I built a website on Bluehost four separate ways: buying a dedicated WordPress hosting plan, adding a site through an existing plan’s Websites tab, reimaging a VPS with a one-click WordPress install, and running the standalone AI Website Builder from a single prompt. Here is what each path actually involves, and which one fits which kind of project.
Most people assume “building a website on Bluehost” means one workflow. It does not. Bluehost has four separate entry points into a live WordPress site, and they are not interchangeable.
One assumes you have nothing yet and want a single checkout to handle everything. Another assumes you already have server space sitting there. A third only makes sense if you run your own VPS. The fourth skips WordPress’s admin panel almost entirely in favor of an AI tool that writes and edits the site for you.
Picking the wrong one costs you time. Someone who already pays for a Bluehost plan and buys a second WordPress Hosting package on top of it has doubled a cost that method two would have avoided for free. Someone chasing a fully custom AI-written layout who ends up in the templated AI Site Creator instead is going to be disappointed by how generic the result looks.
I went through all four paths end to end to map out exactly where each one starts, what it asks of you along the way, and who it is actually built for.
The Four Ways to Build a Website on Bluehost
| Method | What You Need Already | Skill Required | Cost | Time to a Live Site |
| Buy a WordPress Hosting plan | Nothing | Low | New hosting cost | Under 15 minutes |
| Add a site through the Websites tab | An existing Bluehost hosting plan | Low | Free (already paid for) | Under 15 minutes |
| Reimage a VPS or VDS | An existing Self-Managed VPS or VDS | Moderate to high | Free (already paid for) | A few minutes for the install itself |
| Use the AI Website Builder | Nothing (runs on its own trial) | Low | Free trial, paid to keep it live | Under 15 minutes |
Before you pick a lane, understand the naming collision buried in this list.
Two of these four paths hand your first draft to an AI tool, and Bluehost gave both tools names that sound almost interchangeable. AI Site Creator sits inside the Websites tab (Method 2) and works from a form: you fill in a title, a description, and a site category, and it hands you a short list of pre-built templates to pick from.
AI Website Builder is a separate standalone product with its own signup flow, and it writes a custom multi-page site from a full written prompt, not a form field, then lets you keep editing it by clicking elements, chatting, or opening the raw code.
If someone told you to try Bluehost’s “AI website builder” and you land inside the Websites tab, you are in the wrong tool. Jump to Method 4 instead.
Method 1: Buy a WordPress Hosting Plan
Think of this as the bundle option. You are not installing WordPress as a separate task, you are buying hosting that comes with WordPress already sitting on it the moment the transaction clears.
For someone with zero existing Bluehost footprint, this collapses two decisions (buy hosting, then install a CMS) into one.
Step 1: Find the WordPress Hosting Plan Page
WordPress Hosting is its own product line inside Bluehost’s Hosting menu, separate from general Web Hosting or VPS.
On the plan page, tiers are broken out mainly by how much traffic and how many sites you expect to run, not by raw server specs the way a VPS listing would present them.
A single blog and a five-site agency account should not land on the same tier, and picking a tier too small here is the kind of mistake that shows up later as a slow site under actual traffic rather than something you notice at signup.
Step 2: Check Pricing Before You Choose a Plan
Before you land on a tier, pull up any current promotional coupons Bluehost is running. Hosting companies rotate discount codes and first-term pricing constantly, and the number on the comparison page is rarely the number you pay at checkout.
Step 3: Pick Your Domain
Checkout asks you to handle your domain in the same flow as your hosting purchase, which is convenient but easy to rush through. You get three paths: register a brand-new domain right there, point to an existing domain you already own at this new hosting, or defer the decision and add one later.
If you register new, Bluehost also offers Domain Privacy and Protection on the same screen. This masks your name, address, and contact details from the public WHOIS record that anyone can look up for any registered domain, which matters more than it sounds like it should if you would rather not have your home address one search away from anyone curious enough to check.
Step 4: Complete Checkout
The checkout screen collects contact details, account credentials, and billing information in one pass for a new customer, or auto-fills from your existing login if you already have a Bluehost account.
Submitting payment triggers the WordPress install automatically on the backend. There is no separate installer to run and no confirmation email to wait on before you can start working.
Step 5: Let WordPress Install Itself
You land in a setup screen with a choice: start building a fresh site, or migrate one you already run somewhere else.
Bluehost also issues a temporary subdomain the instant the install finishes, which matters because DNS changes for a newly registered or newly pointed domain can take anywhere from a few minutes to a full day to propagate globally.
Rather than sit idle waiting on DNS, you can start building against the temporary address and switch over once your registered domain resolves.
Overall verdict: This is the least amount of decision-making of any of the four methods, because hosting and installation happen as one transaction. It is the right default if you are starting with nothing and you already know you want WordPress itself, not a page builder or an AI-generated draft.
Method 2: Add a Website Through an Existing Hosting Plan
If you already have any Bluehost plan running, whether that is shared hosting or something larger, buying WordPress Hosting on top of it is money spent on a product you do not need. The Websites tab inside your account lets you add a WordPress install to hosting you are already paying for, at no extra cost.
Step 1: Open the Websites Tab
The Websites tab lives in your Portal’s left-side navigation and lists every site currently running on your account, with an Add Website button sitting above that list.
Step 2: Choose WordPress From the Dropdown
Clicking Add Website opens three choices: install WordPress fresh, transfer in a WordPress site you already run elsewhere, or spin up an Empty Environment with no CMS at all, useful if you are planning to hand-code something or install a different platform yourself.
Choosing WordPress here kicks off the installation immediately, no plan selection screen and no payment prompt, since it runs against hosting resources you have already purchased.
