Bluehost Pricing and Plans for Small Businesses
As one of the top web hosting platforms around, Bluehost has made a name for itself by offering WordPress hosting at affordable costs. However, creating a WordPress website can be a daunting experience to beginners. As such, Bluehost designed its own WordPress website builder to help streamline this process for those looking to make a business website.
This Bluehost pricing review will cover what to expect from the plans and prices for the Bluehost website builder. It’ll also cover what features are available at each Bluehost site builder tier, and by the end you’ll know which Bluehost builder plan is right for you.
Recommended: After extensive research, we think the Bluehost Builder Pro Plan is the right fit for most small business owners.
Before You Begin
Since Bluehost offers both hosting and website building, we want to take a moment to clarify that this article will only focus on the plans for the Bluehost website builder, but all builder plans come with hosting included.
Here’s a brief snapshot of Bluehost’s website builder pricing plans:
In addition to this Bluehost pricing guide, check out these other helpful articles to ensure this platform is the best choice for your business:
The Bluehost Builder Basic Plan
The Bluehost Builder Basic plan delivers the majority of Bluehost’s core, social media, and form-building features. This simple, versatile plan also offers competitive pricing when compared to Bluehost’s other two plans for its WordPress website builder.
Core Offerings
Although you may have heard of some of these features, it’s still essential to understand what they are and how they can benefit you as a website owner.
- Smart Website Editor: All Bluehost Builder plans include Bluehost’s Smart Website Editor, which is a visual interface that helps users build web pages without the need to know how to code.
- WordPress Updates: Bluehost also will perform all WordPress core updates to your website, taking one item off your to-do list.
- Bluehost Customer Support: Site owners also have 24/7 access to Bluehost’s team of WordPress experts.
- SSL Certificate: Bluehost will install a secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate on each website to help protect your and your customers’ data.
- Domain Registration: All Builder plans include free domain registration for a year.
Design Offerings
Because Bluehost’s WordPress website builder delivers an intuitive site-building experience on the WordPress platform, many of its key features include advanced design and interface elements. These features help WordPress users create and modify their websites quickly and easily.
- Mobile-Responsive Functionality: All websites created with the Bluehost WordPress website builder are automatically mobile responsive, meaning they’ll look good on tablets and mobile phones.
- WordPress Gutenberg Blocks: Much like other website builders, Bluehost’s WordPress website builder takes advantage of useful element “blocks” that can help you insert photos, videos, quotes, forms, and more.
- Custom Fonts: If you aren’t happy with the standard fonts offered by WordPress, Bluehost’s WordPress website builder supports the use of custom fonts.
- Slides and Carousels: If you’re interested in using a slideshow or product carousel, the Bluehost Builder makes it easy to add these elements to your site’s pages and blog posts.
- Website Design Templates: Bluehost Builder plans automatically include basic website templates that can help you create and launch your website quickly.
- Blog Post Templates: All Bluehost plans also include a number of blog post templates so you can easily incorporate blog posts into your website.
- Forms: These enable site owners to easily incorporate contact and log-in forms into their websites.
Social Media and Email Marketing Offerings
The Bluehost Builder Basic plan also includes several email marketing and social media offerings, which sets it apart from other website builders’ plans.
- Landing Pages: The Bluehost builder makes it easy to create landing pages for your business ads.
- Social Sharing Buttons: This plan also enables you to incorporate social sharing buttons on your web pages and/or blog posts.
- CTA Buttons: In addition, this plan also includes easy-to-use, calls-to-action (CTA) buttons you can incorporate into your web pages and/or blog posts.
- Email Marketing: Bluehost partners with Creative Mail to add email marketing tools to its WordPress website builder.
- Social Reviews: As a Bluehost customer, you’ll have the ability to incorporate social reviews (e.g., from Google, Yelp, etc.) into your website.
Pricing
The Bluehost Builder Basic plan currently costs $2.95 per month for a 12-month term. At that price, it’s more cost-effective than basic plans offered by most competitors.
Ideal Users of This Plan
This plan will suit anyone who wants to leverage the functionality and expandability of WordPress, but also wants the simplicity of using web page and blog post builders.
