Now that you have decided to build a website online, you need to know two crucial details. Where to host it and how much it
will cost you? That is what I will be covering in my compare Bluehost and Wealthy Affiliate review.
I will be walking you through the major differences between these two top companies. They each appear to have top-level systems but one is outstanding.
Let’s look at the very different affiliate programs that they offer.
Wealthy Affiliate pays you $23.50 per month recurring monthly commission or $235 recurring for a yearly membership. Bluehost pays you a one-off commission of $65 for a new member, no recurring commission, ever. So the question is do more people stay with Wealthy Affiliate long-term because they have such a great reputation?
Why is it important to Compare?
We’ve all said it at some time in our life, “I wish I had known that before I bought …….” This is why it is really important for you to do research on any new item that you want to buy. In the case of hosting sites, you really get what you pay for.
Hosting companies come in two shapes. A very low monthly price but you have to pay extra for security or more upload speed and usually no lessons.
Or a competitive monthly rate that includes awesome security, technical support, and comprehensive business lessons. At this point you may be thinking, ‘I already know the internet business world and I want to pay the absolute lowest price.’ Then Bluehost is probably your choice.
But Wait There’s More!
Let’s really dig down into the Bluehost vs. Wealthy Affiliate review;
- What does each hosting company include?
- How each works
- Pros and Cons
- What they each do well and don’t do well
- What others are saying (good and bad)
- Plans and Pricing
- The Major Differences
- My Recommendation
Two years after Matt Heaton started Bluehost in Utah, Kyle Loudon and Carson Lim started Wealthy Affiliate in Victoria, British Columbia. They had achieved success online with their keyword list business (Jaaxy) and wanted to help others to build a prosperous business online with easy instruction.
Kyle and Carson still own Wealthy Affiliate 15 years later and regularly chat directly with members in the community, an unheard-of link to the website co-owners in other businesses. I can’t see them looking to sell out and as they want to keep a hands-on approach to supporting their members. With great plans for the future. You can read more about Wealthy Affiliate in my review here.
Since they started, the platform has grown at a pace faster than the industry, and today has 1.4 million+ members. Wealthy Affiliate is all about adding value, not just hosting.
Why Wealthy Affiliate is such a Huge Success
More bang for your buck!
- A highly engaged social media style community platform, providing 24/7 support worldwide
- Your Site Content platform where you can learn to create structured content and add free pictures
- A straight-shooting Site Feedback where you can get instant on-demand feedback on your website so you can polish your site
- Site Comments where you can get on-demand comments on your website posts and make money–Google recognizes comments.
- Your custom control panel in WordPress, so you can customize your website design.
- A dashboard to help you manage the health of all of your individual websites: speed, plugins, engagement, SEO, and more.
- Keyword research tool (Jaaxy) to help you create content around topics that are in high demand but low supply
- Live weekly internal training on up to the minute Internet Marketing
- 1000’s of hours of recorded training videos
- 1-on-1 coaching from the member you joined. A personal mentor if needed.
How Do I Get Started with Wealthy Affiliate?
Getting started with Wealthy Affiliate is quick and easy, there are two options for getting started and they’re both free.
Two Options to Join For Free
- You can create a free trial account – CLICK HERE TO CREATE YOUR ACCOUNT
- Or, you can create a free Siterubix website here.
Once you see the value in the program and features, you can decide to upgrade to premium membership. Wealthy Affiliate stands behind their hosting plans and services, and they know you’ll love them too because most people do!
Disclaimer: This article contains affiliate links where I may receive a small commission at no cost to you if you choose to purchase from a link on this page. However, these are merely tools I fully recommend when it comes to hosting a website. You can read my full affiliate disclosure in my privacy policy. I would never recommend something that I haven’t used.
How to create a Bluehost Account?
To get started with Bluehost, you have to:
- Pick your plan
- Enter your billing information
- Purchase your domain
- Install your Content Management System (WordPress is most recommended)
- Get your WordPress login details
- Begin customizing your website (Good luck if you already know how to do this!)
Bluehost Support
Sadly, it is known for being almost nonexistent. Just when you really needed that help, you’ll be kept waiting and waiting! Having a bad experience with Bluehost support is not uncommon as you can see on TrustPilot and where several customers have complained about bad support.
Bluehost is owned by the largest owner of a hosting company in the world, Endurance International Group. EIG is a huge company that owns more than 70 of the largest hosting companies including Hostgator, Hostmonster, Fastdomain, IPage, Sitebuilder.com, BigRock, and others. They also own companies like ConstantContact and others that offer services that are staples to online business.
