Abu Zar Mishwani
When talking about website domains, GoDaddy stands out as the go-to registrar for many. Not only is it widely known for its domain services, but it’s also a top-notch hosting provider, a fact that often goes under the radar.
Given the significance of selecting the right hosting service for building a reliable website, we’ve taken the initiative to dissect GoDaddy’s features and compared them with its competitors to assist you in making an informed decision.
GoDaddy vs. Other Web Hosting Providers
Established in 1997, GoDaddy has long been a prominent player in the domain registration sector, holding the title of the largest domain registrar globally. However, today, our focus is on GoDaddy’s web hosting services.
While it may not be the most prominent name in the web hosting industry, GoDaddy remains a familiar and trusted option for many users. This reputation alone warrants our attention and prompts us to explore its offerings for hosting your website.
GoDaddy serves its purpose effectively, particularly for those seeking a swift and hassle-free website setup. However, it’s important to note that it may not be the most budget-friendly option available.
Therefore, it’s advisable to consider comparing GoDaddy with alternative hosting providers to ensure you’re getting the best value for your investment.
We dedicated ample time to thoroughly researching, testing and evaluating all prominent web hosting providers to identify the top performers in the industry. Here’s what we discovered:
- Bluehost – Great Choice for New Websites
- Hostinger – Cheap Price ($0.99)
- A2 Hosting – Fastest Shared Hosting Service
- DreamHost – Great “Monthly” Payment Plans
- SiteGround – Excellent Customer Service
For more details about the web hosting providers we endorse, explore our comprehensive list of top picks here.
GoDaddy: Pros & Cons
In our imperfect world, every web hosting provider, including GoDaddy, comes with its own pros and cons. The crucial task is to identify the provider whose advantages align most closely with your needs, outweighing any cons they may have.
GoDaddy: The Pros
To figure out if GoDaddy is right for you, let’s talk about what’s good about it and what you should watch out for.
1. One-Click WordPress Installation
GoDaddy makes installing various apps, including WordPress, easy with just one click. This is perfect for beginners who want to build their own websites without needing much technical know-how.
GoDaddy is fantastic for people who want to launch a website fast without dealing with the complexities of setting up WordPress. While WordPress can be tricky for beginners, GoDaddy streamlines the process for its web hosting customers, making it much simpler.
2. Easy to Use
For newcomers to website creation, GoDaddy is an excellent hosting provider. Its website builder handles all the heavy lifting, letting you easily choose from a range of templates to design your site exactly how you want it.
The trade-off for GoDaddy’s simplicity is that you might have less freedom to be creative compared to other providers. But if you’re new to website building and prefer a straightforward approach without investing much time and effort, GoDaddy’s user-friendly platform will be a big plus for you.
3. Exceptionally Responsive Customer Support
Getting in touch with customer support over the phone can be challenging nowadays, often leading to frustration with automated systems. However, GoDaddy stands out in this regard. While they do utilize bots, they also offer 24/7 phone and live chat support, ensuring that customers can get assistance promptly and efficiently.
Even more impressive, many users have shared that it usually takes less than 2 minutes to connect with a live person when calling GoDaddy’s phone support—an almost unheard-of feat in today’s automated world. Similarly, if you opt for the live chat option, you might encounter a brief wait initially, but within minutes, you’ll be chatting with a helpful representative.
4. Useful Video Guides
If you prefer to troubleshoot on your own without reaching out to GoDaddy’s support, you can turn to their extensive collection of video guides. Their How-To section on the website is unparalleled among hosting providers, featuring playlists of video guides covering topics like planning your online presence, setting up email, marketing basics, and more.
This rich resource isn’t just for solving problems; it’s a valuable tool for taking your website and its underlying concept to new heights.
5. Quick Load Time
Website load time plays a crucial role in the user experience, as nobody likes waiting for a slow website to load. Fortunately, GoDaddy excels in this aspect, boasting super-fast load times that ensure your site is up and running swiftly.
6. Several Data Centers
Having multiple data centers is key to achieving faster load speeds for a hosting provider. GoDaddy’s presence in three major regions—Europe, the U.S., and Asia—ensures fast load times across much of the globe.
However, some areas farther from these centers might experience slightly slower speeds. To address this, GoDaddy is expanding its network by planning to open another data center in India, which should help mitigate slower speeds in certain regions.
For those utilizing GoDaddy’s Linux hosting, you have the flexibility to choose your preferred data center and even modify it later if needed. This level of control over the backend of your site is a valuable perk for users who want to have complete control over their hosting setup.
7. Freebies
Whoever said the phrase “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” clearly hasn’t experienced GoDaddy’s hosting service. With the purchase of a shared web hosting plan, you unlock a range of fantastic free features. These include a domain, an Office 365 email, webmail, access to over 125 applications, and much more.
