Bluehost vs Hostinger

Bluehost vs Hostinger 2026: Which Should You Choose?

Both hosts are listed on the WordPress.org hosting page, and both start under $4 a month. Those prices come with a long commitment, though. Hostinger’s lowest rate needs 48 months upfront, Bluehost’s needs 36, and shorter terms such as 12 months cost more per month. So which one is cheaper depends on how long you’re willing to sign up for and how long you actually stay.

Bluehost has a few things Hostinger doesn’t: a $1.99 One Site plan you can only get through TopSiteHosters, phone support from the Business plan up, and a move onto Oracle Cloud Infrastructure that it expected to finish in 2026. Hostinger gives you more websites and storage for the money, and it measured higher uptime.

For one site, it’s close and comes down to how long you’ll keep it. For several sites, Hostinger wins.

Pricing Compared

Both hosts save their best prices for the longest terms, 48 months on Hostinger and 36 on Bluehost, so the monthly figures don’t compare fairly on their own. The table below uses those terms and adds up what you pay at checkout and over four years. A 12 month term, or a shorter one where offered, costs more per month but lets you leave sooner, and you’ll see those prices at checkout. Prices were checked on 8 October 2026 on the US storefronts, excluding VAT.

The four year column assumes each renewal bills at the monthly rate times twelve. Neither host confirms that, so treat the totals as estimates. If you’re unsure which term to pick, the guide to hosting billing cycles explains how term length changes what you pay.

For a single site, One Site stays cheaper for a little over three and a half years. Hostinger Premium then pulls ahead and finishes $36 lower at the four year mark, though the gap narrows afterwards because Bluehost renews $2 a month cheaper. On the mid range plans the gap is much bigger. Hostinger Unlimited costs $228 less over four years, and Bluehost’s $3 a month renewal discount would take more than six years to close it.

Here is how the single site comparison looks over longer periods, using the same renewal assumption.

The lead changes hands twice. Hostinger moves ahead around month 44, once your Bluehost payments add up to its single upfront payment, and One Site is cheaper again from around month 66. After six years the two are $12 apart, so the better pick depends on whether you’d rather save in the first three years or pay less at renewal.

Renewals jump on both hosts. Bluehost Starter rises 150 percent and Business rises 100 percent. Hostinger Premium rises 268 percent and Unlimited rises 326 percent. Bluehost’s lower renewals narrow the gap on single sites but don’t close it on the mid range plans.

Some links on this page are affiliate links. TopSiteHosters may earn a commission if you sign up through them, at no extra cost to you. Advertising Disclosure

Bluehost One Site: $1.99 a Month Through TopSiteHosters

Through TopSiteHosters you can get Bluehost’s One Site plan for $1.99 a month on a 36 month term, which comes to $71.64 for three years. It doesn’t appear on Bluehost’s public plan page. It renews at $8.99 a month, a rise of 352 percent, so plan for that from the start.

One Site suits a single blog or small business site. The 10 GB limit fills quickly if you upload many images. Need more than one website? The public Starter plan allows ten.

Check Bluehost’s $1.99 One Site plan or read the full Bluehost review. The Bluehost coupon page lists any active codes.

Prices here are in US dollars and exclude VAT. If you’re in Europe, VAT is added at checkout, which is between 20 and 25 percent in much of the continent. Bluehost also shows prices in euros and pounds if you switch currency.

Features Compared

This table compares the plans most people actually choose. It shows what each includes before any add ons.

Hostinger Unlimited is the standout. You get unlimited websites, 50 GB of NVMe storage, a free CDN, daily backups and priority support for the same $3.99 a month that gets you ten websites and 10 GB on Bluehost Starter. The Premium plan is leaner: three websites, no CDN and weekly backups. It works for one small site, but you’ll outgrow it.

Bluehost’s cheaper plans leave gaps that cost extra. Domain privacy ($1 a month), CodeGuard backups ($2.99) and SiteLock security ($2.99) are all offered at checkout, and they can add almost $7 a month to a $3.99 plan if you leave them selected. Backup cover differs by plan, so check what your plan includes before you decide whether you need CodeGuard.

Worth knowing for store owners: Hostinger isn’t PCI compliant. Most small stores hand card payments to a processor like Stripe or PayPal and aren’t affected, but a store that takes cards directly should check.

Performance Compared

These figures come from TopSiteHosters monitoring of each provider’s review site. They were taken at different times, August for Bluehost and April for Hostinger, so treat small gaps as noise.

