Bluehost vs. Pantheon

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Bluehost
Score 5.5 out of 10
N/A
Bluehost, 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
Pantheon
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Pantheon is a WebOps platform where marketers and developers collaborate to drive results. The vendor states that with Pantheon, site owners maximize their capacity to update website design and functionality, responding to market trends, catering to consumer behavior, and adding real value to the business's bottom line. Today, companies compete on the basis of digital experiences, and the best results emerge from an agile build-test-learn process. Whether it's publishing content,…
$29
per month
Pricing
BluehostPantheon
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
Basic
$29
per month
Performance
$114
per month
Elite
Contact for quote
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BluehostPantheon
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Best Alternatives
BluehostPantheon
Small Businesses
Cloudways
Cloudways
Score 9.5 out of 10
ManageWP
ManageWP
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
WP Engine
WP Engine
Score 9.2 out of 10
Kentico Xperience
Kentico Xperience
Score 7.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Pantheon
Pantheon
Score 8.4 out of 10
Kentico Xperience
Kentico Xperience
Score 7.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BluehostPantheon
Likelihood to Recommend
5.0
(19 ratings)
8.1
(69 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(2 ratings)
8.8
(29 ratings)
Availability
4.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.1
(6 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
3.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BluehostPantheon
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.
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Pantheon
Pantheon is excellent for medium-large websites that require high availability and a managed workflow. It would be inappropriate for small websites because of the cost or for situations where more control of the environment is appropriate. We find it useful because we rarely do anything outside of the Drupal application.
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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!
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Pantheon
  • Effective use of our codebase deployment and implementation.
  • The dashboard functionality and general stability and security are excellent.
  • The server is quite consistent, and if you need assistance from the support team, they are very quick to respond.
  • Automatic updates let me ensure that my customers have safe websites without increasing my own expense.
  • The team offers excellent assistance and help for chat.
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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.
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Pantheon
  • Pricing structure has too large of a jump between Basic and Performance plans
  • Have run into issues with prescribed WP updates not working through dashboard and having to do manually.
  • Pantheon site dashboard occasionally is unavailable (the site is never affected though)
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Likelihood to Renew
Newfold Digital (Endurance + Web.com)
No answers on this topic
Pantheon
The environment is stable and we have not had any issues/downtime. The annual cost is reasonable.
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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.
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Pantheon
Pantheon is an easy system, especially to the users with previous experience with other similar platform and the interface is clear enough to easily understand how things operates. On the Cloud deployment everything also works effectively and the technical team from Pantheon community are very helpful on providing the necessary assistant to their customers.
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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.
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Pantheon
Even tier 1 Pantheon chat and ticket support are knowledgeable, competent, and useful. They routinely understand and promptly resolve urgent, complex, and/or unusual issues that other hosts need to escalate to tier 2 or tier 3 support personnel. I honestly can't think of a truly negative or disappointing support experience in the years I've used Pantheon hosting for client websites.
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Implementation Rating
Newfold Digital (Endurance + Web.com)
No answers on this topic
Pantheon
Once the environments were up and running, the implementation was easy to synchronize with latest data prior to switchover.
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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.
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Pantheon
Although it may seem a good fit for a company that needs extra control over the deployment process and development process, for a firm that is mainly concentrating on SEO, it would be an overkill. Pantheon provides that sweet automation that allows us to shed some weight on development and focus on our business activities.
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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
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Pantheon
No answers on this topic
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.
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Pantheon
  • Pantheon allows ordinary sites to excel esp if there is consistent development going on behind the scenes.
  • Website management is super easy and the hosting fee gets paid off as you save on developer hours.
  • Expensive for those who are not consistently developing on the platform, there are other options out there at better price points.
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ScreenShots

Pantheon Screenshots

Screenshot of Find out in seconds if your site is ready to launch. Use Launch Check to get recommendations and discover site issues fast with our report based on over 50 automated checks.Screenshot of Our Developer Dashboard has everything you need to build, launch, and run Drupal and WordPress sites. Interface via SFTP or Git, deploy and scale your sites, and access tools like backups and one-click core updates. Easily add team members and control access.