GoDaddy
5.0

GoDaddy

+ Best uptime (99.99%)
+ Top 5 speed (405 ms)
+ One-Click-Install for WordPress
+ Easy to use, beginner-friendly + Free domain and site builder

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Pros
  • Best uptime (99.99%)
  • Fast, 405 ms load time as average
  • Good & quick customer support
  • Recommended by WordPress.org
  • 1-Click installs for website builders
  • Cheap introductory cost
Cons
  • Some disadvantage

GoDaddy – Why does it dominate the hosting market?

According to various resources, one out of twenty websites globally is hosted by GoDaddy. Inarguably, they are the world’s largest service provider, serving 19+ million customers daily.

They are known for their domain name registration, email hosting, and more. A great variety of domain extensions you are looking for are available: .com, .net, .org, .law or even .today, though it may be pricey. GoDaddy offers a variety of services, including WordPress hosting, windows servers, and dedicated servers for power users.

GoDaddy’s hosting has proven to be stable (99.97% uptime) and fast (554ms average).

Their entry plan named Economy generously gives you up to 100 GB storage and unmetered bandwidth.

The word on the street is that GoDaddy is not all it’s cracked up to be. They say they won all their existing customers by aggressive advertising rather than by providing exceptional service. Well in this review, I will focus on the facts. Let’s see how their shared hosting options stack up with pros and cons, features, support, and equally important, pricing.

Why are you going to love GoDaddy?

Reliability – they guarantee you 99.9% uptime (anything beyond 99.5% is considered good), and we know that every minute your website is down, you are potentially losing money. Security is not an issue with GoDaddy since their servers are highly protected. Since 2018 they have been migrating the vast majority of their infrastructure to AWS as part of a multi-year transition.

Load speed is another thing that could put a smile on your website visitors’ faces or make them never come back again. GoDaddy has been doing a great job here for many years. Test pages have shown an average page loading speed of 554 ms over the past 24 months.

GoDaddy features

  • 24/7 support (live chat, phone, email, social media)
  • Fast Loading Times & Solid Uptime
  • Variety of templates and opportunities for independent design
  • WordPress integration
  • High security provided with great up-to-date technology
  • 30-days money guarantee
  • Free advertising credits that include over $100 toward Google AdWords for every $25 spent. Moreover, these credits also include $50 in Bing ads and Facebook ads.

Like some other hosting providers, GoDaddy offers hosting reseller programweb design services, and SEO consulting.

What surprised us is that free SSL certificates and security are only available with Ultimate and Maximum plans, which are pricy and won’t suit everybody. Back-ups are also available for the extra charge only. The cache memory varies between packages.

Nevertheless, with GoDaddy, you have an extensive selection of applications to choose from (more than 125) and great user-friendly tools for website creation and maintenance. My personal opinion is that their website building plugins are one of the best to develop your website if you’re a so-called citizen developer. The simplicity of designing and maintaining gives it a social media feel and look.

GoDaddy Pros and Cons 

PROS

  • Usability: It’s an excellent product for less tech-savvy users thanks to its sharp interface and an application stock
  • Performance: According to numerous tests, GoDaddy offers reliable performance in uptime and page loading speed.
  • GoDaddy manages its security very well and supports plenty of technologies specially dedicated to thwarting spam and hackers.
  • Storage: All your files combined can’t be more than 250,000 files (inodes). That’s the only storage limitation they have – quite generous.
  • Windows servers: GoDaddy also offers Windows-based hosting.
  • Bandwidth: The traffic on your website won’t be measured regardless of the package chosen
  • It provides email accounts with most hosting plans, and you could also purchase extra accounts and features if needed
  • 24/7 support both via live chat and phone.

CONS

  • Complicated pricing policy and a lot of upsells (e.g., backups and SSL-certificates)
  • Many users are not happy with the customer support provided, saying that it is slow and frustrating.
  • It misses some advanced features like staging areas or Git repositories that may come in handy for developers.
  • One of GoDaddy’s significant cons is that you cannot change themes once you have chosen one of the pre-made design templates without losing your content. Therefore, you have to be 100% sure that you have found the perfect theme before committing to one of the models.

