TechRadar Verdict

Bluehost’s email hosting service comes with a decent range of features but its pricing plans may not suit everyone.

Good range of features

Robust security

Pricing could be more flexible

Can’t raise a support ticket

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Bluehostis one of those hosting providers that doesn’t only offer email hosting services. As such, there’s a plethora of other hosting services on other, from shared hosting todedicatedandVPS hosting.

Looking at its email hosting specifically, however, the simplicity of its two pricing tiers makes a nice change from some providers that make your head spin with a raft of different numbers. Either tier provides a reliable, secure service - even if you might find more affordable options out there.

Bluehost: Plans and pricing

Bluehost’s email hosting is available across two pricing plans: Professional Email and Professional Email Plus. The Professional Email plan costs $14.99 for the first year, rising to $24.99 a year per account upon renewal. The Professional Email Plus plan, meanwhile, is nearly twice as expensive, costing $24.99 for the first year and $44.99 per account per year following renewal.

You’ll notice that Bluehost’s email hosting isn’t the cheapest and there’s no option for paying monthly, so you do have to commit yourself financially somewhat. If budget is a major concern for your email hosting needs, you might be better off going withHostingerorNeo.

You should also keep in mind that Bluehost offers many other hosting services besides email hosting. As such, we’d advise that you take your time during the checkout process. We’ve found that when purchasing a service from the company, many other solutions are automatically added to your basket. You might not notice these at first, because often they are added as an initial free trial. However, when they automatically renew, you could find yourself facing an unexpected bill for a feature that you never use.

Of course, you may find the added level of professionalism that comes with a Bluehost email account is worth the cost. The advance features may also make it worth the expenditure for your business, especially when you examine the functionality on offer with Professional Email Plus. It remains true, however, that if your budget is tight, then there are probably other email hosting providers that are better suited to your needs.

Features

The main difference you see with the features that Bluehost provides across its pricing tiers is in terms of storage and the number of email aliases you are allowed. With the Professional Email plan, for example, you receive 25GB ofcloud storageand can create up to 25 email aliases. If you’re a subscriber to the Professional Email Plus plan, on the other hand, you’ll see your storage limit increase to 80GB and you are then able to create up to 50 email aliases.

Features that come with both plans include unlimited mail filters, email forwarding, the ability to sync across devices, and the ability to share yourcalendar, contacts, and tasks for easiercollaboration. For businesses that want their email hosting to come withproductivitytools, Bluehost also fits the bill and comes with an integrated suite of tools like text-creation solutions,spreadsheetsand presentation functionality. Overall, Bluehost comes with a good range of features across its two pricing tiers, with most functionality given to both sets of customers.

Support

Interestingly, Bluehost’s email hosting represents an example of a provider that doesn’t give customers a support ticket option. Instead, the provider offers 24/7 support via its website,live chat, and telephone channels. This is a lot more support channels that you receive with some email hosting providers, but the absence of a support ticket can be frustrating - especially if you have a recurring issue that can’t be completely resolved in one go. For instance, we spent approximately six hours trying to fix an issue across seven support sessions and some of that time was wasted simply explaining our problem over and over again.

Admittedly, Bluehost does have a pretty extensive knowledgebase, which includes resources about itsemailfeatures, as well as its many other hosting services, such asshared hosting,WordPress hosting, as well as itswebsite builderservice. We also found that when telephone or live chat support was needed, agents were responsive, helpful and knowledgeable.

Security

Both Bluehost’s email hosting plans - Professional and Professional Plus - come with essential spam filter andantivirusfunctionality.Researchhas shown that companies waste more than $20.5 billion annually on spam emails, so the inclusion of this functionality as standard with all Bluehost email hosting plans is a welcome addition. Similarly, the antivirus functionality should also help CISOs sleep a little easier regarding this email provider.

If businesses want enhanced security, however, they’ll probably want to plump for the Professional Plus plan, as this is the only one that comes with one-click email and fileencryption. This is likely to prove essential for larger teams or enterprises handling sensitive information.

The competition

Although you could decide to go with Bluehost’s email hosting and none of the other services the company offers, it’s easier to compare Bluehost against other hosting providers that deliver a multitude of services. The likes of Hostinger,Dreamhost, and Neo, for instance, all offer email hosting alongside other services. Bluehost stands up well against these rivals, with faster, more reliable and better quality hosting than you can find with many other providers.

Drilling down into its email hosting, however, you may start to find a couple of disappointments. As we mentioned, Bluehost’s pricing isn’t the cheapest and works a little differently from its competitors in that it doesn’t let you pay monthly. For smaller businesses then, this may not prove to be the most attractive provider on the market as they may not be able to commit themselves financially for an entire year. For larger businesses where this is less likely to be an issue, the increased price tag you’re offered after renewal still might sting a little though.

Bluehost: Final verdict

Bluehost’s email hosting represents a good option if you want to increase the professionalism of your brand. Smaller businesses may find the pricing tiers a little on the steep side but if you have the budget, this is a secure, reliable, feature-rich hosting provider with good support.

We’ve also featured thebest email hosting services.

Barclay has been writing about technology for a decade, starting out as a freelancer with ITProPortal covering everything from London’s start-up scene to comparisons of the best cloud storage services.  After that, he spent some time as the managing editor of an online outlet focusing on cloud computing, furthering his interest in virtualization, Big Data, and the Internet of Things.

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