The two are close on speed. Bluehost loads a page 0.07 seconds faster, and server response is effectively level at 300 and 295 milliseconds. Where they differ is uptime. Bluehost promises a 99.99 percent uptime SLA on its plans, but that’s a guarantee and not a measurement. Hostinger measured 99.98 percent against 99.90 percent, which works out to roughly 1.75 hours of downtime a year against about 9 hours.

Bluehost has been moving its customers onto Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and says the change improves speed and reliability. Its August figures may not reflect the newest setup, so they could shift on a retest. Independent testing has also put Hostinger’s page rendering near the front of the shared hosting field. Both hosts run LiteSpeed servers on shared plans, so neither has a caching advantage over the other.

The honest summary: neither one will slow your site noticeably at this price. If you run a busy site, the mid range plans and above matter more than the brand.

Support and Control Panel

Support is where Bluehost has the edge. Both offer 24/7 live chat, but Bluehost adds phone support from the Business plan upwards, while Hostinger lists live chat as its support channel and doesn’t advertise a phone line. If your site earns you money, a phone number is worth having when something breaks.

Bluehost’s cheaper plans don’t include phone support, so on One Site and Starter you get 24/7 chat only, the same as Hostinger. Hostinger’s Unlimited plan adds priority support, which Premium doesn’t have.

The control panels are different too. Bluehost uses a custom dashboard on top of cPanel, and you can open the full cPanel underneath. Hostinger uses hPanel, its own panel, on its current plans. If you’re coming from a cPanel host, Bluehost will feel familiar. If you’re new to hosting, either is easy to learn.

Ease of Use and WordPress

Both hosts install WordPress for you and both appear on the WordPress.org hosting page, where Bluehost is described as its longest running recommended host.

Bluehost guides new users through setup, and cPanel sits behind its dashboard, so files, email accounts and databases are laid out the way many hosts have long done it. Hostinger’s hPanel is simpler and asks less of someone who has never used a hosting account.

Both also have an AI website builder if you’d rather not start with WordPress. They suit a simple page better than a site that needs WordPress’s plugin library, and neither is a reason to pick one host over the other.

Security and Backups

Backups are the clearest difference here, and the plan you buy decides what you get. Both hosts include a free SSL certificate.

Bluehost lists weekly backups on Starter and Business. SiteLock malware scanning and CodeGuard backups are paid add ons at checkout, so if you want daily backups on Bluehost, plan for CodeGuard or use a backup plugin.

Hostinger Unlimited includes daily backups with easy restore, while Premium has weekly backups. On a site you edit often, a weekly backup can mean losing several days of changes.

On either host, download a full backup before big changes and keep it somewhere other than your hosting account.

Data Centres and Europe

Hostinger publishes where its shared and cloud servers are. In Europe you can choose France, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands or the United Kingdom. It also lists India, Indonesia and Malaysia in Asia, Brazil in South America, and Phoenix, Boston and Asheville in the United States.

Bluehost’s shared hosting page says it has data centres in North America, South America, Europe and Asia, and that you pick a location at checkout. It doesn’t publish a city list for shared plans. The lists it does publish cover Managed VPS and Dedicated hosting, where the European options are London, Amsterdam and Frankfurt.

If your visitors are in Europe, look at the location options in the Bluehost checkout before you pay, because the plan pages don’t say which European locations shared plans offer. With Hostinger you can see the list beforehand.

Ownership and Infrastructure

Bluehost was founded in 2003 and belongs to Newfold Digital, formed in 2021 when Endurance International merged with Web.com. Newfold owns other hosting brands too, which matters if you’re picking a host for the long run. Bluehost’s infrastructure is moving to Oracle Cloud. A November 2025 company announcement said nearly a million customers had already moved and that the full migration was on track to finish in 2026.

Hostinger started in Kaunas, Lithuania, in 2004 and is privately held. Its current ownership structure wasn’t verified for this page, so check the company’s latest information if that matters to you.

Refunds and the Fine Print

Both hosts give you 30 days to get your money back, but the details differ. For these two, watch for the following.

• Bluehost refunds hosting only. If your plan included a free domain, a $15.99 non refundable fee is deducted from the refund
• The free Bluehost domain needs a 12 or 36 month term
• Bluehost extras such as domain privacy, CodeGuard and SiteLock are offered at checkout and need removing if you don’t want them
• On Hostinger, the standard price of a free domain may be deducted from a refund
• Hostinger’s lowest price needs 48 months paid upfront, so the real commitment is the full $143.52 or $191.52

Hostinger’s 48 month payment is large, so the 30 day window is your realistic way out. Use the first month to run speed checks, open a support chat and move a real site.

