How do we stand up against Bluehost?
Compare our main features at a glance
| Krystal | |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | London, UK |
| Infrastructure Provider | Katapult by Krystal |
| Ownership | Family Owned |
| Number of hosting brands |
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| Environmental Credentials |
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| Introductory Pricing Structure | No |
| Trustpilot Rating | 4.8 |
Switch to Krystal today without losing any of the money you've already paid Bluehost
With our free Switch Credits, we will credit the remaining value of your existing plan and term, so you’re no longer locked in. Not with Bluehost? Switch Credits are also available to clients of 35 other large hosting companies.
Bluehost - a quick history
Bluehost was one of the earliest web hosts. Since its Founder sold out to EIG in November 2010 and then quit in 2011, the company has gone through numerous 'consolidation' (redundancy) exercises and is now on its 6th CEO in 12 years. (Krystal's had the same CEO for 21 years)
Over the years Bluehost has also been subject to varioussecurity breaches. Security shortfalls have also been noted via independent one click client-side vulnerability testing.
Why choose Krystal over Bluehost?
Ethics
Customers complain that Bluehosts's system is packed with continuous upsell pitches and sneaky introductory offers, a common issue with large hosting corporations (see also: GoDaddy & HostGator). We've found the Bluehost registration form counter intuitive and designed to encourage you into buying expensive extras that you won't need (an unethical sales tactic that psychologists call “dark patterns”), while the website and customer journey is littered with upsell proposal banners, popups and sneaky links.
Renewal shock
Because Bluehost entices clients in with a low introductory price, their customers find that they can be shocked by the huge increase in price once it reverts back to their ‘regular rate’ come renewal time. What’s more, Bluehost makes it virtually impossible to find out what that “regular rate” is until you’ve signed up, as they keep it hidden within the control panel. They don’t make it easy to leave either - if you wish to cancel your account and retain your domain, they charge a fee. Clients have reported being unable to get a refund when stung by an expensive renewal, even if they’ve contacted them the same day. They’d rather hold clients' money than do the right thing.
Transparency over trickery
We’ll never use low introductory pricing that might go up as much as 256% on renewal (here’s looking at you GoDaddy). Avoid a painful renewal with our Switch Credits initiative.
Features
Bluehost doesn’t offer ticket support! This makes it nigh on impossible to follow up on complex service issues and escalations. Krystal clients often tell us they love the convenience and transparency of our support ticket system.
Bluehost also only offers free migrations for WordPress whereas we’ll help you move over from cPanel too.
Performance
Bluehost doesn’t provide an uptime guarantee, which doesn’t sound like the actions of a company confident in its own reliability. (We offer a 99.99% one)
If you’d like your hosting to reach an international audience you might be disappointed at Bluehost as there’s no option to choose which datacentre your service is located in. If your readers come from other regions, they could face having a (very) slow site. Krystal offers 4 global locations.
Backups
The entry-level plans don’t have the best backup solution. Bluehost says it creates backups ‘as a courtesy’, which doesn’t sound very…reassuring. Just 3 backups and they can’t assure you they’ll have them. If you want extra website backup options (e.g. on-demand backups), you have to purchase their expensive backup add-on. Krystal provides 31 daily backups as standard, with business plans having 120 backups taken every 4 hours to a dedicated offsite location.
Bluehost addons (also known as ‘standard features’ at Krystal and FREE):
- Dedicated IP: $5.99 per month
- Premium SSL Certificates: Starting at $89.88 per year
- SpamExperts Mail Filtering: $2.99 a month per domain name
- Microsoft 365: Starting at $59.88 (Essentials)
- Privacy: $15.00 Domain Privacy per domain per year
- SiteLock: Starting at $71.88 per domain per year
- SEO Tools: Starting at $71.40 per year
- Codeguard Basic: $35.88 per year
- Expired Account Reactivations: $30.00
Brands
Despite being a well-known brand, Bluehost is just another cog in the enormous and many-faced corporate machine that is EIG/Newfold. Bluehost was acquired by EIG in 2010. Conveniently, after 13 years, there’s still no mention of it on Bluehost’s About Us page!
This is a manoeuvre EIG pulled many, many times building up a catalogue of over 80 different hosting brands! They buy a company but keep it trading under the same name and legal entity so clients don’t know where their money is going (clue: it’s going into EIG/Newfold investors’ pockets). It’s also a great way to have clients ostensibly buy ‘highly recommended’ 3rd-party services and products that are actually owned by the same umbrella company, putting even more money into those investors’ pockets.
EIG itself ended up merging with Web.com and morphing into a new brand identity; Newfold. Same approach to treating clients, same back catalogue of brands, different name.
Krystal has no investors, is family run and has never paid a dividend, so we can reinvest profits into the service.
Krystal Brands
Information correct as of
02 Oct 2023
Looking for more reasons to pick Krystal?
Check out 3 Good Reasons or our Reviews page, and if you're currently with Bluehost and would like to leave our Switch Credits will compensate you for any unused time so you're not out of pocket. We'll even help you move over.
Choose the right plan for you
They all include award-winning UK support, flexibility to upgrade or downgrade, and our 60-day, no-quibble money-back guarantee.
Not sure which plan is right for you?
We’re happy to help you find the perfect hosting plan. Compare our plans or get in touch for honest advice without sales tactics or upsells.
Green energy
We use Ecotricity for our power, the first company in the UK to offer true 100% renewable energy.
Green data centres
All power consumed at our data centres comes from 100% renewable sources. All centres have achieved a PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) rating of at least 1.2.
Green purpose
We work with key partners including Ecologi, veritree and 1t.org to create a path to a cleaner future. We balance profit with purpose and are a Certified B Corp.
Green leadership
We work as a beacon for positive change, so we help our staff go green by offsetting their lifetime carbon footprint, and encourage our industry to adopt a planet-first approach.
Join 36,453 happy clients running on our premium, planet-first B Corp web hosting
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