Overview
GoDaddy at a Glance
You’ll no doubt be familiar with GoDaddy, the somewhat snarky, slightly scandalous, and seriously silly hosting service that combines humor and website hosting in a professional and reliable way. Between that and perks like affordable pricing, 99.9% uptime, and a free SSL certificate with most plans, GoDaddy is a great deal.
You can find every type of hosting package with GoDaddy. So, whether you’re looking for shared hosting, Managed WordPress, VPS, Dedicated Servers, reseller hosting and beyond, this is the address for you.
GoDaddy has hosting centers around the world. This translates to faster load times and happier customers across the board. GoDaddy also offers truly unlimited and unmetered bandwidth, a free domain with an annual plan, and free Microsoft Office 365 business email for the first year.
Best For
With so many hosting plans, domain options, and other special features, GoDaddy can accommodate nearly every type of online project. Its popularity alone attracts many first-time web builders.
You might think that it would be an excellent option for pretty much anyone looking to establish an online presence, but I haven’t found that to always be the case; GoDaddy is ideal for a user that has a little bit of web admin experience or is planning on creating a very simple site.
Customers looking to set up a GoDaddy WordPress site, for example, should have little trouble doing so. Conversely, I’m reluctant to recommend GoDaddy for the first-time ecommerce customer. There are so many fantastic tools and services that can support your store, but they can be tricky to use, and customer support may be hard to reach at times.
Features
One of the benefits of a company being as large as GoDaddy is that they have the resources to venture out and try new things. The company has technical features like unlimited storage, bandwidth, and MySQL databases, and it offers two tiers of hosting plans, the first designed for light-to-medium use. The second tier is Advanced Hosting solutions, designed for higher traffic sites or hosting environments that require customization.
Web Hosting Economy
Great for beginners or if you just want to set up a single site. Economy gives you everything you need to get your website up and running with one website, 100GB storage, unlimited bandwidth, free Office 365 email for a year, and a free domain – with an annual (or higher) plan for the length of your initial plan. Economy is a good option for getting started and is more than sufficient if you don't have any particularly big online plans.
Web Hosting Deluxe
If you need something with a little more power and flexibility, Deluxe allows you to create an unlimited number of websites. You also get unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, free Office 365 email for a year and a free domain – with an annual (or higher) plan for the length of your initial plan.
Web Hosting Ultimate
If you're looking for more power for complex sites and heavy traffic, Ultimate offers unlimited websites, storage, and bandwidth; a year of free Office 365 email; free domain when you purchase an Annual (or longer-term) plan; premium DNS; and free one-year SSL certificate (again, only when purchases with an Annual - or higher - Web Hosting plan). All the above, plus double the processing power and memory.
Web Hosting Maximum
If you're looking for a hosting solution that supports multiple, complex sites, Maximum is the way to go. This plan offers unlimited websites, storage, and bandwidth, free Office 365 email for a year, free domain for the length of your initial plan, premium DNS and a free SSL certificate (for extra security) for the full term of the hosting plan. Plus double the memory and double input/output (I/O) when you use GoDaddy Maximum and cPanel with Linux.
Web Hosting Plus
If you're looking for the power of a Virtual Private server without having to manage a server, Web Hosting Plus is your best bet. It offers dedicated resources and comes with a built-in, easy-to-use control panel (cPanel). Web Hosting Plus is ideal for ecommerce, high-traffic and resource-intensive websites, and there are four plans to choose from based on your needs.
All plans offer unlimited websites, unmetered traffic, include free Office 365 email for a year and a free SSL certificate (for extra security) for the full term of the hosting plan.
Advanced Hosting solutions (VPS Hosting and Dedicated Server Hosting)
For more significant undertakings, GoDaddy offers a souped-up service for web designers, developers and business customers including a range of self-managed and fully-managed virtual private servers (VPS) and dedicated servers.
There are packages for Linux and Windows, ranging from 1CPU, 1GB RAM with 20GB SSD storage, up to 8 CPU, 16 GB RAM with 400GB of SSD storage. Dedicated services allow for up to 8TB of HDD storage (RAID-1) with 256GB of DDR4 RAM (there are also SSD options for faster VPS service). If you are looking to max out the speed of your server resources you could sign up for NVME too!
Security and Reliability
After establishing market prominence as the world’s largest domain name registrar, GoDaddy branched out into Web Hosting. On the upside, that means GoDaddy is constantly improving its service while staying vigilant and timely.
Recent reports suggest GoDaddy Security is vastly improved, with the security team monitoring the network 24/7 for suspicious activity and protecting against DDoS attacks, providing several options for password protection over your directories and numerous other steps you can take to look after your data.
Something GoDaddy has become very adept at recently is reliability. If the service provides you with anything less than 99% uptime, you can request a refund for the affected month. It also offers some of the fastest page-loading times on the web.
