GoDaddy review: Pros and cons in 2024
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BLUEPRINT
Published 7:25 a.m. UTC June 25, 2024
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GoDaddy
Pros
- Excellent customer service.
- Powerful website builder.
- Diverse e-commerce tools available as add-ons.
Cons
- Top e-commerce plans get pricey.
- WordPress hosting tiers only include one site.
- Base plan only includes free SSL for first year.
GoDaddy is probably best known for its dominance of the web domain registration market, topping the list of the most ubiquitous registrars with nearly 63 million registered domains. However, it also offers a wide range of web hosting options, including shared (commonly called web), WordPress, VPS and dedicated hosting, all driven by a powerful drag-and-drop website builder.
GoDaddy also boasts some of the most well-rounded and versatile e-commerce tools, making it an appealing host for online storefronts or any business that intends to sell products or services online.
Featured web hosting offers
Bluehost
Price
Plans starting at $1.99 per month
Free domain included
Yes
HostGator
Price
Plans starting at $2.56 per month
Free domain included
Yes
Web.com
Price
Plans starting at $2.75 per month
Free domain included
Yes
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Our team of experts evaluates hundreds of business products and analyzes thousands of data points to help you find the best product for your situation. We use a data-driven methodology to determine each rating. Advertisers do not influence our editorial content. You can read more about our methodology below.
- 17 companies reviewed.
- 1,568 data points analyzed.
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GoDaddy overview
GoDaddy offers an impressive range of web hosting features and options. There’s an intuitive drag-and-drop website builder that allows you to start with a theme or template, or you can answer a series of questions and allow AI to generate the site for you before editing as you wish. Alternatively, you can build a site from the ground up, manually crafting or uploading the content you want.
On the pure hosting side, GoDaddy offers shared, virtual private server (VPS) and dedicated server hosting, depending on what level of resources and features your site requires. There are also managed WordPress and managed WooCommerce hosting options if you want to let GoDaddy handle some top-level administration tasks for you, allowing you to focus on running the business aspects of your site.
GoDaddy pros and cons
While there’s a lot to recommend about GoDaddy, there are a few shortcomings that stand out as well.
Pros
GoDaddy emphasizes its e-commerce offerings with good reason. Its plans allow you to sell both physical and digital goods and services, including memberships or gift certificates, and it offers in-person point-of-sale (POS) services as well.
Even the lowest tier of its e-commerce subscription allows for unlimited products and orders through your online store, and it offers very competitive transaction fees. All of GoDaddy’s plan tiers also offer discounted shipping as well as an automatic abandoned cart email to help drive customers through your funnel to a final purchase.
The sheer variety of hosting options GoDaddy offers is also impressive. You can build a site with limited options completely for free, host a simple site with competitively priced shared hosting or choose robust dedicated hosting for larger businesses and enterprise needs. The company also offers managed WordPress and WooCommerce sites, and there are good options like VPS hosting for small- to mid-sized businesses as well.
GoDaddy boasts top-tier 24/7 customer service — a major plus for a company that offers so many options for businesses and e-commerce customers. Notably, the company has won seven Stevie Awards (business awards given annually since 2002) for Exceptional Customer Service.
Cons
Though GoDaddy’s e-commerce plans are full-featured and its per-transaction fees are competitive, the monthly/annual fees can get pretty steep, particularly at higher tiers. GoDaddy also doesn’t include free SSL certificates after the first year, an important security feature for encrypting and protecting data. This is something to keep in mind when it comes to ongoing costs.
There are also other advanced security features like daily malware scanning and continuous site monitoring that aren’t offered by default as part of its hosting packages. Additionally, if you opt for GoDaddy’sWordPress hosting, even the top-priced plan only supports a single site.
