Bluehost Pro Vs. Bluehost Shared Hosting : Is it Worth the Upgrade?

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Running a self-hosted WordPress blog is fun, as we need to take care of everything. The moment you start a self-hosted blog, you are almost running a business. That means you need to take care of everything around your blog. One of the major concerns with self-hosted blogger is web hosting.

Till the time your current hosting is not giving any issues, you don’t need to worry about anything, but the moment your WordPress blog gets old, or some buggy plugin or codes starts playing hide & seek, Webhosting company can give nightmare.

In the last 4 years of blogging, I had many sleepless nights because of hosting woes, and it’s always fun to fix the problem and learn something new.

This is one reason, I often recommend new bloggers to opt for quality Webhosting, which can easily host your WordPress blog, and you can focus more on the thing you are best at; i.e. writing.  

In my earlier guide (Webhosting packages for beginners), I explained different types of hosting packages and explained why shared hosting is the best for a new WordPress blog. A quality hosting like Bluehost or Hostgator which starts at $5.95/month can easily handle traffic up to 20K/daily of an optimized WordPress blog.

Usually, when shared hosting can’t handle our traffic, we tend to upgrade to VPS hosting, and I have tried this in the past with Knownhost VPS and Linode VPS and realized it works only when you have enough memory on your VPS server, and is completely optimized for running WordPress blog.

Disclaimer: This article does contain affiliate links. If you purchase a tool through one of the links, SML will receive a small commission for coffee ☕️, at no additional cost to you.

In fact, there was a time when I downgraded from a basic VPS plan to a shared hosting plan, and it worked better for me.

Today, I will be talking about the Bluehost PRO package and will explain why it’s a good option for bloggers who are looking for something in between shared hosting and VPS hosting.

What is Bluehost Pro Package?

Bluehost Pro package is a paid addon offered to Bluehost shared hosting customers, who need more resources in comparison to shared hosting resources.

Typically when we are on shared hosting, all the server resources are shared among all the websites hosted on the same server.

That means, if a shared hosting has 100 websites hosted on them, all server resources can be utilizsed by any of the sites, and this is one reason many times we face issues like server downtime, due to one buggy website on that shared hosting.

Bluehost Pro Package
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Bluehost pro package gives extra privilege by limiting the number of sites hosted on the same server, along with increased server resources and many add-ons to further make the most out of their hosting package. Here are a few of the features of the Bluehost Pro plan:

Free Dedicated I.P:

I already had a long discussion on how does shared hosting affect search engine ranking, and by the end we concluded that, if budget is not an issue, having your site hosted on private I.P. have its advantages. With pro package, you get 1 dedicated I.P, and needless to say SEO advantages you will be getting along with it.

Performance upgrade:

Website speed not only is useful for your users but also for search engines. With increased CPU and memory on the Bluehost Pro account, your website will load faster.

Specially if you are struggling with slow WordPress dashboard on shared hosting, you should consider upgrading your account to pro package, and notice the difference. $20/month for improved performance of a website is totally worth the money.

SSL Certificate:

If you are running a WordPress membership site or eCommerce WordPress site and taking payment, SSL certificate is a must-have for your blog. The Pro package offers a positive SSL certificate, to offer a secure way for your client to access the payment page.

There are many more extra features you get with Bluehost Pro package like:

  • 1 Domain privacy protection
  • 1 Domain name registration
  • 1 Sitebackup Pro
  • 10 post in Email Filtering

Is it worth upgrading to Bluehost Pro package?

If I would have been you, and my website is having memory issues on Bluehost standard shared hosting, or when my site needs more resources, the front end, and backend running a little slow, I would prefer upgrading to Bluehost pro package over moving to cheap or entry-level VPS, for simple reasons:

  • On the Bluehost Pro package, we get more resources in comparison to their shared hosting.
  • There are less users on Pro package in comparison of standard shared hosting. Now, more resources with less users will be far better than upgrading to any entry level VPS.
  • With Bluehost pro package, I will be paying way less than managed VPS.

Along with above two reasons, if you are using addons like dedicated I.P, SSL certificate, Email accounts, with pro package you will save more than $200/year.  

