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Guide

Migrating from GreenGeeks to Bluehost

GreenGeeks renews at 4.7x its intro rate, costing $370 over three years against Bluehost at $106. The saving, the green-hosting trade-off you should think about, and the full migration steps.

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Researched by the Host Cliff editorial team Published 28 Jul 2026 · 2 min read · No paid placements
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The reason to migrate from GreenGeeks to Bluehost is arithmetic. GreenGeeks advertises $2.95/mo and renews at $13.95/mo — a 4.7x rise after a 12-month term — which works out at $370 over 36 months. Bluehost advertises a near-identical $2.95, renews at $8.99, and holds the intro rate for 36 months. The same three years costs $106.

Two hosts, the same headline price, a $264 difference. The gap is almost entirely the term length and the size of the step at the end of it.

The trade-off worth thinking about

GreenGeeks' proposition is not really its price — it is that it buys renewable energy credits at three times the electricity its platform draws. If that is why you chose it, this migration costs you the thing you were paying for, and $264 over three years is a low price for a position you hold. We are a pricing site and we are not going to tell you that argument is worth less than the money; we will only tell you accurately what the money is.

The practical trade-off is smaller: GreenGeeks offers free migration and Bluehost does not. So this particular move costs you an afternoon or a migration plugin, which is unusual among the pairs we have written up and is the main reason to plan it properly rather than start on a Friday evening.

The migration, step by step

  1. Buy Bluehost on the 36-month term. The $106 figure depends on it; a 12-month term renews at $8.99 two years earlier and the saving largely evaporates. Check your own numbers in the true cost calculator.
  2. Export from GreenGeeks: database via phpMyAdmin in cPanel, files via the File Manager or SFTP. Take the whole web root, including the dotfiles — a missing .htaccess is the classic cause of a site that loads but has broken URLs.
  3. Import into Bluehost and update your database credentials in the site config. For WordPress that is wp-config.php.
  4. Test on Bluehost's temporary URL before any DNS change. Forms, logins, checkout.
  5. Lower DNS TTL to 300 seconds a day ahead, then switch nameservers. The downtime-free migration guide covers the ordering in detail.
  6. Re-issue SSL on Bluehost, confirm the padlock, and only then cancel GreenGeeks — after keeping it running for a week.

Both of these renew steeply

Be clear-eyed about what this move achieves: Bluehost still renews at 3.05x its intro rate. You are moving from a steep cliff to a shallower one three years further away, not escaping the pattern. Two hosts we have reviewed never raise the price at all, and the full ordering — by real cost rather than by discount — is on the deals page. See also GreenGeeks alternatives and why hosting renewal prices triple.

Price it over the term you will actually stay

Every host we track, priced over one to four years, using the renewal rate and how long each intro price is really locked for.

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Next in the series · 12 of 22 Migrating from ChemiCloud to Namecheap ChemiCloud renews at 4.8x its intro rate; Namecheap renews at 1.7x — the flattest of any budget host we track. $317 against $120 over three years, plus the full migration steps. 2 min read

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