GoDaddy vs Bluehost Vs NameCheap Vs Siteground vs Hostgator vs Others

GoDaddy is definitely not the best in our list of best hosting providers in 2019 but it has decent uptime and relatively loads fast. I personally bought Goddady when I built my first website in 2011 as I only had one criterion to use when I selected the best host. Fast forward, I still agree that Goddady gives the best 100 GB storage and unmetered bandwidth.

About Godaddy

GoDaddy is one of the most renowned American domain registrar and web hosting firm. The firm is based in Scottsdale, Arizona. It is also incorporated in Delaware. The company is most popular for its advertisements on TV and on print media. GoDaddy had about 9,000 employees and over 18.5 million customers worldwide as of March last year.

A Brief History of GoDaddy

Founded in 1997 as Jomax Technologies by Bob Parsons, GoDaddy’s servers can now be accessed from any country around the globe. Prior to the firm’s initial public offering on April 12, 2006, GoDaddy filed an S-1 registration statement on May 12, 2006. In the firm’s initial stock offering, Marketwatch reported that they had hired Lehman Brothers to manage the offering. According to the article, the offering had the potential to raise approximately $100 million. The company’s value was also expected to increase several times the amount.  However, due to “market uncertainties”, Bob Parsons announced the withdrawal of the firm’s IPO filing on August 8, 2006.

On July 1, 2011, Silver Lake Partners, KKR and Technology Crossover Ventures struck a deal to purchase the firm. Though GoDaddy’s purchase price was not officially announced, reports suggested that the figure was about $2.25 billion for 65% of the firm. Subsequently, Bob Parsons stepped down as CEO in December of the same year and was offered the role of executive chairman of the firm.

On January 6, 2013, Blake Irving joined GoDaddy as its new CEO and served the firm in this role for five years before retiring on December 31, 2017. During his tenure as CEO, GoDaddy successfully got an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange on April 1, 2015. The firm’s stock soared to 30% on its first day of trading. Scott W. Wagner was appointed as GoDaddy’s new CEO on December 31, 2017, after formerly serving the firm as the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer. However, as of September 4, 2019, Wagner was replaced by the current CEO, Aman Bhutani.

How GoDaddy Works

Arguably the largest cloud platform provider, GoDaddy provides over 18.5 million subscribers around the globe with web hosting and domain registration services. GoDaddy also provides other internet services such as web security products, website building, email hosting, and email marketing among other online business tools. GoDaddy is more geared towards hobbyists, blogs or small shop type arrangements.

When purchasing a domain on GoDaddy, you just have to search for your desired domain name and the website will provide a list of all available domain names and the prices. From the list you can select the most appropriate domain name for your site then pay for it. You can later connect it to your website.

The large number of subscribers on GoDaddy presents a server overload challenge. They have too many sites hosted on their servers. It is very tricky to offer extremely low prices and have great loading time. As a result, users have in the past complained of slow emails and websites. The firm, however, claims it has resolved the slow initial load issue on their GoDaddy Community Forum.

Go Daddy is one of the cheapest and largest domain registrars with more than 63 000 000 domain names. Apart from being a domain registrar, it renders other services such as:

• Reselling domain names (WildWest domains)
• Web hosting
• Email hosting
• SSL shop store
• Website builder

Features of GoDaddy Hosting

Hosting and presence make the second largest part of GoDaddy’s services. This part brought the firm nearly $370 million in the first nine months of 2014. The hosting and presence section includes SEO, website building products, SSL certificates, private IPs, SiteLock website security among many more.

In their hosting services, GoDaddy offers dedicated and VPS servers starting at just a few dollars per month for each domain. Moreover, the hosting service includes website building products to help amateurs figure out how to build and run their websites efficiently and effectively. This, in my opinion, is pretty cheap given the quality of the services.

Below are the features GoDaddy offers you when you host your website with them. Keep in mind the features offered vary depending on the plan you select. The pricier plans have better functionality and more features. They are as follows:

1. Control Panel

GoDaddy offers its customers use of the industry-standard cPanel. From the cPanel, you can check your website’s server resource usage, billing and account-related details, transferring files to your web server, and much more.

2. Security

GoDaddy offers 24/7 monitoring of their servers. They also protect against DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks.

Security add-ons to further secure your website

• SSL Certificates: SSL certificates use advanced encryption to prevent unauthorized parties from gaining access to data that should otherwise be kept private. It is a mandatory requirement for all websites. 
• Premium Website Security: It is designed to protect your website from malware, hacking, blacklisting, and more
• Malware Removal: If your site has been compromised, GoDaddy can help you remove the malware, as well as set up ongoing protection to keep the threat from returning

3. 99.9% uptime guarantee with a Service level agreement (SLA).

GoDaddy guarantees a 99.9% uptime for all plans. This means not experiencing more than 45 minutes of downtime (excluding maintenance scheduled periods) in a month.

4. Domain name registration E-Commerce and Website Builders

If you have a WordPress-specific hosting plan, GoDaddy offers you themes and plugins to help you build your site.

