Shopify Vs. Bluehost – In-Depth Comparison

Shopify vs. Bluehost comparison is about taking an in-depth look at the performance, features, pros and cons, prices, and lots more. It helps in choosing popular online platforms and websites.

Shopify offers an excellent gateway for payment, and users get to access deals with a support team. They can also get the eCommerce issues sorted all day. Most queries are solved in a short time with Shopify online that which is much preferred by users.

Bluehost is a prominent name for web hosting, and it allows building an eCommerce site and running it. However, Shopify is solely for running online stores, and so there is a difference. 

Shopify vs. Bluehost -Performance

The significance of a reliable and speedy web host cannot be taken for granted with eCommerce platforms. A slow website has a direct impact on sales. It may take more than 8 seconds for any slow site to load, and the result is less than 60% conversions, and it has a direct impact that users end losing money.

The users are impatient with online shopping and find it hard to trust the eCommerce stores that fail to load quickly. It gives rise to a doubt in the shopper’s mind if the platform is trustworthy to process payments and results in a loss of potential customers.

Uptime is also critical while referring to performance. The platform should run and must be up at all times. If your uptime lacks or the site is down, a customer will look elsewhere and soon turn to your competitors. 

Both Shopify vs. Bluehost for sales are capable of handling traffic spikes. The marketing campaigns manage heavy traffic. The results show that both web hosts support eCommerce stores from medium to high traffic, even on testing. 

Shopify vs. Bluehost- Pricing

Shopify users have the option of choosing from several tiered plans with different features, so users with a single monthly payment can set up and run a site as they choose.  The hosting plans range per month from $29 to over $200, while it is easy for Shopify users to budget and run an online store.

Bluehost, wooCommerce is free. However, setting a storefront online requires a WordPress site, and it means there is a need to buy a domain name and a hosting account. In addition, however, users buy various WooCommerce extensions and themes or plugins to run the site. Yet, it is difficult to predict how much a WooCommerce site costs and any cost changes that require new components.

Shopify and WooCommerce are top choices to set up and run an online store. Both platforms make launching a new venture in eCommerce possible.

Shopify vs. Bluehost- Server Infrastructure

Shopify vs. BlueHost, whatever you choose, be certain that the website hosting will be on a high-performance platform. Both hosts provide fast SSD storage to a server stack optimized for reliability and speed. Yet, a few differences are there.

Shopify does not have a hosting infrastructure. Instead, it uses Google Cloud Platform servers that are the fastest cloud infrastructure. On signing up with Shopify, there is Shopify CMS already preinstalled as a provisioned server for you. Therefore, most optimizations are managed for you, and it is not to advantage when you wish to select your cache plugins.

Bluehost offers proprietary hosting services and a data center. It does not make it better, but it also specializes in web hosting than eCommerce. You get additional information about your account and more bandwidth and storage space.

Shopify vs. Bluehost both have servers in the US. So, online stores addressing audiences from the US enjoy excellent loading speeds all across the US states. While targeting non-US customers or some other global audience may be lightly problematic as there is no way of choosing a data center from other regions.

Shopify vs. Bluehost -Page Loading Speeds

Shopify is impressive. Of course, the Google cloud platform is newer to Bluehost, but it offers a speedy network. It provides a great speed in page loading as the platform uses CGP and several optimization tools to promote its performance. Shopify keeps hidden its caching system. Thus, it allows beginners to boost the site performance effortlessly. However, web admins wishing to peek under the hood and optimizations may get irritated with this platform.

Bluehost is a giant web host, and the track record has been consistent for all sizes of websites. Choosing a plan appropriately and taking into account the visitor’s numbers daily ensures no sluggish site. Bluehost offers good results and convenience with a dedicated Bluehost hub. The page loading speeds are excellent to complete within two seconds. Bluehost has specific plans designed for eCommerce, and there is more freedom to customize.

Shopify vs. Bluehost- CDN

CDN refers to the content delivery network. It helps to improve the performance of a site. It ensures a cached version such that your website stores local servers. Thus, a user trying to access sites stays connected to the nearby server, then the data center.

Shopify vs. Bluehost has an integrated CDN that there is no need to spend time getting set up. Shopify users the CDN faster, and Bluehost also has the free Cloudflare version of CDN. Both are impressive with performance, and it is done speedily. Though Shopify claims to do faster, it is a bit slower to Cloudfare system. Besides, Bluehost allows customizing each aspect of your website and account.

Shopify vs. Bluehost – Uptime, speed, and reliability

Shopify and Bluehost promise 99.9% uptime as a minimum for online stores, and it is average. Both web hosts recorded after testing the uptime for several months as Shopify with 99.99% and Bluehost with 99.96%. The same is with their high-performance infrastructures, and the tests also confirm they both are the best hosts for online stores.

Both web hosts do not provide a guarantee of proper uptime. However, the providers provide some compensation in their service agreement for excessive downtime. Even monitoring Shopify vs. Bluehost’s performance on many occasions, the results are impressive each time. The difference is that Bluehost offers more freedom to optimize and configure the website. 

Shopify vs. Bluehost – Ease of Use

Shopify vs. Bluehost keep the ease of use. The key purpose is that they can set up an account, even with zero experience. Thus, they can connect a domain and ensure it appears good on all platforms by creating an online beautiful store. 

