Amazon Lightsail vs. Bluehost

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon Lightsail
Score 5.3 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Lightsail is a virtual private server (VPS) designed to present an easy-to-use cloud platform that offers everything needed to build an application or website, plus a cost-effective, monthly plan.
$3.50
per month
Bluehost
Score 5.4 out of 10
N/A
Bluehost, headquartered in Orem, Utah, offers website hosting. Bluehost also offers managed WordPress hosting, with optional SEO and marketing tools for WordPress plans.
$19.95
per month for 36 month term
Pricing
Amazon LightsailBluehost
Editions & Modules
512 MB Linux
$3.50
per month
1 GB Linux
$5.00
per month
2 GB Linux
$10.00
per month
Shared WordPress Hosting
$3.95-$16.99
per month
Shared Web Hosting
$3.95-$26.99
per month for 36 month term
eCommerce - WooCommerce Hosting
$15.95-$49.95
per month, 1 month to 36 month terms available
Managed WordPress (beta)
$19.95
per month for 36 month term
VPS Hosting
$19.99 - $119.99
per month
Blue Sky Live WordPress Support
$29.00-$149.00
per month
Dedicated Hosting
$79.99-$209.99
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon LightsailBluehost
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon LightsailBluehost
Considered Both Products
Amazon Lightsail
Chose Amazon Lightsail
The only reason to shift from liquid web to Amazon Lightsail is the cost. Amazon Lightsail's cost is very low as compared to liquid web.
Chose Amazon Lightsail
Amazon Lightsail is ideal for beginners looking for a low-cost VPS to try out new things. It's especially useful if you're at a hackathon and need a quick way to prototype a quick idea. I would never recommend Lightsail for any kind of production work. In terms of uptime, …
Chose Amazon Lightsail
I believe Lightsail has worse support than DigitalOcean and the pay more for better service model is not great as most customers are trying it for the first time. They are both very fast to set up and get started, but we went with AWS Lightsail because we were familiar with …
Chose Amazon Lightsail
Linode and Digital Ocean are far more reliable than Amazon Lightsail. I would recommend against hosting any production applications in Lightsail. Even for prototyping, I would also suggest using the VPS provider of your choice for your production application because you can …
Chose Amazon Lightsail
Amazon Lightsail is a great platform. Before we started using it, we were using AWS EC2 instances as our primary servers after being dissatisfied with other providers. After Amazon Lightsail's introduction, we were able to reduce our operating costs, improve our quality …
Bluehost
Chose Bluehost
Bluehost stacks up against them by providing a variety of plans which gives decision-making power to the customers. Also, it has a built-in website builder.
Chose Bluehost
I enjoy DreamHost Over Bluehost, but our business already had many settings set up through Bluehost.
Chose Bluehost
Bluehost is better - easier to use, more reliable, have better customer service and offer more for the price you pay.
Chose Bluehost
Bluehost is somewhat similar in terms of their tech stack and somewhat similar in terms of pricing. I think for websites that want to remain small and operate on the lowest budget possible, Bluehost is sufficient. For websites that are interested in scaling, or need top-tier, …
Chose Bluehost
Bluehost did not stack up against HostGator; in fact, HostGator was where we ended up migrating after we realized Bluehost was not for us. Bluehost is not geared toward businesses, especially ones like ours that have a very customized site. HostGator allowed us the …
Chose Bluehost
Bluehost is more expensive, but they offer a more complete set of tools and seem far better equipped to handle WordPress sites. We wanted the ability to grow our site if necessary and felt Bluehost offered more potential than GoDaddy for long-term support.
Chose Bluehost
GoDaddy & Network Solutions are both priced similarly. I recommend Bluehost over both of these because of its support and upgrade cycles. NS hasn't been updated in what seems like a decade. GoDaddy, on top of its shady advertising and predatory behavior, has terrible support.
Chose Bluehost
Prior to moving over to Bluehost, I was using GoDaddy for 3 years which initially suited me but as I wanted more features and planned on selling products online I noticed the add-ons started adding up. For example, I had to find a free SSL certificate outside of Godaddy as they …
Chose Bluehost
I originally started in Bluehost when I took on a portfolio of existing business websites to manage. In an effort to consolidate my client base into one hosting service, I opted to move hosting and domains to GoDaddy, who is my preferred hosting service. When I started the …
Chose Bluehost
I found WordPress installation to be easier with Bluehost. 1&1 offers a monthly payment plan whereas you have to pay for the entire year with Bluehost.
Chose Bluehost
Bluehost was much better at customer support, and easy of use and initial setup compared to Site5. We were much happier when switching to Bluehost.
Chose Bluehost
I found that Bluehost had a better UX and better prices. It was easier to navigate, easy to update key settings and the 1 touch Wordpress install and automatic Wordpress updates (at the time) made Bluehost a better choice. Also, GoDaddy was having issues with uptime at that …
Chose Bluehost
We now use WP Engine exclusively. We have found the hosting platform and customer service to be well worth the extra money.
