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GoDaddy
Review Summary
GoDaddy’s shared hosting plans provide a flexible solution that puts you in control of your hosting, regardless of skill level or experience. What’s more, with solid average server uptimes (99%) and response times (600ms), you’ll rarely experience any performance issues on GoDaddy’s shared hosting environment.
What’s Included
All shared plans include a minimum of one website, 100GB HDD storage, 512MB RAM, 1 CPU core and unmetered bandwidth. This option is best used if you want to create a basic website, primarily text based with images and minimal traffic. If you aim to install apps like wordpress or host email accounts, be mindful that these will also share the allocated 100GB storage capacity. If you plan on uploading a lot of media, video and audio, with the ‘Deluxe’ (or higher) would be a better hosting option, as you are provided ‘unlimited’ websites and storage, upto 2GB RAM and upto 2 CPU Cores. Plus, unlike the ‘Economy’ plan, you’ll also get the option to pay monthly, with no lock-in contract and at only a couple dollars more. While you’re not capped at a specific allocated amount, for resources marked as ‘unlimited’ you should still expect some limitations on the resources your website can utilise from the shared servers. This is common among hosts offering ‘unlimited’ server resources on shared plans and the exact limitations vary with each company/server. As outlined in GoDaddy’s Terms of Service document:In the event the bandwidth, number of websites or disk space usage of your website presents a risk to the stability, performance or uptime of our servers, data storage, networking or other infrastructure, you may be required to upgrade to a VPS or Dedicated Server, or we may take action to restrict the resources your website is utilizing.GoDaddy’s shared plans also come with a bundle of useful features you’ll likely want, such as 24/7 human customer support, Office365 Email (O365) and free domain registration for the first year, and one-click app installers. GoDaddy’s ecosystem of support options ensure that even the most novice user will hardly get stuck managing their website. You’ll find only the top hosting companies will offer 24/7 live chat, phone support and a rich knowledge base full of articles and tutorials.
Website Migration Support
New users, looking to migrate their website should know that this is a manual process, with GoDaddy’s how-to articles and live support being your main sources of support. GoDaddy doesn’t offer free site migration like other hosts, and instead offer it as a paid service. Website migration support costs $99 per website (one database per website) and can take a few hours for their techs to complete.GoDaddy Office365 Email
With GoDaddy’s O365 Email, setup of your domain email is done automatically and if you opt to upgrade to a multi-year, Business Premium Plan, you’ll also get access to Microsoft’s full productivity suite (Word, Excel, Outlook and more). This feature is useful for those looking to keep their hosting with GoDaddy’s dashboard and skip having to setup email hosting manually for the site. That being said, some users have reported issues with GoDaddy’s O365 Email service that you might want to know about. When attempting to migrate away from O365, some users have experienced issues accessing their account without a GoDaddy login, or it taking up to two business days to transfer their emails to a different service. Moreover, some have complained about the GoDaddy O365 login page lacking multi-factor authentication, which could open your business up to phishing or hackers. If your business relies on a secure and reliable email service you may what to keep these points in-mind. O365 Emails renews after the first year at $4.99/month (per user).SSL Certificates
One missing feature from GoDaddy’s ‘Economy and Deluxe shared hosting plans is the lack of an included SSL Certificate. You can typically expect a free, auto-installed ‘Let’s Encrypt’ SSL Certificate as standard with most shared hosting plans across the market. ‘Lets Encrypt’ SSL Certificates are a great, cost effective solution for basic websites. GoDaddy do allow manually installation of them, although, you’ll have to manually generate and update your ‘Lets Encrypt’ Certificate every 90-days as they expire. This can be a tedious process and not updating your SSL Certificate will result in your website displaying a security warning on some browsers. The free SSL Certificate included on higher-level plans renew at $80/year, or they can be purchased with hosting at the same price. GoDaddy’s SSL Certificates provide a higher level of validation (security) than ‘Let’s Encrypt’ and is the better choice if you’re website will regularly handle customer data or transactions. If you’re planning to run a basic eCommerce website, an SSL certificate is a must and it would be worthwhile purchasing the ‘Website Backup’ service, to get a higher level of web-protection. For $2.99/month you can now ensure your website and customer data is kept safe with automatic site backups and malware scans performed daily.Price vs. Competitors
Compared to other companies on the market, GoDaddys shared hosting plans are at the higher end of the price scale (when comparing renewal prices). On average, for the amount of resources you’re receiving, expect to pay slightly more per month than what other shared hosting providers are offering on the market. That being said, value for product shouldn’t be assessed solely on server resources and will be a unique assessment for your site requirements. If your budget allows, with GoDaddy you do get the advantage of 24/7 human customer support and a reliable level of security and performance that not all hosts provide. If cost vs. resources is your bottom line, you can find cheaper plans with similar server resources and features with our hosting finder tool. If you’re looking to get the most savings from your purchase with GoDaddy, you can save up to 33% on your purchase when signing up to 12-month to 36-month plans, which also include a Free SSL Certificate and Premium DNS. Be aware though of the total renewal price for your hosting after the initial term is over, as discounts will not carry over. All products that are set to renew can be cancelled at anytime and, if you’re initially unhappy with your hosting, GoDaddy do offer a money back guarantee that must be claimed within 14 days for annual plans, or 48 hours for monthly plans.GoDaddy’s WordPress tailored hosting plans are designed with easy setup and scalability in-mind. All plans utilise GoDaddy’s reliable shared hosting environment and come with features to help your website perform optimally, as it grows in content and traffic.
