Bluehost vs DigitalOcean | TrustRadius

What users are saying about

Score 7.4 out of 10

Based on 39 reviews and ratings

Score 8.1 out of 10

Based on 89 reviews and ratings

Feature Rating Comparison

Bluehost

DigitalOcean

Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime

Dynamic scaling

Elastic load balancing

Pre-configured templates

Monitoring tools

Pre-defined machine images

Operating system support

Security controls

Pros

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!

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Verified User

Employee in Information Technology

Education Management Company, 201-500 employees

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Ease of use - You can get set up with a new server in a matter of minutes. It doesn't get any easier than that.
Support - The public forums are incredibly helpful as are the official help articles. I've never needed to contact the support team because of this. All of the information is at my fingertips.
Pricing - We're only paying $10/mo for a solution that gives our customers more confidence in us and is a selling point for us.

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VP of Technology & Human Resources

Quality Ironworks, Inc.Construction, 51-200 employees

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Cons

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.

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Ayo Bamgbose, Assoc CIPD, MSc

Online digital business coach

Self-employedE-Learning, 1-10 employees

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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.

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Leonel Quinteros

Director of Technology

Global Brigades, Inc.Non-Profit Organization Management, 11-50 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

DigitalOcean 9.0

Based on 2 answers

I've been very happy with it for my purposes and I plan to continue to use DigitalOcean for the foreseeable future!

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Devops Engineer

Tommy BahamaComputer Software, 1-10 employees

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Usability

Bluehost 9.0

Based on 2 answers

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.

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Ayo Bamgbose, Assoc CIPD, MSc

Online digital business coach

Self-employedE-Learning, 1-10 employees

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DigitalOcean 8.5

Based on 6 answers

While DigitalOcean is a top notch host in our opinion, it could be more user friendly. There have been great strides taken in the last year with user friendliness, and while if you are experienced with web hosting, the services they offer will be easy to use, if you are not then it will require some research on your part.

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Brandon Mullins

CEO

Moon Books PublishingEntertainment, 1-10 employees

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Reliability and Availability

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

DigitalOcean 10.0

Based on 1 answer

Have not found a single second of down time myself. Superior availability.

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Front-end developer

Velocity PartnersInformation Technology and Services, 11-50 employees

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Performance

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

DigitalOcean 9.0

Based on 1 answer

Very quick response and high performance, you have to fine tune configurations on your machines though.

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Front-end developer

Velocity PartnersInformation Technology and Services, 11-50 employees

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Support Rating

Bluehost 8.5

Based on 12 answers

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.

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Stephen Steinberg

Founder

Raw AthleticsSports, 1-10 employees

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DigitalOcean 8.6

Based on 10 answers

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.

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Co-Founder / Full Stack Dev

Madness LabsComputer Software, 1-10 employees

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Alternatives Considered

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.

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Verified User

Director in Marketing

Graphic Design Company, 1-10 employees

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Amazon has a very complex UI and many products to offer. They haven't polished up their UI and it has a much greater learning curve compared to DigitalOcean. However, Amazon Web Services (AWS) does have more comprehensive cloud computing services, which forces some companies to migrate their backend and other services to AWS as they scale up.

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Co-Founder/CEO

aspace, Inc.Computer Software, 1-10 employees

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Scalability

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

DigitalOcean 10.0

Based on 1 answer

Great scalability, you can start with small plans and move up to premium features at a very good price.

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Front-end developer

Velocity PartnersInformation Technology and Services, 11-50 employees

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Return on Investment

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.

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Owner

Small Business Help GroupMarketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees

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With DigitalOcean, I've been able to move all my sites to https using my own implementations of SSL with LetsEncrypt.
Since moving my sites to DigitalOcean, my hosting plan costs less than 40% of what I paid for similar hosting from Site5.

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Jeanine Schoessler

Web Developer

satinflame designHigher Education, 1-10 employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Bluehost Editions & Modules

Edition

Shared Web Hosting	$3.95-$26.99¹
VPS Hosting	$19.99 - $119.99²
Dedicated Hosting	$79.99-$209.99²
Shared WordPress Hosting	$3.95-$16.99²
Managed WordPress (beta)	$19.95³
Blue Sky Live WordPress Support	$29.00-$149.00⁴
eCommerce - WooCommerce Hosting	$15.95-$49.95⁵

per month for 36 month term
per month
per month for 36 month term
per month
per month, 1 month to 36 month terms available

Additional Pricing Details

—

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

DigitalOcean Editions & Modules

Edition

1GB-16GB	$5.00¹
8GB-160GB	$60.00¹

Starting Price Per Month

Additional Pricing Details

—

Rating Summary

Bluehost

DigitalOcean

Bluehost

DigitalOcean

Bluehost

DigitalOcean

Bluehost

DigitalOcean

Bluehost

DigitalOcean

Bluehost

DigitalOcean

Bluehost

DigitalOcean

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