5. GoCentral which is A DIY Website Builder
6. Custom Website Designing 
7. Customer Service and Technical Support

GoDaddy offers 24/7 technical support via telephone and live chats from Monday through Friday.

How to Get a GoDaddy SSL Certificate

If you are looking to purchase an SSL certificate and are on a budget, GoDaddy is perhaps the cheapest option on the market. While GoDaddy sometimes includes SSL certificates in their hosting plans, a typical SSL certification goes for just $73.75 per year. However, GoDaddy is currently offering coupons and promo codes that offer its customers up to 92% discount on the SSL certificates. That means you will only need $5.99 to have a GoDaddy SSL certification.

To get a GoDaddy SSL certificate and activate the credit, you just need to:

• Activate your GoDaddy SSL credit
• Request your website’s domain names that you want to be secured with SSL.
• After completing your request for an SSL certificate, you will be required to verify control of all the domain names you have listed in the request.
• If you prefer to install your SSL certificates manually, you can download your certificates from the GoDaddy SSL dashboard and install them on your server.

SSL certifications help your website rank higher on search results pages. This is because Google and other search engines give these sites top priority. We all know that SSL certificates can be quite expensive, especially with hosting giants like GoDaddy. If you are on a budget and looking for a less expensive option, I think it is worth it to consider getting an exclusive GoDaddy coupon code.

GoDaddy WordPress Hosting

GoDaddy has made a sizeable chunk of revenue from using WordPress for website setup. It’s no wonder the firm leads in the market share of the total WordPress website installations around the internet.

The company’s WordPress hosting plans range between $8.99 -$19.99 per month at renewal. You could, however, access even cheaper prices if you check out their promotions. While the pricing might look like only a dollar more on face value, their plans are for each website. Due to this, their WordPress hosting plans are far more expensive in the value price.

However, with WordPress hosting, you pay according to the number of visitors your site is serving. In other words, you pay for the results rather than the features. Moreover, GoDaddy’s WordPress Hosting product simplifies installation.

I think GoDaddy WordPress websites have a hand over their competitors due to their simplicity and efficiency. Their design is superior compared to their competitors, who are most technically oriented.

GoDaddy also goes the extra mile to make sure that spam and hackers are thwarted. Moreover, their restrictive policies, though sometimes disadvantageous, are pretty efficient at locking out attacks and spam. The main reason GoDaddy is able to tackle security threats with such efficiency is simply that they have resources to throw at any issue that arises. For instance, they purchased Sucuri, a go-to web security firm, when they needed to improve their online security tools.

In addition to the large storage, Godaddy can be integrated with other services, more than 130 that can be installed in your Godaddy-hosted site in one click.

The biggest disadvantage that may discourage you from reading more of this review is the fact that Godaddy charges for everything! You get charged for things such as SLL certificate (something other hosts such as Bluehost don’t charge) and site migration. Another thing you wouldn’t want to know but would be grateful to know now is that their customer support is painfully frustrating.

Godaddy Pricing Plans:

The firm offers three hosting plans for both individuals and organizations to choose from. They are:

• Economy: The economy plan is designed to serve individuals working with a fixed budget. The firm charges $4.99 per month for each website in the economy plan. The plan also features 100 GB storage, unlimited bandwidth, and a maximum of 100 email addresses.
• Deluxe: The deluxe plan is set at $5.99 per month for an unlimited number of websites. Among the features of this plan are unlimited bandwidth and storage, and a maximum of 500 email addresses.
• Ultimate: Set at $7.99 per month for unlimited websites, the ultimate plan is GoDaddy’s most expensive option. It features unlimited storage and bandwidth, and a maximum of 1,000 email addresses.
• Maximum plan

All the hosting plans offered by GoDaddy also include a free domain with a yearly plan, DDoS protection, 24-hour monitoring, and an intelligible control panel. It is, however, critical for all GoDaddy subscribers to note that while both the Deluxe and Unlimited plans boast unlimited bandwidth and storage, they are not technically unlimited.

You can check this comparison in detail here.

GoDaddy Pros & Cons

GoDaddy is driven by a mission to make the internet easily accessible to anyone across the globe in a one-stop-shop. While the company has been largely successful in offering competitive prices for top-notch products, just as any other firm, they still face some challenges. Below are some of the most noteworthy pros and cons of GoDaddy:

Godaddy Pros

They have very affordable prices: GoDaddy periodically avails a handful of discounts in its various products. The offers can make the price of maintaining your web presence remarkably economical. GoDaddy offers as low as $0.99 for domain registration. Moreover, there are coupons for each hosting plan that are regularly offered.

GoDaddy supports many payment options: Almost all major currencies can be accepted in paying for a GoDaddy hosting plan. This means you can easily make payments from PayPal or any other payment processor from wherever you are.

One-click WordPress installations: If you opt to use the more efficient and simplistic WordPress hosting service, GoDaddy avails the one-click WordPress installation option. It is great for those who are only beginning to understand website design and content building but still want to go at it on their own.