What’s Included
Being a managed solution, the technical aspects of installing and updating WordPress, keeping site backups and performing daily malware scans are all automated for you. You’ll also get free email hosting and a free domain with each plan, with both requiring paid renewal after your first year.
For new WordPress users, these automations provide peace of mind knowing that your site is always updated and secure. What’s more, with GoDaddy’s modern site templates and integrated drag & drop page editor, you’re also provided all the tools needed to easily create and edit your site. WordPress ‘Basic’ starts at $12.99/month ($6.99/month on 36-month plan) and includes 30GB HDD storage, with a limit of 25,000 monthly visitors before you’re expected to upgrade plans.
For basic portfolio, blog, or business websites, this is enough resources to get you started and scale your website. Although, if you’re uploading a lot of high-quality media, you’ll likely want to go with one of the higher tiered plans with more storage.
Tip: While GoDaddy’s “SEO Optimizer” add-on isn’t included in the ‘Basic’ plan, you can still get its benefits by manually installing YoastSEO to your site (which is a quick and easy process). YoastSEO is used by millions of WordPress sites and works by optimising and managing your on-page and off-page SEO.
If you’re interested in purchasing the ‘Deluxe’ hosting plan, we’d suggest paying a couple extra dollars and going with ‘Ultimate’ instead. Especially if you’re looking to migrate a site that already sees consistent monthly traffic.
Important features you’ll use such as an SSL certificate, unlimited storage and visitors, enhanced malware security, $550 marketing credit, and the ability to utilise GoDaddy’s content delivery network (CDN) for free, are all ways you’ll get more value out of the ‘Ultimate’ plan, for a similar monthly price to ‘Deluxe’.
Included GoDaddy CDN
Utilising a CDN is especially useful for content rich sites, as it will work in increasing overall page speed and conversion rates on your site. GoDaddy’s CDN servers are located across North America, Europe and Asia and are only supported on ‘Ultimate’ and ‘eCommerce’ plans. That said, you always have the option to install a third party CDN provider on your site as well.
SSL Certificates
Like most of GoDaddy’s lower level hosting plans, a free SSL Certificate isn’t included in the ‘Basic’ and ‘Deluxe’ options. An SSL Certificate is an essential security feature and lacking one will limit your SEO and site accessibility on most browsers. Purchasing an SSL with GoDaddy costs an additional $80/year on-top of hosting, and GoDaddy do not support auto-installation of ‘Let’s Encrypt’ Certificates. Instead, this is a manual process that must be repeated every 90-days as they expire.
Enterprise Solutions
For an enterprise solutions, GoDaddy also offer multi-site, Pro+ plans which come with all the same managed automation, CDN access and support features of single site plans. Additionally, Pro+ plans also come with individual SSL certificates and staging environments as added features.
Pro+ Plans entry-level plans comes with five websites, each sharing 50GB Storage. From there, plans scale up from their with up to 50 websites and 200GB storage available. We’d recommend these options if you’re planning to create basic WordPress sites, as storage is limited.
Website Migration
Lastly, if you’re migrating your WordPress site to GoDaddy, you’ll be able to do so with their one-click migration tool. Plus, GoDaddy’s 24/7 live chat and support means you’ll rarely be left troubleshooting a problem yourself.