Shopify is easier slightly than Bluehost, with eCommerce. Shopify offers everything required to create an already set online store by the time one logs in. Focusing on website building is easier, and you need not bother about the speed, plugins, or security. Shopify is PCI-compliant. You may directly process payments.

Besides, there is a checkout system and complete cart built into the platform straight that there is no need to install the software to make it work.  Shopify has a CMS, and so the platform is easier for online business management. It includes design and website hosting, besides order processing, inventory management, social media integrations, and lots more.

Bluehost is a different type of service. It is simple to start and to host any of the WooCommerce plans. It is because the Storefront themes, WooCommerce, and WordPress are pre-installed. However, it does take some extra time to set all the plugins right from cart, site optimization to payment processing.

Bluehost allows website customizing the way you want it exactly. Using WooCommerce or other frameworks to build a site is possible and adding functions, as well. Bluehost lets its online store do more things, but to familiarize and get the service will take time, and in comparison, Shopify is quicker.

Shopify vs. Bluehost – Customer Support

Both Shopify vs. Bluehost offers 24/7 comprehensive customer support through email, live chat, and phone. Therefore, it is a must to know how to provide good support. Yet, it is not free from drawbacks.

Both web hosts support their agents willingly and politely. However, with technical questions, the information is not clear. Customer support is available such that additional assistance is given with coding, web development, and debugging while it is expensive. Bluehost has a tech support BlueSky as their tier. You get assistance and priority support on activating BlueSky with WooCommerce and WordPress issues. It does not come for free.

The customer support of Shopify is also great, but with Bluehost, you can get more tech support on paying a modest fee. Thus, you get to save a lot of time and launching a business without technical issues. 

Shopify vs. Bluehost -Search Engine Optimization

Shopify and Bluehost have nothing to worry about SEO. Optimizing a website is possible, and there is no need for additional work.

Shopify offers an SEO-ready website structure, and it means it has automated optimization tasks. For example, the name of the store and the title tags get generated automatically, the same as the canonical tags assisting in preventing duplicate content from appearing in search results. In addition, Shopify generates the website’s sitemap and gives a simple way of editing title tags, Meta descriptions, and URLs.

Bluehost has WooCommerce working, a WordPress plugin mainly for online stores. Unfortunately, there are not many SEO features with WooCommerce. Instead, it builds using SEO-friendly code for your website. However, if you are looking for more features or facilities, get an additional plugin installed.

WooCommerce is integrated seamlessly with WordPress, and using SEO plugins such as Yoast are popular. Using Yoast, Bluehost can also do all that Shopify does, such as setting automated canonical URLs, while others require optimization and keyword research to do for yourself.

Shopify vs. Bluehost -Security

Shopify and Bluehost give security of similar levels for your admin area and website. However, the edge is with Shopify as it offers the best features such as credit card protection and anti-fraud. Shopify stores are by default PCI compliant, while Bluehost needs to apply for compliance. There is a lengthy process for verification before obtaining a license. 

Shopify offers automatic backups and SSL certificates as inclusions with all the plans. It also offers anti-fraud systems to keep the potential fraudulent orders away. In addition, the credit card information of all the customers is safe, and there is nothing as extra add-ons to pay to keep a store secure. 

Though both web hosts have security features, the drawback of Bluehost is users must buy an add-on for website security.

Shopify vs. Bluehost – Scalability

Shopify vs. Bluehost are the best platforms to scale a growing business. The difference is in pricing. With Shopify, things are different. It gets costly. Shopify offers a solution as enterprise-grade, and it is seven times expensive than Shopify Advanced and expensive by 20 times than the premium dedicated Bluehost server setup. For medium or small businesses, it may be tough to afford managed services. Shopify provides cloud hosting.

Bluehost accesses web hosting services in a wide range, and it includes shared hosting to dedicated and VPS servers. The provider offers on sale several plans for each hosting type and ensures its suits all budget types. In addition, Bluehost provides a dedicated single-tenant, safer server.

The machines are not shared with users, and it offers additional customization besides ensuring a better and secured account. Bluehost provides a suitable portfolio for growing businesses that beginning with some shared hosting cheap plan for WooCommerce is enough and to scale up if required. There is no need to deal with it unless there is some overwhelming traffic to start.

Shopify vs. Bluehost -Hands-off software maintenance

Shopify and Bluehost carry routine updates. However, the updates of Shopify happen automatically. So it will have immediate access to the latest features before you have any time to read the details.

Bluehost updates also take place automatically. It requires you to keep an eye on different things to get an update. It also includes themes, plugins, and WordPress software. There is manual intervention required for themes and plugins not offered by Bluehost or WordPress.

Shopify vs. Bluehost- Final thoughts

Make the right decision with Shopify vs. Bluehost. Shopify uses various free layouts with the client to begin with. Clients of Shopify include individual sellers and web-based media selling out storage compartments. This web offers the convenience that the goal requires no plans. It means it allows even an amateur to begin with, and you get on the spot to work with here.

Bluehost is known for its setup of asset insurance agreements offering the guarantee of shard facilities to the clients. It is the reason Bluehost has smooth to rough clients working on the same platform. Clients and customers introduce using SimpleScripts the application.