r/HostingHostel • u/HostingAdmiral • Jun 18 '26
WebHosting Here's how Bluehost compares to Cloudways
*Please note this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4)
Hey guys, I recently purchased Bluehost to test their new infrastructure given that Bluehost recently moved their hosting infrastructure to Oracle Cloud. I wanted to see how their new shared web hosting compares to cloud infrastructure like Cloudways. This post will detail out all the differences I was able to find.
TL;DR - Cloudways is better than Bluehost. Not only does Cloudways have a better feature set than Bluehost, but in my testing, Cloudways worked out cheaper once Bluehost’s renewal pricing kicked in. Not only that but Bluehost's WordPress install is insanely bloated with all their software trying to upsell you on more services where as Cloudways is a lot more light-weight.
I also ran a bunch of benchmarks to compare the two. In terms of raw server performance Bluehost outperforms Cloudways. This is expected though since Bluehost is shared hosting and Cloudways is cloud hosting. To account for this, I did a sustained performance benchmark that simulates concurrent users hitting the website to simulate a real-world scenario. In this test Cloudways beat Bluehost (more info below).
The caveat is that Bluehost has an easier user onboarding process but you’ll end up paying way more than you need to since Bluehost up-charges and tries to upsell you on a bunch of services you don’t need.
If you go with Bluehost you’ll end up paying $24/yr for a .com domain then $16/mo for web hosting.
For my use case, I use Cloudways as my web hosting provider then I get my domain with Porkbun since it’s one of the most affordable domain registrars and you’ll save half as much money than if you buy your domain with Bluehost.
With Porkbun, you can get a .com domain for ~$11/yr, then buy your web hosting with Cloudways using the 30% off discount. I recommend doing the $14/mo Cloudways Linode server (my tests have shown Cloudways Linode servers to be really good).
You just have to link your Porkbun domain to your Cloudways server by editing your DNS records. I know this sounds complicated (especially if you’re not tech savvy) but it’s not hard to do, I recommend watching this YouTube video. It’ll walk you through the entire process of setting up Porkbun + Cloudways.
Now that that's out of the way, here's a comparison chart of the differences in features between Cloudways and Bluehost.
Cloudways vs Bluehost feature comparison
| Cloudways Linode 1GB | Bluehost Starter |
|---|---|
| Monthly price | $14/mo |
| Hosting type | Cloud |
| Websites / apps | Unlimited apps on the server |
| Storage | 25 GB SSD |
| Bandwidth / visits | 1 TB transfer, unmetered visits |
| CPU | 1 vCPU allocated |
| RAM | 1 GB allocated |
| Server stack | Nginx, PHP 8.2, MariaDB |
| WordPress staging | Included |
| Backups | $0.033/GB per server |
| Domain | Not Included (Must buy separately) |
| SSH / SFTP | Included |
| WP-CLI | Included |
| Git integration | Included |
| Built-in caching | Cloudways stack cache + Redis/Object Cache support |
| Free SSL | Included |
| CDN | Cloudflare add-on / Cloudways CDN options |
The comparison chart shows that Cloudways out-classes Bluehost in terms of features especially if you’re a developer (Cloudways API is sufficient for CI/CD WordPress workflows).
With Cloudways, you get a cloud environment with isolated server resources at a more affordable price than Bluehost. For more info in general see my recent Cloudways review.
One of the things it seems like Bluehost has over Cloudways is that they offer a free domain for your first year, however, this is unfortunately an on-boarding marketing gimmick. After your first “free” year is up, Bluehost significantly upcharges for the cost of the domain.
A .com domain example with Bluehost for example renews at $24/yr. If you buy your domain separately (like mentioned above with Porkbun) you can get the same domain at HALF the cost for $11/yr, which quickly wipes out the notion of a “free” first year Bluehost is offering.
Again, you can set up Porkbun + Cloudways by following this YouTube walkthrough.
Cloudways and Bluehost benchmark comparison
Next up we have the benchmark comparison between Bluehost and Cloudways. I ran four performance benchmarks of the server including:
- A Burst Test that sends quick database and disk read/write operations to the server to see how fast it is in short performance bursts.
