When it comes to domains, GoDaddy works just fine. Registering a domain is a simple process and your domain registrar doesn’t matter too much. Sure, there are a few details that make them different, but it ultimately isn’t that big of a decision. Just pick one.
We can’t say the same for web hosting or GoDaddy’s massive range of other products. It does matter and it matters a lot.
As such, we’ll be focusing mostly on GoDaddy’s other products for this review.
Compare GoDaddy to The Best Web Hosting Services
GoDaddy’s been around for a long time and it’s great for domain registrations. However, it didn’t make our list of the best web hosting providers.
Why? GoDaddy’s hosting is more expensive than other options and we couldn’t find anything to justify the added cost. Providers like Hostinger (our favorite), Bluehost, and HostGator cost half as much. Plus, they’re all focused on improving their hosting services rather than adding dozens of new products you’ll have to pay for separately.
With that said, there’s nothing inherently wrong with hosting your site on GoDaddy. It’s just not one of our favorites.
On top of that, we recommend registering your domain separately from your hosting provider in case you decide to switch providers later. Getting a free domain with hosting is great–there’s no problem with doing that. But we suggest transferring your domain name elsewhere once your free year is up.
Doing so will save you a lot of money and potential hassle down the road.
GoDaddy: The Good and The Bad
Despite not being one of our favorites, GoDaddy has a lot of good things going for it and a massive selection of products and tools to help you build and managing your business.
However, it’s likely not a good choice for you if saving money, customer service, or upsell-free experiences are your top priority.
The Good
One-click WordPress installation: GoDaddy offers one-click installation for a number of different apps, including WordPress. This is ideal for those who are new to building websites but still like to do things on their own.
It is also great for those who are ready to get a site up and running as quickly as possible and don’t have the time or desire to spend time fussing with a complex WordPress setup. While WordPress can sometimes be a bit clunky for newbies, GoDaddy really simplifies the process for its web hosting clients.
Easy to use: GoDaddy is a great hosting provider for those who are fresh to the world of websites. The builder available via GoDaddy does all the hard work for you and allows you to simply pick what you want your website to look like by choosing from a variety of templates.
The only downside of the ease of use is that you don’t have as much room for creativity as you may with other providers. However, if you are new to website building and don’t want to put a lot of time and energy into creating something elaborate, GoDaddy’s ease of use will be particularly advantageous to you.
Amazingly responsive customer service: Getting someone on the phone to help you in this day and age is not as easy as it once was. It feels as if everything is automated and you’re constantly run through bots until you lose patience and eventually hang up. That is not the case with GoDaddy. Though they certainly do use bots, GoDaddy also has phone and live chat support available 24/7.
Even better, users have reported that it typically takes less than 2 minutes to talk to a real person on the phone. Now that feels unheard of. The same thing happens when you decide you’d rather hop on the chat instead. You may find that the reps are busy initially, but wait just a few minutes and you’ll get someone helping you out.
Strong video guides: If there’s a question or an issue that you’re having and you don’t want to turn to GoDaddy’s support for help, try their video guides instead. The How-To section on GoDaddy’s website is unlike any other hosting provider’s. They have playlists of video guides to help you through things such as how to plan your online presence, how to set up your email, marketing basics, and much more.
This extensive resource will come in handy for more than just troubleshooting issues you may be having. It’s a place for you to take your website and the concept behind it to new levels.
Quick load time: Load time is a very important piece of the website puzzle, and your site won’t do well if it won’t load fast. Because newsflash: no one wants to sit around waiting for a website to load. We want things to happen now. Thankfully, GoDaddy’s load times are super fast.
Multiple data centers: The more data centers a hosting provider has, the faster their speeds can be. GoDaddy has three data centers—Europe, U.S., and Asia, which means GoDaddy has fast load speeds that cover most of the world. However, there are places further away from those data centers that do cause the speed to drop a bit, but GoDaddy is planning to open another data center in India which may help to cut out the low outlier numbers.
If you’re using GoDaddy for Linux hosting, you’ll even have the option to select your data center and change it down the road (if necessary). This is a great perk for those of you who want to be in total control of what’s happening on the back end of your site.
Freebies: Whoever said there’s no such thing as a free lunch didn’t use GoDaddy’s hosting service. When you purchase a shared web hosting plan, you get some great free features including a domain, an Office 365 email, webmail, over 125 applications, and more.
The biggest one is the domain, however. Since GoDaddy is known for its domain registration, it is smart of them to give a free domain to someone purchasing their hosting. Domain names can otherwise cost anywhere from $5 to $5,000 per year, so a free one is always nice. However, do note that the domain is free just for the first year. Following that, you will be charged the regular annual price.