Which Plan Fits Your Site?

Four cases come up most often.

A single blog or portfolio

Bluehost One Site is the cheapest way in at $1.99 a month. You pay $71.64 for three years and get one site on 10 GB, which is plenty for a text blog and tight for a photo heavy one. Hostinger Premium costs more upfront but gives you three websites and a lower four year bill, so it’s the better choice if you might add a second site.

A small business that wants phone support

Choose Bluehost Business at $6.99 a month. It’s the only plan in this comparison with a phone line, and it allows 50 websites. You’ll pay $251.64 at checkout and $13.99 a month after that, well above Hostinger’s price, so only go this route if you’ll actually use the phone.

Several sites or an agency

Hostinger Unlimited is the clear pick. The $3.99 plan includes unlimited websites, 50 GB of NVMe storage, a CDN and daily backups. Bluehost’s equivalent costs $6.99 a month, and its cheaper Starter plan stops at ten sites.

An online store

Both can run WooCommerce, but a store needs more resources than a blog, so start on a mid range plan rather than the cheapest one. If you take card payments directly on your own pages, check the host’s payment compliance terms first. Most stores send customers to Stripe or PayPal instead.

Who Is Bluehost Best For?

Bluehost suits you if you’re launching one site and want the lowest price for three years, if you want phone support for a business site, or if you already know cPanel. It also fits you if you’d rather commit for 36 months than 48. Untick any checkout add ons you don’t need.

Check Bluehost’s current pricing

Who Is Hostinger Best For?

Choose Hostinger if any of these sound like you:

• You want the lowest total cost over four years
• You plan to run several websites on one plan
• You want more storage, a CDN and daily backups at the intro price
• You’re happy with chat support and don’t need phone
• You want a wide choice of European data centres

It’s less suited to anyone who needs phone support or doesn’t want to pay for four years upfront.

Check Hostinger’s current pricing or read the full Hostinger review.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Hostinger better than Bluehost?

For most people on cost, yes. Hostinger Unlimited gives you unlimited websites and five times the storage of Bluehost Starter for $3.99 a month, and it measured higher uptime. Bluehost is better if you want the $1.99 One Site plan, phone support or a familiar cPanel setup.

Is Bluehost better overall?

It depends on what you count. Bluehost is better for a single site on a three year budget, for phone support and for a lower monthly renewal. Hostinger is better on four year cost, mid range value and measured uptime. Bluehost’s move to Oracle Cloud may close the performance gap, and the measured figures here will be updated after a retest.

Which is cheaper after renewal?

Bluehost renews cheaper per month: $9.99 against $10.99 on the entry plans and $13.99 against $16.99 on the mid range plans. Hostinger still comes out cheaper over four years because of its lower upfront price, although on a single site the gap narrows after year four.

Which is better for WordPress?

Both appear on the WordPress.org hosting page and both install WordPress for you. WordPress.org calls Bluehost its longest running recommended host, and Bluehost lists managed WordPress updates on its Starter and Business plans. Hostinger Unlimited adds daily backups and a CDN at a lower price than Bluehost’s mid range plan.

Which has better support?

Bluehost, if phone support matters, because it comes with the Business plan and above. Both offer 24/7 chat. Hostinger doesn’t list a phone line.

Does Bluehost run on Oracle Cloud?

Mostly. In November 2025 Bluehost said nearly a million customers had moved to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and that the full migration was on track to finish in 2026. It hasn’t published a more recent progress figure.

Can you move a site between the two?

Yes. Bluehost lists a free site migration tool on its plans. Hostinger’s migration terms weren’t checked for this page, so confirm them before you move a site.

The Verdict: Which Should You Pick?

This one is too close to call. Pick the host that fits the site you’re building.

Both hosts are on the WordPress.org hosting page, both guarantee strong uptime, and both give you a CDN and a 30 day refund window. Uptime is effectively level, price swings depend on how long you stay, and Hostinger’s slightly better Trustpilot score is the only gap in the reviews.

Choose Bluehost if you want one site online for as little as possible. One Site costs $1.99 a month through TopSiteHosters, which is $71.64 for three years, and you can move up to Business later if you need phone support. Plan for the $8.99 renewal from the start.

Choose Hostinger if you want to run several sites or keep your costs down for four years or more. Unlimited gives you unlimited websites and 50 GB of storage for $3.99 a month, and it costs $228 less than Bluehost Business over four years. The trade off is the 48 month commitment and a renewal price more than four times the intro rate.

Not sure either one fits? See the best web hosting for 2026, a ranking of ten tested services.