Whether you’re a music artist, filmmaker, photographer, animator, or any other kind of artist, Bluehost has a web hosting plan for you.
But the question is: which Bluehost plan is best for artists?
The answer is simple: The Bluehost Basic Plan which costs $2.95/month or the Standard VPS plan which costs $29.99/month – depending on your needs and budget.
I have been hosting this blog you are reading on Bluehost since 2019.
This is my proof:
And I have explored Bluehost hosting to the extent of reviewing Bluehost shared hosting, dedicated hosting, and the plan suitable for small businesses.
I have recommended the best Bluehost hosting plan to my fellow bloggers.
Now I’m here to explain to you why Bluehost Basic Plan or Bluehost Standard VPS Plan is best for you as an artist.
Bluehost Basic Plan: Best for beginner artists on a low budget
If you’re a beginner artist who is yet to make money from their creative work, chances are you are on a tight budget.
So you need an affordable Bluehost plan that will allow you to host your website to grow your online presence, showcase your portfolio and establish your brand identity.
The Bluehost Basic Plan offers all the features you need to get started without breaking the bank.
The $2.95/month hosting has resources for beginner artists. For example, it guarantees 99.9% uptime, offers a free domain for the first year, and automatic WordPress installation which is the content management system many artists use.
At least you can upload your music albums if you are a musician, display some of your photographic work if you’re a photographer, or any artistic work you want the world to see online.
Another thing is that it saves costs if you don’t intend to run a complex website as an artist.
Let’s say you just want to host a single website where your target clients can learn about your services. It’s a waste of resources to go for Bluehost Standard VPS Plan when the Basic Plan which costs $2.95/month can do it.
Let’s look at the features of the Bluehost Basic Plan and how they benefit you as an artist.
Features of Bluehost Basic Plan
10 GB SSD Storage – As a beginner, this is enough storage to keep any artistic work you upload or store on your website. And for users to access it at a faster rate.
Free CDN ( Content Delivery Network) – Bluehost partners with Cloudflare to make this free plan possible. With CDN, your target audience can access and consume your artistic work faster irrespective of their location in the world.
Let’s assume you’re a photographer in the US. With CDN, your audience in Israel can assess your content at the same speed as your audience who resides in the US will.
1 Website – Of course, you can host only one website on the Bluehost Basic Plan.
That doesn’t sound like a downside but to me because as a beginner artist, it’s expected you make your first site successful before you start another one. And if need be, you can upgrade to higher plans like Choice Plus and plans which are still Bluehost shared hosting packages.
Customer Support – 24/7 support through phone or live chat
Custom WP Themes – After installing WordPress in your Bluehost Basic Plan hosting, you need themes to design it. Bluehost provides you with custom WP themes most of which are free to use. You can use them to design the layout of your site.
Of course, they have limitations, but you can manage them until you have money to subscribe to premium themes.
Free SSL certificates – This is a security feature that uses an encrypted connection to protect your sensitive information and that of your customers. Your audience will want to be sure your site is safe, so they always look at the address bar to see the lock key icon when they load your pages. This suggests that your site has SSL certificates.
Domain manager – You may need to update or even change your domain name. Bluehost’s domain manager handles this seamlessly.
Google My Business – As an artist, you may want an audience within your locality to find you by performing a simple search on Google. Listing your business on Google My Business makes it easy.
Let’s assume you are a music DJ in Nebraska, United States. An audience who wants a DJ around Nebraska can easily find you if you list your business on GMB. That’s a way of getting leads.
However, it’s not all glitz and glam with Bluehost Basic Plan.
As a shared hosting, you share a server with another site and your site will be impacted once you run out of hosting resources in the event of a traffic spike. Plus, it doesn’t support Root Access which allows you to customize and allocate resources.
Another is that you pay more when you want to renew your hosting since the discount you enjoyed in your first year of hosting won’t apply again.
For example, I paid $97.08 to renew my Basic Plan hosting for one year in 2020. This is higher than the $35.4 I paid in 2019 for my first year of hosting.
Let’s move to the other best Bluehost plan for artists – Bluehost Standard VPS plan
Standard VPS Plan – Best for artists that want to scale their sites
You need the Standard VPS plan which costs $29.99/month if you plan to scale your sites as an artist. By this, I mean adding more pages and uploading large files of creative works. The VPS plan is different from the shared hosting plan which the Basic Plan falls under.
Here, you have a server partitioned to you, and you have full control over it. You can customize and allocate resources using Root Access for optimal performance. Keep in mind that uploading heavy files which is common in artistic websites requires many hosting resources.
The Standard VPS plan of Bluehost takes care of it. You enjoy high RAM, core CPU, SSD storage, and unlimited bandwidth. These are hosting resources that guarantee high processing power.
Features of Standard VPS Plan
2 GB RAM – Your server will need this to store and run applications. And as an artist, your audience may flood your site to download your latest artistic work. You need a minimum of 2GB RAM to host this traffic and process their requests faster.
2 Core CPU – This is the brain of the server which processes different requests from users. Having 2 core CPU is a boost considering that you may display a lot of your artistic works on your site and your audience will engage them via download, on-demand streaming, and lots more. In addition, it guarantees 99.9% uptime, so no worries about frequent server downtime.