The standout offering among these free features is undoubtedly the domain. Given GoDaddy’s reputation in domain registration, it’s a savvy move on their part to include a free domain with their hosting packages. Domain names typically range from $5 to $5,000 per year, so receiving one for free is a significant benefit.
It’s essential to note, though, that the domain is free only for the first year. After that, you’ll be charged the regular annual price.
8. Powerful Security
In addition to hosting your website, GoDaddy goes the extra mile to safeguard it against malicious attacks, viruses, malware, and other external threats.
Every GoDaddy web hosting plan includes robust network security features along with DDoS protection and continuous monitoring, ensuring your website remains secure around the clock.
Plus, you’ll receive free automated daily backups. If something goes wrong, you can easily restore your hosting account to how it was the day before. This is more advanced than other providers, who might only give you a free SSL certificate and leave the rest of the security up to you.
GoDaddy: The Cons
Now, let’s discuss the cons of GoDaddy’s web hosting.
1. Limited Basic Plan
GoDaddy’s Basic plan is straightforward—it doesn’t have any standout features or bonuses to impress you. While it’s a decent starting point to grow your website, it doesn’t offer anything unique compared to competitors. Plus, its price isn’t as competitive as other basic web hosting plans, like those from Hostinger.
The next level up is just a bit pricier each month but still reasonable. However, many websites might go for the Web Hosting Ultimate package right away. It’s more than double the price of the basic plan, but it gives you everything you need for a long time.
2. Upselling
While GoDaddy includes some freebies with their hosting plans, they tend to upsell additional features. Many of the features offered with GoDaddy hosting come at an extra cost.
You might feel overwhelmed during the checkout process, as GoDaddy tries to sell you various products and sometimes adds things to your cart automatically. While these extras could be useful, it’s not ideal that they’re added without your consent. Some users may not even realize these additional charges until after they’ve completed their purchase.
3. High Renewal Cost
While this practice is common among hosting providers, GoDaddy appears to have more significant disparities between their introductory prices and renewal rates when compared to others.
The initial price might be attractive for new customers but be prepared for your rates to nearly double once your initial sign-up term expires. To maximize your savings, consider opting for a longer contract when you first sign up.
GoDaddy Plans and Pricing
GoDaddy provides five hosting plan options to suit different requirements: Shared Web Hosting, WordPress Hosting, VPS Hosting, Dedicated Servers, and E-commerce Hosting.
| Plan Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Shared Web Hosting | Basic hosting for small websites |
| WordPress Hosting | Optimized for WordPress websites |
| VPS Hosting | Virtual private servers for more control |
| Dedicated Servers | Fully dedicated servers for high performance |
| E-commerce Hosting | Tailored hosting for online stores |
Each plan type offers different features and resources to meet various website needs.
1. GoDaddy Shared Hosting
GoDaddy’s shared plans are perfect for small and new websites that are just getting started. They offer great value because you’re sharing server resources with other websites; hence the name “shared.”
This means shared hosting isn’t as strong as other options. But it’s affordable and works well for personal sites, blogs with low traffic, and small business websites with a few pages.
Compared to other web hosting providers, GoDaddy’s shared plans are slightly pricier. Sometimes, these plans can be double or triple the cost of other providers’ entry-level promotional rates.
The higher rates do offer some additional benefits. With GoDaddy, you get 24/7 support, DDoS protection, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Plus, GoDaddy provides free daily backups, a feature not commonly found with other providers’ basic plans.
You’ll also benefit from newly optimized servers with GoDaddy, which are up to 40% faster compared to other options.
While you’re indeed paying a bit extra for the GoDaddy brand, it’s still a reliable option worth considering.
Let’s take a closer look at GoDaddy’s shared hosting packages:
| Feature | Economy Plan | Deluxe Plan | Ultimate Plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing (Monthly) | $7.99 (Renews at $8.99) | $10.99 (Renews at $11.99) | $16.99 (Renews at $17.99) |
| Disk Space | 25 GB | 50 GB | 75 GB |
| Bandwidth | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Websites | 1 | 10 | 25 |
| Free Domain | ✓ (With annual plan) | ✓ (With annual plan) | ✓ (With annual plan) |
| Free Email | ✓ Free Trial Professional Email | ✓ Free Trial Professional Email | ✓ Free Trial Professional Email |
| SSL Certificate | Free SSL Certificate ($99.99/yr value) - 1 year | ✓ Free, unlimited SSL for all your websites | ✓ (Free for the first year) |
| FTP Accounts | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| MySQL Databases | 10 | 25 | 50 |
| One-click Installations | ✓ (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc.) | ✓ (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc.) | ✓ (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc.) |
| Customer Support | 24/7 via Phone & Live Chat | 24/7 via Phone & Live Chat | 24/7 via Phone & Live Chat |
| Money-Back Guarantee | 30 Days | 30 Days | 30 Days |
Note: Pricing and features may vary based on promotions and changes made by GoDaddy. Be sure to check their website for the most up-to-date information.