Chose Bluehost
We have used other hosting systems such as HostGator and GoDaddy. We had security problems with GoDaddy and HostGator had performance difficulties. With Bluehost we were able to get a solid, secure hosting service overcome our security and performance concerns. While GoDaddy …
Chose Bluehost
Bluehost's VPS offering gives me full control over my container which I don't get with Dreamhost. The size of the container is much more desirable for hosting multiple products, over and above DigitalOcean, and the control panel for Bluehost is far more intuitive than AWS'.
Features
Amazon LightsailBluehost
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Lightsail
9.1
Ratings
12% above category average
Bluehost
-
Ratings
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing9.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring tools8.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Operating system support9.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Security controls8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Automation9.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon LightsailBluehost
Small Businesses
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 8.7 out of 10
Flywheel
Flywheel
Score 9.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
WP Engine
WP Engine
Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
AccuWebHosting.Com
AccuWebHosting.Com
Score 9.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon LightsailBluehost
Likelihood to Recommend
9.8
(0 ratings)
4.9
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
4.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
3.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon LightsailBluehost
Likelihood to Recommend
It is best suited for the small applications which do not need much CPU powers to executes tasks and when integration with other AWS services but it is less suited for the applications which need very frequent auto scaling for the performance purpose, as AWS Lightsail did not support system downgrading so not recommend to use in this case.
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Bluehost is a decent all-around choice for web hosting with professional web development and domain management features that are particularly ideal for WordPress websites and blogs. They have a good reputation within the industry as a company that invests heavily in new technology and platform innovation. Bluehost has made a lot of improvements to customize their back-end administration (AMP & control panel) by working to improve the usability and design of the browser interface. Bluehost is primarily focused on customers who use WordPress and we would recommend either their hybrid cloud or managed WordPress platform, which provides everything that you need to build and maintain a popular website. All in all, Bluehost is a well-established brand that continually improves its hosting products, regularly upgrades their data center hardware, and is generally considered a leader in the development of new cloud hosting platform services.
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Pros
  • Value instances packages
  • Better organized UI
  • Easy billing resulting in higher efficiency
  • Cheaper than competition
  • Better support staff
  • Can adjust for any bills you may have incurred by accident
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  • Bluehost provides a cost-effective website hosting bundle for WordPress.
  • Transferring a domain name was super easy and saved me money on the domain name and domain privacy renewal.
  • Provides a basic free SSL certificate for all websites and offers unlimited websites on the pro plan.
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Cons
  • Lack of flexibility in terms of configuration
  • Customer service tiers - have to pay more for better service
  • Usage not shown in obvious place
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  • Sometimes the login page does not function properly.
  • You have to purchase hosting for the whole year instead of being able to pay monthly.
  • It doesn't have the option to transfer hosting to another account. My customers have to sign up on their own.
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Usability
My overall experience with Amazon Lightsail is very good, and the online community of Lightsail users is very large and its helps to resolve any kind of issue i faced on my server. I also like the integration of other AWS services with Amazon Lightsail like we can export our Lightsail instance into ec2 server using snapshots.
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I use Wordpress for my website on Bluehost, so I already know how it works and happy with it. I gave it this rating as I love the fact that If you do plan on creating multiple websites on Bluehost you'll be able to create specific login access for each website sites making it less likely to enter into the wrong website accounts. Which makes it even easier to manage client websites if you plan to create and host websites on behalf of your clients.
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
When we decided to migrate away from Bluehost, a quick call to their tech-support solved most of our problems, and we immediately got our money back. They did — to their credit — try to accommodate us, but they realize that we needed something else that they couldn’t accommodate. And once that realization set in, customer service immediately refunded us our money.
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Alternatives Considered
Amazon Lightsail is ideal for beginners looking for a low-cost VPS to try out new things. It's especially useful if you're at a hackathon and need a quick way to prototype a quick idea. I would never recommend Lightsail for any kind of production work. In terms of uptime, Lightsail has proved unreliable. Occasionally, the instance will simply crash or reboot at random. Without warning, Amazon will perform maintenance on your Lightsail instance. Lightsail's networking is likewise lacking, with no support for IPv6.
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Bluehost is somewhat similar in terms of their tech stack and somewhat similar in terms of pricing. I think for websites that want to remain small and operate on the lowest budget possible, Bluehost is sufficient. For websites that are interested in scaling, or need top-tier, USA-based tech support 24/7 at their fingertips, then other hosting providers may be better.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
The website is slow. The speed is not reliable. Sometimes, sites would go down without warning. You would have to get a VPS to get consistent speed. If you have small website as a hobby, then Bluehost will be sufficient. Otherwise, I recommend looking for something more fast. Storage is good, but speed is lacking
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Return on Investment
  • Hosting a production application on Lightsail will guarantee you a loss
  • Saved lots of time for our prototyping
  • Other VPS providers are better
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  • Because of their level of service and support, we were able to create our web presence in-house without the need to hire an external firm or consultant. Consequently, Bluehost has more than paid for itself.
  • The efficiency of the all-in-one solution means our web person doesn't have to spend time logging into different sites and managing different accounts, and the business office only has to pay one vendor.
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ScreenShots