Choosing Between BlueHost and JustHost

When it comes to web hosting there are so many different providers to choose from! Finding an affordable hosting solution for your website doesn’t have to be that difficult and today we’re reviewing two of the most popular web hosting companies, BlueHost and JustHost. We’ll compare the plans and prices as well as the features included so you can choose the best web host for your small business or personal website. Let’s get started with our JustHost Review.

JustHost Plan Overview

JustHost offers 3 hosting solutions. Shared web hosting, VPS plans, Dedicated Servers as well as a 4th option called Go Pro.

The 3 Shared Hosting plans are as follows:

Basic Plan $3.95/month (On a 3 year term) totaling $142.20

Plus Plan $6.95/month (On a 3 year term) totaling $250.20

Prime Plan which is $6.95/month (On a 3 year term) totaling $250.20

You’ll notice that the Shared Plus and Prime Plans have the same pricing of $6.95/month but keep in mind these are introductory offers and the plans renew at their regular rates. Also note that the prices quoted above are without Whois Privacy which adds on an additional $11.95/year and is included in the Prime Plan.

The Prime plan (Which is their recommended plan) also includes unmetered disks pace, bandwidth, email accounts, sub-domains as well as their website backup protection and spam prevention. One feature that we liked about JustHost is they include Marketing Credits so you can start advertising on Google Adwords for free. What exactly is Unmetered disk space? That crossed my mind to which is why I did some more digging and found out that the Prime plan does have a 200 thousand file inode restriction in place and a 50 thousand softcap for all Shared plans.

What is an Inode? An inode is a data structure used to keep information about a file on your hosting account. Basically it is a file and the inode count is the number of combined files you can store on the server including your website and emails.

Having an inode limit allows JustHost to keep their Shared servers at optimal performance and ensures stability for the other clients hosted on the server. Most users will never hit the inode limit but if you have a very big website it’s something to consider.

Lets look at the Shared Hosting solution I mentioned earlier called the Go Pro plan at $24.95/month or $538.20 on a 3 year term. This plan offers everything the Prime plan has and guarantees high performance with all the bells and whistles including a SSL certificate, dedicated IP address, whois privacy and site backups. The inode limit on this plan increases to 300 thousand.

JustHost does offer Positive SSL Certificates as an addon for $49.95/year. If you want the green lock to show up in your web browser then you will need SSL. Having an SSL Certificate gives your website visitors the comfort in knowing that any transactions or forms they will out on your website are secure.

VPS Hosting plans are also available and there are a total of 4 VPS plans to choose from.

Standard VPS plan – $19.95/month:

Dual Core/2GB Ram/30GBs disk Space/1TB Bandwidth/month and 1 IP address included.

Enhanced VPS plan – $29.95/month:

Dual Core/4GB Ram/60GBs disk Space/2TB Bandwidth/month and 2 IP addresses included.

Premium VPS plan – $44.95/month:

Triple Core/6GB Ram/90GBs disk Space/2TB Bandwidth/month and 2 IP addresses included.

Ultimate VPS plan – $59.95/month:

Quad Core/8GB Ram/120GBs disk Space/3TB Bandwidth/month and 2 IP addresses included.

All VPS plans come with CentOS 6.5 (64 bit) installed as well as a free domain name. VPS plans do come with full root access as these plans are not hosted in a Shared environment with other clients which means that all available resources are dedicated to your website. This gives you the ability to host a large website since you’re not restricted by any server wide limits that are typically found on shared plans. You will have full root access on your VPS (Just like a dedicated server) that gives you full reign on the server and allows you to compile and install any software your site needs.

When choosing a VPS plan it is important to take into account 3 main factors:

1). Check your websites current disk space usage since a VPS does not have unlimited space. Also plan for growth and additional space your site will use. Keep in mind that cPanel alone uses about 3GB of disk space on its own.

2). The amount of memory that your site currently uses since a lot of third party scripts and plugins can be resource intensive. WordPress plugins in particular use a lot of memory so having less plugins installed will improve your load times.

3). Compatibility is a third factor that you will need to consider since you want your VPS to match your current setup when it comes to PHP versions and MySQL.

JustHost is cheaper than BlueHost and recommended for startups. If you want a simple web hosting plan with email and are looking for the best price then JustHost is recommended. They host close to 2 million websites and have been around for over 10 years.

Check out JustHost Hosting Plans here

BlueHost Plan Overview

Lets turn our focus to BlueHost and see what they have to offer. They are very well known in the hosting industry and have been around since 2002! (JustHost has been around since 2008).

Much like JustHost, BlueHost offers 3 main hosting solutions with a greater focus on WordPress hosting plans.

BlueHost offers the following 4 plans:

Basic Plan – $2.95/month (On a 3 year term) totaling $106.20
Plus Plan – $4.95/month (On a 3 year term) totaling $178.20
Prime Plus Plan – $5.95/month (On a 3 year term) totaling $196.20
Prime Pro Plan – $13.95/month (on a 3 year term) totaling $502.20

You’ll notice that both JustHost and BlueHost offer the same Prime Pro Plan that include the following features.

Dedicated IP
SSL Certificate
Domain Privacy
Site Backup

The inode restrictions at BlueHost are exactly the same as JustHost.

BlueHost is known for their WordPress optimized hosting plans. They haven been recommended by WordPress.org since 2005 so you if you want a hosting plan that is fully compatible with WordPress then BlueHost is the way to go. Their hosting plans have features that are geared specifically toward WordPress sites and their support will be able to help you along the way.

The WordPress plans all include a free SSL certificate, free installer and auto updates for WordPress and a free domain name for the first year. You can also setup a staging environment to test your WordPress changes before going live.

Refund Policies

JustHost offers an anytime money back guarantee which means you can cancel at anytime and receive a refund.

BlueHost offers a full 30 day money back guarantee which allows the client to cancel anytime within that 30 day period to receive a full refund.

Where To Host Your Website

BlueHost has a reputation for speed, reliability and most importantly, their relationship with WordPress. You can install free themes and plugins right away to launch your site in minutes. JustHost is more of a budget hosting provider. If you just need a hosting plan for a static site or informational website then JustHost will work just fine. For e-commerce sites we’d recommend BlueHost.

Both hosting companies use cPanel which lets you setup email accounts, view website stats and create databases. It’s a user-friendly control panel that lets you manage your hosting plan. Deciding which web host is best for your website it depends on the size of your website, your budget and if you plan to use WordPress.