In 2003, Matt Heaton the founder and operator created Bluehost as a better hosting solution than what was available at the time. In 2011, EIG bought Bluehost and laid off 440 of the staff members to centralize the operations with their other hosting assets.
This is normal practice for EIG and many previous customers’ websites were transferred to other EIG servers at that time. Since the name was kept the same, many customers didn’t know the cause of the sudden change in the performance and service of their hosting. Despite the changes behind the scenes, Bluehost has still managed to maintain many affiliates who are happy to promote them.
What Does Bluehost Do Well?
- Lower cost than most email marketing providers when you have a list of 5000 or more
- They host an unlimited # of websites per plan
- Offer unlimited business email and Email forwarders
- There is a platform to buy domains
- They have a popular affiliate program with a commission starting at $65 per sale
Common Positive Feedback
- Definitely cheap
- Their websites integrate well with WordPress
- You can host more Content management systems than WordPress
- Well-known influencers commonly refer others to Bluehost
- Many reviewers said they’ve never had issues with downtime or speed, but others have had major problems with it.
Common Negative Feedback for Bluehost
- The user interface is difficult to navigate
- Site support is terrible
- Many Sites get hacked with malware then get upsold to their partner Succuri.net
- Technical support isn’t very knowledgeable so many problems have to be hired elsewhere
- Great initial pricing deals, but when your initial term is over, the price spikes up
- A lot of technical terminologies makes it difficult to understand and navigate
- Emails get sent to spam
- For the cheap monthly price, you have to be locked in for 3 years
- Client sites went down several times
- Websites ran slower than on local servers
- Email addresses had a low delivery rate
Bluehost Price
There are quite a few backends upsells within Bluehost. Many common hosting problems are solved thru upsells, but their newest managed-to-host plans include many of their previous upsells. Definitely more than the promoted $3.95 monthly only with a 3-year contract.
This site participates in affiliate programs. This means at no cost to you; I may receive compensation if you purchase something through one of these links. Thank you for your support. For more information please read my Privacy Policy and Affiliate Disclosure.
Wealthy Affiliate Tools & Training
Wealthy Affiliate offers training on a plethora of topics including:
- Setting up a website
- Design and layout
- Website Monetization
- Traffic Generation (social media, paid to advertise, and SEO)
- and, the list goes on and on
- In addition to the owners creating courses, any of the premium members are able to create courses, so Wealthy Affiliate serves as an open marketplace with 1000’s of hours of training materials. You get paid for people having access to the courses that you create.
Wealthy Affiliate Support
Wealthy Affiliate offers the fastest customer service. I’ve been a customer for one year and have never waited for a response more than 10 minutes, and they’re always helpful (even on technical matters).
What Does Wealthy Affiliate Do Well
- No upsells – you get it all for $45 US a month
- Rare price rises for customers (only one in 15 years)
- 1000s of hours of training
- They’ve created a highly engaged community of 1.4 million+ members integrated into a social media-style interface
- A very modern easy user interface
- It’s privately owned and continuously improving
- Members suggestions are used to improve the platform continuously
- The owners are actively engaged with the members
- They provide lots of technical support – Free
- A full suite of features to empower members to be successful online–they don’t just offer hosting
- Very thorough step-by-step training on many topics that help people to be successful online (advertising, SEO, website monetization, affiliate marketing, etc.)
- They offer a lower cost than hosting services that offer similar managed WordPress hosting with bandwidth and storage like Flywheel, WP Engine, or Siteground who offer comparable hosting packages (without the other features) for upwards of $200
- The offer of 1-on-1 coaching with the membership (it’s best when you choose a knowledgeable sponsor)
- An amazing affiliate program with great training and a 40% recurring commission
- Unlimited business email and Email forwarders
Common Positive Feedback
- I made my first dollar online thanks to Wealthy Affiliate!
- “I started making money online because of Wealthy Affiliate”
- “Easy, I was able to start without any online experience and developing a company that earns me a full-time living online.”
- From $0 to a full-time income online
- “The SiteSupport team is amazing and always responds fast”
- Weekly live training is always value-packed and informative
- When I write all of my content in SiteContent it saves me so much time
- “I love being able to get feedback on my website whenever I need it”
- The community is like a family and I’ve gotten so much support from them
Pricing between Bluehost and Wealthy Affiliate
Bluehost has plans that start from $3/mo (but you have to be locked in for 3 years and pay for extras).
Wealthy Affiliate has a free plan that you can sign up for without a credit card. With the free plan, you’ll also get two free WordPress websites, ten free training lessons, and access to the community. – Wealthy Affiliate wins on value and quality!
