Is upgrading to Bluehost Pro worth it?
Wondering if Bluehost Pro is worth the money?
Bluehost Pro is an upgrade to the standard base bluehost hosting plan and it’s designed to help out those of us that need a little more room to breathe.
I have long touted the good points of Bluehost’s hosting service as, for me, they’ve been a pretty reliable and supportive hosting company. I’ve always felt well looked after and found them to be a great host to get started with at an affordable level when I was starting out.
Recently though, I found my websites were getting a little sluggish, especially when editing the backend of a WordPress installation. At that stage I was running around 8 websites on my account and things were starting to slow down a bit.
Could it be that I was out growing their monthly hosting service and needed to upgrade to Bluehost Pro?
One of the main indicators that your account is getting too overloaded according to the user run support forums is CPU throttling.
After a quick check on my CPU throttling graph, which you can find in the Bluehost cPanel, it was apparent that my sites were chewing more than their allotted CPU time on the machine.
They were quite often sitting in a queue for a few seconds before executing the code. I’m grossly over simplifying their quite advanced CPU scheduling here but that’s the gist of it.
My initial thoughts were to look at the Bluehost Pro package and see what that offered and on first glance I actually wasn’t that impressed.
I couldn’t find any technical specs on what the Bluehost Pro package came with in regards to CPU usage and memory usage other than it was “increased”.
I started wondering if it was time to switch hosting companies, but what a pain that was going to be!
Possible Next Steps Other Than Bluehost Pro
The next logical jump up would be purchasing a VPS somewhere which can run from anything a low as $30 a month for a basic one up to and over $500. More than likely it was going to cost around $50-100 for a service that would let me grow without too much hassle.
While my sites are starting to gain in popularity now I was pretty disheartened that my little hobby was going to start costing me even more. I don’t mind paying for things, but hosting is really one of those things that has become a bit of a commodity so it makes sense to look around for a good deal.
I started by asking Google the exact question you probably found this article with, “Is the Bluehost Pro service really worth it?” and to my delight I found the post of another blogger who was in much the same position as me only a few months earlier.
His results were quite eye opening and more useful than I found any other forum post or blog post.
It’s with great pleasure that I’ve had similar success with Bluehost Pro.
Yes, I sucked it up and re-purchased my hosting plan for the next 12 months under the Bluehost Pro package and it’s made the world of difference.
The Process for Upgrading to Bluehost Pro
Once you hit upgrade and order the Bluehost Pro package in your cPanel you’ll find the change over is quite quick.
In a matter of a few hours and with very minimal downtime to my sites (less than a few minutes I suspect), my sites were moved from the very crowded box it was on that previously hosting upwards of 999 other websites to a new machine with just 16 other websites.
I suspect the old machine my websites were hosted on was pretty much maxed out and that was contributing to my slow website loading times and intense CPU throttling.
If you’re on a shared hosting service like Bluehost, it’s pretty common for them to load up their web servers with people on their base plan. It’s a really common thing and most web hosts do it. The best thing you can do is check how many other domains are on your machine using this service.
Now that I’m on Bluehost Pro, and my account has been moved to a machine that doesn’t host near as many websites, my sites are now loading pretty much as fast as they would on a VPS (in my experience with different VPS services) for a fraction of the cost.
Other benefits of upgrading to Bluehost Pro
Other than my site now loading lightning fast (compared to before), there’s also a handful of other bonus benefits on upgrading to Bluehost Pro:
SEO Benefits
I’m hopeful that the move to Bluehost Pro will also have some SEO related benefits. While Google does it’s best to judge your site on it’s own characteristics, some things like what other sites share your IP address (all the others on your machine in the case of shared hosting) can effect your rankings.
One dodgy site can effect the rest of the websites on that IP.
My research on the other 999 websites hosted on the old machine showed some disturbing results including a few porn sites. Even though this is against Bluehost’s policies they obviously aren’t policing it as strictly as they say they do.
While I could just request to Bluehost that those sites are removed it still doesn’t solve the fact that my site’s domain ranking value was being diluted so much.
Upgrading to Bluehost Pro gives me my own IP address which I think I’ve found over these past few months to be quite beneficial in getting the rankings my websites deserve.
Free SSL certificate
I’ve mentioned in the past that I do my payment processing offsite by way of Paypal and eJunkie so I don’t have to worry about these sorts of things but if I wanted to make a cart page secure to inspire some more trust this could come in handy.
It also enables me to integrate my sites with payments processors in the future if needed.
Free Dedicated IP address
Further to not having so many domains on the same machine as me, I now also get a dedicated IP address just for my sites. This gives me total control and shows search engines like Google that I own the IP address attached to my sites.
This is something you need to activate after your hosting has been completely changed over to the Bluehost Pro package.
Increased CPU and memory
I mentioned this earlier, but I can now authoritatively say that this has been the best part of my upgrade to Bluehost Pro.