Step 3: Choose AI Site Creator
Once the base WordPress install finishes, you are offered a choice between AI Site Creator for a fresh build or importing an existing WordPress site if you are migrating one in. AI Site Creator is what most people building from scratch will use.
Step 4: Describe Your Site
AI Site Creator works from three inputs: a site title, a short description, and a site type or category.
This is a narrower input than a full written brief, so the more concrete you make the description, the less generic the resulting template pick tends to feel, even though you are still choosing from a fixed set rather than getting something purpose-built the way a written-prompt tool would produce.
Step 5: Add or Generate a Logo
You are given the option to upload an existing logo file or generate one on the spot through a built-in AI tool.
Step 6: Rate Your WordPress Familiarity
You are asked to rate your own comfort with WordPress as Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced. That self-rating changes how much guidance the tool surfaces afterward, so answer it based on your actual comfort level with a WordPress dashboard rather than what feels impressive to select.
Step 7: Pick a Layout
AI Site Creator presents a short set of layout options built around your description, each one previewable before you commit.
Step 8: Publish or Keep Customizing
Once you land on a layout you like, you either publish it as is or open it for further customization before publishing.
Either route drops you straight into your WordPress admin dashboard once you are done.
Overall verdict: This is the cheapest and fastest of the four methods if you already have hosting sitting idle, since it skips a checkout screen entirely. Set expectations correctly going in. AI Site Creator selects from a bank of existing templates based on a short form, it does not write a layout from scratch the way the standalone AI Website Builder does, so plan on a solid starting template rather than a page structured entirely around your specific description.
Method 3: Reimage a VPS or VDS With WordPress
This method only applies if you already have a Self-Managed VPS or Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS) running on Bluehost.
A VPS gives you a virtualized slice of a shared physical machine, while a VDS is closer to a full dedicated environment with less resource sharing, but both are managed the same way through Bluehost’s reimaging tool, which lets you swap out what is installed on the server without touching a terminal.
Step 1: Open Your VPS or VDS Package
From your Portal’s Hosting section, opening a specific VPS or VDS package takes you to its overview page, which shows the currently installed Server Image alongside a Reimage button.
Step 2: Click Reimage and Open the Applications Tab
The reimage screen splits into a Plain OS tab, for anyone who wants a bare operating system and intends to configure everything by hand, and an Applications tab, which is where the one-click installs live.
Step 3: Search for and Select WordPress
Searching WordPress in the Applications tab usually surfaces three related options rather than one: plain WordPress, an OpenLiteSpeed and WordPress bundle, and a WooCommerce build aimed at anyone starting an online store rather than a content site.
Understand what OpenLiteSpeed actually is before you pick it. It is a web server, the software layer that handles incoming requests to your site, and it tends to outperform the default Apache setup most shared WordPress hosting runs on, particularly under heavier traffic, because of how it handles caching and concurrent connections at the server level.
If your VPS is meant to run a higher-traffic site, that bundle is the more performance-conscious pick over plain WordPress.
Step 4: Confirm the Reimage
Given how destructive this action is, Bluehost gates it behind a typed confirmation, requiring you to type the word “reimage” into a field before the process starts. This is your last chance to back out if you have not backed up existing data.
Step 5: Wait for the Install to Finish
Once confirmed, the install runs on its own for a few minutes. WordPress then appears listed as your new Server Image, and the system selects an appropriate operating system for WordPress automatically rather than asking you to pick one, since WordPress has fairly standard server requirements that most current Linux distributions satisfy without extra configuration.
Overall verdict: This is the only one of the four methods aimed at someone with existing server infrastructure rather than someone starting cold, and it is the most consequential if you get the confirmation step wrong. Skip this route if you are building your first site. Use it if you are already running a VPS or VDS and want WordPress on that same box instead of paying for a second hosting product.
Method 4: Use the AI Website Builder
I put this tool through a full hands-on test in my dedicated AI Website Builder review, generating a complete four-page WordPress site from a single detailed prompt in roughly two minutes. Here is the shorter version, framed against the three methods above.
Step 1: Find AI Website Builder
Every other method in this guide gives you a version of the standard WordPress admin dashboard as your starting point, whether that is a blank install or a picked template.
AI Website Builder works differently, and you can find it under the AI & Developers menu on Bluehost’s main site, listed under AI Platforms with a Free Trial badge attached.
Step 2: Describe Your Site in a Prompt
You describe your business and what you need in a paragraph, not a form field, and the tool generates a multi-page site structured around that description, complete with matched typography, tone-appropriate copy, and a working navigation between pages.
Step 3: Edit the Generated Site
Once the site exists, editing happens three ways: click any element directly and the tool scopes your next instruction to just that piece, type a broader instruction into a persistent chat panel with nothing selected, or open the underlying code in a full file browser if you want to work at that level directly. The generated site sits on an actual WordPress install underneath all of this, with direct links into WP Admin, so nothing about the WordPress plugin and theme ecosystem gets locked away from you later.
Step 4: Watch the Trial Terms Before You Publish
Bluehost’s own landing page advertises a 14-day free trial, but the clock that actually starts once you create an account runs 72 hours, not 14 days.
You can still publish a working site to a temporary Bluehost subdomain for free within that window. What actually requires payment is a custom domain of your own and continued access once the trial period closes.
Overall verdict: Choose this method over the other three if what you want is a layout generated from a written description of your business rather than a template selected from a list, and if the idea of full code access underneath an AI-built draft appeals to you as your site grows.
Which Method Should You Actually Use?
None of these four is universally better than the others. The right one depends entirely on what you are starting with.
If the decision on your mind is AI Site Creator versus AI Website Builder by name, it comes down to how much generation you actually want. AI Site Creator picks a template based on a title and a short description. AI Website Builder writes and structures an entire multi-page site from a full prompt, then hands you element-level editing, chat-based revisions, and raw code access on top of it.
