Meet Maggie, PCMag'sWordPress is a popular, flexible content management system that we've seen power millions of websites, and Bluehost makes it the backbone of its website builder. If you need extra help building a site, this builder gives you the tools to easily make dependable, attractive pages with e-commerce options. Since my last review, Bluehost has leaned further into AI, renaming the service to Bluehost AI Website Builder. This focus on AI is arguably as stifling as it is convenient. Editors' Choice winners Duda and Wix hold up better as standalone site builders, but Bluehost is an accessible alternative if you're willing to embrace its WordPress focus.
Although it lacks a free plan, Bluehost AI Website Builder offers a 14-day free trial. You just need to suss out exactly what you pay under each WordPress hosting plan, as the builder comes included at no extra cost.
The Starter hosting plan includes unlimited monthly data transfers, the option to build ten websites, and 10GB of SSD storage. The Business plan lets you build 50 websites, and offers domain privacy, 50GB of SSD storage, and a free CDN and Secure Socket Layer (SSL). The eCommerce Essentials tier lets you build 100 websites, 100GB of storage, and adds more business features, such as the ability to offer discount codes, site memberships, and online booking. The e-commerce functionality, payment, and storefront tools are the main draw, and WooCommerce is one of the best WordPress plug-ins.
Alternatively, you can subscribe to the standalone builder for $10 per month or upgrade to the online store for $16 per month. Both of these tiers include a free domain and domain privacy for one year, free SSL and CDN, hosting for one site, weekly backups, malware detection and removal, and 20 AI edits per month. The online tier naturally adds more e-commerce features, such as AI agents for topics like catalog, inventory, and ordering.
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All tiers provide shared hosting. With the included hosting, you receive email marketing tools and a free domain for the first year. If you want more high-powered hosting, consider Bluehost's VPS or other dedicated hosting services.
Bluehost gives you two options for creating a WordPress-powered website: the traditional WordPress interface or the Bluehost AI Website Builder. Like fellow website builders from GoDaddy and Hostinger, Bluehost has adopted AI tools to make building sites even easier and faster. Now, if you opt out of WordPress, you must use the AI-powered experience when starting a site. You simply answer questions and let the builder generate text and image suggestions (or provide SEO and commerce help). For my test, I created a podcast-focused website featuring a large pair of headphones on the home page.
To be honest, much of the novelty of these AI tools has worn off for me. The fact that Bluehost almost forces you to use them feels a little condescending, like it doesn't trust users to even be able to put in the effort of designing their own websites. You can manually edit your AI-generated Bluehost sites, but it's sort of presented as a last resort, not a way to replenish the vital human creativity that AI site builders inherently lack. AI is not the only option, but Bluehost's strong desire for users to build sites with AI, including putting AI in the name of the product, is a turn-off.
Bluehost features just one WordPress theme, but the sheer variety of drag-and-drop templates and layouts lets you make near-endless tweaks. Although you can’t change your theme selection (a common limitation in website builders), you can alter numerous visual components within your selected template, such as fonts and background colors. In addition, you can swap between desktop and mobile previews to see how your site looks on different displays.
This stylistic freedom doesn't apply to image editing. You can import your own photos, including a logo, and browse Bluehost's stock photo library. However, you can’t really edit those photos, other than resizing them or adding a link and alt text metadata. Wix gives you more robust photo editing options.
Bluehost doesn't skimp on tools. Under Sections, you can browse many different elements to add to your site. Each element presents you with a few examples to choose from before dragging it onto your page. The standard options include text forms, video embeds, and image galleries. More bespoke elements include a countdown timer, map, and a carveout for custom HTML/CSS.
Here you access e-commerce features, such as product listings, reviews, promotions, and price lists. With WooCommerce, you can sell tens of thousands of different products, physical or digital, as well as subscription memberships.
Bluehost's website builder is simple to use, but placing all elements under the same Sections banner makes it take longer to find what you’re looking for. Once an element was on the page, I spent a few more seconds than I wanted adjusting values to get what I desired. Establishing a workflow won’t take long, though.
You can view all of your site's pages, alter global appearance settings, and enable transition animations. Likewise, you can enter business and shipping information, as well as social media account credentials, if you want your site to sync with Facebook or Twitter/X. It's easy to track traffic progress via Google Analytics, too.
The website builder also includes WordPress-specific features that make your site shine. For example, you can create a WordPress.com blog that lives on your site or swap back and forth between the simplified website builder and fully featured WordPress admin interface at any time. In that way, Bluehost serves as useful training wheels as you teach yourself to ride the WordPress bike. To learn even more, check out how to get started with WordPress. For more on website building, check out our stories on how to create a website and 10 SEO tips to boost your traffic.
An attractive website won't do you much good if no one can reach it. That’s why we also investigate how well traditional web hosting services and website builders stay online. Bluehost has historically been very stable, and that's still the case. The company has a 99.9% uptime promise.
You can leverage Bluehost’s proven customer support team. Through its Blue Sky service, Bluehost provides 24/7 telephone support, online web chat, a ticket-based system, and a helpful knowledge base. As with uptime, Bluehost's quick and reliable customer support continues to impress us in testing. If you aren’t satisfied, you'll receive a full refund if you cancel within 30 days. For more details, check out our full Bluehost web hosting review.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: Bluehost)
Bluehost AI Website Builder
- 5.0 - Exemplary: Near perfection, ground-breaking
- 4.5 - Outstanding: Best in class, acts as a benchmark for measuring competitors
- 4.0 - Excellent: A performance, feature, or value leader in its class, with few shortfalls
- 3.5 - Good: Does what the product should do, and does so better than many competitors
- 3.0 - Average: Does what the product should do, and sits in the middle of the pack
- 2.5 - Fair: We have some reservations, buy with caution
- 2.0 - Subpar: We do not recommend, buy with extreme caution
- 1.5 - Poor: Do not buy this product
- 1.0 - Dismal: Don't even think about buying this product
Read Our Editorial Mission Statement and Testing Methodologies.
Bluehost's WordPress focus isn't a limitation. In fact, WordPress powers so many websites that choosing a website builder built for the CMS gives you more flexibility than you'd initially expect. For existing Bluehost users, it makes sense to stay within the ecosystem, and the site builder won’t let you down, even if it leans a little too hard on AI for our liking. That said, if you’re starting fresh with website builders and want one that doesn’t feel quite as supplemental, our Editors' Choice winners are Wix for its free plan and Duda for its integration with SaaS platforms.
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About Our Expert
My PCMag career began in 2013 as an intern. Now, I'm a senior writer, using the skills I acquired at Northwestern University to write about dating apps, meal kits, programming software, website builders, video streaming services, and video games. I was previously a senior editor at Geek.com and have written for The A.V. Club, Kotaku, and Paste Magazine. I'm the author of the gaming history book Video Game of the Year: A Year-by-Year Guide to the Best, Boldest, and Most Bizarre Games from Every Year Since 1977, and the reason everything you know about Street Sharks is a lie.
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