GoDaddy pricing and value
| SHARED HOSTING | VPS HOSTING | DEDICATED HOSTING | MANAGED WORDPRESS | MANAGED WOOCOMMERCE | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Basic
| $11.99 per month
| $14.99 per month
| $179.99 per month
| $14.99 per month
| $34.99 per month
|
Mid
| $15.99 per month
| $29.99 per month
| N/A
| $19.99 per month
| $99.99 per month
|
High
| $21.99 per month
| $59.99 per month
| $379.99 per month
| $29.99 per month
| $149.99 per month
|
Highest
| $29.99 per month
| $74.99 per month
| $519.99 per month
| N/A
| N/A
|
The majority of GoDaddy’s hosting plans are decently priced, though there’s an important caveat to consider. Its lowest fees require at least a one-year term, while its shared and VPS hosting rates benefit most from a three-year term.
That said, even when you select to pay on a month-by-month basis, its rates remain competitive enough, if still a bit pricey. The lowest tier shared hosting plan, for instance, which GoDaddy calls Web Hosting Economy, is $11.99 per month when you pay month-to-month, which isn’t exorbitant.
While GoDaddy’s e-commerce and managed WooCommerce plans do get pricey (the lowest tier is $34.99 per month if you pay on a month-by-month basis), you do get a lot of specialized e-commerce support, tools and features for that price. Those plans compare relatively favorably to other high-end e-commerce solutions like Shopify, though there are less expensive alternatives.
GoDaddy types of hosting
GoDaddy offers a variety of hosting options, including:
- Shared hosting: Commonly called web hosting, shared hosting requires a user to share a server or other processing resources with other users.This is typically the least expensive option.
- Virtual private server (VPS): A VPS gives users access to a virtual machine and dedicated processing resources and typically lies between shared hosting and a full dedicated server in terms of pricing.
- WordPress hosting: This is hosting that’s specifically optimized for sites powered by WordPress.
- E-commerce hosting: Hosting that features a diverse suite of tools and support specifically designed for online stores.
- Dedicated hosting: Provides a server dedicated exclusively to your site for maximum performance and control at a premium price.
GoDaddy performance and uptime
GoDaddy guarantees 99.9% uptime and optimized server hardware designed to serve your website quickly with minimal load times. The company claims that — due to recent optimizations — its servers are up to 40% faster than they previously were, and these servers are located around the globe for maximum coverage. GoDaddy gives customers the option to choose a server in North America, Europe or the Asia-Pacific region during sign up.
GoDaddy bandwidth and storage
GoDaddy’s web hosting plans start with 25 GB of dedicated storage and range up to 100 GB of storage with the highest tier plan. All of its plans also offer unmetered bandwidth, automatic daily backups and anywhere from 10 to 100 databases depending on your plan.
GoDaddy security features
SSL Certificates are an essential feature for encrypting data and securing data transfer between the server and users. Unfortunately, GoDaddy doesn’t include SSL certificates with its plans, and they must be purchased separately.
GoDaddy’s hosting plans include some standard security features, like protection against DDoS attacks and suspicious activity monitoring, but for advanced features like malware scanning and firewalls, users must purchase a separate security package.
GoDaddy customer support
GoDaddy offers 24/7 customer support through phone, text or online chat to assist with issues promptly. The company has been the recipient of seven Stevie Awards for Exceptional Customer Service.
GoDaddy vs. top competitors
| LOWEST MONTHLY FEE | HIGHEST MONTHLY FEE | FREE PLAN | UNLIMITED STORAGE | E-COMMERCE SUPPORT | DRAG-AND-DROP EDITOR | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 GoDaddy | $11.99 | $29.99 | No | No | Yes | Yes | ||||||||
| ||||||||||||||
 Duda | $25 | $199 | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||||||
| ||||||||||||||
 Strikingly | $12 | $59 | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | ||||||||
|
GoDaddy offers a broad array of features across a number of hosting options, and is priced fairly competitively against other web hosting companies for its shared hosting plans.
GoDaddy vs. Duda
Duda has positioned itself as catering to agencies and related businesses, regardless of size, and offering a feature set matched to the specific needs of agencies and their teams. It offers client relationship management (CRM) tools, resources, support and a white label platform designed to help grow your business.