120 SSD storage – This is enough to store and deliver files. And you can even customize and allocate it within your server if you manage multiple websites.
Unmetered bandwidth – You can upload and download data within your site without restriction. This simply means that Bluehost won’t measure the rate at which data flows in your site. This is good for a website where your audience will want to access your creative work at a higher speed.
Access Control – You can use it to create a password for ownership access and even a master password to access every including server administration.
Root Access – Use it to modify and customize resources in your VPS hosting. For example, you can create unlimited file transfer protocols which you need to upload and download files on your server.
Multi-server Management – Add other servers like shared or dedicated hosting services to your VPS account and manage them all from a single dashboard.
24/7 Support – A customer support agent is available to help you any time via live chat or phone
Host Unlimited Websites – As an artist, you can host different websites on your VPS plan. Let’s assume you started your first site to show the world your photography skills. Soon after you learned how to edit professional videos and now want to have a site where people can hire your services. Instead of hosting it separately, you can just buy a domain and host it on your Standard VPS plan since it allows you to host unlimited sites. That saves you costs and makes it easy to manage your portfolio of business websites.
Dedicated Processing Power – You don’t share resources with any site. All the server resources partitioned to you are exclusively yours, and you can customize them to suit your needs. This is one of the things I like about VPS hosting.
Think of it as renting an apartment where only you enjoy all the facilities in it versus shared hosting in the case of Bluehost Basic Plan where you share it with others.
As good as the Standard VPS plan is to host your sites as an artist, there are a few challenges with it.
Leveraging the Root Access to allocate and customize resources isn’t what a non-techie person can handle. So if you aren’t tech-savvy, you may need to hire a web hosting expert to help you manage your hosting on Bluehost VPS.
Another is that just like Bluehost Basic plan, the renewal price of Standard VPS is higher. And the reason remains that the discount you enjoyed in your first year of hosting doesn’t apply again.
This is an advantage Namecheap VPS which has its renewal price the same as the first year price has over Bluehost.
What you should consider as an artist when choosing a web hosting plan
As an artist, you are in the creative field and there are certain things you should look for in a web hosting plan to suit your nature of job.
Ease of Use
You need a web hosting plan that you can set up and manage yourself without any assistance. Oftentimes you will upload files on your site, renew your hosting, install software, and troubleshoot issues. Bluehost Basic plan makes all these like a breeze. And with your content managed on WordPress, you have everything under control.
Budget
Consider your budget when choosing a hosting plan. It doesn’t just end at paying for hosting the first year. Renewing it when it’s about to expire to keep your site live is where the financial burden is. That’s why I recommend Bluehost Basic plan which costs 2.95/month to beginner artists that want to host their site. It’s affordable, and you won’t break the bank to renew it.
Feature
There are features to look for in web hosting. For example, you need SSL certificates, good RAM, core CPU, and sizable SSD storage to start with. All these are what you can get on Bluehost Basic plan. And of course, you can get more if you choose the Standard VPS plan.
Customer Support
This is one of the top things to consider when choosing web hosting. Sometimes you may have issues with your hosting. It’s only the customer support team of your hosting that comes to your rescue. I like the support team at Bluehost. They have always been helpful anytime I call on them. You can contact them through live chat or phone.
Recently, I had a few issues while trying to renew my hosting. I sent a message via live chat and within 5 minutes, one of their agents joined and assisted me with the renewal. Also, there was a time I wanted to fix issues with Cloudflare that required me to contact my host. They responded and assisted me to resolve it in a few minutes. I must confess their customer support is friendly.
FAQs on best Bluehost plan for artists
Let’s look at major questions artists ask about Bluehost plan
Is Bluehost good for artists?
Yes, Bluehost is good for artists. In terms of affordability, ease of use, security, and management of content, it’s second to none. Artists need web hosting that is design-friendly, guarantees a good uptime, and offers a great processing power. You get that in Bluehost Basic plan or Bluehost Standard VPS plan.
What is the best website host for artists?
Bluehost is the best for artists. It’s affordable, easy to manage, and offers features artists need in a web host like awesome WP themes, option to install WooCommerce to design an online store for artists that want to sell their creative work, and lots more.
Do artists need their website?
Yes, artists need their website to grow their online presence, build brands, display creative work, and sell their products. The digital age has made it compulsory as many of their fans and supporters are online.
Is Bluehost best for artists to sell their creative works?
Yes, Bluehost has an online store plan that is designed for artists and other users that want to sell their products. It costs $9.95/month and offers awesome store themes to design it. You can also host your site on Bluehost Basic plan and install Woocommerce as a plugin to run your online store.
Final thought on best Bluehost plans for artists
As a beginner artist on a tight budget, Bluehost Basic plan offers all you need to get started with the hosting of your site. I have explained all the features you get including a free domain and SSL certificates for the first year.
And if funding isn’t an issue, consider Standard VPS plan that allows you to host unlimited sites, and allocate resources within your server.
It offers higher RAM, SSD storage, core CPU, and unlimited bandwidth you need to host large files and traffic your site may experience.