What’s Included
GoDaddy’s VPS plans are ideal for high-traffic, high-performance sites and provide a scalable solution to suit your site requirements. The entry-level ‘Launch’ VPS plan is equipped with one vCPU core, 2GB RAM and a 40GB SSD. Plans scale, with up to 4 vCPU’s, 8GB RAM and 200GB Storage as options, and also include the features and functions you’ll want, such as: root access, SSH Access, unmetered bandwidth, a single dedicated IP, resource monitoring, site backups and a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
Self-Managed vs. Managed Solutions
If you have the technical skills and time to self-manage your server, you can expect a typical sandbox environment, devoid of any pre-installed software and command line access via SSH. Moreover, you’ll have the choice of CentOS 7, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, or Debian 8 OS at your disposal.
The benefit of self-managed hosting is a comparatively lower price for a VPS server than what’s typically offered on the market, and while as automated backups, updates and monitoring will have to be performed or setup manually, you’ll still get access to 24/7 VPS expert support. GoDaddy’s VPS support is an upgrade from their current support, as you’ll be connected with a technical customer support agent who has access to your server.
Managed plans on the other hand utilise CentOS 7 and come with cPanel/WHM + Installatron, Apache Web Server, MySQL, PHP, and EXIM mail server pre-installed as standard. Also included is GoDaddy’s Snapshot service which creates an image of your server stored on GoDaddy’s cloud environment, restorable at anytime. This option is best utilised by users looking for easy server management and are accustomed to cPanel. Managed plans start at $75/month, with $27.99 for your hosting and $21 for GoDaddy’s management services.
Plan Flexibility & Scalability
With all of GoDaddys hosting environments, resources are restricted at a plan level and cannot be upgraded individually like some other hosts offer. That being said, GoDaddy have created a realistic and fair pricing model around their VPS offerings. With resources essentially doubling with each plan, GoDaddy have ensured that you’ll have the next suitable plan available as your site grows. Price wise, the jumps are realistic aswell, ranging from an extra $10-$20 depending on the term of your plan. Moreover, the task of upgrading your plan is quick and easy aswell, with resources being provisioned almost immediately and all settingings around your hosting service managed within GoDaddys admin dashboard.
Data Centers
With Data Centers across North America, Asia and Europe, an additional advantage you’ll get with hosting your site on GoDaddy’s VPS environment is the choice of server location. If you’re looking for ideal site performance and speeds, going with a host that provides hosting closest to your audience is another reason why GoDaddy may be the right host for you.
Website Migration
On all hosting plans, migrating your site and databases to GoDaddy is a manual process and if you need assistance, GoDaddy’s offer a $99 migration service (one website + one database). This generally takes 5-7 days for GoDaddy to complete and you should expect at least one day of downtime during the process for DNS propagation.
What’s Included
GoDaddy’s dedicated hosting plans are designed to best suit your hosting requirements, offering: three levels of server management, WHM, a free SSL for the first year and your choice of Windows or Linux OS as standard. Tip: GoDaddy’s free SSL Certificate on all plans costs $80/year if you plan on renewing and ‘Let’s Encrypt’ SSL Certificates must be manually renewed every 90 days.
GoDaddy’s host server utilises DDR3 RAM, HDD Drives (Raid 1), and a single Xeon E3-1220-V3 processor (4 CPU Cores). When compared, we found this level of hardware to be standard, across the market, for basic-intermediate dedicated hosting plans. That being said, we did find GoDaddy’s processor was one of the poorer performing models when we ran a PassMark test against GoDaddy’s competitors hardware.
Price vs. Competitors
In terms of price, GoDaddy was generally more expensive than other hosts for basic dedicated hosting, without any managed options or add-ons included. Moreover, if you’re looking for a highly flexible solution, plans don’t support the ability to upgrade individual resources that some hosts offer. Managed solutions are an additional cost on-top of hosting GoDaddy, here’s a breakdown of the hosting options available with GoDaddy’s dedicated servers:
- Managed, $10/month: cPanel®, Patching, Security, Monitoring, Backups.
- Fully Managed, $130/month: CentOS 6 Only, ‘Managed’ features + dedicated team of server admin experts.
- Unmanaged, Free: No control panel or backups. Only one dedicated IP address. Command-line only..
Tip: Premier Support is optional (paid) add-on on ‘Managed’ and is included free with ‘Fully Managed’
Overall, we found GoDaddy’s managed solutions to be priced higher than most competitors for similar hardware. That said, GoDaddy do provide a generally higher level of customer support than other hosts and, if you already have other GoDaddy products or services, then you also get the advantage of managing all your products within a single location.