Prior to the upgrade my websites were being throttled (according to the CPU throttling graph in cPanel) on average between 500-800 seconds per 24 hour period (around 10 minutes a day).
That’s horrendous, and my Google webmaster tools were starting to show my site speed inching up to 10 or more seconds to load a page!
Not good at all and with the big ‘G’ (Google) now putting so much emphasis on things like website load times it’s even more worrying.
Since changing to Bluehost Pro, I haven’t experienced any throttling at all, even when administering several sites at once and performing intensive reporting. There just seems to be much more available capacity on my account. I’m not sure exactly how much more, but the difference is noticeable.
There is also some included site backup features and a few other things I’m yet to try out…
If you’re on the fence
If you are stuck in the same situation as I was, don’t even think about it any longer. For $20 a month it’s still a steal and the performance upgrade has thus far been outstanding to say the least.
The other benefits I listed above should hopefully give you a better idea of what to expect when upgrading to the Bluehost Pro Package. Bluehost are good in a lot of ways, but their upsell for Pro is pretty shocking and the user support forums aren’t much better at suggesting why you should upgrade and when.
If you’re deciding if Bluehost is the right host for you, then hopefully this shows you that there is a clear upgrade path. Bluehost is worth the switch.
Also, if you’re planning on purchasing hosting with Bluehost anyway (even if you’re not upgrading to Pro straight away), I’d really appreciate if you clicked through my link, they pay me a small amount if you end up signing up and it helps keep this site free.
Click here to sign up with Bluehost
Did you or do you have issues with your current hosting? Tell me your experiences below in the comments along with what you did to overcome it. Have you upgraded to Bluehost Pro yet?
Did you like this article?
If you liked this article click one of the buttons below:
Wow, I just read your post and had pretty much the same experience as you. I still have a cheap plan with Bluehost and the Pro plan for my business site. The difference in speed in incredible. And, i went from being on a machine with about 900 domains to one with less than 40.
I’ve been with Bluehost since 2007 and never really experienced throttling issues until this past year. I agree that going Pro is the best decision I made but I wonder if Bluehost is inching people to upgrade to their Pro servers with slower site speeds and more throttling.
I want to stay with Bluehost but I am working with others that I am going to suggest hosting to and while I will suggest Bluehost, I can’t say it’s the best anymore.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
Glad to know I wasn’t the only one Ellen! Good to hear you had some success with the pro package as well.
I’ve also only experienced throttling recently. I suspect it was not long after they changed over to their new data centre. I guess they figured they could now load those machines up a lot more than they used to..
Thanks for this. I’m running several websites on Bluehost that use a WordPress Membership plugin and my sites are constantly being throttled no matter how I tweak them. I’ve even deleted some sites.
I really don’t want the hassle of VPN or a dedicated server…mainly because of what (I assume) will be the large learning curve. I will upgrade to BlueHost PRO and cross my fingers!
Hey Ryan,
No problems mate, glad the article was a help. Would love to know how you go, I’m not running any membership sites myself so it will be interesting..
Hi, Just a little question,
You said, and I quote :-
“In a matter of a few hours and with very minimal downtime to my sites (less than a few minutes I suspect), my sites were moved from the very crowded box it was on that previously hosting upwards of 999 other websites to a new machine with just 16 other websites.”
How did you know you previous box had 999 sites and current has only 16 ? I would like to know these figures for my box as well.
Please share
Hi,
As mentioned in the post just use this site: http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/web-sites-on-web-server/
Looks like you’re the only one using your IP.
Next time you post make sure you use your real name please otherwise my spam filter will flag you.
Josh,
Thank you for writing this article. I’ve been a long time Bluehost customer but recent traffic increases and some plugins I was using was really starting to slow my site down. I was on the verge of moving to a VPS, which as you know can get very pricey. After reading this article I made the jump to the pro package and I have to say that I’ve been EXTREMELY satisfied. My site performance has increased, I never get CPU throttling anymore, and the site is just flat out snappy.
Thanks Paul, I read your Bluehost hosting review (thanks for the link!) – glad you found my post helpful. It’s still working out great for me months down the line as well and I’ve launched a couple more sites in that time as well.
My website is one of the 999 sites and yes there are too many downtimes. I am about to transfer my 12 year-old site (with so many files in it) to Hostgator, when I found your post. I will try the Bluehost Pro Package first. If it doesn’t work, I will move to Hostgator. Thanks Josh for the review!
Hi Adrian,
Glad you found this first. It’s such a hassle moving hosts which is what led me on this course in the first place as well.
Do come back and let us know how things pan out!
Just checked this, as I am currently on Bluehost and experiencing slow responses from my site.
Just checked using the tool you mentioned, and I am only with 10 other sites. 10. No where near the 999 you were on!