GoDaddy has a solid reputation: Being the largest domain registration and web hosting firm, GoDaddy has built a strong online reputation over the years. You can easily access customer service on the user-friendly online dashboard after logging into your account. Furthermore, you retain the freedom to design a website that speaks the message of your brand.

1. Great uptime
2. Fast loading speed
3. Its web builder app has several apps that you can easily install on your website.

Godaddy Cons

Response to customer problems can sometimes be slow: While the installation of a GoDaddy site can be fast and affordable, resolving problems can take a while. It might take up to 48 hours to receive a response after submitting a trouble ticket. The follow-up answer could also take up to 48 hours. Unless your problem can be resolved in the first response, it might take more than a week to resolve one issue.

GoDaddy charges restoration fees: While most companies offer to restore your website at no cost, GoDaddy requires a restoration fee. The fee could go as high as $300.

GoDaddy’s internal speeds are not always the best: As stated earlier, this is often due to the huge number of subscribers on the platform. However, if there are fewer people on a 50/10 connection, your speeds would be much higher than quoted. As more subscribers join the giant platform, speeds are bound to remain slow.

1. Several upsells
2. The basic plan is just not good – lack a lot of features such as SSL, back-up, security, site-migration
3. High renewal rates
4. Money-back guarantees, not fully credible guarantees.
5. Poor customer support

GoDaddy Video Review

GoDaddy Vs. Bluehost

As we all know, Bluehost has one of the largest shares of online reputation, being one of the oldest shared hosting firms on the internet. However, GoDaddy has a solid brand and arguably the best prices on the internet. This table has comparative features of Godaddy vs. Bluehost:

Comparing GoDaddy and Bluehost on price is quite complicated for a few reasons. First, they both offer frequent offers and deals, which make their pricing unpredictable. Second, their plans are not entirely comparable, except the basic plan in Bluehost and the economy plan on GoDaddy.

If you are on a limited budget, GoDaddy and Bluehost are more or less equal on their lowest pricing tier. However, I would go for Bluehost’s middle-tier since it is versatile and has no caps unlike in GoDaddy’s Deluxe Plan.

When it comes to usability, GoDaddy is not terrible. It has improved to a much better interface than before. However, in comparison to Bluehost, it simply doesn’t match up.

It is not much different in support. I have found Bluehost’s approach to support and response to be more preferable. Reps have fewer transfers and it gives you a sense of more control. Its downside is that “self-Diagnosis” is sometimes confusing, especially when you have an overlapping question.

Though GoDaddy has in the past been receiving complaints on internal data speeds, it has recently been showing improved performances. However, in my recent tests, they have been slightly slower than Bluehost.

If you need a domain and a whole suite of products to build your website, GoDaddy might be a great option. However, in my opinion, Bluehost offers the better overall deal between the two. It, nonetheless, depends on what your preferences are and what your brand requires.

GoDaddy Vs. Namecheap

Namecheap is a renowned domain registrar that was founded in 2000. The firm has registered more than 4 million domain names around the globe. Like GoDaddy, Namecheap provides an assortment of other services including email hosting, web hosting, cloud-based services, and site security services.

Both companies offer several promotion codes to their various products on the internet. It woud therefore be difficult to compare the pricing of both firms. However, Namecheap offers an overall cheaper pricing. In addition, they offer privacy protection services for free, which is a premium addon on GoDaddy.

As far as user experience is concerned, GoDaddy tramples Namecheap, with both live chat support and telephone options. The features are great in case you want to get your problems resolved quickly. GoDaddy’s only mishap in user experience is the bombardment of their pages with advertisements of other special offers. These constant advertisements can lag the process of acquiring a domain name.

In my opinion, GoDaddy is a better option for reliable DNS as compared to Namecheap. However, if you are on a very tight budget, Namecheap’s products are more or less as efficient as GoDaddy’s. While GoDaddy might charge additional fees for custom name servers and WHOIS guard, Namecheap offers 100% free email forwarding services and WHOIS privacy features in their bundles.

Godaddy Vs Siteground

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Godaddy Vs Hostinger

Godaddy Vs Google Domains

Conclusion

Every domain registrar and web hosting firm has its merits and demerits. As GoDaddy is a great option for individuals and startups that are on a limited budget, it is still rigged with slow internal data speeds. All the pros and cons of GoDaddy show there are plenty of hosting and design options that can serve your brand’s objectives.

If you need to host multiple sites, you should consider subscribing for the Deluxe Plan as it features unlimited websites, bandwidth, and storage. What’s more, the plan can go for as low as $4.99 per month for the initial 12 months. Try it out and you just might find the right solution to your domain registration and site hosting problems today.

Nate R. Reiner

My name is Nate Reiner and I am the editor here at 10Webtools. I have 8 years of experience using 50+ different web tools ranging from podcast, web hosting, email marketing, and much more. I previously managed a team offering support services to a large conglomerate that utilized tens of software solutions. I now run this blog full-time and when I am not reviewing or testing software, I enjoy riding bikes and supporting my clients achieve internet success. You can reach me directly at [email protected]