WordPress is generally ideal for bloggers or tech-savvy business owners, but using a WordPress-based website builder like Bluehost’s can make this platform accessible to all small business owners.
Ecommerce businesses should avoid this plan because it lacks many of the tools and features essential for their success. In addition, business owners who want an extra level of privacy and security or want to leverage subscription forms may want to consider one of Bluehost’s higher-tier plans.
The Bluehost Basic plan is a great entry-level option for small businesses looking for a WordPress website builder.
The Bluehost Builder Pro Plan
The Bluehost Builder Pro plan delivers the same core, design, and social media and email marketing offerings as the Bluehost Basic plan plus expanded security, design, and ecommerce features.
Core Offerings
The Bluehost Builder Pro plan includes one additional core offering that’s crucial for many small businesses:
Domain Privacy: This means Bluehost will replace the IP address and email address publicly associated with your website with its own. That’ll protect your business from unwanted spam, which can stem from having your business information posted on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) website.
Design Offerings
Beyond the features included with the Bluehost Basic plan, the Bluehost Builder Pro plan includes three additional design features.
- Premium Templates: This plan includes access to premium design templates, such as for testimonials, subscription forms, and more.
- Custom Messages: With this plan, you also can incorporate custom messaging into any form you create.
- Subscription Forms: Unlike the Bluehost Basic plan, this plan includes subscription forms.
Ecommerce Offerings
This Bluehost builder plan is the first to offer any sort of ecommerce capabilities. They are few in number, but quite mighty in practice.
- Online Payments: With this plan, your website can accept online payments.
- Storefront Templates: This plan also includes specialized templates for your storefront homepage.
- Manual Orders: The Bluehost Pro plan also gives you the ability to manually enter orders your business receives via email or telephone.
- Pricing Table and Product Page Templates: This plan includes several templates for pricing tables and product pages.
- Unlimited Products: Unlike many of its competitors, this plan doesn’t limit the number of products you can list in your online store.
- PayPal Integration: With this plan, your website can accept online payments through the PayPal payments system.
Pricing
The Bluehost Builder Pro plan starts at $9.95 per month for a 12-month term. This mid-range plan includes ecommerce capabilities not found in the Bluehost Basic plan.
Ideal Users of This Plan
The primary difference between the Bluehost Basic and Bluehost Pro plans are the latter’s ecommerce capabilities. The Bluehost Pro plan suits small business owners who either want to incorporate an ecommerce element into their websites or who have a business solely focused on ecommerce.
Check out the Bluehost Pro plan starting as low as $9.95 per month.
The Bluehost Builder Online Store Plan
The Bluehost Builder Online Store plan includes all the core, design, social media, and email marketing offerings included in the Bluehost Basic and Bluehost Pro plans along with several additional ecommerce capabilities.
Ecommerce Offerings
This plan comes with four ecommerce features not included in the Bluehost Pro plan.
- Shipping Plugin: Worth $98 per year, this shipping plugin will help you prepare and print shipping labels for your physical products.
- Subscription Plugin: This plan also includes a subscription plugin, which allows you to offer subscription-based services and products on your website.
- Appointment-Booking Functionality: In addition, this plan includes appointment-setting and management capabilities.
- Automated Sales Tax Management: With this plan, you can automatically calculate and apply local, state, and federal sales taxes to your customers’ online purchases.
Pricing
The Bluehost Builder Online Store plan starts at $24.95 per month for a 12-month term.
Ideal Users of This Plan
Small businesses that need advanced scheduling, subscription, and shipping capabilities for their online stores will benefit most from this plan.
If you don’t need to enable visitors to schedule appointments with you, don’t offer products/services on a subscription basis, or don’t need an integrated shipping option, then you may want to consider one of Bluehost’s less-expensive plan options.
The Bluehost Online Store plan offers advanced ecommerce functionality for just $24.95 per month.
Final Thoughts
Now that you know what each of Bluehost builder plans has to offer, you’re ready to select your plan and begin building your website. To make the entire process much easier, follow this step-by-step guide to learn How To Make a Bluehost Website.
Designing, publishing, and managing your WordPress website has never been easier now that Bluehost offers a proprietary website builder. Use Bluehost to get your WordPress website up and running in no time.
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