Trying to choose between Bluehost and Dreamhost to host your website can be a little exhausting, especially since they both claim to be the best web hosting provider.
There are big differences between both Performance and other aspects. And in this review, we will demonstrate honestly which is best for what and why.
About BlueHost
BlueHost founded in 2003 by Matt Heaton and Danny Ashworth in Provo, Utah, is one of the world’s best-known web hosting providers. Today it’s part of Newfold Digital (the same group that owns HostGator) and says it serves over 5 million WordPress users worldwide. If HostGator is also on your list, read how Bluehost and HostGator compare.
They provide web hosting solutions for any type of website at a low price and provide many free and paid features.
About Dreamhost
DreamHost hosts over 1.5 million websites, blogs, and applications, and over 750k WordPress installations.
Since 1997, Dreamhost started providing reliable web hosting solutions for almost any type of web hosting at a low price as well.
Ease Of Use
Both DreamHost and BlueHost are easy to understand and navigate between the options of their control panels from the first time.
Managing your websites, WordPress sites, domain names, and account settings couldn’t be easier than what you will see on their platforms.
So, if you are new to web hosting services, both Bluehost and Dreamhost will be easy for you to understand. However, Bluehost now uses its own Account Manager dashboard (with cPanel still reachable from the Hosting section), while Dreamhost uses its own built-in control panel.
Plans and Pricing
Both BlueHost and DreamHost have many web hosting plans you can choose from according to your website’s needs. Here we will look for the shared hosting plans as they are recommended for these types of web hosts.
Shared hosting allows multiple websites to utilize a single server, sharing the same resources. Each customer will usually have a limit on the total amount of server resources they can use.
BlueHost plans and pricing:
Bluehost offers three shared hosting plans with listed prices, plus a custom tier:
- Starter plan: Host up to 10 websites with 10 GB of NVMe storage for $3.99 per month on a 36-month term (renews at $9.99).
- Business plan: Up to 50 websites and 50 GB of NVMe storage for $6.99 per month on a 36-month term (renews at $13.99), with free domain privacy for the first year.
- eCommerce Essentials plan: Up to 100 websites, 100 GB of NVMe storage and store tools for $14.99 per month on a 36-month term (renews at $21.99).
- Enterprise & Custom: A tailored setup for bigger businesses, priced on request.
DreamHost plans and pricing:
Dreamhost shared hosting now has three plans. The top Web Hosting Scale plan starts at $9.99 per month for the first year (renews at $25.99) with 100 websites and 100GB of NVMe storage. The two smaller ones are:
- Web Hosting Launch starts at $2.89 per month for the first year on a 1-year term and renews at $10.99. It covers 25 websites and 25GB of NVMe storage.
- Web Hosting Growth starts at $3.99 per month for the first year and renews at $12.99, with 50 websites and 50GB of storage.
Cheapest DreamHost vs BlueHost plans comparison:
| Comparison | BlueHost | DreamHost |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest plan | Starter | Web Hosting Launch |
| Intro price | $3.99/mo (36 months) | $2.89/mo (1st year, 1-year term) |
| Renews at | $9.99/mo | $10.99/mo |
| Websites | 10 | 25 |
| Free Domain | Included (1st year) | Included (1st year) |
| Free Domain Privacy | Not on Starter (free 1st year on Business) | Included |
| Free SSL | Yes | Yes |
| Storage space | 10 GB NVMe | 25 GB NVMe |
| Bandwidth | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Phone Call Support | Yes | Paid callbacks |
| Automated Backups | Weekly | Daily |
Performance And Reliability
Website performance is all about making the website fast and functioning very well. It’s essential to get a reliable web hosting service. This is what helps your website to rank high on search results.
So you should carefully choose the right web hosting for your website among all the many web hosting companies out there.
Uptime:
Uptime is important for user experience, bad uptime means that your website will go down while users are browsing your website, and this will certainly leave a bad impression on the visitors of the site, and they may not visit your site again.
Bluehost’s uptime is good, it was usually around 99.8% in our earlier tests. Bluehost used to offer no uptime guarantee at all, but shared plans bought since 2025 now come with a 99.99% uptime guarantee. The catch: the credit is capped at 5% of that month’s hosting fee, one claim per month, and you have to request it within 30 days.
Dreamhost’s actual uptime was 99.98% in our earlier tests, which is fantastic compared to other web hosting providers. However, DreamHost guarantees 100% uptime, this means if DreamHost failed to provide 100% uptime, you get one day of hosting credit for each hour (or part of an hour) of downtime, up to 10% of your next renewal fee.
Both Bluehost and Dreamhost deliver great uptime, yet Dreamhost’s uptime was better in our tests. Dreamhost’s 100% promise is also the stronger guarantee, since Bluehost’s credit tops out at 5% of your monthly fee.
Loading speed:
Google wants the main content of a page to load within 2.5 seconds (the Largest Contentful Paint target in its Core Web Vitals), and it says good Core Web Vitals line up with what its ranking systems reward. So speed matters if you want to rank high on search results.
Website speed is also important for user experience. Slow sites make visitors leave right away, which lowers your conversion rate.
DreamHost’s speed is exceptional compared to shared web hosting, it’s one of the best hosts that deliver fast loading speed.
Bluehost on the other side delivers slower-loading pages. This is the main reason why we don’t recommend BlueHost all the time.
