BlueHost is bad value
Posted on 17 August, 2023
Having recently set up the Dolwen Solutions website, which is costing an entire £10 per year to run, I though it was worth seeing how much it costs to run this site.
BlueHost Costs
The answer — BlueHost is charging me nearly £250 per year. For that I get:
- domain registration
- hosting (up to three sites and some very healthy usage that I don't need)
- WordPress install for the site
- emails related to my domain
There's an option for a cheaper package that doesn't include the three sites (that I don't need), but that would still be somewhere close to £200 per year.
Another Way
An alternative solution:
- use Cloudflare for domain registration — circa £10
- use Netlify (other services are available!) for hosting — potentially free
- either set up email on a custom domain using iCloud (free), or use someone like Hover to get a managed email service — starting at $20
The only negative? Not being able to use WordPress — which isn't a drawback for me, I've felt quite constrained by WordPress. In theory it has the benefit of being able to write posts on any device (using the WordPress app on phone or tablet for instance) but in practice I've found that the apps are buggy and making any change is clunky.
What To Do
My BlueHost renewal isn't for months (sometime spring 2024) so plenty of time to work on a replacement site. I'll definitely be using a Static Site Generator, just need to decide whether it's Gatsby or Eleventy. Gatsby has the benefit that I can write components in JSX/React, but comes with more overhead and baggage then Eleventy ... I'll let you know which route I go.