2. WordPress Hosting
If you’re new to building websites, WordPress can be your best friend. It simplifies the hosting and website-building process, making it much smoother. With WordPress, you don’t need to learn any coding, although you have the option to do so if you want to customize your site further.
In addition to having WordPress pre-installed and optimized servers, GoDaddy provides extra service perks. These include 24-hour malware scans and removals, nightly backups, and automatic updates to the latest WordPress versions, plugins, PHP, and core security software.
All WordPress hosting plans also include the global Cloudflare CDN. This caches static content, speeds up dynamic content, and enhances your site’s performance even further.
| Feature | Managed WordPress Basic | Managed WordPress Deluxe | Managed WordPress Ultimate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing (Monthly) | $10.99/month | $15.99/month | $17.99/month |
| Websites | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Bandwidth | ✓ Unmetered bandwidth | ✓ Unmetered bandwidth | ✓ Unmetered bandwidth |
| Storage | 10 GB SSD | 20 GB SSD | 30 GB SSD |
| Free Domain | ✓ (With annual plan) | ✓ (With annual plan) | ✓ (With annual plan) |
| Free Email | Free Trial Professional Email | Free Trial Professional Email | Free Trial Professional Email |
| SSL Certificate | Free | Free | Free |
| WordPress Installed | Pre-installed | Pre-installed | Pre-installed |
| Malware Scan & Removal | Included | Included | Included |
| Backups | Weekly backups | Daily backups | Daily + on-demand backups |
| Customer Support | 24/7 via Phone & Live Chat | 24/7 via Phone & Live Chat | 24/7 via Phone & Live Chat |
| Staging Environment | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| SEO Plugin Included | ✗ | ✗ | SEO optimizer |
| Money-Back Guarantee | 30 Days | 30 Days | 30 Days |
Note: Pricing and features may vary based on promotions and changes made by GoDaddy. Be sure to check their website for the most up-to-date information.
3. E-commerce Hosting
If you aim to transform your WordPress site into an e-commerce store, these plans are tailored for you. They’re akin to GoDaddy’s managed WordPress plans but designed specifically for selling through WooCommerce.
You’ll still receive all the managed WordPress features you’d expect, along with additional perks.
With GoDaddy’s WooCommerce plans, you can sell a variety of products, including physical products, memberships, subscriptions, digital products, gift certificates, and more. GoDaddy enables you to customize the checkout experience fully, and it seamlessly integrates with GoDaddy’s POS system if you’re selling both online and in person.
Here’s a brief overview of the plans and pricing for these hosting packages:
- Essentials – Starting at $19.99 per month
- Flex – Starting at $79.99 per month
- Expand – Starting at $129.99 per month
All plans include the ability to sell unlimited products with discounted shipping rates of up to 84%. You can also utilize GoDaddy’s built-in payment processing system, with fees starting at 2.3% per transaction.
The main difference between each plan is how many orders you can sell through online marketplaces every month. The Essentials plan allows 1,000 marketplace orders, while Flex and Expand allow for 2,500 and 5,000 orders, respectively.
Each plan includes built-in shopping cart abandonment emails. However, with each tier, you’ll receive an additional message in your drip.
If you’re thinking of selling online with WooCommerce and considering GoDaddy, it’s a great choice. Plus, your store will be supported by GoDaddy’s 99.95% uptime guarantee, making it an easy decision.
4. VPS Hosting
If you’re after a website that’s fast and performs well, VPS hosting might be the way to go. With VPS hosting, your website has dedicated servers just for itself, resulting in quicker speeds and overall better performance.
Just keep in mind that these are self-hosted plans, so you’ll need some technical know-how to maximize their potential.
In general, self-managed VPS hosting from GoDaddy is ideal for developers and system administrators. With full root access and SSH keys, you have complete control over your hosting environment.
These plans are designed to scale, allowing you to easily boost RAM and CPU for improved performance without the hassle of manual migrations.
All of GoDaddy’s VPS plans offer the same features. The difference lies in the amount of storage, memory, and processing power you get at each tier level.