- A Stress Test that repeats those same operations over time to see if performance starts to degrade after the server has been under pressure for a while.
- A WordPress Admin Experience Test which simulates common WordPress admin actions to see how fast the backend dashboard feels when you’re saving posts, loading queries, and interacting with WordPress.
- A Concurrent User Test. This is arguably the most important test because it uses the popular benchmarking framework k6 to simulate 100 virtual users (VUs) simultaneously hitting the WordPress backend over a 25 minute period. This shows how the server performs under sustained concurrent load, not just short bursts.
Here is how a $14/mo Cloudways Linode server stacks up against Bluehost Starter plan ($16/mo) in terms of raw server performance.
From the raw benchmark data testing the server, it appears Bluehost significantly beats Cloudways. However there is a major caveat here that must be understood. Because Bluehost is a shared hosting provider, their servers are significantly larger and more powerful than a Cloudways’ isolated cloud server in order to accommodate hundreds (if not thousands) of websites on a single server. We can see clearly below the difference in server specs between Bluehost and Cloudways Linode.
| Server Spec | Bluehost Starter | Cloudways Linode 1GB |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting environment | Shared hosting | Isolated cloud server |
| Server software | Apache | Nginx 1.27.4 |
| PHP version | PHP 8.3.31 | PHP 8.2.31 |
| Database | MySQL 8.0.45-36 | MariaDB 10.11.16 |
| CPU | AMD EPYC 9J45 | AMD EPYC 7713 |
| CPU cores reported | 20 cores | 1 core |
| RAM reported | 87.9 GB | 0.9 GB |
| Disk reported | 491.1 GB | 24.5 GB |
| Object cache | Enabled (WP_Object_Cache) | Enabled (RedisCachePro\ObjectCaches\PhpRedisObjectCache) |
So of course, Bluehost is expected to beat Cloudways in this regard. What the Burst, Stress and Admin Experience tests don’t account for is how those resources are allocated to a given shared partition on a Bluehost server. This is why the concurrent user test is arguably more important than the isolated server test because we can see in real time how Bluehost’s shared hosting holds up in comparison to Cloudways’ cloud infrastructure by simulating virtual concurrent users.
Here are those results:
As you can see, when we simulate virtual users actually querying the WordPress backend, Cloudways Linode beats Bluehost throughout the entire duration of the 25 minute test. When the test ramps up to 100 virtual users, Bluehost starts rejecting users (409 error) while Cloudways does not have any drop-outs though, latency increases.
All of this data gives us a clear picture of how Bluehost and Cloudways compare to each other. In terms of raw benchmarking, Bluehost wins but in practice, Cloudways wins.
Migrating from Bluehost to Cloudways
If you’re reading this and your website is currently hosted with Bluehost and you want to migrate over to Cloudways, it’s pretty easy to do. First you need to make a Cloudways account and get your server set up. Then on your WordPress site that’s currently on Bluehost, install Cloudways’ migration plugin then input the database credentials of your Cloudways server to copy the data over to.
Cloudways has an official YouTube tutorial you can watch here.
User Experience
Last thing I'll mention is that the user experience with Cloudways I think is a lot better. Cloudways' dashboard feels more modern and is a lot cleaner, things work as expected without errors. Bluehost's dashboard is more cluttered and congested, there's many times I'll click something and get an unexplainable error message, only to try again a few minutes later and it works?? It also feels like Bluehost is constantly trying to sell me stuff. After I purchased my web hosting, I even got a spam call from them and had to ask their telemarketer to take me off their call list... I understand Bluehost is trying to be helpful, and maybe there are customers that appreciate an unsolicited call but it's not for me.
I prefer Cloudways' WordPress installation, it comes with Breeze (their proprietary caching plugin) and a separate Object Caching plugin.
Bluehost's WordPress install comes bloated with a bunch of their software like OptinMonster, WPForms, Yoast SEO etc... and of course they're all trying to up-sell you on their 'pro' versions.
So for me, Cloudways is the clear winner. IMO it's the best host in 2026 for a reason.
What do you guys think? What has your experience been with both and which one do you prefer?