Robust security: In addition to hosting your website, GoDaddy helps protect it from malicious attacks, viruses, malware, and other external threats. Every GoDaddy web hosting plan comes with network security features and DDoS protection and monitoring around the clock.
You’ll also get automated daily backups for free. So if something does go wrong, it’s easy to recover your entire hosting account from how things were left off the previous day. This is far more advanced than other web hosting providers that just offer a free SSL certificate and leave all other aspects of security in your hands.
The Bad
It’s expensive: GoDaddy charges at least 2x as much as similar web hosting plans from other providers. We couldn’t really find anything that justified this higher price tag.
High renewal rates: While this is true with almost all hosting providers, GoDaddy seems to be one of the worst when you compare their introductory prices to the renewal rate. While the price is okay for new customers, you can expect your rates to double when your initial sign-up term ends.
Limited basic plan: Despite having a higher price tag than most, GoDaddy’s Basic plan is just that–basic. It doesn’t offer anything that will wow you or include much in the way of special features and bonuses. It doesn’t offer anything that competitors don’t.
SSL certificate is only free for one year: Providers like–Hostinger–give you a free SSL certificate for each website… forever. You won’t have to pay for one unless you have specialized security needs (most people don’t). This is the standard. There are various ways you can get a free SSL certificate and through your host is usually the easiest. However, GoDaddy will automatically start charging you $99.99 per year for something you can get for free elsewhere.
Loaded with upsells: While there are some freebies included in the hosting plans, where GoDaddy gets you is with the upsells. A lot of features are available when you use GoDaddy for your hosting, but most of them come at a price.
You may find yourself overwhelmed by the checkout process that attempts to upsell you on all sorts of products and sometimes will automatically add some things to your cart. While they may be great additions, we don’t love that they are added to your cart without your permission. Many people may not even notice those additional charges until after they’ve already made their purchase.
GoDaddy Pricing and Options
GoDaddy, like other web hosting providers, offers several different plans that each fit different needs. And, as to be expected, the lower-tiered plans limit what you can do with your hosting, but also come at a low price and serve as a great place to get started.
GoDaddy Shared Hosting
GoDaddy’s shared plans are ideal for small websites and new sites that are just starting out. They’re a great value because you’re sharing server resources with other websites—hence the name “shared.”
This means that it’s not quite as powerful as other hosting tiers. But it’s a cost-effective option for personal sites, low-traffic blogs, and even business sites with only a few pages.
Compared to other web hosting providers on the market, GoDaddy’s shared plans are a bit more expensive. In some cases, these plans are double or triple the cost of other entry-level promotional rates.
The higher rates do come with some extra perks. You’re getting 24/7 security, DDoS protection, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. GoDaddy also offers free daily backups, which you won’t see from other providers at the lowest plan tiers.
You’re also getting newly optimized servers that are up to 40% faster than alternative options.
While you’re definitely paying a little bit more for GoDaddy’s brand name, it’s still a solid choice to consider.
Here’s a closer look at GoDaddy’s shared hosting packages:
Web Hosting Economy. Beginners that are just getting started building websites should lean towards the economy plan. It supports a single site and includes a free SSL, free email, and 25 GB of storage. Starting at just $6.99 per month with a one-year contract ($5.99 with a three-year contract), it’s a decent value for new websites.
Web Hosting Deluxe. The Deluxe package is made for beginners that need a hosting solution for multiple websites. It comes with everything included in the Economy plan but supports up to ten websites and has double the storage capacity—all for just $2 more per month.
Web Hosting Ultimate. Starting at $12.99 per month, the Ultimate plan is designed for high-traffic sites. You’ll benefit from increased processing power, support for up to 25 sites, 75 GB of storage, and 50 databases.
Web Hosting Maximum. The Maximum plan is the highest tier at GoDaddy’s shared level. Starting at $17.99 per month, this plan is made for sites that need to support high-quality photos and videos. With support for up to 50 sites, 100 GB of storage, and 100 databases, there’s plenty of room for growth.
WordPress Hosting
For those who are new to websites, WordPress may be your best friend. It will make hosting and building your website much easier and a much smoother process. You don’t need to learn any coding to use WordPress, although you can if you want to further customize your site.
GoDaddy offers fully managed WordPress hosting.
So in addition to getting WordPress pre-installed and WordPress-optimized servers, you’re also getting extra service perks. GoDaddy offers 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 come with global Cloudflare CDN. This caches static content, accelerates dynamic content, and further improves the performance of your site.
Managed WordPress Basic. For a small site that’s just getting started, the Basic plan is all you need. This tier includes two Microsoft 365 mailboxes for free for the first year, a free SSL certificate for as long as you use GoDaddy for your hosting plan, and 5 GB of storage. The starting price for this is $9.99 per month for the first 12 months.
