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Bluehost is owned by Newfold Digital, a Florida company backed by two private equity firms. That matters because Newfold also owns HostGator, Network Solutions, Register.com and Crazy Domains. A buyer comparing Bluehost against HostGator is comparing two brands of one company, on shared infrastructure, with a shared support organization behind them.
The ownership itself is not hidden. It sits in Newfold’s own press releases and in the boilerplate at the bottom of every announcement it publishes. But it is rarely mentioned on the pages where people actually decide, and the shortlist that sends a beginner to Bluehost almost never names it.
Who Owns Bluehost?
Bluehost is owned by Newfold Digital, formed in 2021 from Endurance Web Presence and Web.com Group. Newfold is backed by Clearlake Capital Group and Siris Capital Group. The same company owns HostGator, Network Solutions, Register.com, Crazy Domains, Web.com, Yoast and YITH.
The Paper Trail
Bluehost launched in 2003 and spent years inside Endurance International Group. Clearlake took Endurance private, then split off the web presence division and merged it with Web.com. The result was renamed Newfold Digital in 2021.
So the frequent claim that Bluehost “is still EIG” is out of date, and the claim that it was “sold to a new owner” is misleading too. Nothing was sold away. The same assets were reorganized under a new name, and Clearlake and Siris hold the equity.
Newfold has since reorganized internally as well. Its hosting brands sit in a Bluehost Group, while the domain brands sit in a Network Solutions Group. In practice, that means the two names a shopper is weighing often report into one org chart.
What Else Newfold Owns
Here the reporting gets sloppy, and it is worth being precise about why. Review sites routinely state that Newfold owns “over 60” or “over 80” brands. Newfold publishes no such number.
The boilerplate on Newfold’s own press releases names Bluehost, Crazy Domains, HostGator, Network Solutions, Register.com, Web.com, Yoast and YITH — then adds “and many others.” That is the company’s own accounting, and it stops short of a count.
We are not going to invent one either. Below is what Newfold names itself, which is verifiable, rather than a round number that has been copied between review sites for years.
| Host | Owner (since) | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Bluehost | Newfold Digital (2021) | Newfold press releases |
| HostGator | Newfold Digital (2021) | Newfold press releases |
| Network Solutions | Newfold Digital (2021) | Newfold press releases |
| Register.com | Newfold Digital (2021) | Newfold press releases |
| Crazy Domains | Newfold Digital (2021) | Newfold press releases |
| Web.com | Newfold Digital (2021) | Newfold press releases |
| Yoast SEO | Newfold Digital (12 Aug 2021) | Newfold, PRNewswire |
| YITH | Newfold Digital (Mar 2022) | Newfold, Siris |
| Liquid Web | CloudOne Digital, One Equity Partners (Apr 2023) | Acquisition reporting, 2023 |
| Nexcess | CloudOne Digital | Group brand listings |
| StellarWP | CloudOne Digital | Group brand listings |
| Modern Tribe | CloudOne Digital | Group brand listings |
| A2 Hosting, now hosting.com | World Host Group (Jan 2025), renamed Apr 2025 | Company announcement, WHG release |
| Doteasy | World Host Group | Group brand listings |
| WebHostPython | World Host Group | Group brand listings |
| ColombiaHosting | World Host Group | Group brand listings |
| Cloudways | DigitalOcean (2022) | Acquisition reporting, 2022 |
| WP Engine | Silver Lake, majority stake (2018) | Reported at about $250 million |
| Pressable | Automattic | WordPress.org hosting page |
| Hostinger | Privately held, Vilnius; about 30% PE-held | Company's own statement |
| DreamHost | Independent, describes itself as employee-owned | Company's own statement |
| InMotion | Independent for 25 years, never acquired | Company's own statement |
| InterServer | Independent since 1999, owns its data centers | Company's own statement |
| Hostwinds | Independent since 2010, Seattle | Company's own statement |
| GoDaddy | Publicly listed | Public filings |
| IONOS | United Internet about 64%; listed since Feb 2023 | IONOS Group investor relations, 30 Jun 2026 |
| Namecheap | CVC Capital Partners, majority since September 2025 | Company's own leadership page; deal reporting |
| Scala Hosting | Owner not established; Dallas-based since about 2008 | Company's own profile, read 20 Sep 2026 |
| ChemiCloud | Operated by CChosting, Inc.; owner not established | Site's own copyright line, read 20 Sep 2026 |
| GreenGeeks | Founder-led by Trey Gardner; independent | Company statements and press, 2026 |
| Rocket.net | hosting.com, part of World Host Group (Aug 2025) | Rocket.net and hosting.com announcements, 26 Aug 2025 |
| Kinsta | Not established in the sources we read | — |
| SiteGround | Privately held since 2004, Sofia | Company's own pages |
The Part Most Buyers Miss
Yoast SEO belongs to Newfold as well. Newfold announced the acquisition on 12 August 2021, and the release went out on its own newsroom, on Clearlake’s site, on Siris’s site and over PRNewswire. Yoast runs on roughly 12 million WordPress sites.
