Bluehost Speed – Is Bluehost Slow? 9 Crucial Tips!

Is Bluehost slow? In this article, I’ll run the numbers on 405 live websites that are hosted by Bluehost in real-time.

Bluehost has become more popular over the last few years, because of its insane discounts and reliable hosting.

Sure, Bluehost will promise you the world on their advertisements and on their landing pages. But hey, you only care about real-life examples, right?

This is what Bluehost promises you when you buy a website with their hosting plan:

Now let’s put this to the test.

One year ago I built a website scanner that allows you to detect Website Builders, plugins, and frequently also the hosting.

When I built this tool, I added one great feature to it. It saves all entries to a database. So at this point, I am sitting on a bunch of very valuable data.

When I’m writing this, there are 405 websites in my database that are being hosted with Bluehost.

Here are the real-life statistics of real-live Bluehost websites.

Bluehost Page speed scores from 405 real-life websites

* Page speed score is a metric that summarizes the overall speed performance

Bluehost Time To Load Full Page (LCP) from 405 real-life websites

* Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) marks the point in the page load timeline when the page’s main content has loaded.

Above you found the 2 most important metrics when it comes to website speed. However, there is a third metric that I would like to show you. 

Even though it’s not fair to blame Bluehost for these scores, I did want to show them to give you some context.

Bluehost Page Size scores from 405 real-life websites

Bluehost page speed analysis

Looking at the page speed scores of Bluehost websites, there are a few things that stand out.

#1 It is definitely possible to have a fast website hosted on Bluehost

As you can tell from the results, the fastest website loads in 0.6 seconds, which is incredibly fast. 

Does this mean Bluehost is fast? Well, it definitely is possible.

#2 Bluehost should educate its customers better at improving page speed

Looking at the average page size, there is a lot that can be improved. With an average page size of 5,175 kb, it’s not surprise that some websites aren’t loading fast. One website even has 23,071 kb to load, causing a horrible website performance.

Bluehost page speed recommendations – 14 mistakes to avoid

Whether you’re considering to purchase a Bluehost subscription, or you’re an existing Bluehost customer – I’ve listed down the biggest mistakes that cause a slow website.

Make sure to avoid each of them, and you’ll be guaranteed of a fast website.

1. Your images are too big

Larger-sized high resolutions can consume a lot of bandwidth, slowing down site loading times. If I were you, I’d consider uploading them in a smaller size. As you do so, don’t let the image quality deteriorate. Use dependable and efficient picture compressing tools to ensure that their visual clarity is still preserved with no drop in quality. 

2. You’re not using proper caching

Caching is the most essential site speed optimization approach. It is the process of saving a copy of your website’s files in a location known as a “web cache”.

Without caching, the client’s browser will repeatedly request your website’s assets (HTML, CSS, JS) from your origin server rather than relying on a local or intermediary cache. Because servers have a limit on the number of requests they can handle concurrently, the lack of cache layers may result in longer response times. When that limit is reached, all requests are queued, resulting in prolonged load times. WP Rocket does a great job at this.

3. The browser begins to load photos all at once

For the clueless ones: your browser attempts to load everything at once by default. If you do not prioritize the photos that must be loaded first, the browser will be too busy to render them all at once. What a complete mess. Instead, focus on the most important images that must be displayed in the visitor’s viewport.

4. You are redirecting users too much

You’re in danger if you have too many redirects on your website. A redirect generates additional HTTP requests, resulting in prolonged load times. With that, you should limit redirection as much as possible because I’m going to be honest with you: people are way more impatient than you think. 

5. You have too many plugins

Many WordPress sites use lots of new plugins behind the curtains. Each one performs a separate file request, which slows down the load time. To solve this issue, go through the plugins on your site and remove those that are no longer needed. The longer you put off removing inactive or harmful plugins, the slower your site will be.

6. Your website’s code is “too large”

Your website will be slower if your code contains needless characters and line breaks. With that, I suggest doing code minification to delete superfluous sections of the code, such as white space and comments.

Remember this: size counts when it comes to your website’s pages. The lower a page’s file size, the quicker it will load for anyone who seeks it. 

People do notice how long it takes a page to load. According to Pingdom research, “24% will exit a site that takes 4 seconds to load, and 38% would abandon the page if it takes 5 seconds.”

Frankly, the weight of your pages will differ “depending” on your organization or industry. If you have an eCommerce website with a lot of photographs, you may probably expect a heavier page weight. It really depends. 

7. You using the wrong formats

The size of your photo is merely one aspect of the issue. Then, the file types you employ also use important storage space. 

Are you utilizing a file format such as TIFF or BMP? If yes, keep in mind that TIFF is an uncompressed format that produces a more detailed image and contains more data, resulting in more storage space. I recommend other formats such as JPEG or PNG to help your site speed.

Want to embed videos? It’s best to use the Youtube embed feature, they’ll do the heavy lifting for you!

8. You’re not using a CDN

When a user’s physical location is far from the server and there is no CDN for your website, the load time increases. These latencies become noticeable because they affect all HTTP requests to the server.

Using a CDN allows users to retrieve the resources needed for the webpage from a server closest to their location. A CDN’s servers are spread across multiple geographical regions. This strategy is more expensive, but it is a great way to optimize the load time of your application. I highly recommend WP Rocket’s CDN.

9. You’re including too much rich content

Avoid including a lot of rich content (e.g., photos, gifs, embedded videos) on your page. Autoplaying videos will also lengthen the time it takes for your page to load. Take it easy. Just put what matters. Less is more than enough if you made it right.

10. Your code is broken

HTML, CSS, or Javascript that is broken or not optimized for speed can significantly slow down the speed of your page.

11. You have broken links

Broken links can increase website loading time and degrade the user experience. Find out how to spot broken links as much as possible because they are SEO killers. Yikes! 

Our entire web and search system is built on links. Spiders regularly crawl the links between websites repetitively. If there are no links to or from your content, search engines will not be able to discover it. 

12. You have JavaScript problems

The availability of JavaScript/jQuery plugins has made adding dynamic content to websites extremely simple. However, if used incorrectly, JavaScript might slow down the page load time of your website.

Loading, interpreting, and executing jQuery and JavaScript takes time. If you use several API requests to render JavaScript/jQuery data, this can cause considerable delays while loading web pages. In fact, one of the most prevalent WordPress bugs that causes page loading delays is JavaScript rendering.

13. You’re using excessive flash content

Although flash content is an excellent tool for bringing interaction to your website, it is almost certainly contributing to your poor page load speed. Flash material is typically large in file size, and the larger the file size, the slower your sites will load.

Reduce the size of your flash files or remove them entirely. If you want to speed up your website, seek HTML5 alternatives. You got this! 

14. You’re having an excessive number of HTTP requests

A large number of JavaScript, CSS, and image files can result in an excessive number of HTTP requests. When a person visits your website, the browser makes numerous requests to load each of these files, which can considerably slow down page load time.

Is Bluehost slow?

It can be. The slowest Bluehost website in this analysis takes more than 22 seconds to load. However, the fastest Bluehost websites loads in 0.6 seconds. Take a look at the recommendations in this article to speed up your Bluehost website.

Why is Bluehost slow?

A slow Bluehost website is most likely caused by poor website configurations. In this analysis I’ve seen Bluehost websites that load within 0.6 seconds, so having a fast Bluehost website is definitely possible. Take a look at the recommendations in this article to speed up your Bluehost website.

How to improve Bluehost page speed?

You can improve your Bluehost website page speed by following the recommendations in this article. Here are my two quick-win recommendations: #1 Get a good caching plugin for your website. #2 Compress all images to reduce your page size.