Technology
GoDaddy incorporates a significant amount of current and cutting-edge technology into its services. Even the Basic plans are crammed with technology-rich features. GoDaddy Web Hosting uses cPanel, adding a level of third-party familiarity to a sometimes vast menu of proprietary services.
Site builders aren’t limited to a single individual being able to do administrative work on the back end. Basic plans (Economy and Deluxe Web Hosting) allow for 50 FTP users while some plans have unlimited users. That same breakdown is reflected in GoDaddy DNS management, too. Basic plans have a domain-naming system, and the high-end plans (Ultimate and Maximum Web Hosting) have premium DNS, giving users complete control over how they set up the hierarchy of their online project.
Some less-obvious technologies are at work for other unique products and services; GoDaddy Bookkeeping has accounting processes going on behind the scenes and the auction service is completely out-of-the-box.
Ease of Use
The cPanel integration makes migrating a site from another host a simple task. It’s also easy to install popular applications such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and Magento with a single click. WordPress users can look forward to a new onboarding experience, including a GoDaddy-exclusive template gallery as part of the first step of the set-up process.
From there, it’s super easy to customize your WordPress website. Ecommerce customers will appreciate the GoDaddy Quick Shopping Cart installation to start selling online. The multitude of one-click tools available is also a real time saver.
How GoDaddy Works
GoDaddy is a full-featured web service. You get a free domain for the length of your initial plan when you sign up for the Annual (or longer) Web Hosting plan.
Plus, they add free Office 365 email for the first year; 125+ free applications including WordPress, Drupal and Joomla, unmetered bandwidth, unlimited storage with Deluxe, Ultimate & Maximum plans; free premium DNS with Ultimate & Maximum plans; a free SSL certificate (for a year with the Ultimate plan, free for the full term with Maximum plan).
And, there are lots of Web Hosting Plus, VPS Hosting and Dedicated Server Hosting options for bigger web projects.
Help and Support
GoDaddy's support network is large. So, if you understand the problem you are experiencing, it's relatively straightforward to get in touch and get it fixed. However, if you're not quite sure what may be happening, it can sometimes be a challenge to get connected to the right person who understands your issue.
If you call support, you will be connected with an expert – it just might take a little while longer. On the plus side, calls are toll-free and customer support is on-call 24/7 in most places. Online chat is also available in some areas.
To supplement their customer support, GoDaddy’s help center consists of a substantial support section of articles and videos. Check there first if you’re experiencing a problem.
GoDaddy Pricing
How Much Does GoDaddy Cost?
Because of the sheer number of GoDaddy hosting plans, pricing can be difficult to track. The company offers multiple tiers for each of its Shared Hosting, Business Hosting, Managed WordPress Hosting, VPS Hosting, and Dedicated Server Hosting. Additionally, you can usually find a deal or discount on their main page. Beyond that, a quick online search will typically result in some available GoDaddy discount codes.
For more pricing details, refer to GoDaddy’s website for website builders, marketing tools, and domain registration.
GoDaddy Alternatives
How GoDaddy Compares to Other Website Builders
GoDaddy vs Hostgator
If you’re a small business looking for a solid hosting platform, GoDaddy could be the best choice for you. They also offer a free domain forever, unlike Hostgator’s domain offer which lasts for only one year. A service provided by Hostgator that’s great for SMBs is the business email feature. This way, you can connect your online footprint to your brand and site and stand out from the competition by mail. When hosting it’s super important that your site is secure. While Hostgator malware scans only happen weekly, GoDaddy’s security team monitors the network 24/7 for suspicious activity and protects against DDoS attacks, providing several options for password protection over your directories and numerous other steps you can take to look after your data. Even more so, all of GoDaddy’s hosting plans are encrypted.
GoDaddy vs Bluehost
When comparing GoDaddy and Bluehost’s hosting services, the first obvious difference is the prices. GoDaddy is cheaper than Bluehost at $1.99/month for the first year. This price can really feel like a steal since the company provides an all-in-one solution for high traffic sites. The uptime is at 99.9% and it’s guaranteed. Bluehost also provides a 99.9% uptime but without a guarantee, only offering to solve any uptime problems within 15 minutes. Bluehost is a better option for those looking for simplicity and ease of use, without confusing add ons.
Bottom Line
GoDaddy is one of the most widely-recognized names in web hosting and has come a long way since its early days as a simple domain registrar. With lots of different options and GoDaddy themes, this is a fast, reliable and affordable web host. GoDaddy provides plenty of flexibility and options for online projects of all scales and scopes, and tech-savvy developers will love GoDaddy’s toolbox full of gadgets.
If you're not at home in front of cPanel and you run into trouble, getting the help you need can sometimes be a laborious process. Other options like GoDaddy's own Websites + Marketing offer a more comfortable starting point for beginners, allowing you to build a website without being a web expert. Recommended.