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Support
Wealthy Affiliate offers quicker and more knowledgeable support in most instances than Bluehost. Wealthy Affiliate Wins!
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Reliability
The uptime and site speeds at Wealthy Affiliate are watched closely by many of the members, and WA is almost always at 99.9% uptime, site speeds are fast, and you’re taught ways to improve speeds. Many sites suggest that Bluehost also has high uptimes and speeds, however, customer complaints are mixed on this. — Wealthy Affiliate wins!
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User-friendliness
Wealthy Affiliate gives a virtual tour upon joining and step-by-step video training on how to build your website, monetize it, and use the various feature and services. Bluehost uses two logons: one for billing and a C-Panel. If you’re new to C-Panel, the service may be very confusing to use, and you’ll need to find Youtube videos and online articles to find answers.–Wealthy Affiliate wins again!
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Features
Wealthy Affiliate offers additional features in addition to hosting: Site content, Sitedomains, Site email, Sitefeedback, Site comments, and a highly engaged social media-style networking platform. Bluehost offers standard hosting. –Wealthy Affiliate wins!
If you feel that you have enjoyed this review please leave a comment and share it. I’m happy to answer any questions.
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Wishing you great success
This is a great article for newbie online marketers to understand the differences between Bluehost and Wealthy Affiliates. Both have a pretty good name in the industry and many influencers are recommending either of them. However, there seems to be key difference between what Bluehost has to offer and what Wealthy Affiliates is. Bluehost is a hosting services which is supposedly a good and fairly priced one. But it seems the main reason why affiliate marketers are recommending it is the high one time commission they earn. That is quite an obvious bit.
Wealthy Affiliates is a complete package for affiliate marketers. Besides hosting, there is a good education and training on subjects which an affiliate marketer would need to know and master. Besides, help is handy for wherever you get stuck.
I believe there is no comparison between Bluehost and Wealthy Affiliate. It is recommended to join Wealthy Affiliate if you really are looking for success in the affiliate marketing field.
Hi Rohit, thanks for your great comments. You obviously are a savvy marketer and appreciate the huge difference between these two companies. We all need support in our business journey.
Wishing you success.
Lily
Thanks for your in-depth review of Wealthy Affiliate vs. Bluehost! Besides being a member at WA, I’ve tested out BlueHost sometimes ago and could compare and contrast between the two platforms. Looking at the site protocols such as site speed, site security, site email, WHOIS registration, and others, Wealthy Affiliate hosting is much cheaper. So I’d love to go for it.
Considering the revenue opportunity for users, the type of WA is rare in the entire affiliate marketing space. You earn $1 just for referring a free starter who’s not yet a premium member.
WA pays a further initial commission of $8 when the free user upgrades for the first time. The monthly commission paid to affiliates is $23.50, and more revenue opportunities are introduced into the system, unlike Bluehost that pays a one-time commission and will pay no more. Thanks.
Joyce
Hi Joyce, it is great that you have looked into both platforms and the cost. It is so important that you do an indepth comparison before launching into a new exciting business.
Glad I could help.
Wow, this is truly an in-depth education course in itself about the comparison of the two, “Bluehost and Wealthy Affiliate.
With so many people surfing the net looking for a lucrative online business, this post will certainly benefit them as to make an informed decision about what type of affiliate marketing business they should join. You provide lots of information, and it is in a clear and precise language that all can understand.
You can never overdo it when you look to start a business, that little word called, “research”, although it is time consuming, but it must be done. Doing your research will definitely set you apart from the rest.
Thanks for your well inform post, very informative.
Nicole,
Hi Nicole, I am so very pleased that you found my article so informative. You are correct that is most important to do your research before starting a business. I’m glad that you found this a help.
I am pleased to see your features including the benefits comparison with Blue Host and Wealthy Affiliate. One can clearly see that W.A. is way better for anyone to start and become successful. W.A. has all the foundations in place to help us. I am a premium member and I am glad I’ve got started with W.A. Before I got started, I knew nothing about creating my own website. Now I can create one anytime I want with all the knowledge I’ve gained. Your article will definitely help people to see clearly to choose W.A. to build their own website that comes with very good support, tons of training, and excellent community based interaction.
Hi John, I am so pleased that this article really struck a note with you. I did a lot of research before I tripped over Wealthy Affiliate and after 18 months of learning and creating my own 2 websites I love it here. It has enormous training and support and it’s so cheap compared to other website hosters, technical help, and security. And don’t get me started on the wonderful community and training courses.
Definitely my first choice.