GoDaddy was founded by Bob Parsons. About 70 percent of GoDaddy was sold to a private equity consortium several years ago, and the company has since gone public on NASDAQ with the stock ticker GDDY.
GoDaddy owns a massive 320,000 square feet data center that is located in Phoenix Arizona. The company also has data centers in Los Angeles, Chicago and Ashburn, Virginia, along with international facilities in Amsterdam and Singapore.
Yes and no. Shared plans do come with unlimited storage, but you are limited to 250,000 files/folders (and each email counts as a file). Furthermore, there are certain “soft” caps on other resources — if your usage exceeds these caps, GoDaddy may throttle the resources available to your website and, in extreme cases, may even prevent your use of the resources, leading to site downtime.
How do I contact GoDaddy’s support? You get first class 24/7 customer support via phone, live chat – and you can browse a database of questions and articles with common questions covered. What languages does GoDaddy support speak? Besides English, GoDaddy’s customer service is provided in many languages. Here’s a full list of supported languages including phone numbers.
If your domain name is registered someplace else (for example with Namecheap) then you need to update the domain’s nameservers. You will find the correct NS values in your control panel. For example, GoDaddy’s default DNS nameservers look like: ns01.domaincontrol.com and ns02.domaincontrol.com. Their premium DNS nameservers look like: pdns01.domaincontrol.com and pdns02.domaincontrol.com. Again find the right information by logging into your web hosting cPanel.
You can contact GoDaddy using live chat (Live chat can be launched via the “Chat with us” button on their website) or phone. To request a refund go to the “Contact Us”, select your country and perform a toll-free phone call.
GoDaddy offers a money-back guarantee however it is related to the length of your web hosting plan. So do read the fine prints. However, you do qualify for 45-day money-return guarantee if you have selected their annual plan.
First of all, you’ll find many free templates to start customizing your website with. You’ll also find a nice library of 8,700 free photos. Another feature you can add to your website is a shopping cart. If you’re really short on time, GoDaddy’s Website Builder offers you pre-built websites with pre-written words and pictures. It just takes a mere 5 minutes to perform a tweak and you’re good to go.
GoDaddy’s cheapest hosting plan is $2.99 per month and it comes with unlimited bandwidth and 100 GB storage and a free domain (for the first year) is included with the purchase.
WordPress installation is manual (though easy), but GoDaddy provides you with a WordPress managing tool suite, which automatizes your WordPress site backups and software updates. GoDaddy also enhances the performance of your WordPress website and offers you 24/7/365 specialized tech support.
Managed WordPress plans come with the WordPress core pre-installed.
The best plan for self-hosted WordPress users depends on the total number of sites hosted. Although the Developer plan is the most expensive one, it’s meant for people who own 5 websites and have up to 800,000 monthly visitors. On the other hand, the Ultimate plan can handle one or two WordPress sites, and 400,000 monthly visitors. It also includes malware protection.
GoDaddy also offers managed WordPress options, which includes bonuses like WordPress installed by default, staging areas, and dedicated phone support lines (no live chat, though).
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.
Need a great web host? Want to save some time? This shortlist is your best place to begin:
