Fast Page Load Speed
Bluehost or Site5, which is the right web host for you?
Well, choosing the right web host means that you have to get a lot of things right. And one of the most important things to get right is speed. If your web host doesn’t load your web page quickly, you’ll most definitely run into a lot of problems. One of those problems, and perhaps the most consequential, is that search engines won’t rank your site. If web engines don’t do that, your conversion rate will be in the gutter. If your conversion rate suffers, your business does too.
Bottom line? You have to be absolutely certain that a prospective web host will be fast. And how do you check this out? Easy. You test.
Like we did.
Bluehost Fast Page Load Speed Test
Our Bluehost page loaded in about 700ms. Which is pretty fast for web hosts. Most web hosts take longer than a second, on average, to load a web page.
Site5 Fast Page Load Speed Test
Site5 was a lot slower than Bluehost though and only loaded in about 1.6 seconds. While that page average page load speed isn’t the worst thing in the world, there are a lot of web hosts that can do better.
However, even the fastest web hosts have to be paid for. And if you’re paying, you need to know that you’re getting the right value for your money. That’s why we’re going to check out the pricing of both web hosts to see which company offers more value
Bluehost vs. Site5; Pricing And Value Comparison
There are a few things that the right web host must be, and having the right price is one of those things. No matter how great the performance of a hosting company, it simply wouldn’t do to overpay for their services. So you need to make sure that you’re paying the right price for the right value. Any other thing simply wouldn’t do.
Since you wouldn’t expect your site to have hundreds of thousands of views in the first month, you should probably start off with a shared hosting plan. That’s why we’ll be doing a shared hosting plan comparison.
Entry Point Plan; Basic Plan vs. HostBasic Plan
The Basic plan of Bluehost is their cheapest shared hosting plan and it comes with 1 website, 50 GB of storage space, unmetered bandwidth, a free SSL certificate, 1 included domain, 5 parked domains and 25 subdomains. The plan costs $2.95 per month.
The HostBasic plan of Site5 comes with 1 website, free migration, unmetered Bandwidth, unmetered Disk Space, Disaster Recovery Backups, and 24×7 Support. The plan costs $7.65 per month.
Obviously, the Site5 plan is way more expensive than the Bluehost plan. So, it should at least have way more features, right? Right?
No.
Both plans have 1 website, and the Site5’s biggest selling point is that it has unmetered disk space. However, since the Bluehost plan has 50 GB of SSD storage, it isn’t so far fetched to say it’s probably the same thing. Moreso, the Bluehost plan comes with a free domain and free SSL certificate, which the Site5 plan doesn’t come with. If you’re just setting up your website, you’d have to pay $12 extra for a new domain. You wouldn’t have to pay that much with Bluehost.
Mid Tier Plan; Plus Plans vs HostPro Plan
Bluehost has two medium-tier plans and they are the Plus plan and the Choice Plus plans. Both plans are really similar, but one important difference is that Choice Plus has an extra security feature. Another difference is that the Choice Plus plan costs more to renew.
The Plus plan has unlimited websites, unlimited storage, unmetered bandwidth, a free SSL certificate, standard performance, unlimited domains, unlimited parked domains, unlimited subdomains, Spam Experts and 1 Office 365 Mailbox— free for thirty days. The plan costs $5.45 per month for an initial three-year plan and renews at $10.99
The Choice Plus plan has all the features of the Plus plan plus Site Backup in the form of Codeguard Basic. However, instead of renewing at $10.99, the plan renews at $14.99.
The HostPro plan of Site5 comes with unlimited websites, free migration, and is suitable for up to 25000 visits per month. Additionally, it comes with unlimited websites, unmetered Bandwidth, free migration, unmetered Disk Space, Disaster Recovery Backups, and 24×7 Support. The plan costs $12.05 per month.
Site5’s HostPro plan is way more expensive than Bluehost’s mid-tier plans, but if you looked at the specs of the plan, it certainly doesn’t look like it. Nothing justifies the price difference, and Bluehost’s plans actually look like they would worth more. For example, Bluehost offers a free domain and free SSL certificate. Site5 doesn’t offer that.
Top Tier Plan; Pro Plan vs. HostPro + Turbo Plan
The Pro plan of Bluehost comes with unlimited websites, unlimited storage, Domain Privacy + Protection, Codeguard Basic for site backup, a dedicated IP, unlimited domains, Spam Expert, free SSL certificate, unmetered bandwidth and 1 Office 365 Mailbox free for thirty days. The plan costs $13.95 per month.
The Host + Turbo plan of Site5 (which, if we’re being honest, sounds like a name designed to make you buy into the illusion of it being an elite package) costs $15.35 per month. Which makes it undoubtedly one of the most— if not the most, expensive top-tier shared hosting plans we’ve ever reviewed. The plan comes with unlimited websites, unmetered Bandwidth, free migration, unmetered Disk Space, Disaster Recovery Backups, and 24×7 Support. It’s suitable for up to 100 thousand visitors per month.
While the specs of the HostPro + Turbo plan of Site5 is impressive, the price is certainly not. $15.35 for a plan that doesn’t even come with a free domain, free SSL certificate or extra free backup/security features is too much, no matter which way you look at it. On the other hand, the Pro plan of Bluehost offers just as much as the Site5 plan while costing a lot less. The more cost-effective and perhaps sensible option would be to go with Bluehost’s Pro plan. However, if you need to move a lot of sites over from another web host, Site5’s HostPro + Turbo plan may just be worth it.
The Right Host For You
Like we stated at the beginning when choosing the perfect web host, you have to get a lot of things right. And one of the most important things to get is the right plan to pay for. If you want only one website, then your choices should be between the Basic plan of Bluehost and the HostBasic plan of Site5. The Bluehost plan offers more or less the same specs as the Site5 plan and even provides better performance at a lower price. The reasonable choice, of course, would be Bluehost. However, if you have to migrate your site from another web host, Site5 may be a better option.
If you want a lot of websites, you can go with any of the mid-tier or top tier plans of either host, but you should know one thing. Or two things, in fact. Bluehost plans cost far less than Site5’s plans, and actually offer more value. Bluehost has a better performance as well. The only thing that Site5 has going is the fact that they offer free migration.
Alternative
If you don’t want to buy a plan from Bluehost, you could always try to buy from Site5. The web host has great uptime, 24/7, customer care, and amazing security infrastructure. In fact, you can set up an account in under ten minutes. The interface is not complex and is very easy to understand. What’s more, Site5 even has a forty-five-day money-back guarantee which is longer than what Bluehost offers.
However, choosing Site5 may come with some trouble. For example, while page load speed isn’t terrible, it isn’t exemplary and your conversion rate may suffer. Importantly, Site5 is way more expensive than Bluehost on an average. You should also know that unlike Bluehost, Site5 doesn’t offer free domains and free SSL certificates. You’d have to pay for that.