Bluesky Bluehost Honest Review by Real Customer: WordPress Support
Bluesky from Bluehost is provides expert WordPress help to Bluehost account holders. With three levels of membership, you can choose the plan that works best for your needs. You can choose e-mail support, live internet chat support, or over the phone support with screen sharing. Whether you are just starting your website or you need some help maintaining and growing your business, the Bluesky team can help get you there. I credit the Bluesky team with getting my site up and running so that I can pursue my dream of having a blog.
In this article, I will discuss the BlueSky package options, my experience as a Blue Sky- Pro user, the pros and cons of this program and how to get the most out of this service.
Subscribing to a paid service is definitely an investment to research. Read on to see if this is the right program for you and how to use it to its full potential.
To hear a brief overview of the Blue Sky service, you can watch this one-minute video from Bluehost.
How Much Does BlueSky Cost? Is It Worth It? Packages and Pricing
The Bluesky service comes with a choice of 3 packages: Basic, Plus, and Pro. The next choice to make is whether to subscribe for one month at a time or for a term of 6 or 12 months. You can refer to this Bluehost Blue Sky link for current pricing and options. The price difference of choosing the term lengths varies depending on the level. On the Basic and Plus plans, you can save around 10% off a month by going with a 6 month term verses monthly. A 12 month term ends up saving about 20% off the one month term. With the Pro plan, the 6 month term is a savings of almost 15% and a 12 month subscription can save you around 20% off the month by month price. When you sign up, they tell you that you can choose any term but can still cancel anytime.
BlueSky Basic/Lite Plan
The first option is called “Bluesky Basic” or “Lite”. It comes with the 4 core services:
- On-demand e-mail ticket support (it may take 24-48 hours for them to answer your message).
- Account Access Assistance: Help with your WordPress admin board or Bluehost dashboard
- Website Backup Assistance
- Design Guidance for selecting and customizing a theme
BlueSky Plus
The Blue Sky Plus plan comes with the same 4 core offerings of the Basic listed above, but with one additional service.
With Blue Sky Plus, you have the opportunity to have a live chat with a Blue Sky agent through your customer dashboard. This would be a typing conversation where you can ask any WordPress related questions. I believe it is still limited to the shift hours that the agents are available.
Pricing: at the time of this article, this package costs $49 for one month, $44 for a 6-month subscription and $39 for a 12-month term. (Check above link for current pricing)
BlueSky Pro
This is the package that I subscribed to. I will list its unique features below. It also includes the 4 features listed above: E-mail support, Account Access Help, Back-up Assistance, Live-chat help and Design Guidance.
The additional features include:
- On demand phone support (*I feel this is the best feature of them all)
- Bluehost SEO Tools
- Content Optimization Assistance
- Landing Page Optimization Assistance
- Mobile Optimization Assistance
- And Constant Contact (up to 500 contacts)
Pricing: at the time of this article, this package costs $149 for one month, $129 for a 6-month subscription and $119 for a 12-month term. (Check above link for current pricing)
This is a video that you can listen to where another satisfied shares her experience.
My Experience as a BlueSky Customer
I purchased a 3-year hosting plan from Bluehost a year and a half ago. The blog I purchased it thourough included a free 42-video course on how to start the site. As well written as it was, I was still confused about many things and wasn’t able to move forward. Life became busy and I put my dream of starting a blog on the back burner. The blog gurus that say “You can have your blog up and running in 15 minutes” obviously hadn’t met low-tech me!
In January of 2022, I decided I wanted to try again. I still wasn’t successful at understanding WordPress and wasn’t getting anywhere. I was contacted by a representative of Bluehost who encouraged me to try the Blue Sky Pro service. Interested, but trying to avoid any extra costs, I asked him to call me back in a month in case I could try one more time to figure things out on my own. I tried watching You Tube Videos and reading online tutorials, but it is not the same as having someone walk you through things. I’m so glad the Bluehost representative called me back, because the Blue Sky service was exactly what I needed to get my blog up and running!
