GoDaddy Hosting Review: We Decided To Put One Of The Biggest Names in Hosting to The Test. Here’s What We Found.

Digital.com’s Rating for GoDaddy

Our Editor’s rated GoDaddy 3.5 / 5 based on user ratings, pricing, and features offered.

GoDaddy: Quick Overview

Overall, there’s a lot to like about GoDaddy. With over 82 million domains under management, GoDaddy is the top domain registrar globally, and they’re also one of the most popular hosting providers.

GoDaddy offers plans for every hosting user, from bloggers who need affordable basic shared hosting to businesses looking for super-charged dedicated servers that handle a high traffic volume.

They provide excellent customer support options as well. The only downside is that, while GoDaddy’s shared hosting and WordPress plans are affordable, other providers offer lower prices. So, if you’re looking for the lowest hosting price available, you’ll need to look elsewhere. But if there’s room in your budget beyond the bargain bin, you should strongly consider GoDaddy.

What Are the Pros and Cons of GoDaddy?

Before we get into the details of GoDaddy’s hosting services, let’s review the biggest advantages and disadvantages to using this provider:

What Makes GoDaddy Standout?

GoDaddy Poynt 

GoDaddy Poynt for WooCommerce is a pre-installed e-commerce plugin included on their WordPress Hosting plan that’s ideally suited for online merchants who want to get paid quickly — the next business day. Access from a single dashboard all online orders, payments, refunds, and deposits by completing the setup from the Plugins dashboard. They guarantee that approval is quick and there’s no contract to sign.

•  Source everything from one provider with just one bill and one team to contact for 24/7 support.
• Pay no signup fees, monthly minimums or hidden costs. Pay just 2.3% + $0.30 per transaction.
• Keep your customers’ data secure with hosted iFrame processing that also helps your store stay PCI compliant.

Website Builder

GoDaddy offers a website builder and marketing suite called Websites + Marketing with plans ranging from $9.99/month to $24.99/month.

It’s easy to build your site from scratch using this tool. They give you dozens of pre-built templates to choose from — then, you just need to fill in the template with your own content. You can add and remove sections to customize the layout however you want.

Websites + Marketing can also help you engage customers via email, manage your online reviews, and improve your site’s position in search rankings.

GoDaddy Hosting Types

GoDaddy offers many different hosting plans, including shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated servers.

Shared Hosting

GoDaddy’s shared hosting packages start at $5.99 per month (though you can get it for just $1.99 per month with our special discount link). That’s for the Economy plan, which works for one website and includes 100 GB storage, unmetered bandwidth, one year of free domain registration, and one year of free Microsoft 365 email.

If you need more hosting resources or are interested in extra features, GoDaddy also offers the following shared hosting plans:

• Deluxe: Works for unlimited websites and includes unlimited storage.
• Ultimate: In addition to the features that come with the Economy and Deluxe plans, the Ultimate plan offers free premium DNS, a free SSL certificate for one year, and increased processing power.
• Maximum: With this plan, you get unlimited SSL for all of your websites.

WordPress Hosting

All of the following WordPress hosting plans include automatic security updates, a one-click migration tool, a drag-and-drop page editor, and access to thousands of free themes and plugins:

• Basic: 30 GB storage and bandwidth suitable for up to 25,000 monthly visitors. Other features include website backup protection, automatic daily malware scans, one year of free business email, a free domain for the initial term, and free SSL for the duration of hosting.
• Deluxe: 75 GB storage and bandwidth suitable for up to 100,000 monthly visitors. Extra features include an SEO optimizer and one-click testing site.
• Ultimate: Unlimited storage and bandwidth. Also includes unlimited malware removal and hack repair.
• Ecommerce: Unlimited storage and bandwidth. As you may have guessed from the name of this plan, it includes features for managing an online store, such as unlimited product listings, real-time shipping rates, and free access to over a dozen top WooCommerce extensions.

VPS Hosting

Shared hosting options should work fine for most sites, but if you have a lot of traffic you may need to upgrade to a solution that doesn’t share your hosting resources with others.

With a virtual private server (VPS), you get the power of dedicated resources at a lower cost than an actual physical server. GoDaddy’s most affordable VPS plan ($4.99 per month) includes 1 CPU core, 1 GB RAM, and 20 GB SSD storage — you can upgrade all the way up to 8 CPU cores, 16 GB RAM, and 400 GB SSD storage.

Dedicated Servers

Users with the most demanding hosting needs will likely need to have their own dedicated server in order to maintain optimal performance.

GoDaddy’s dedicated servers start at $129.99 per month for an Intel Xeon-D processor, 32 GB RAM, and 2 x 4 TB HDD Storage (RAID-1). The most powerful solution that GoDaddy offers will cost you $399.99 per month with our discount, and this dedicated server includes an AMD EPYC processor, 256 GB RAM, and 2 x 1 TB SSD Storage (RAID-1).

GoDaddy Plans & Prices

Below is an overview of GoDaddy’s plans and their current price list. For more detail, visit our page about GoDaddy’s hosting plans.

GoDaddy Hosting Plan Features

GoDaddy’s platform is optimized for WordPress, with high-performance features like load-balanced servers. WordPress Hosting from GoDaddy uses servers modified to ensure WordPress websites run smoothly. 