There are four Standard plans available:
- 1 vCPU Standard – $9.99/month
- 2 vCPU Standard – $19.99/month
- 4 vCPU Standard with 8 GB RAM – $39.99/month
- 4 vCPU Standard with 16 GB RAM – $49.99/month
Alternatively, you can opt for a High-Performance VPS, which offers more storage, memory, and computing power:
- 8 vCPU / 16 GB RAM High-Performance – $69.99/month
- 8 vCPU / 32 GB RAM High-Performance – $99.99/month
- 16 vCPU / 32 GB RAM High-Performance – $129.99/month
- 16 vCPU / 64 GB RAM High-Performance – $169.99/month
All the rates mentioned above for both the Standard and High-Performance VPS plans are promotional rates based on a three-year term. These rates are approximately 33% less than the regular rate, which will renew automatically at the end of your contract term.
5. Dedicated Server
While this type of hosting is the most expensive, it also offers the most power and control. If you have a small website or are new to building one, you probably don’t need to invest in this level of hosting. However, if you have a larger website that requires the control and flexibility of your own server, then this option is suitable for you.
Dedicated server hosting is ideal for those with traffic volumes that exceed the limitations of VPS plans.
When considering a dedicated server from GoDaddy, you have two options: SSD NVMe or HDD. SSD NVMe servers are up to 25 times faster than HDD ones, and they cost just slightly more. If you have the budget for dedicated hosting, it’s worth opting for the best possible servers available.
Most of the SSD NVMe plans are only $10 or $20 more than the HDD servers.
All dedicated hosting plans include the same features:
- 99.9% uptime guarantee or your money back
- Root access
- Monitoring and alerts
- Choice of cPanel/WHM or Plesk control panel
- Dedicated hosting support
Each tier offers increased storage and RAM, with DS-256 providing a maximum RAM of 256 GB. This plan is tailored for enterprise-level businesses and is priced at $469.99 per month.
GoDaddy also provides fully managed dedicated hosting servers for those who desire top-tier hosting. This includes unlimited service requests, five free site migrations, proactive remediation, and numerous other benefits.
FAQs about GoDaddy
Is GoDaddy good for web hosting?
It depends on your specific requirements. GoDaddy offers a range of hosting options suitable for different needs, from shared hosting for small websites to dedicated servers for larger businesses. It provides user-friendly tools, decent uptime, and customer support. However, some users criticize its performance and pricing compared to competitors.
Why is GoDaddy so expensive?
GoDaddy's pricing can appear higher than some competitors due to its extensive marketing and brand recognition efforts. Additionally, it offers a wide range of services beyond basic hosting, including domain registration, website building tools, and marketing services, which contribute to the overall cost. While it may seem pricey upfront, some users find value in the additional features and support provided.
What types of hosting plans does GoDaddy offer?
GoDaddy offers various hosting plans, including Shared Hosting, WordPress Hosting, VPS Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, and E-commerce Hosting. Each plan caters to different needs and budgets, providing scalability and flexibility for users.
Does GoDaddy offer good customer support?
GoDaddy provides 24/7 customer support through phone, live chat, and email. While some users praise its support team for being helpful and responsive, others have reported long wait times and inconsistent assistance.
Can I transfer my existing website to GoDaddy?
Yes, GoDaddy offers website migration services to help you transfer your existing website from another hosting provider. Depending on your current setup, GoDaddy's support team can assist you with the migration process to ensure a smooth transition.
Does GoDaddy offer a money-back guarantee?
Yes, GoDaddy typically offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on its hosting plans. If you're not satisfied with the service within the first 30 days of signing up, you can request a refund, excluding any setup fees or domain registration costs.
Is GoDaddy's uptime reliable?
GoDaddy claims to offer 99.9% uptime for its hosting services, but uptime can vary based on factors such as server maintenance, traffic spikes, and technical issues.
Does GoDaddy provide SSL certificates?
Yes, GoDaddy offers SSL certificates to secure your website and protect sensitive information transmitted between your site and its visitors. You can purchase SSL certificates directly from GoDaddy or choose from various options available through its hosting plans.
Can I upgrade my hosting plan with GoDaddy as my website grows?
Yes, GoDaddy allows you to upgrade your hosting plan as your website's needs evolve. Whether you need more storage, bandwidth, or additional features, you can easily upgrade your plan through your GoDaddy account or by contacting customer support.
Does GoDaddy offer website backup services?
Yes, GoDaddy provides website backup services to help you protect your website's data and files. Depending on your hosting plan, you may have access to automated backup features or the option to manually back up your website through the control panel.
Does GoDaddy offer any discounts or promotions for new customers?
Yes, GoDaddy frequently offers discounts and promotions for new customers signing up for hosting services. These promotions may include discounted hosting plans, free domain registration, or special pricing for the first term of service. Be sure to check their website or promotional emails for current offers.