Over 960,000 Websites in the United States are hosted with GoDaddy, making them the industry leader when it comes to web hosting, having 22.28% of the total market share in the US (source: datanyze).
To test GoDaddy’s hosting performance we used a few Pingdom reports. Over the span of a year, Pingdom’s probes (located across North America) performed daily checks, on a basic website (less than 100KBs) hosted on GoDaddy’s shared server environment. Additionally, there was no throttling added to these checks, so slower response times can be expected for 3G or 4G connections.
Yearly Server Performance:
Average Response Time
0.00msMonthly Downtime
No DowntimeData shown as monthly Uptime averages for a basic Godaady website
Our results found that overall GoDaddy does a good job in providing stable and reliable hosting performance across the board. Over 12-months, GoDaddy maintained an average of 99.977% server uptime, which can be estimated as about 10 minutes of expected downtime per month. For most basic sites you’ll hardly notice this at all, and when you take into account GoDaddy’s 24/7 customer support access, if your server was to go down you won’t be left troubleshooting it yourself. As for response time, GoDaddy constantly returned a time to first byte of 608.8 milliseconds (0.6 seconds). Considering we tested response time with an extremely low content page, you’ll want to consider utilising a CDN or other speed optimization plugins to ensure your site works optimally as it grows in content and traffic. Server performance can affect all aspects of your site. Case studies have consistently found that customer wait times (page load and response times) directly affect everything from SEM, revenue, and traffic growth. By a lot too, here’s just one example:For Mobify, every 100ms decrease in homepage load speed worked out to a 1.11% increase in session-based conversion, yielding an average annual revenue increase of nearly $380,000.
Overall, GoDaddy provide a good base level of security for your website as standard. Shared hosting environments are equipped with essential security features such as CageFS, Password Protected Directories, SSH and FTPS access, and ModSecurity which is enough to keep most sites safe from intruders and common cyber attacks.
2-Step Login Verficication
Available for all users, GoDaddy provide a offer an optional 2-Step verification at login. You have the choice of verifying login attempts via Authentication app, USB Security Key, or SMS verification. For businesses especially, this is a great security feature that ensures your account and data are safe from phishing attempts. On top of this, GoDaddy also offers a range of optional, premium security add-ons aswell.
Premium Web Security Add-on
For the highest level of security, GoDaddy offer premium Web Security that can be added on-to all hosting plans. Starting at $83.99/year, the base-level security plan performs daily scans and backups of your websites. Although, the higher-level plans is where you’ll get more bang for your buck with included features such as web application firewall prevention and content delivery network access. Here’s a few great features of the addon:
Web Application Firewall Prevention (WAF)
If user data and site integrity is of the utmost importance for your site requirements, WAF works by stopping malware before it gets a chance to infect your site. Intercepting and inspecting incoming data, automatically removing any malicious code it finds. WAF also protects against DDoS attacks, hijacking attempts, brute force attacks and malicious script injection attempts.
Content Delivery Network performance boost (CDN)
Typically a paid service, a CDN can improve your site load time by up to 50% for some users and works by storing your content on multiple servers around the world, closer to visitors.
Other web-security services that can also be purchased seperately, such as GoDaddy’s Premium SSL Certificates, Premium Domain Name Servers (DNS) and ‘Website Backup’ service.
Premium SSL Certificates
GoDaddy’s SSL Certificates start at $80/year for a single certificate and, for those setting up a business or eCommerce website, you can also select either an Organization Validation (OV) and Extended Validation (EV) Certificate as well. OV and EV Certificates provide a higher level of validation and security than the free ‘Let’s Encrypt’ Certificates most hosting plans include.
Website Backup Add-on
Best for new, intermediate or time poor users, GoDaddy’s ‘Website Backup’ service starts at $2.99/month and works by automating a lot of necessary maintenance tasks involved in server/site hosting. Tasks such as regular malware scans, database backups and security monitoring are done effortlessly, and with one-click site restoration, ‘Website Backup’ also simplifies a lot of typically technical interactions you have with your website.
Premium DNS
Finally, for even more security, GoDaddy’s Premium DNS is priced at $2.99/month and, once purchased, is applied to all domains on your account. Integrated with a user-friendly dashboard, a Premium DNS provides improved performance, accessibility and security by placing your DNS information on a premium network. A premium DNS network provides a higher level of trust and verification between your servers and users browser and is an especially useful feature if you’re hosting multiple sites.
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