Bluehost vs Squarespace

Review of Bluehost vs Squarespace

The review below is my opinion. I am trying hard to be fully unbiased – and have accurately measured speed, pricing, efficiency and up-time. Elon, Author

In the world of numerous hosting brands Bluehost and Squarespace are yet another two hosting providers for your next blog, personal, ecommerce or official website.

Both brands have similarities and differences that make one of them winner over the other that I am trying to find out. In this effort, I am looking into the various factors that clearly make one of them stand ahead.

Let me specify requirements that i consider important for my choice:

• I want my website load fast every time.
• I want a cheap hosting for my blogs.
• I want to find our if Squarespace or Bluehost is more worth the money.

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Bluehost and Squarespace Pricing Review

Pricing is a major factor in comparison because there are many hosting providers who charge you for the not-much-needed extra features. You would certainly like to know certain pricing factors about Bluehost and Squarespace before making a choice.

^ Bluehost pricing table

Any customer like me would look into the pricing at the first place. I will explain the pricing related to the important hosting features so that you get a more detailed outlook.

Bluehost is worth the price of hosting. They offer a pretty good monthly price without overheads like setup fees. They also offer promo codes and discounts (check the bottom of the post to see mine) and are a worthy choice to get into a deal.

Don’t confuse unmetered bandwidth with really unmetered, rather it is on fair usage policy. It means that you can host fair amount of stuff in there and that offer required bandwidth. Unless you would like to upload the huge 1000 HD videos (terabytes of data), unmetered bandwidth is something you can avail of.

They offer free SSL certificate and that is great deal for you. Your website will run secured with https certificate (the green paddle lock in URL). I am not sure how many hosts offer free SSL with such down-to-earth rates and that is amazing!

The SSD Storage is much faster than normal hard disks for your website files including images. That means your website will load faster with SSD storage. The unlimited SSD option is awesome.

^ Squarespace pricing table

It is totally different on Squarespace pricing page and you need to pay more for getting less. When I look into details, I understand why their pricing is different and here are the major differences comparing to Bluehost.

They also offer unlimited bandwidth like Bluehost, but let`s not forget that there is nothing unlimited in practice. It is good that they did not set up any upper limit for this option.

They offer unlimited storage, but it is not clear what type of storage they are offering. I'd not suggest that they are offering SSD storage like Bluehost because if it was true they would definitely point it out as a feature. That makes Bluehost the preferred option compared to Squarespace.

They offer Mobile Optimized Website only if you use the Squarespace Page Builder. It is not offered with your custom website. But now almost all CMS (Wordpress, Shopify, Woocommerce,..) are mobile optimized and the hosting provider does not have to do anything on that. So this point is not worth for me.

So the price-wise hosting winner – clearly that is Bluehost.

Which hosting offers more website speed – Bluehost or Squarespace?

Website speed is a critical factor that can decide about your website’s success. You need to host your website in a fast hosting company that load your home page and all pages including images lightning fast, consistently. I was able to gather the speed test results for you.

When comparing the speed between Bluehost and Squarespace, lots of factors are different and it is interesting to examine them.

Performing the speed test

First of all, I created 2 similar websites with the same CMS. Bluehost uses many CMS including Wordpress in their platform and Squarespace has its own CMS. It is fairly easy to make a simple website on Squarespace and make it run on them.

I purchased one package each, the Plus from Blue host and Business from Squarespace and transferred my websites on to the 2 hosts.

The free tools I used to conduct the tests are Pingdom, GtMetrix and Google PageSpeed Insights.

I conducted a batch of 10 tests on each host before arriving at my final decision.

Speed test results for Bluehost

SquareSpace Speed test results for Squarespace

The differences are amazing!!

2 similar websites in the same setup have taken speed tests at the same time and the results indicate a definite and clear winner.

Bluehost served the page in 0.6 seconds and that is amazingly admirable! In all rating factors, it stands ahead than Squarespace. The test results are causing me to conclude that Bluehost has data centers across the world. That is why the low latency and faster page loading.