When to use GoDaddy’s hosting?

Our research has shown that GoDaddy is an excellent option for businesses to build their websites from scratch. It is also a good option for less tech-savvy users and those who want to have sufficient storage without giving up the simplicity of interface and usability.

However, if the price is your main criteria when choosing a web hosting provider, we suggest taking a look at the other providers from our list, since GoDaddy may be pricy.

While many hosting providers have their servers located on one continent,  GoDaddy offers you several servers around the Globe.

When not to use GoDaddy’s hosting?

Even though GoDaddy has e-commerce-friendly features, it still might not the best provider for your e-commerce site. For instance, it doesn’t host a checkout feature on your domain. Trust is everything in e-commerce, and some users could feel vulnerable when redirected to another domain to complete their purchase. If you are a very cost-sensitive business, you might want to consider other options.

Is GoDaddy easy to use?

With GoDaddy, you can update your website from pretty much every device out there. The interface of the website builder and cPanel are intuitive and user-friendly. It’s easy to use even if you do not have extensive experience in website building or administration. Don’t forget that once you’ve chosen the template for your website, you cannot change it.

On the other hand, the support might not be as responsive as you wish, so if you are looking for constant guidance from the provider’s side, GoDaddy might not be your first choice. But again, it’s manageable.

GoDaddy Pricing Plans

GoDaddy offers a lot of different plans, but we are going to take a closer look at the features of their shared hosting options. All shared plans include unmetered bandwidth. In other words, they won’t charge extra for a large amount of data sent to your account.

The basic Economy plan offers you 100GB of storage, one website, ten databases, and a free domain that starts at $4.49 per month. Free office-365 email is available for the first year of hosting. It seems like a decent package for most small businesses and personal blogs. Some providers will only give you 10GB of storage on the cheapest package. Now, bear in mind that price for this and all other packages will go up upon renewal. But let’s be fair, almost all providers do that.

Another option, Deluxe, gives you all the above plus unlimited storage (as well as more high-end plans), 25 databases, and unlimited subdomains and websites, which is something to consider. The starter price is $7.49.

The Ultimate package gives you 2Xpower and memory for complex sites and heavy traffic and starts at $8.49. It includes all of the Deluxe features + free premium DNS, which essentially means that your end customers will get a faster Web address resolution speed, regardless of their geographical location. With this option, you will get a free SSL certificate for the first year of usage and unlimited databases.

Finally, Maximum is designed to support multiple complex sites with heavy-weight content. It includes all Ultimate features, plus 2x more power and memory; 2x Maximum site traffic and free SSL Certificate for the full term, all for $19.99 per month.

Does Hostozilla recommend GoDaddy?

Yes, we do.

GoDaddy has steady uptime and superior load times. The available applications allow you to work with the most popular web apps you need. Initial pricing is reasonable, and usability is good.

If you don’t want to be surprised by your credit card statement, we recommend studying all the potential charges, like backups, $2,99 and SSL-certificates for lower-end plans (starting at $63.99/year). Some important advanced features are missed, and you won’t find free migration tools from your current provider.

We also like that apart from the standard Linux option, you can go for the Windows-based hosting services, which is not that common. Another crucial thing that is highly valued is the intuitive interface and ease of use.

The good thing is that they have a 30-days money-back guarantee so that you could try their services risk-free.

GoDaddy FAQ

Can GoDaddy host WordPress?

Yes, it can. GoDaddy has a set of plans dedicated to WordPress hosting. For more information, please follow this link.

Are GoDaddy and WordPress the same?

WordPress is a content management system. So you could build your website on WordPress. While GoDaddy is a hosting provider, which essentially means that it’s a place where your site can live and be stored while being accessible on the broader web.

Are GoDaddy websites ADA compliant?

Being ADA compliant is more about the content that you put on your website than hosting or the website itself. If you want to increase your site’s accessibility, make sure that you post more video content, this content is transcribed, and so on.

Plans start at:
$2.75/mo
Fastest Speed
Reliable hosting for SMBs and individuals.
-20% for the first 3 months.
5.0
Easy of Use
5.0
Uptime
5.0
Pricing Policy
5.0
Customer Support
5.0 Overall Rating

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