GoDaddy is best known as the largest domain registrar in the market. However, it’s just as big in the web hosting market, offering a wide variety of services, including shared, WordPress, VPS, and even dedicated hosting. Yet, there are quite a few GoDaddy customer reviews saying that GoDaddy is no good when it comes to hosting services.
So to see whether that’s true or false, I purchased a hosting plan from GoDaddy. Throughout the following sections of this GoDaddy review, you’ll find what I discovered about pricing, ease of use, performance, security, extra features, and customer support.
GoDaddy Hosting management – is it easy to use?
When it comes to user experience and hosting management, GoDaddy is really easy to use. It helps you set up a website in the native dashboard while cPanel is also available.
Also Read: A Small Orange Hosting Reviews
All I needed to do to set up was select a domain name, a data center, and optionally – install WordPress. This is something I like about GoDaddy – it offers a one-click installation process with lots of apps. No more than 2 minutes later, I had WordPress installed and ready for testing.
Keep in mind that you should always choose to upgrade to the latest PHP as it’s one of the things that can speed up your website considerably. Unfortunately, not all providers support it. Even GoDaddy is yet to make PHP 8 available.
Alternatively, if you’re looking for a hosting provider with PHP 8 available – Hostinger is one of the best hosting providers to consider.
In any case, the initial account set up with GoDaddy was smooth, and I had no issues whatsoever. So basically, in the first 5 minutes of you owning a GoDaddy web hosting account, you’ll have a website ready to be worked on. Which is quite impressive.
But that’s not all that the provider has on its toolset.
WordPress starter templates
The first time you open the newly installed WordPress admin panel, GoDaddy will have a starter process ready. This is a neat detail that allows you to install one of GoDaddy’s offered themes and make your website look good and professional immediately.
Plus, all of the templates are mobile-friendly, saving you time from adjusting everything for the mobile version.
Having a theme with demo content on it makes the website building process very easy. You can simply switch the demo text and images into your own, and the site is good to go.
If you’d like to use GoDaddy’s WordPress starter templates, all the demo stuff will be installed for you, for free.
What you should keep in mind is that some providers charge extra to make your site look like the nice “demo” template that all of the themes showcase. That’s because that “demo” content is not available by default and has to be installed with all the settings attached.
Overall, GoDaddy took an extra step in terms of making the website building process easier. It’s a good WordPress hosting, and starter templates areis a great option for beginners and those in a rush.
What does the GoDaddy control panel look like?
In addition to the native interface, GoDaddy still remains faithful to cPanel for more advanced website management tasks. It uses the standard version of it, so you can easily find all the main management modules – file manager, email accounts, domains, software, and databases.
But if we already set up a website, do we ever need to use cPanel? It’s up to you, but you should know that cPanel has more “advanced” tools, such as:
- Installatron – in case you don’t want to use WordPress or need to add a second website, head there. Installatron is a one-click installation library similar to Softaculous or QuickInstall. It has hundreds of different apps you can build your website on.
- Email accounts – you can create a professional email address with your domain name in this section for free. It’s as simple as filling out details like the name of the mailbox and password. Just keep in mind that this will only be good for casual use, as each email client used is rather outdated and hosted on the same server as your website.
- Addon domains – if you have a domain hosted with another domain name registrar, but want to use it for your GoDaddy website, go ahead and add it there. Just don’t forget to point it to GoDaddy.
- Backup – you can manually back up the whole cPanel (with files and databases). This is a tool of precaution or for website migration. It can save you if you break your website or want to move it elsewhere.
All in all, GoDaddy is easy to use and functional. I liked the possibility to install WordPress during the initial setup as well as choose a data center. cPanel is another invaluable tool when it comes to managing your website.
GoDaddy: The Pros and Cons
There’s no question GoDaddy is one of the biggest names out there as far as how recognizable it is. It also houses the most domains globally, with over 17 million domain names on its roster.
Still, there are pros and cons to choosing GoDaddy as your web hosting provider. Here are the more prominent ones to take into account.
Pros
24/7 support: GoDaddy ensures it’s always within reach if you ever need a hand or run into trouble with your site. You can either reach them by phone or use its handy chat support option.
Lots of storage: When you look through and compare GoDaddy’s hosting plans, it’s generous with its unmetered bandwidth feature for all tiers.
Affordable .com domain: GoDaddy offers you the chance to snag a domain for only 99 cents for the first year, which can save you money as you begin.
Unlimited site hosting: Most GoDaddy plans let you host an unlimited number of websites except for its cheapest Economy plan.
Convenience: Since you can manage your domain and website in one place, GoDaddy offers convenience in managing both from one dashboard.
Cons
Constant upsells: GoDaddy is notorious when it comes to its upsells through every step of the checkout process. While it does honor the prices for each tier if that’s all you’re going for, it’s quick to suggest add-ons and extra features you might not need.
Expensive renewal rate: This is one of the reasons why I think GoDaddy is great for beginner sites that just want to get their foot in the door with hosting. Once that initial year is up, GoDaddy’s renewal rates can start to get costly for what you get.
Charges for add-ons: Other hosting providers throw in free first-year domain registration, for example, or include free SSL certification as part of its plans. GoDaddy does not always include these features depending on the plan you choose and can charge extra for them.
Inconsistent customer support: Support for GoDaddy isn’t always top-notch as convenience and reliability are concerned. There is always the possibility of long wait times to be connected to the right person.
Performance – is GoDaddy fast?
GoDaddy went through all of my standard tests and showed good performance results. I got long-term uptime monitoring data, tested website loading speed on multiple occasions, and checked if the provider can handle the traffic.
GoDaddy uptime and response time
I have monitored GoDaddy for 2 months now. In this time, it had 3 outages which totaled 16 minutes of downtime. In this period, the uptime rate was 99.98%, which is great.
The standard uptime guarantee, backed up by Service Level Agreement (SLA) is 99.9%, so GoDaddy is significantly better. For example, 99.9% means 43m 49s of monthly downtime. With 99.98%, that number drops to 8m 45s.
This tool also checks server response time every minute. GoDaddy averages at 341ms, which is a very good result. In comparison, the shared hosting average is around 600ms.
GoDaddy speed
As for the next test, I ran a website with a standard WordPress theme on it through a speed test from 3 different locations – the US, UK, and India.
Just as I expected, GoDaddy was great in the US, where it is hosted. What we are looking at is Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). This number should be lower than 2.5 seconds to be considered good. It loaded in 481ms.
Very naturally, other locations took longer to load. UK visitors would have to wait 1 second, while India – 1.6 seconds. That’s because data needs to travel longer distances when compared to the US.
But even with this, the website fits into the recommended 2.5 seconds with a margin to spare.
Next up, I went through GoDaddy’s WordPress Starter and installed one of the themes with demo content on it. This made the website heavier and increased LCP to 791ms.
Still, an excellent load time result for a page with some nice pictures on it.
But this does not help me compare it to other providers. That’s why I went in and installed my regular Astra theme that I use for all providers’ testing.
This time, LCP increased to 1.5 seconds.
As a result, it is great. We fit in the recommended 2.5 seconds with one second to spare.
On the other hand, providers like Hostinger and SiteGround load this theme in under a second because they have advanced optimization measures in place. I cannot say the same about GoDaddy.
GoDaddy review – the final verdict
GoDaddy might not be the nicest guy in the web hosting industry, but it surely isn’t the worst. Sure, it offers high prices and expensive security features. But at the same time, GoDaddy has an amazing interface to work with and keeps up its end when it comes to performance. Not to mention helpful support agents.
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