BlueHost vs 1&1 - Web Hosting Comparison

BlueHost is much better than 1and1 for Linux-based web hosting for its technology, features, loading speed, reliability and technical support, as we have collected over 200 real customer reviews for these 2 hosting companies, and have hosted the same WordPress site with BlueHost and 1and1 for over half a year since 2011.

BlueHost and 1and1 are both the experienced web hosting company founded in 1996 and 1997, but they had the different mission and focus from the beginning.

BlueHost is missioned to provide the professional & cost effective Linux-based web hosting service for personal and small businesses, but 1and1 is designed for miscellaneous hosting solutions including web hosting, VPS, dedicated servers and cloud hosting based on both Windows and Linux platform. Simply, we could say, at 1and1, you can have more choices, but if you don’t want to buy bothers while purchasing a Linux-based web hosting service for a small website with traffic under 1000 unique visitors daily, we DON’T recommend you going with 1and1, and highly recommend you going with BlueHost for shared web hosting service.

BlueHost VS 1and1 > Technology

The reliability is usually the most concern for web hosting users, because there have been over 100,000 web hosting providers over the Internet and almost all of them don’t have any specific technology for the web hosting reliability.

Compared to 1and1 barely overselling the shared web servers for its web hosting users, BlueHost is the only web hosting company that can guarantee the server resources for every user on every shared server. With the only focus on Linux-based web hosting service, BlueHost had digged into Linux kernel for increasing the web hosting reliability at the OS level, besides invested over 20 million USD on its 3 dedicated data centers in 2010.

BlueHost released the CPU Segregation Technology by customizing the Linux kernel in 2010, and rebranded it as BetterLinux in July 2012. For the most cases, this technology helps BlueHost:

• guarantee CPU, memory and disk I/O resources for every user on every shared server.
• protect from heavy neighbors. No longer can bad neighbors consume high amount of resources causing your sites down or slow. No other web hosting company worldwide can commit this with any validity. BlueHost is the only company that has this feature at this moment.
• be sensitive for CPU, memory and disk I/O resources allocation – all the resources consumption is evaluated in 0.2 second increments. This means the BlueHost servers will consistently handle requests quickly, and users won’t be exposed to slowness due to sudden bursts of server CPU usage.

Watch the following video to learn more about BlueHost technology.

BlueHost VS 1and1 > Features

1and1 has 3 Linux-based web hosting packages, but it mainly promotes the package named Unlimited as it’s the most rich-featured and powerful web hosting package from 1and1. In fact, there are lots of similarities between 1and1 Unlimited and the BlueHost all-in-one unlimited web hosting package named BlueHost Professional.

For you to better understand the essential difference, we compare the core features of BlueHost Professional and 1and1 Unlimited as following.

Actually, the 1and1 money back guarantee includes a lot of hidden terms unless you carefully read its Terms & Services with up to 30,000 words. The 1and1 guarantee just works for your payment via PayPal, and excludes the domain registration fees, account setup fees, any fees except for extra services including SSL, SEO, Site Lock, domain privacy, etc. So, for a risk-free purchase, we recommend you going with BlueHost, it’s providing a time-proven ANYTIME money back guarantee.

BlueHost VS 1and1 > Price

1and1 Unlimited hosting package is offering a 50% discount for $3.49/mo for the first 12 months. Then you have to pay $6.99/mo for the renewal. One of the hidden terms is when you intend to cancel the 1 year plan which you paid $41.88 ($3.49 x12), the refund will deduct $12 for the domain registration and $15 for the account setup fee. Finally, you can only get $14.88, even that’s on the second day after the sign up.

Compared to 1and1, BlueHost Professional is priced at $5.95/mo, $4.95/mo and $3.95/mo for 12/24/36-month term with a 44% discount applicable to all visits throughthis promotional link. As well as 1and1, BlueHost also charges renewal for the regular price, but choosing BlueHost, you can get the discounted price for 3 years totally saving up to $108 and be totally risk-free by leveraging their ANYTIME refund guarantee.

BlueHost VS 1and1 > Loading Speed

By leveraging the world-class data centers and self-developed technologies, BlueHost is able to ensure fast speed. So far, the company has made huge investment on the building, upgrading and maintenance of infrastructure and the development of new technologies.

Based on our research, the 1and1 investment on the technology, hardware and data centers is much fewer than BlueHost. Even, 1and1 still uses PC for servers for the web hosting customers by losing the hosting reliability and concurrent capacity.

We have compared the server response speed of the same site hosted with 1and1 and BlueHost. The one hosted with BlueHost approximately 137% faster than 1and1 in the performance testing, seeing the comparison chart as following.

BlueHost VS 1and1 > Technical Support

BlueHost provides responsive support via phone, live chat and email, and commits that customers can get their puzzles cleared in a quick and reliable way.

The 1and1 technical support is much worse than BlueHost. The 1and1 tier 1 support doesn’t help customers resolve issues during the phone call or live chat, but just help create the ticket, send a email notification for the reference, and ask you wait for up to 24 hours. This 1and1 technical structure is the cheapest and most popular in the web hosting industry, but it’s really frustrated to customers especially when someone is pulling the hair white for urgent issues.

BlueHost VS 1and1 > Conclusion

1and1 is not recommended at all from our opinion. The 1and1 hosting service quality needs to be improved for matching its increasing internet usage demand. Instead, we strongly recommend you going with BlueHost for personal websites, especially for ones with traffic under 1000 daily visitors.

Furthermore, our another site BestHostingSearch.NET, so far has received 171 customer reviews each of which comes with ratings for the BlueHost hosting reliability, loading speed, control panel and technical support. Based the BlueHost review statistics, the 99.4% of BlueHost customers were happy with its professional web hosting service.