Site5 is looking really attractive to me at the moment, as they have a London server, but I’m not sure yet. Willing to spend roughly $15 a month, but can’t find anything majorly improved to make it worth the change.
Interesting Harry, sounds like you might have some other issues there. Check your SQL long queries log and make sure you don’t have any issues with the software you’re running. Changing servers wouldn’t fix something like that.
I might just do this. I met a couple of Bluehost engineers at WordCamp SF 2011 in August. Very cool guys. A Perl shop! Haha! That’s cool, that’s what you need for the back end operation of a Bluehost.
Hello, I am experiencing CPU Throttling in my Bluehost account.
I have a WordPress blog and the database size is 2.49 MB, I think it’s not so much, but I recive CPU Throttling everyday and I don’t know why.
Is upgrading to the pro plan a solution for this?
Hey Juca,
Judging by feedback from others and my own experience, it’s probably nothing you’re doing wrong unless you have a lot of long running SQL queries. You can find these in the log directory using FTP.
If it’s just WordPress though, and you know the plugins you’re using are all ok, then it’s likely because Bluehost has loaded that server up too much and everyone’s sites are competing for resources. Upgrading to pro would fix that.
Thanks, I found lots of error logs made by a plugin.
I removed it, I think it was causing the problem.
Oh… I deleted the plugin, but I still get CPU Throttling in my account.
Then I went to “access-logs” directory in the FTP and it was empty.
What does that means?
Hi Juca,
Sounds like you in the same situation as a lot of the people here. Check out how many websites are sitting on your server and go from there.
Hi,
Wow, there are over 1000 sites on my server!
So I think it’s not my fault, but the server is like overloaded, do you think Pro Plan will really solve this?
Hi Juca,
It worked for me and several of the other people who have commented here. I’d personally say it was worth the money. Over 6 months later and it’s still not giving me any issues and I’ve launched about 3 new sites since!
Hi Josh Kohlbach,
As you said:
“Josh Kohlbach says:
August 27, 2011 at 11:16 am
Hi,
As mentioned in the post just use this site: http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/web-sites-on-web-server/”
I have checked my domain and the result is only 3 site on the server, but bluehost told me hundreds of site on my server, so i guess http://www.yougetsignal.com can not get the correct result.
My site got CPU throttling each day, my god !
It worked for me at the time, but I’m sure that Bluehost could be breaking up servers with different IP addresses.
CPU throttling every day is a pretty sure sign the server is overloaded though, unless there is some script going wrong on your site. I’d probably check there first just incase.
I just upgraded to Bluehost PRO last night after reading your article. I had been noticing some serious slowdowns when loading my sites and especially in the WordPress admin pages. Everything seems much faster today.
Now that its been a few months for you, have you noticed any SEO improvements?
Hey Casey,
I have noticed some improvements over the last couple of months in particular. I wouldn’t say it’s a huge difference, but having a faster site definitely seems to help in the SERPS. This site alone has increased it’s traffic from Google month on month since I implemented PRO
What are your traffic levels like though? Some ballpark visits & pageviews per month would be appreciated, thanks!
Pretty modest, I’ll admit. Normal levels for this site you’re reading are around 200+ a day. But I often get spikes of over 1000-1500 in a couple of hours and it handles it no problems.
Really the problem isn’t the number of visits on one site, it’s how many sites you’re running on the same account with how many visits to all of them combined. I’m edging towards 20 now with about 1/3 receiving good traffic.
In addition, it depends on what other sites are on your server and what their traffic levels are like. One busy site or group of sites can slow a whole box.
Hah, thanks a lot for this post. This was exactly what I needed to know. BlueHost’s own info about their ProPackage is very humble on what it offers and I was thinking about going to another provider before seeing your post.
Just bought my Pro Upgrade.
Awesome Fernando, hope it works out for you. It’s certainly a lot less work. Changing hosts can be a real pain…
Yeah, I know. Had to change 2x before landing on BlueHost.
By the way, the upgrade worked really fast. I’m already seeing a noticeable difference. One question: did you have to change anything on your dns/cname records after acquiring the dedicated IP?
I just acquired mine (70.40.200.75), but my domain name (www.fernandohrosa.com.br) is still looking up to the old dynamic address (66.147.244.229).
I’m assuming the DNS will refresh by itself in a couple of hours but just to be sure…
It should all be taken care of on Bluehost’s end because the name servers will not change. So even if you registered your domain with someone else, you shouldn’t need to change anything there.
When I changed over, I found that the whole process was done in a couple of hours, but some of the DNS lookups took about 12-24 hours. I guess it depends on the ISP’s. But if you’re seeing the new site, then you can start working on it again because everyone else will catch up within a day anyway.
Yeah, and saturday night is not exactly a time when I get many hits anyways. Thanks a lot!
No problems! Glad you found my article and it saved you a bunch of time
Let me know how it works out in the long run.