WebFin runs on Yoast, and we are flagging exactly the kind of relationship we would flag anywhere else. Our reasoning is on our About page.
There is a stronger artifact than any press release, though. Bluehost’s Five for the Future page on WordPress.org opens by describing Bluehost, Yoast and YITH as sister companies, in the company’s own words, on WordPress.org’s own domain. Anyone can read it in under a minute.
What Shared Ownership Actually Changes
Three things change, and none of them are secrets.
Support is shared. Newfold brands have historically operated with common support infrastructure and agents, so “switching brands” after a bad support experience can land you in the same queue.
Pricing behaves alike. Bluehost’s Starter plan advertises at $3.99 a month on a 36-month term and renews at $9.99. Sister brands follow comparable patterns, because the pricing model is a group decision rather than a brand-level one.
Resource limits are written the same way too, and add-ons come from the same catalog. CodeGuard backups, SiteLock security and paid migration appear across the group at similar price points, which is why a “cheap” plan at one brand tends to cost about the same as a “cheap” plan at another once the cart is full.
What It Does Not Mean
Common ownership is not evidence of a bad product, and treating it that way would be lazy. Bluehost is midway through moving customers to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure — announced in November 2025, with roughly a million customers migrated and 4–5× median response improvements claimed in Newfold’s release. That is a real infrastructure investment, whoever signs the checks. Our page on dedicated against cloud hosting covers when a whole machine still earns its price.
Ownership also does not mean identical service. HostGator and Bluehost run different control panels, different plan structures and different limits. In fact, treating them as interchangeable is its own mistake.
What ownership does mean is narrower and more useful: a shortlist of three “competing” hosts can contain one company twice, and diversification you thought you were buying may not exist.
Ownership and the WordPress.org Listing
WordPress.org lists recommended hosts, and on 31 August 2026 that list named Pressable, Bluehost and Hostinger. Bluehost has held a place on it since 2005.
The page is unusually candid about itself. It states that some listed hosts donate a portion of your fee back when you click through from there, and the outbound link to Bluehost carries an affiliate parameter. It also calls the selection “completely arbitrary” while listing criteria that include contributions to WordPress.org.
That last criterion is where ownership becomes interesting. In March 2025, The Repository reported that Newfold cut its Five for the Future pledge across Bluehost, Yoast and YITH from 329 hours per week to 20, consolidating everything under the Bluehost page. Newfold confirmed the consolidation to the publication without explaining the cut.
Meanwhile the listing did not change. As of 31 August 2026, the Bluehost pledge page shows 10 contributors and 50 hours per week — recovered from the March 2025 low, still far below where it started. Bluehost’s own blog, on the same date, describes that same pledge as 20 hours. Two pages, one company, two numbers.
How We Research
Every ownership claim above comes from a primary source: Newfold’s press releases and corporate boilerplate, the acquisition announcement carried by Clearlake, Siris and PRNewswire, and two pages on WordPress.org read directly on 31 August 2026. Where a figure is contested, we show both numbers rather than picking the tidier one.
We do not run our own speed or uptime tests, so the Oracle migration figures above are Newfold’s claim, labeled as such. Our full method, including the five criteria behind every score, is published on our About page.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Both brands belong to the same parent, Newfold Digital, so neither owns the other. They are sister brands rather than competitors, sharing an owner and support infrastructure. Comparing them is closer to comparing two plan pages than comparing two independent hosting companies.
Newfold Digital is backed by two private equity firms, Clearlake Capital Group and Siris Capital Group. The company formed in 2021 from Endurance Web Presence and Web.com Group, and describes itself as serving nearly seven million customers globally across its brand portfolio.
Not under that name. Endurance International Group was taken private, and its web presence division merged with Web.com to become Newfold Digital in 2021. The assets did not leave; they were renamed and reorganized, and Clearlake and Siris hold the equity today.
Yes. Newfold announced the Yoast acquisition on 12 August 2021, and the release appeared on Newfold’s newsroom, on Clearlake’s and Siris’s sites, and over PRNewswire. WordPress.org’s own Five for the Future page describes Bluehost, Yoast and YITH as sister companies.
No. Bluehost appears on WordPress.org’s recommended hosts page and has since 2005, but that page is a listing, not an ownership relationship. WordPress.org states that some listed hosts return a portion of your fee when you click through from it.
The Verdict
Bluehost belongs to Newfold Digital, and so do HostGator, Network Solutions, Register.com, Crazy Domains, Web.com, Yoast and YITH. None of that makes Bluehost a bad host. It does mean the comparison you think you are running may have fewer companies in it than brands, and that the three-year totals deserve checking either way.
Check it before you shortlist. If two of your three candidates share an owner, you are choosing between plan pages, not between companies.