excellent job in making sure that your server stays updated with new OS changes and security fixes.

However, when you start getting into the advanced server optimization and configuration, your experience will vary from each support / system administrator that you talk with. Sometimes, you will be asked to pay additional fees to install certain scripts or modules on the server.

Overall though, Bluehost’s dedicated hosting offers the best value for the money.

  • Storage – 500GB to 1000GB
  • RAM – 4GB to 16GB
  • Regular price is 125.99/ mo. but our users pay $79.99/ mo.
  • 24/7 Chat, and Phone Support
  • Dedicated support agents
  • Get started with Bluehost now!
DomainFree (1 Year)
Disk Space500GB to 1TB
Money Back Guarantee30 Days
Sorry, we do not have any comparison data for this type.

VPS Hosting Comparison

BlueHost Review
Bluehost Overall Rating
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star Full   4.8 / 5.0

bluehost vps.. read more +

After shared hosting, cloud and VPS hosting are the next step up. VPS is short for Virtual Private Server. With VPS hosting, while you’ll be sharing resources with other sites, you have a lot more dedicated power and flexibility for your site.

Built using open source technology like OpenStack and KVM, Bluehost offers VPS hosting that’s both powerful and easy to use. Because Bluehost owns their own datacenters, they invest in state of the art hardware to unlock breakthrough speeds.

With its VPS plans, Bluehost offers you up to four cores and 2GB to 8GB of RAM with guaranteed resources. Every VPS configuration comes with improved cPanel interface, featuring everything found in a shared hosting interface along with special tools for your VPS management.

Unlike our VPS hosting services, Bluehost’s VPS is instantly provisioned, meaning you don’t have to wait hours or days to have your account activated. You can instantly log in and start building your website.

Bluehost’s VPS servers are designed to support Secure Shell access, log file access and more. You also get SSD (Solid State Drive) storage ranging from 30 GB to 120 GB. The biggest advantage of VPS hosting is that you have guaranteed resources allocated towards your website, so it can have maximum performance and uptime.

You have the ability to do multi-server management, have access control, can obtain root access for advanced configuration and more. Bluehost’s VPS offering is amongst the best in the industry for its price. Bluehost smart support team will be there to help you along every step of the way.

  • Storage – 30GB to 120GB
  • RAM – 2GB to 8GB
  • Regular price $39.99/ mo. but you pay $19.99/ mo.
  • 24/7 Chat, and Phone Support
  • Dedicated IP Addresses
  • Get started with Bluehost now!
DomainFree (1 Year)
Disk Space30GB to 120GB
Money Back Guarantee30 Days
Sorry, we do not have any comparison data for this type.

WordPress Hosting Comparison

BlueHost Review
Bluehost Overall Rating
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star Full   4.9 / 5.0

bluehost hosting discount.. read more +

Bluehost is one of the largest hosting brands in the WordPress ecosystem. Officially recommended by WordPress.org, Bluehost stands out among the crowd with its strong WordPress offering.

With the WordPress plans, they offer 1-click WordPress install, a free domain name, and a free SSL certificate for the price of $2.75 per month, which is the best when it comes to the quality of service they offer.

We recommend selecting either the Choice Plus or Pro plan. You’ll get unlimited SSD storage, AI driven templates, free domain privacy, and free CDN. With the Pro plan, you’ll also get a dedicated IP and optimized CPU resources.

Bluehost regularly contributes to the WordPress open-source project, and their team is highly-trained to help answer any WordPress question that you may have. They also offer premium themes and plugins through their subsidiary, MOJO Marketplace. You can also get access to their 1-on-1 expert WordPress support through their WP Live service.

In recent years, they have invested heavily in improving their WordPress offering by renovating the onboarding flow, bundling services like security, CDN, caching, staging features, and a whole lot more.

Though it’s not a managed WordPress hosting, if you are just starting your WordPress site, then there’s no better hosting provider than Bluehost on the market that offers the features they do at a very reasonable price point!

  • Free domain and site builder
  • 1-click WordPress installs
  • Unlimited Disk Space and industry-leading hardware
  • Regular price $9.99/ mo. but our users pay $2.75/ mo.
  • 24/7 Chat, and Phone Support
  • Get started with Bluehost now!
DomainFree (1 Year)
Disk SpaceUnlimited
Money Back Guarantee30 Days
iPage Web Hosting
iPage Overall Rating
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star Empty   4.0 / 5.0

ipage wordpress hosting review.. read more +

iPage’s WordPress hosting makes it super easy to get started with your WordPress website. All WordPress hosting plans come pre-installed with the latest version of WordPress, plus hand-selected themes and plugins. You’ll also get a fully-customized control panel, which makes it easy to operate your website without hassle.

The company offers 2 WordPress hosting plans: WP Starter and WP Essential.

All plans offer unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth. If you need specially-trained support agents to assist you with WordPress hosting, it’s recommended to choose WP Essential.

iPage has also teamed up with Sitelock, which scans for malware, prevents your site from being blacklisted, and makes WordPress more secure. With WP Essential, you get automatic malware removal and Sitelock professional security as well at no extra cost.

  • Storage – unlimited
  • Bandwidth – unlimited
  • Pre-installed WordPress themes & plugins
  • Regular price $7.49 / mo. but our users pay $3.75 / mo!
  • 24/7 chat, email, and phone support
  • Get started with iPage now!
Domain1 year (free)
Disk SpaceUnlimited
Money Back Guarantee30 days

WooCommerce Hosting Comparison

BlueHost Review
Bluehost Overall Rating
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star Full   4.9 / 5.0

bluehost woocommerce plans.. read more +

WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce platform on the internet. Due to its recent growth, many web hosting companies have started offering optimized WooCommerce hosting plans.

Bluehost due to its strong relationship with the WordPress community was among the first to build WooCommerce specific hosting plans. Their WooCommerce hosting plan comes with the WooCommerce plugin pre-installed along with the Storefront theme.

With Bluehost’s WooCommerce hosting, you get everything you need to start an online store. You get a dedicated IP address, positive SSL security, a dedicated support line, and more.

Bluehost is also an officially recommended WooCommerce hosting provider. Bluehost makes sure that you have everything you need to start an online store on a budget.

The WooCommerce hosting is built on top of the Bluehost cloud hosting infrastructure so it can handle larger load and traffic than a typical shared hosting plan. Often users get confused between the WordPress hosting vs WooCommerce hosting option that Bluehost offers.

While you can use either plan, we recommend using the WooCommerce hosting plan for WooCommerce sites for optimal results.

  • Storage – Unlimited
  • WooCommerce Pre-Installed
  • Dedicated IP Addresses, Private SSL, and Bonus Offers
  • The regular price is $24.95/ mo. but our users pay $9.95/ mo.
  • 24/7 Chat, and Phone Support
  • Get started with Bluehost now!
DomainFree (1 Year)
Disk SpaceUnlimited
Money Back Guarantee30 Days
Sorry, we do not have any comparison data for this type.

Reseller Hosting Rating

Sorry, we do not have any comparison data for this type.
Sorry, we do not have any comparison data for this type.

Bluehost vs. iPage (Final Results)

BlueHost Review
Bluehost Rating
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star Full   4.9 / 5.0
Visit Bluehost »
iPage Web Hosting
iPage Rating
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star Empty   4.0 / 5.0
Visit iPage »

Other Bluehost Comparisons

Wondering how Bluehost stacks up against other web hosting companies?

See our side-by-side comparison to see for yourself.

Other iPage Comparisons

Wondering how iPage stacks up against other web hosting companies?

See our side-by-side comparison to see for yourself.

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