Squarespace loaded the page in 2.3 seconds and that is not very bad. It is as competitive as most of the websites in internet. But since this is a speed test between Bluehost and Squarespace, the difference matter.

Should we give that much priority to hosting speed? Aren’t they both good?

I would like to make it clear that both of them are fast.

But if you want to make an impression in the crowd, stand separate with clear advantage, offering nice experience to your viewers, then Bluehost is the fastest hosting provider.

So, to be short and precise, I give the verdict in favour of Bluehost! Would you like to have a try? There is an impressive campaign - $3.95 per month in place of $7.95. Click here to grab that offer!

Which web host is easier to use – Bluehost or Squarespace?

I am a bit more technical. I work with code, move here and there around and is well versed in most of the hosting concepts. I have knowledge about SSH and work with FTP regularly.

Still, I would insist upon selecting a hosting provider that offers very intuitive and easy to use interface. All operations like installing Wordpress or any CMS, work with databases, FTP accounts and certificates, all should be very easy and flexible.

And on this part, Bluehost certainly is the winner.

• Bluehost has integrated CMS like Wordpress, Magento, Drupal, Joomla, etc.
• Bluehost supports caching to make your website load faster.
• Bluehost is integrated with Cloudfare CDN that allows you to save bandwidth.
• Bluehost supports plugins and modules of all CMS including Wordpress.

Squarespace is offering its own CMS that may affect the range of functionality allowed for us. Even if it is good for you, it does not have much impact since Bluehost is the winner and has the lead on other major parts of the comparison.

If anything that makes Squarespace to be chosen over Bluehost is that Squarespace migrates your existing Wordpress installation to their CMS for free, while Bluehost is costly in this by charging $149. Even though you can do this yourself using the free migration plugins, this point is worth mentioning here.

And the winner in usability – it is Bluehost over Squarespace!

There are some additional factors I have looked in this review and while these are not very important for me, it is worth considering for you.

As we are aware, SEO is very important in 2019 and if you want to be successful in this, then right hosting is a must.

I used different free tools like GTMetrix, Pingdom and Google PageSpeed Insights to test the website load time. These tools tested the websites from different locations and provided me important statistics.

The crucial measurement is the TTFB (Time To First Byte), that is the time taken by the server even before starting sending data.
Lower value for TTFB is desirable means there is less delay in starting data transfer. Bluehost is proved to be the cheap and fast hosting company in the comparison and the results pointed clearly towards this.

Which host is best for a blog – Bluehost or Squarespace?

My personal recommendation is for Bluehost. It offers lot of features and flexibility compared to Squarespace, even though Squarespace has the free CMS migration feature, but to their CMS that limits the possibilities.

We all have great plans with our websites and we need to select a host that allows growth. If we select anything that is limited and does not offer flexibility, our future growth will be affected and that is a cause of regret.

For most small blogs, Bluehost’s Basic Plan is a good place to start with since it allows to setup, test and know their service and quality with less expense. Everything is easy and flexible that allows you in setup and running in very less time.

The winner of Bluehost and Squarespace review

For those of you who had reached here without reading the full review, some quick points:

• Bluehost comes with more features and is cheaper than Squarespace.
• Bluehost is faster than Squarespace.
• Bluehost has more ease and use and flexibility. It also comes with plenty of tools.

Bluehost is found to be the winner over Squarespace in this comparison!

I am happy with the way the different tests are done and results are got in order to find the best hosting.

Even though I have signed as a Bluehost affiliate, it has in no way affected or biased the decision. I am presenting for you a worthy deal in this.

Signup now and pay only $2.95 – 3.95 per month instead of $7.95 » Really an amazing deal for you. To avail it click here to get Bluehost for just $2.95..

I have done the tests myself and results are got in real time. My opinion and conclusions are unbiased and is solely based on the tests. If I have missed something, let me know through the comments below. I used to do hosting articles regularly and if any of these hosts changes anything or include new features, I will provide it here and update my article.

Wish you all the best in your efforts! Elon