Any existing Bluehost user can upgrade to the pro package from the Bluehost dashboard. Here are quick steps to upgrade:

  • Login to Bluehost cPanel
  • Click on Addons
  • And add Pro package

Do remember, it will take 1-2 hours for them to migrate your website to a new powerful server, and your website might go down for 1-2 hours, because of DNS propagation. So, a good idea is to upgrade to the pro package on weekends and on less traffic day. Overall, if your shared hosting is giving your trouble, and you considering upgrading to VPS, you should consider the Bluehost Pro package, to avoid huge VPS bills, and tech hassles.

If you are an existing Bluehost Pro customer, do share your experience and review of their service.

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

15 thoughts on “Bluehost Pro Vs. Bluehost Shared Hosting : Is it Worth the Upgrade?”

  1. Swaroop

    Great Blog. Very Helpful. Referred here and bought 6 Pro accounts for 36 months. It is cheap if you purchase for 36 months upfront.

  2. Rishi

    Hey Harsh,

    I recently pyrchased a domain from bluehost. Will purchasing a domain from india would affect my traffic of other countries like us,aus etc?

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Yes, it would. if you are targeting traffic from U.S ar Australia, you should go with Bluehost.com

  3. Pratik kundale

    Can Bluehost pro plan gives unlimited domain hosting ??
    Little bit confused 🙁

  4. shikhar tyagi

    Hi,
    I am considering among HostGator, Dreamhost and Bluehost. Could you recommend one?

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Shikhar
      Go with Bluehost or Hostgator.

  5. Ivan

    I’m currently using Bluethost shared hosting service. Is it easy to upgrade to Pro? Is there any negative effect if I move to Pro (like search engine treats my blogs as different sites)

  6. Abhay Bajaj

    I did the mistake of adding too many sites to my hosting, and now I can’t take down any of them. This drains a lot of resources, the end result being poor user experience on my main website, which is an ecommerce one.
    This surely has affected conversions and search engine traffic, and I will be upgrading to Bluehost Pro to tackle with this.

  7. Gautam

    Hi Hursh,

    Exactly the post i was looking for. But i have a few concerns on how to optimize my blog. I have uninstalled the plugins which i’m not using and also installed a WP Super Cache plugin. My blog doesn’t have many images or a hefty theme. Just a simple site. Is it enough, anything more that i could do?

  8. Tuan

    Hi,
    I am considering among HostGator, Dreamhost and Bluehost. Could you recommend one?

  9. Stephen Malan

    Whenever you can upgrade to a less crowded environment in hosting, do it! A pure shared hosting server has a lot of sites on it which yours is just one. If you can upgrade to a dedicated server, one with only your sites on it and no others, is the way to go if your traffic and budget will allow for that.

    If traffic and budget concerns will not allow for a full dedicated server then a move up to a less crowded server with more features is the way to go.

    Good post!

  10. kapil

    Very help full articles, harsh I would like to say that i got bore with go daddy hosting, it is good but not good in E mail. from a few time when I saw you post than i take decision to buy hosting blue host and now you suggest to buy Blue host Pro Package. It is great i will buy this one today for my new website.

  11. Steve eMailSmith

    I’m using HostMonster (basically still BlueHost, but with a different name) and I can say that, indeed, the shared hosting works great when you get started.

    However, once there is enough traffic coming and more resources needed, I preferred to go another route and I’ve chosen a Cloud Hosting solution, not a VPS or a Pro upgrade.

    The benefits of serving content from the nearest possible server to the request, combined with a true 100% uptime (even if one or a number of servers fail, there will be still the other ones, serving the content, even if from a farther range) were the decisive factors for me.

    A downside of it (for the beginner blogger) is that usually, such hosting solutions do not come with cPanel for backend administration, sadly… But hey… it is actually meant to be a high end solution. Presumably, if someone needs such cloud hosting, they could easily afford a managed account, right?

    Cheers,
    Steve ✉ Master eMailSmith ✉ Lorenzo
    Chief Editor, eMail Tips Daily Newsletter

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