My first few days were a little discouraging because we had to back up my site and completely start over! I had purchased and installed a theme I thought was “pretty” on Etsy and it really backfired by conflicting with WordPress and created many problems. We also had to undo the portion of the site I had built using the Bluehost site builder because it conflicted with the WordPress program. The technicians were able to walk me through the entire reset process so that we could start with a clean slate and a functioning site.
Because I was committed to only subscribing for one month, I devoted as much time as I could to calling Blue Sky and working on as many issues as I could think of. Over the month of March, we were able to check off all the important tasks on my to do list. Even though I didn’t have many articles written yet, by the end of the month I was able to turn off the “coming soon” message and my site was live! It was a wonderful feeling to publish my first article!
The month was intense because I am a stay-at-home mom and I try not to be on the computer while my toddlers are in their awake hours. Because the Blue Sky hours are somewhat limited to 10 till 7pm, (eastern time) and only Monday through Friday, I was on the phone during naptimes and when my husband could be with them. I tried to get at least 1-2 calls per day so that I could make the most out of the month of service. The call time is limited to about 20 minutes. After the girls’ bedtime, I would be working on my blog and trying out what I was learning from the technicians and writing down more questions for the following day that I wanted to tackle.
Pros of Bluesky Support from Bluehost
There are many pros to the Blue Sky support service. I will focus on the Pro version since this was what I had the most experience with.
- Little to No Time on Hold for Phone Calls: When calling in for help, my call was always answered promptly.
- Friendly and Knowledgeable Staff: I was always greeted by a friendly and courteous agent who was eager to help me.
- Continuity of Service from Call to Call: I was told BlueSky has about 40 agents. Even though I rarely had the same agent when I called, they take excellent notes and each would read the log and pick up right where I left off without me having to explain a lot.
- Cost: I found the BlueSky pro service to be well worth the money as long as you are using it as much as possible. If you are new to WordPress and had to choose between spending money on this service or a blogging course, I would choose BlueSky. The team can teach you invaluable skills that would be hard to learn from a static course.
- Hands On Learning is Best: On each call, you are given a “Go To Meeting” code number (they help you install the program). And once you sign in and allow access, they can see your screen. The agent will guide you, but you do all the actually tasks under their direction. In this way, you can gain the experience of using WordPress and will remember more than if someone just did everything for you.
- Efficiency: The calls are limited to about 20 minutes. At first I thought that it would be limiting to only have 20 minutes. However, it is the right amount of time to accomplish most tasks and it helped us to work together efficiently. Occasionally, if we were in the middle of a more complex task, the agent would go overtime a bit until we were at a good stopping point.
- Unlimited Calls During Business Hours: As soon as you hang up, you can turn around and call right back again. You usually won’t reach the same agent, but you can call an unlimited amount of calls per day during their business hours.
- Seo Tools Included: This membership also comes with SEO tools by Bluehost. I wish I had known more about this part of the program
- Bluehost’s Regular Customer Service is Open 24 Hours: Even though the hours of Blue Sky are limited, if there are some issues that you can contact Bluehost Customer Support, they are open 24 hours.
Cons of Bluesky WordPress Support
- Limited Hours Available: The Blue Sky support staff is located in Colorado which is on Mountain Time. I live under Eastern Time. The hours I could call and talk to an agent were between 10am-7pm Eastern time. You can call their customer information at 844-815-8968 to see their current hours. It would have been very helpful for me to be able to call in later in the evening after my children were in bed. However, I was able to make the calls whenever I could during the day. If you work during daytime hours, it would be very challenging for you to be able to benefit from call-in help and I would recommend the other levels where you could send your questions through e-mail if you can wait a little while for a response.
- Cost: At first, I was afraid to spend money on my site because I wasn’t generating any income yet. However, I found the price to be very reasonable as long as you make an effort to fully utilize the service.
- Early Term Renewal: If you subscribe to a Bluehost service, watch your e-mails about upcoming charges. I had planned having Blue Sky for one month only and they automatically billed me a day before the term was up before I could cancel. It took a few phone calls to straighten it out, but they did give me a complete refund.
