When considering hosting providers for your site, it definitely matters how long a platform has been in the business for. Two long-time players in the hosting industry you can look into are Bluehost and Media Temple, both of which have over 20 years of experience under their belt. That said, they’re different in a lot of ways and are suitable for different kinds of sites. To help you decide which one’s better for yours, here’s an in-depth look at their performance, security, ease of use, and huge difference in pricing.

Bluehost vs Media Temple Comparison Chart

Performance

Bluehost and Media Temple use top-notch hardware and boast of impressive uptime and page loading times.

Server infrastructure plays a big role in a hosting provider’s performance. Fortunately, both Bluehost and Media Temple use top-notch hardware. While Bluehost only has one data center that’s based in the US, they make use of SSD storage and Cloudflare CDN. So even if your visitors are outside of the US, they can still enjoy fantastic speeds. As for Media Temple, they make use of something called The Grid which is basically a special cluster of servers. This network is able to create a shared hosting environment that’s similar to public cloud hosting, boasting of speed and efficiency.

While Bluehost and Media Temple have impeccable server infrastructure, they’re built to do different things and serve different needs. Bluehost is well-known for their shared hosting plans and their infrastructure is a much better match for small to medium websites. These include personal blogs, small-scale e-commerce businesses, and business presentation websites. As for Media Temple, managed cloud hosting is where they truly shine, taking advantage of Amazon Web Service’s (AWS) servers. This makes them better suited to bigger sites with an enormous budget (we’ll talk about pricing later).

Differences aside, Bluehost and Media Temple are both ahead of the pack when it comes to uptime. Both have a 99.9% uptime guarantee and statistics show that these two providers are actually able to keep and even go beyond this promise. They’re neck and neck when it comes to page loading times as well, both able to deliver quick results even when there are several user requests to process.

Security

While both Bluehost and Media Temple have security features in place, you have to pay extra for most of them.

Security features are a must-have for all hosting providers because threats such as malware, hackers, DDoS attacks, and data breaches are all too real in the cyber world. While both Bluehost and Media Temple do have security measures in place, it’s unfortunate that you have to pay extra for most of them. This is especially true for Media Temple because while other providers usually offer SSL certificates for free, they ask for an additional fee before they give you one. You also have to fork over quite a hefty sum if you want the add-on that keeps your site free of malware.

As for Bluehost, they’re slightly more generous, providing their users with free SSL certificates. To boot, DDoS protection and 24/7 monitoring are standard features for all their plans. If, however, you want malware scanning and removal, you’ll have to purchase the SiteLock Essential add-on. As for automated backups, you can enjoy them for free for the first year but you’ll be charged extra for the succeeding years. If you don’t want to keep paying for this feature, you can always upgrade to the Pro plan or subscribe to any of the managed WordPress plans.

In short, both Bluehost and Media Temple can do better when it comes to securing their users’ sites. After all, other providers are already offering these security features without any additional charges.

Ease of Use

Both hosting providers are easy to use but Bluehost goes a step further by providing a step-by-step set-up guide.

When it comes to ease of use, it’s good news that both Bluehost and Media Temple use the cPanel control panel for all their plans. So even if you don’t know anything about coding, building your website shouldn’t be too much of a problem. However, Bluehost has a slight edge in this department because they provide you with an easy-to-follow to-do list that covers everything from WordPress installation, finding the appropriate plugins, and SEO. With Media Temple, you’re kind of left to your own devices which could be daunting for beginners.

That said, creating and launching your own site should be a fairly painless process with either hosting providers. Aside from the familiar cPanel dashboard, they also have one-click installations for your favorite CMS platforms. To boot, you have the option to download a website builder so that it’s that much easier to design your site. BoldGrid and Elementor are good examples of drag-and-drop builders you can use, both of which are free and easy to download. Bluehost also supports Weebly, another popular fool-proof website builder.

Pricing

Bluehost wins by a mile for having much lower rates and more inclusions in their plans.

Pricing is where the gap between Bluehost and Media Temple truly widens. It would be an understatement to say that Media Temple is more expensive because you have to pay around ten times more for their services, whether it be VPS, shared hosting, or managed WordPress hosting. So if you’re on a tight budget, it would definitely be wiser to go with Bluehost. Not only are they more affordable by a mile, but they also include more freebies. Their most basic plan, for example, is cheaper than anything you can get at Media Temple but it already comes with one website, unlimited bandwidth, and a generous storage allotment of 50GB.

If, however, you’re looking for cloud hosting, Bluehost doesn’t offer this service so you’re stuck with Media Temple. While cloud hosting is their area of expertise and it’s what they’re most known for, their rates are still unbelievably pricey and quite difficult to justify. This is especially true when you start to factor in things like CDN and SSL certificates which Media Temple doesn’t offer for free. It might be better to turn to other cloud hosting providers instead.

Verdict

Bluehost is the better option for most sites while Media Temple is only really good for larger sites in need of cloud hosting.

While Bluehost and Media Temple are both old-time players with plenty of experience to boast of, it’s clear who our winner is. Bluehost takes this one for a couple of good reasons, starting off with the fact that they offer better value for money. For a fraction of the cost, you get similar performance in terms of uptime and loading speeds as well as more free inclusions such as an SSL certificate. To boot, Bluehost is slightly more beginner-friendly, thanks to their step-by-step set-up guide. While we’re not saying that Media Temple is a bad hosting provider by any means, they’re definitely not for everyone. They’re only really good for larger sites that need AWS solutions.

FAQs

The post Bluehost vs Media Temple (2021): Two Old-Timers With A Huge Price Difference appeared first on Instructify.