Server location (Datacenters):
The closer your website hosting server is to your clients and visitors, the better the loading speed and performance of your website. Bluehost lets you pick from ten data center locations in nine countries when you buy shared hosting:
- USA: Arizona and Virginia
- Canada (Toronto) and Brazil (Sao Paulo)
- UK: London
- Europe: Paris, Frankfurt and Madrid
- India: Mumbai
- Australia: Sydney
On the other hand, DreamHost has four data centers: Ashburn (Virginia) and Hillsboro (Oregon) in the US, Amsterdam in the Netherlands (its first outside the US, opened in 2025), and Singapore. If you want your account in a specific one, you ask DreamHost support.
Features
You rather go with a web hosting server that offers a lot of features than one with none or a few. Cause you will eventually be needing some and end up paying for.
The more features available on your server, the easier it will be to manage your sites. The following comparison shows the features available on Both BlueHost and DreamHost.
Free domain name:
Both Bluehost and Dreamhost provide free domain name registration with their shared hosting plans.
When you sign up for any shared plan, they will give you a free domain registration or domain migration for free for one year.
Free domain privacy:
Domain privacy offers the option to replace your personal information in the domain’s public WHOIS with anonymous information, thereby protecting your personal data.
The web hosting Proxy Protection replaces your contact information with their contact information.
DreamHost includes free domain privacy with domain registration on its shared plans. Bluehost only includes it free for the first year on the Business plan and up; it isn’t listed as included on the Starter plan.
Free site migration:
If what makes you decide to choose between Bluehost or Dreamhost is the lack of performance or support of your current web hosting provider. No worries about migrating your website to either DreamHost or BlueHost.
Both have a free WordPress migration option. DreamHost gives you a free migration plugin to move the site yourself, and charges from $99 if you want its team to do it for you.
Bluehost lists a free site migration tool on every shared plan, so you can move a WordPress site yourself at no cost. If you want its team to handle the move for you, check the price first, since that’s a paid service.
Otherwise, you will have to pay extra money or do it manually with the help of some plugins.
Automated backups:
Backup is the first thing website owners should not neglect. Without making backups to your website, you are seriously risking your website data and files.
The backup is the main guarantee that your site can be completely restored after any problems and crashes happen from your server-side or your side.
If you installed or updated a plugin, or someone hacked your website, you can restore everything to the point where you created the backup.
There are mainly two types of backups, manual backups where you make the backup yourself every time you feel a backup must be made. And automatic backup, where the server backs up your website in certain periods of time specified by the hosting server or allows you to specify them.
It’s a good idea to have an automatic backup because you might forget to back up your website yourself. Accordingly, you may lose the work you accomplished on your site and worked on it for a long time.
With that being said, Bluehost used to keep automated backups for its CHOICE PLUS and PRO plans. Its current shared plans (Starter, Business and eCommerce Essentials) all list weekly website backups.
DreamHost goes further, with free daily automated backups on all plans, including the cheapest one.
Free SSL certificate:
An SSL (secure sockets layer) certificate is a small data file that provides an extra layer of security between a website and a browser. It serves to authenticate the website’s identity and encrypts any information provided through the website.
Anytime you view a website, the server that website lives on and the browser you use work together to display the web page you’re on.
Both Bluehost and Dreamhost are offering free SSL certificates for all shared plans.
Bandwidth:
Bandwidth is the capacity of data that can be transferred between the website, its users, and the servers.
The amount of bandwidth you have determines how quickly your website can deliver content to your visitors. Higher bandwidths allow website owners to have more dynamic features and content on their websites which can be more appealing to their visitors.
Bandwidth on both providers is unlimited for shared hosting.
Support
Having a strong support system has many positive benefits. There are several situations that make it necessary to contact support, especially if you are a newbie.
If you get attacked by hackers or your website is crushed and you want to back it up, or simply you want to know about a specific service your web hosting provides and you don’t know about, you may have to call their support.
DreamHost offers 24/7 live chat and email (ticket) support, plus a knowledge base. There’s no call-in phone number, though. Phone help comes as paid callbacks: $9.95 for a single callback or $14.95/month for three a month, unless you’re on a dedicated server or a DreamPress Plus or Pro plan.
On the other hand, BlueHost offers all kinds of support, phone calls, chat, and tickets.
Cancellation: Money-Back Guarantee
On Bluehost, you can cancel your account within 30 days of signing up or set your plan to expire at the end of the term at any time for a full refund.
Similar to Bluehost, DreamHost offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on its shared web hosting plans when you pay by credit card or PayPal. If you find DreamHost does not suit your needs, you can cancel within 30 days and receive a full refund.
Summary: Bluehost vs Dreamhost
BlueHost offers free phone call support and ten data center locations in nine countries.
DreamHost offers way more features, such as better uptime and loading time in our tests, a lower starting price, daily backups, and free domain privacy. For the full picture, read our DreamHost review and Bluehost review.
Bluehost lacked website speed in our tests, which is something you can’t ignore. That’s why we recommend DreamHost.
| Comparison | Bluehost | Dreamhost |
| Ease of use | Yes | Yes |
| Uptime (our earlier tests) | 99.8% | 99.98% |
| Uptime guarantee | Yes (99.99%, plans bought since 2025) | Yes (100%) |
| Loading speed (our earlier tests) | Not good | Great |
| Data centers | 10 | 4 |
| data centers locations | 9 Countries | 3 Countries |
| Automated Backups | Weekly | Daily |
| Prices start at | $3.99 (36 months) | $2.89 (1st year) |
| Chat Support | Yes | Yes |
| Phone call Support | Yes – Free | Paid callbacks |
| Site migration | Yes | Free plugin, paid service from $99 |
| Free domain name | Yes | Yes |
| Free domain privacy | Business plan and up (1st year) | Yes |
| Free SSL certificate | Yes | Yes |
| Bandwidth | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Money-back guarantee | 30 days | 30 days |