Their WordPress search engine optimization (SEO) plugin reviews pages and automatically handles basic SEO needs so search engines can easily find their client’s website. This service includes a security feature that finds and removes malware before it does damage available in their Ultimate and E-commerce hosting plans.

• Easy-to-use control panel.
  Includes industry-standard cPanel to install apps, manage backups and security.
• 1-click install of over 150 free apps.
  Provides access to over 150 free apps to create CMS sites (WordPress, Joomla), forums and blogs through Installatron.
• 24/7 network security.
  Offers peace of mind, knowing network security and DDoS protection is monitored around the clock.
• Resources on-demand.
  If you require more power for your site, seamlessly increases your CPU/RAM, I/O, and storage with a 1-click purchase.
• Global data centers.
   Gives faster page loads and a better visitor experience with nearby, state-of-the-art data centers in North America, Europe, or Asia-Pacific.
• 1-click domain name setup.
   GoDaddy registered domain links your site to your domain name.
  

How Is GoDaddy’s Performance and Uptime?

GoDaddy’s uptime guarantee is 99.9%. They provide a maximum credit of 5% of your hosting for a month if their uptime standard is not met in any circumstances. This is why your website’s downtime needs to be recorded. 

For their other hosting services, GoDaddy promises superior load times, and for the VPS plan, they report using the latest Intel processors which could lead to an increase in site load time.

How Does GoDaddy Keep Your Site Secure?

GoDaddy offers strong and affordable security tools to keep your site and customers secure. They provide daily malware scans and backups are stored in their cloud for safekeeping.

Website Backup encrypts all files, folders, and databases that are transferred and stored. In addition, Website Backup provides a daily malware scan, continuous security monitoring, and reputation monitoring.

Managed SSL Service

Maybe setting up your SSL certificate is just one more thing you don’t have time for — we’ve got you covered. GoDaddy’s Managed SSL Service handles the installation, maintenance, and updates for you, saving you time so you can spend more time running your business.

• Includes one DV SSL certificate.
• Protect one site, multiple sites, or subdomains.
• Terms up to 5 years.
• Compatible only with GoDaddy Web Hosting and WordPress platforms.

Managed SSL Service

Maybe setting up your SSL certificate is just one more thing you don’t have time for — we’ve got you covered. Managed SSL Service handles the installation, maintenance, and updates for you, saving you time so you can spend more time running your business.

• Includes one DV SSL certificate.
• Protect one site, multiple sites, or subdomains.
• Terms up to 5 years.
• Compatible only with GoDaddy Web Hosting and WordPress platforms.

Does GoDaddy Handle Site Backups?

All hosting plans of GoDaddy offer automated backup. Every file, folder and database on your site is always safe, protected, and available. Their website backup allows you to back up your site and related databases via FTP or SFTP to a secure cloud location. During the backup process, they also scan your files for malware and then store the malware-free copies for safekeeping.

Backups start as soon as you set up your account. To conserve bandwidth, they only download new and modified files after the initial backup. Each backup is a complete copy of your website on that day. You can choose how frequently and at what time your backups are done.

Backups are retained for 30 days. This means you can restore your site to the state of any day with a successful backup during the last 30 days. You can also download copies of your backups to local storage for emergency access or site migration.

How Is GoDaddy’s Help and Support?

One of the biggest benefits of using GoDaddy is that whenever you run into an issue, you can always reach a live support rep. Their phone and live chat support options are available 24/7.

GoDaddy also offers a much more developed knowledge base than most hosting providers. In addition to instructions for using their services, the How-To section of their site includes video guides on broader topics such as “Introduction to SEO”, “Website Security Basics”, and “Plan Your Online Presence”.

Money-back Guarantee

Annual plans have a 30-day money-back guarantee, while monthly plans have a 48-hour money-back guarantee.

If the plan you purchased included one year of free domain registration, the cost of this domain will be deducted from your refund. You’ll still be able to use the domain with another host, though.

What Are Some Good Alternatives To GoDaddy?

GoDaddy is a low-budget entry-level web hosting company and if you need to upgrade or shop around and compare web hosts the best GoDaddy hosting alternatives are Bluehost, WebHostingHub, SiteGround, Site5 and A2 Hosting.

For WordPress users, one option to GoDaddy that you might consider is WP Engine hosting, a managed platform for WordPress sites. While managed WP Engine hosting is on the expensive side, the company does one thing, and it does it well: host WordPress sites. You can think of WP Engine as a boutique that offers you everything you need to ship the best possible, most performant WordPress site as possible.

If you are not looking for a (managed) WordPress blog-specific option, consider HostGator and HostMonster.

HostGator is very similar to GoDaddy, but it is slightly more performant and bundles its shared packages with a cPanel (unlike GoDaddy, which uses its proprietary control panel). Both companies offer top-notch customer support. You cannot go wrong in choosing GoDaddy over HostGator (or vice versa).

HostMonster, on the other hand, is a much smaller company geared toward those who are looking for simple hosting for a smaller site. You may find that HostMonster’s pricing is slightly better than GoDaddy’s, but the company’s customer service and technical support team is harder to reach.

Head over to our alternatives guide to learn which brands we think are also worth considering alongside GoDaddy.

Please check out our dedicated GoDaddy FAQ.

Frequently Asked Questions About GoDaddy