TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Bluehost

    Score5.9 out of 10
    N/ABluehost, headquartered in Orem, Utah, offers website hosting. Bluehost also offers managed WordPress hosting, with optional SEO and marketing tools for WordPress plans.

    $19.95

    per month for 36 month term

    DigitalOcean

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/ADigitalOcean is an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform from the company of the same name headquartered in New York. It is known for its support of managed Kubernetes clusters and “droplets” feature.

    $5

    Starting Price Per Month

    Pricing
    BluehostDigitalOcean
    Editions & Modules
    Shared WordPress Hosting
    $3.95-$16.99
    per month
    Shared Web Hosting
    $3.95-$26.99
    per month for 36 month term
    eCommerce - WooCommerce Hosting
    $15.95-$49.95
    per month, 1 month to 36 month terms available
    Managed WordPress (beta)
    $19.95
    per month for 36 month term
    VPS Hosting
    $19.99 - $119.99
    per month
    Blue Sky Live WordPress Support
    $29.00-$149.00
    per month
    Dedicated Hosting
    $79.99-$209.99
    per month
    1GB-16GB
    $5.00
    Starting Price Per Month
    8GB-160GB
    $60.00
    Starting Price Per Month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    BluehostDigitalOcean
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    BluehostDigitalOcean
    Considered Both Products
    Newfold Digital (Endurance + Web.com)
    Chose Bluehost
    Bluehost's VPS offering gives me full control over my container which I don't get with DreamHost. The size of the container is much more desirable for hosting multiple products, over and above DigitalOcean, and the control panel for Bluehost is far more intuitive than AWS'.
    Incentivized
    DigitalOcean
    Chose DigitalOcean
    DigitalOcean is an inexpensive product as compared to other products available in the market. The UI is easy and the beginner can also understand the UI with the step by step guide. It provides a lot of custom features and the user needs to pay only for what they are using. …
    Incentivized
    Chose DigitalOcean
    DigitalOcean and ServerPilot work extremely well together. As for other hosting solutions I feel like I have moved on to the best choice available with DigitalOcean. Times change, and DigitalOcean just feels like the next step in the evolution of hosting providers and I for one …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    63%
    Would buy again
    5 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    11 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    75%
    Delivers good value for the price
    6 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    11 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    63%
    Happy with the feature set
    5 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    11 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    86%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    6 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    11 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    75%
    Implementation went as expected
    6 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    11 Answers
    Features
    BluehostDigitalOcean
    Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
    Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Bluehost and DigitalOcean
    Feature
    Bluehost
    -
    Ratings
    DigitalOcean
    9.2
    36 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings9.931 Ratings
    Dynamic scaling00 Ratings9.932 Ratings
    Elastic load balancing00 Ratings9.723 Ratings
    Pre-configured templates00 Ratings10.029 Ratings
    Monitoring tools00 Ratings9.035 Ratings
    Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings9.733 Ratings
    Operating system support00 Ratings9.033 Ratings
    Security controls00 Ratings8.632 Ratings
    Automation00 Ratings6.55 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    BluehostDigitalOcean
    Small Businesses
    AccuWebHosting.Com
    Score9.9 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Object Storage
    Score9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    AccuWebHosting.Com
    Score9.9 out of 10
    SAP on IBM Cloud
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    BluehostDigitalOcean
    Likelihood to Recommend
    4.9
    (19 ratings)
    8.9
    (36 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    8.9
    (10 ratings)
    Availability
    4.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.1
    (6 ratings)
    8.8
    (9 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    3.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    BluehostDigitalOcean
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Newfold Digital (Endurance + Web.com)
    Bluehost is a decent all-around choice for web hosting with professional web development and domain management features that are particularly ideal for WordPress websites and blogs. They have a good reputation within the industry as a company that invests heavily in new technology and platform innovation. Bluehost has made a lot of improvements to customize their back-end administration (AMP & control panel) by working to improve the usability and design of the browser interface. Bluehost is primarily focused on customers who use WordPress and we would recommend either their hybrid cloud or managed WordPress platform, which provides everything that you need to build and maintain a popular website. All in all, Bluehost is a well-established brand that continually improves its hosting products, regularly upgrades their data center hardware, and is generally considered a leader in the development of new cloud hosting platform services.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    DigitalOcean
    DigitalOcean is perfect for hosting client websites, running marketing tools, and managing media storage with Spaces and CDN. The use of Droplets to quickly launch landing pages or WordPress sites for campaigns is a Godsend. It’s great for fast, cheap, and scalable solutions. But for complex microservices or projects needing strict compliance (like HIPAA), DigitalOcean may not always be the best fit, but that depends heavily on your project.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Newfold Digital (Endurance + Web.com)
    • Customer service/tech support is simply top-notch. Being able to pick up the phone, get help, and not get charged for it is rare in the tech-support world.