- Watch for billing for added services: I hadn’t been watching my e-mails closely and when I received my credit card bill, they had been continuing to charge me 19.95 a month for their SEO tools and 3.00 for Constant Contact e-mail service which I had opted not to use. These services are included in the Blue Sky Pro plan, but they will start billing for them automatically even if you cancel your Blue Sky membership. I missed this on my first bill and ended up being billed about $46 for 2 months of SEO and e-mail. This took a lot of time to straighten out, but they eventually sent a refund.
- Some Agents Prefer Different Plug-Ins: A few times, one agent I was working on recommended certain plugins which we installed. Then other agents had other plugins they preferred, When this happens, you have to make a judgement call on which plugin is most comfortable for you and you may have to do a little research to compare them.
How to Get the Most out of your BlueSky Membership: 11 Tips
- If You’re Too Busy to Use It, Wait Till You Can Make Time Join at a time when you will have time to be able to focus on building your site. If you are too busy, wait until you can devote more time to call in or use their support.
- Try Out WordPress a Little First: Before you start, it is a good idea to explore WordPress and attempt a little writing. This way you can know what questions you should start with.
- Don’t Do Too Much On Your Own If You’re Unsure: Don’t do too much on your own before consulting this service unless you are already somewhat familiar with WordPress. This way you can avoid doing the wrong thing and making it harder to undo. Wit them, you can set things up correctly.
- Make a List of Good Questions: Keep a list of questions to ask or projects to work on. The agents don’t direct you what to do next, they listen for you to express what your questions are. It is very much a self directed process of determining what to work on.
- Have Your General Site Outline In Mind: It is very helpful to already have your categories chosen and the menu options you would like to have. This way they can help set them up for you. Start with your essential categories and you can always add more. You don’t want to start up your site with lots of empty categories. Ask them to show you how to add new categories for when you are ready.
- Set a Goal of How Many Calls You Want to Do Each Week: If you are trying to accomplish your goals in one month, make sure you or reach out as often as possible.
- Ask Them To Walk You Through a Sample Post: One thing that helped me the most is when I asked them to help me create a post. I wasn’t writing anything permanent, I just needed help to learn how to do headings, new blocks, insert links and set them to open in a new window, insert pictures, videos and other formatting options. It is very different than using Microsoft Word! Be sure to ask them anything that you would like to be able to do.
- Ask Them to Walk You Through Using Yost SEO: They can help explain how to write a key phrase, title, meta description and other points that you will need to know.
- Ask Them To Help Set Up Forms or Pop Ups: The team can help you insert forms for contact pages, subscribe requests and also pop up boxes and landing pages.
- Look at Other Sites in Your Niche to Get Ideas: You can learn a lot about what you would like your site to look like by browsing successful sites. You can share your ideas and ask the Blue Sky Team for help to make it happen.
- Eliminate Plug-ins that aren’t Needed: You may use many plugins to set up your site that you may no longer need later. Unnecessary plugins can conflict with each other and can slow down your site. Uninstall or deactivate ones that are no longer needed. Here is a useful video from “Income School” which has a good explanation on which plugins to keep.
In Conclusion: Final Thoughts on Bluehost's Bluesky and How to Sign-Up
If you’re on the fence about signing up with Blue Sky, I would recommend that you give it a try for at least a month. Even though there is a wealth of free information on topics to help you with your site on YouTube and the internet, it is not substitute for 1 to 1 personalized help. You can call: 844-741-1192 to reach the Bluehost Support Staff who can help you by answering any questions you may have and setting up your Bluesky subscription.
Investing some money in learning WordPress does wonders for your motivation. When you are committed to getting the most for your money, you quickly start seeing progress on your site.
Starting a web site isn’t easy, especially if you are like me and not as familiar with WordPress or computer programs. The BlueSky team really helped me feel more confident with navigating this new adventure of starting a blog. I will call on them in the future when I want to make any changes in my theme or when I am entering a new phase of my blog.
I hope this information is helpful in your decision making. I’d be happy to answer any questions if you’d like to contact me or post a comment below. Thank you so much for your time! For more information, you can visit momumentalyou.com