Duda’s site builder is similarly themed, including elements to help manage and coordinate a team, as well as tools designed to boost productivity and enable coordination (along with some AI-assisted options). Given this focus, Duda may be a better fit for agencies, while GoDaddy may be more broadly applicable.
GoDaddy vs. Strikingly
Strikingly is positioned as easy to use and has features and tools designed to appeal to novices, with an emphasis on creating quick, simple websites. However, it doesn’t lack additional features and includes e-commerce functionality as well as several user engagement extras, like membership forms and newsletters.
Strikingly also offers a free plan with some limited features, though it does permit you build unlimited websites and 24/7 support. Strikingly puts a clear emphasis on attracting users who are new to building websites, and its platform is designed accordingly, though it doesn’t offer the depth and range of features that GoDaddy does.
Methodology
We extensively research the key competitors within an industry to determine the best products and services for your business. Our experts identify the factors that matter most to business owners, including pricing, features and customer support, to ensure that our recommendations offer well-rounded products that will meet the needs of various small businesses.
We collect extensive data to narrow our best list to reputable, easy-to-use products with stand-out features at a reasonable price point. And we look at user reviews to ensure that business owners like you are satisfied with our top picks’ services. We use the same rubric to assess companies within a particular space so you can confidently follow our blueprint to the best web hosting services of 2024.
Expert score (10%): We research and analyze key features of each company we consider for our rating, including critical factors to consumers (and particularly to small businesses). Chief amongst them is value, because it’s vital that you see an appropriate return for your money, but we also consider key features, support responsiveness and helpfulness, and a company’s reputation.
Value (32%): Small businesses are often very budget-oriented, and when every dollar counts, it’s important that you know you’re spending them wisely. We consider what resources and features a company offers compared to their pricing structure and how many of them are genuinely valuable and likely to be fully utilized by the majority of customers.
Features (45%): With so many web hosts offering similar core plans, features can be an important way for companies to stand out and add additional value. We consider things like app integration, security features, and bespoke features not offered by other hosts when evaluating each company.
Service and support (8%): Small businesses often need to be very flexible with their hours, which means they need customer support to be available as often as possible. We prioritize 24/7 support when evaluating companies and consider their responsiveness and helpfulness.
Customer reviews (5%): Part of evaluating a company’s reputation is by consulting customer review aggregators like Trustpilot and G2. We consider the overall impression of a company expressed by these sites, as well as individual reviews, and look for common issues and complaints, as well as areas where companies are frequently praised for exceptional service.
Featured web hosting offers
Bluehost
Price
Plans starting at $1.99 per month
Free domain included
Yes
HostGator
Price
Plans starting at $2.56 per month
Free domain included
Yes
Web.com
Price
Plans starting at $2.75 per month
Free domain included
Yes
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
GoDaddy has a number of options designed to serve small- or medium-sized businesses, particularly its extensive e-commerce hosting options. It also offers a number of prebuilt themes for specific types of business, like restaurants, fashion or real estate to cater to specific intents.
Yes, GoDaddy offers a service to sell your domain called List For Sale (LFS). The service will allow you to list your domain for sale on up to 100 resellers and registrar sites.
To transfer an existing domain to GoDaddy, you first need to ensure that it’s unlocked with your current registrar, and ensure you have access to the relevant EPP/authorization codes. You can then visit GoDaddy’s domain transfer portal, enter your domain and initiate the transfer process. Transfer costs start at $10.99.
Blueprint is an independent publisher and comparison service, not an investment advisor. The information provided is for educational purposes only and we encourage you to seek personalized advice from qualified professionals regarding specific financial decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
Blueprint has an advertiser disclosure policy. The opinions, analyses, reviews or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the Blueprint editorial staff alone. Blueprint adheres to strict editorial integrity standards. The information is accurate as of the publish date, but always check the provider’s website for the most current information.
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