    • Their Dashboard/C-panel has a wide selection of popular tools and options to make website design and all that goes with it very easy. Lots of choices; they are more than a simple hosting service.
    • Keeping their tools up-to-date. I never have to worry about upgrades or having the latest features; it just happens automatically!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    DigitalOcean
    • DigitalOcean provides some of the best cost-to-value services available
    • The DigitalOcean cloud console is very intuitive and easy to navigate
    • DigitalOcean has great support for Docker and other dev ops tools like Terraform.
    • DigitalOcean iterates quickly and provides cutting edge features for organizations that want to keep up with the latest and greatest dev ops tooling
    • DigitalOcean has a great developer community and numerous support docs/tutorials
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Newfold Digital (Endurance + Web.com)
    • Setting up wasn't difficult but I think for some having tutorial videos would have been better than screenshots.
    • Provide more than one free domain on the Plus plan.
    • Offer site migration - not an option I saw when I signed up.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    DigitalOcean
    • Some products/services available on other Cloud providers aren't available, but they seem to be catching up as they add new products like Managed SQL DBs.
    • While they have FreeBSD droplets (VMs), support for *BSD OSs is limited. I.e. the new monitoring agent only works on Linux.
    • There are no regions available on South America.
    • They don't seem to offer enterprise-level products, even basic ones as Windows Server, MS SQL Server, Oracle products, etc.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Newfold Digital (Endurance + Web.com)
    No answers on this topic
    DigitalOcean
    I've been very happy with it for my purposes and I plan to continue to use DigitalOcean for the foreseeable future!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Newfold Digital (Endurance + Web.com)
    I use Wordpress for my website on Bluehost, so I already know how it works and happy with it. I gave it this rating as I love the fact that If you do plan on creating multiple websites on Bluehost you'll be able to create specific login access for each website sites making it less likely to enter into the wrong website accounts. Which makes it even easier to manage client websites if you plan to create and host websites on behalf of your clients.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    DigitalOcean
    I honestly can't think of an easier way to set up and maintain your own server. Being able to set up a server in minutes and have fully control is awesome. The UX is incredibly intuitive for first-time users as well so there's no reason to be intimidated when it comes to giving DigitalOcean a shot.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Newfold Digital (Endurance + Web.com)
    No answers on this topic
    DigitalOcean
    Have not found a single second of down time myself. Superior availability.
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    Newfold Digital (Endurance + Web.com)
    No answers on this topic
    DigitalOcean
    Very quick response and high performance, you have to fine tune configurations on your machines though.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Newfold Digital (Endurance + Web.com)
    They are quick, easily reached, and can usually solve problems on the first try. However I noticed I had to go to customer support more often than with other providers, whether that was things breaking more often or if their customer support couldn't fix things on the first try. But in most scenarios, they are fine.
    Incentivized
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    DigitalOcean
    They have always been fast, and the process has been straight-forward. I haven't had to use it enough to be frustrated with it, to be honest, and when I have an issue they fix it. As with all support, I wish it felt more human, but they are doing aces.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Newfold Digital (Endurance + Web.com)
    Bluehost did not stack up against HostGator; in fact, HostGator was where we ended up migrating after we realized Bluehost was not for us. Bluehost is not geared toward businesses, especially ones like ours that have a very customized site. HostGator allowed us the customization that we needed, and their prices were terrific.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    DigitalOcean
    DigitalOcean is an inexpensive product as compared to other products available in the market. The UI is easy and the beginner can also understand the UI with the step by step guide. It provides a lot of custom features and the user needs to pay only for what they are using. Amazon has a complex UI and is on the expensive side. DigitalOcean is simple to use and is easily manageable and the servers can easily be set up without additional cost and such.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Newfold Digital (Endurance + Web.com)
    The website is slow. The speed is not reliable. Sometimes, sites would go down without warning. You would have to get a VPS to get consistent speed. If you have small website as a hobby, then Bluehost will be sufficient. Otherwise, I recommend looking for something more fast. Storage is good, but speed is lacking
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    DigitalOcean
    Great scalability, you can start with small plans and move up to premium features at a very good price.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Newfold Digital (Endurance + Web.com)
    • It allowed me to get my website up and running and sell services.
    • It is fairly low cost, so it was easy to recoup my investment.
    • Having to pay for a whole year upfront made it take a little longer to get the return on my investment.
    Incentivized
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    DigitalOcean
    • Positive - Elastic computer instances make it possible to pay for only for what you need.
    • Positive - Competitive pricing - some of the products that DigitalOcean offers are much cheaper than those offered by competitors.
    • Negative - Having to go to other cloud computing platforms for more specific, advanced services like Computer Vision optimized services, GPU cloud compute instances, etc...
    Incentivized
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