Bluehost vs Wix: We Compare Price, Speed, and Features

Wix and Bluehost offer two very different web hosting experiences, but Bluehost is the better choice overall. Bluehost gives you total control and flexibility over your hosting, its plans are cheaper than Wix’s, and Bluehost offers specialized support for WordPress sites.

In comparison, Wix is a traditional website builder. Your site exists within its ecosystem, and is hosted by Wix, giving you access to all of Wix’s built-in features and support. But, you’re locked into the platform, making it harder to migrate your site in the future.

Is Bluehost Better Than Wix for Hosting?

Following our 2026 testing, Bluehost is a better web host than Wix because of its flexibility and scalability. Plus, it’s been officially recommended by WordPress since 2005, making it our top choice for websites built with the CMS. With all hosting plans, you’ll get 24/7 expert support, free WordPress migration, automatic updates, and more.

Bluehost also offers a range of hosting types (including dedicated hosting plans), making it easy for high-traffic businesses to scale if they need more power and storage. It also gives you more choice to pick a plan that suits your goals – with Wix, you have limited plans to choose from, meaning you could be paying for more than you actually need.

Who Should Use Wix?

Wix is a better option for time-sensitive small businesses and beginners looking for easy website management tools. Bluehost gives you absolute control, but it means you have to fix any technical or security issues yourself, whereas Wix handles all of this for you. However, it’s at the cost of your site’s freedom.

You can design and manage your site with Wix, but it’s a Wix site at the end of the day. You’re limited to what Wix can offer, and swapping to a different platform means starting from scratch again. And, as a website builder first, you can’t scale your Wix site with different hosting plans if you need more power and better performance.

Bluehost vs Wix: Head-to-Head Comparison

I’ve put Bluehost and Wix head-to-head in the table below so you can see which one wins when it comes to types of hosting plans, storage space, uptime guarantee, and other hosting must-haves:

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		Starting from	Renewal price	Types of hosting	Money-back guarantee	AI website builder	Number of sites	Storage space	Uptime guarantee	Server locations	Free domain	SSL certificate	Email accounts	WordPress migration	Automated backups	Security features	24/7 support
WINNER
Bluehost	Wix
$3.99	$17 (or $0 with free plan)
From $9.99 per month	From $17 per month
Shared, WordPress, WooCommerce, VPS, dedicated	Cloud
30 days	14 days
Bluehost AI Site Creation tool	AI website builder + Wix Harmony
10 – 100	1
10 – 3,000GB NVMe SSD	500MB – Unlimited
99.99%	99.99%
USA, Canada, Germany, France, UK, Spain, India, Brazil, Australia	USA, Israel, Brazil, Mexico, Luxembourg, Lithuania, India, Germany, Ireland, UK, Ukraine (+ global multi-cloud networks)
Free for 1 year	Free for 1 year
Free	Free
1 month free trial (then $2.99/month)	From $7/month
Free	Manual
Weekly	Weekly + on-demand
Malware scanning, web application firewall, DDoS protection, weekly website backups, SiteLock Essentials, Codeguard, domain privacy	Data encryption, 24/7 monitoring, PCI DSS Level 1 certification, anti-fraud protection, TPRM program, DDoS protection, vulnerability checks
Live chat, phone	Phone, AI
Visit Bluehost	Try Wix

Is Bluehost Cheaper Than Wix?

Bluehost’s introductory prices are cheaper than Wix’s plans, but once the discounts end, Wix’s all-inclusive model is more cost-effective. With Bluehost, your total costs will increase quickly with its modular add-ons, such as email and security.

While Wix does offer a limited free plan, Wix’s premium plans range from $17 to $159 per month (billed annually):

Bluehost’s pricing ranges from $3.99 to $144.19 per month (for a 36-month term), depending on the hosting type chosen:

Which Web Host Performs Better?

Both Bluehost and Wix performed well when it comes to speed and uptime, so it’s a tie.

For US server response time, Bluehost is faster, with an average speed of 580ms. In comparison, Wix’s server response time is slightly slower at 650ms. That said, Wix has a larger range of global data centers and CDNs, as well as support from its multi-cloud hosting network.

And, both Bluehost and Wix offer a 99.99% uptime guarantee. This is high in the industry, with other major web hosts offering a lower guarantee of 99.9% (such as Hostinger and GoDaddy). While Bluehost and Wix will always aim for 100% uptime, a 99.99% guarantee means your business might only face up to four minutes of downtime per month.

What the Community Says

Both Bluehost and Wix are credible platforms, but they offer different experiences.

Bluehost is praised for its WordPress-optimized plans and recommended by WordPress officially. This is where the majority of its positive reputation comes from, but Bluehost does face criticism for its billing and renewal traps, with introductory prices being much lower than the standard rates. Users are also wary of its ownership by Newfold Digital (formerly EIG), since the company is known for poor support.

Wix also faces its share of positive and negative reviews. The website builder has been widely recognized for its beginner-friendly drag-and-drop editor, large suite of built-in features, and its smooth onboarding for getting your site live quickly. That said, I’ve found its editor to be slow to use during tests, and Wix’s closed ecosystem can make it difficult to migrate platforms.

Summary: Should You Choose Bluehost or Wix?

After reviewing both platforms, I recommend choosing Bluehost as your web host over Wix. It offers great plans for WordPress sites, 24/7 support, and cheap introductory prices (from $3.99 per month). Bluehost is also more scalable than Wix given its flexible plans, migration options, and performance capabilities.

Wix is a better option if you’re looking for a website builder and aren’t comfortable managing all of your website’s security, updates, and hosting yourself. While this can be convenient, you’ll get more control over your site with Bluehost.

Written By

Emma Ryan

Emma is Deputy Editor of MVF’s B2B brands, specializing in website builders, ecommerce, marketing, and vibe coding. Emma combines her wealth of knowledge and years of hands-on testing with a passion for helping small businesses and website owners navigate the highs and lows of being online. Her work has been featured in Newsweek, Digiday, TechRound, and Industry Today.

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Reviewed By

Natasha Willett Lead Researcher

Natasha brings her expert credentials – a BSc, Ma, and MMRS – to Website Builder Expert. Natasha has qualifications in Advanced Statistical Analysis, MRS certificate in Market Research, Brand, Finding the Story in the Data, and Big Data: Measuring and Predicting Human Behaviour. These have allowed her to carefully analyze over 64 providers across website builders, ecommerce web builders, and hosting.

Natasha began building websites when studying sports science, originally using Weebly to create websites to help students learn in a more interactive way. During her first week at Website Builder Expert, she realized that website builders would become important in giving business owners full control over their websites. She began creating a rigorous methodology of research that centered around testing providers and products against a large set of mixed criteria turned into quantitative findings, comparing value for money, design, ease of use, and more. All to provide the most honest and objective insights rather than just looking at their claimed features.

In five years at Website Builder Expert, Natasha has attended multiple expos in her field, including ESOMAR, MRS, eCommerce Expo, Ad World, Digital Customer Engagement Summit, and IMRG, just to name a few. Natasha has also worked alongside website builders directly to share her research with them, so that they might improve their products for users.

She’s clocked an impressive 9,600 hours of product research and testing, pulling data from multiple sources and providing the Website Builder Expert team with the scores and product details they need to give you the best recommendations to succeed online.

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