Managed WordPress Deluxe. Is the Basic plan too basic? Try the Deluxe plan that gives you help boosting your SEO, 25 GB of storage, three Microsoft 365 mailboxes for free for the first year, and everything in the Basic tier. This package starts at $13.99 per month.
Managed WordPress Ultimate. The Ultimate plan is designed for larger sites and higher traffic. It comes 100 GB of storage, five free Microsoft 365 mailboxes for the first year, and everything in the Deluxe tier for $15.99 per month. It also comes with a WordPress code optimizer, which isn’t available at the first two tiers.
Managed WooCommerce Stores
If you want to turn your WordPress site into an ecommerce shop, these plans are for you. They’re similar to GoDaddy’s managed WordPress plans—but specifically built for selling through WooCommerce.
So you’re still getting all of the managed WordPress features that you’d expect to have, plus so much more.
You can use GoDaddy’s WooCommerce plans to sell physical goods, memberships, subscriptions, digital goods, gift certificates, and more. GoDaddy lets you fully customize the checkout experience, and it even integrates with GoDaddy’s POS if you’re planning to sell online and in person.
Here’s a quick look at the plans and pricing for these hosting packages:
- Essentials – Starting at $24.99 per month
- Flex – Starting at $79.99 per month
- Expand – Starting at $129.99 per month
All plans come with the ability to sell unlimited products with discounted shipping rates of up to 84%. You can even take advantage of GoDaddy’s built-in payment processing system, with fees starting at 2.3% per transaction.
The biggest difference between each plan tier is how many orders you can sell through online marketplaces each month. The Essentials plan supports 1,000 marketplace orders, while Flex and Expand stand at 2,500 and 5,000, respectively.
Every plan comes with built-in shopping cart abandonment emails. But you’ll get an extra message in your drip with each tier.
If you’re planning to sell online using WooCommerce and you’re interested in GoDaddy, going this route is really a no-brainer. Your store will also be backed by GoDaddy’s 99.95% uptime guarantee.
VPS Hosting
A VPS-hosted website will see much quicker speeds and performance thanks to the fact that there are servers allocated specifically for your website, and your website only. Thus, if you are looking for a fast website that generally runs better, VPS hosting may be for you.
Just be advised that these are self-hosted plans, which means you’ll need some technical knowledge to get the most out of them.
Generally speaking, self-managed VPS hosting from GoDaddy is best for developers and system administrators. You’re getting full root access with SSH keys—providing total control.
These plans are built to scale. So you can quickly increase RAM and CPU for better performance without having to worry about manual migrations.
All of GoDaddy’s VPS plans come with the same features. You’re just paying for extra storage, memory, and processing power at each tier level.
There are four Standard plans to choose from.
- 1 vCPU Standard – $8.99 per month
- 2 vCPU Standard – $17.99 per month
- 4 vCPU Standard with 8 GB RAM – $34.99 per month
- 4 vCPU Standard with 16 GB RAAM – $44.99 per month
Alternatively, you can get a High-Performance VPS that comes with more storage, memory, and computing power.
- 8 vCPU / 16 GB RAM High-Performance – $64.99 per month
- 8 vCPU / 32 GB RAM High-Performance – $89.99 per month
- 16 vCPU / 64 GB RAM High-Performance – $149.99 per month
- 32 vCPU / 128 GB RAM High-Performance – $199.99 per month
All of the rates above, for both the Standard and High-Performance VPS plans, are promotional rates based on a three-year term. These are roughly 33% less than the regular rate, which will renew automatically when your contract expires.
Web Hosting Plus
Web Hosting Plus is an upgraded version of GoDaddy’s VPS hosting. These plans come with faster page loading speeds and a user-friendly control panel. It’s essentially all the benefits of a VPS server, but without the technical headaches.
Web Hosting Plus Launch. For the basics on multiple websites, this package is a great place to start. Starting at $17.99 per month, it gives you all sorts of features to help get your business started. This includes daily backups and a dedicated IP.
Web Hosting Plus Enhance. If you expect your website to be high-traffic, then this plan is what you want. For $29.99 per month, it comes with more storage and RAM. Uniquely, it’s also the best option if you’re hosting a website on Joomla.
Web Hosting Plus Grow. For hosting on advanced ecommerce platforms like Magento, the Web Hosting Plus Grow plan has you covered. With 300 GB, 16 GB of RAM, and 8 CPUs, it’s an incredible combination of power and value at $39.99 per month.
Web Hosting Plus Expand. Built for photography and resource-heavy websites, this plan comes with 400 GB of storage, 32 GB of RAM, and 16 CPUs. You can use it to host up to 200 websites, which most of you likely won’t come close to. This plan comes with a $54.99 monthly price tag.
