Among webhosting I have used, GoDaddy ranks highly for customer service and reliability but lower for its sitebuilder
I’ve had websites on four different WordPress hosting providers. Some were great experiences, others…not so much. Use this GoDaddy review to see if GoDaddy website hosting is right for your needs and for a comparison with other hosting sites.
One of the most confusing and frustrating things about starting a website or blog can be your website host. For beginners, the technical specs offered like storage, SFTP access and SSL certificates are completely foreign. A lot of new bloggers just go with the cheapest website host and that’s when the frustration begins.
If you’re new to running a blog or setting up a site, make sure you compare the entire package for WordPress hosting before choosing a provider.
What is GoDaddy Webhosting?
If you’re going to run a business, you need a website. Online sales and social media are taking the world virtual and businesses without an online presence risk missing out. Then there’s businesses like mine that run entirely on the web.
Whether you need a simple website, a blog or a complete ecommerce store, you’re going to need webhosting. Your website hosting provider (i.e. GoDaddy, Bluehost or any of the six Best WordPress Hosting sites reviewed here) will store your website on its servers for when people visit the site and click through pages. Your choice of website host is more important than you may think. A good host will keep your site running and offer faster load times which means more Google love.
This is where things get a little confusing for GoDaddy users because the site offers both webhosting and WordPress hosting. There is really no difference other than it’s easier to install WordPress and get your site up with the WordPress hosting…so that’s the one 99.9% of people are going to want.
For WordPress hosting, GoDaddy offers four plans starting at $3.99 and as high as $13.99 per month. I quickly outgrew the basic package, especially after buying new sites, but most new bloggers will get everything they need with the most inexpensive plan. Starting a blog is all about keeping your costs low at first so only buy as much as you need to get up and running.
One thing I like about GoDaddy is that the hosting prices do not jump as much after the first year. The price for the most basic Bluehost WordPress hosting plan jumps to $10.99 after the first year, wiping out any savings you saw in the first 12 months. GoDaddy prices do increase after the first year but not by as much as other hosting providers.
These GoDaddy WordPress hosting plans are what is known as shared hosting, meaning GoDaddy will put your site on the same server as other websites. In my experience, GoDaddy doesn’t cram nearly as many websites on the same server as other hosts like Bluehost or eHost. Too many websites on the same server will really slow down your site and cause it to crash more often. In four years on GoDaddy, I’ve never had the problem although it did happen a few times in my year on Bluehost.
Getting Started on GoDaddy
Getting started with GoDaddy WordPress hosting is about as easy as it gets, though that can pretty much be said for any webhosting site. Check out our resource guide on starting a blog for more details but really the most time you’ll spend will be picking a website name.
The biggest advantage to choosing GoDaddy for your website hosting is its amazing customer service. I have had websites on four different hosting sites and GoDaddy customer service was by far the best. GoDaddy representatives are available by phone or email 24/7 and it rarely took me more than a couple of minutes to get someone from tech support. I still remember the very first site I started and calling tech support at almost midnight.
Even better, GoDaddy customer service has the highest level of English proficiency I’ve heard among webhosts and knows their stuff. If you’ve talked to as many webhosting companies as I have, you’d know how rare that is.
Beyond the fact that customer service is always available by phone, chat or email is the library of tutorials available to get your website started. It all makes for a really easy process in getting your website up.
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Installing WordPress on your GoDaddy site is simple and helps to avoid my only GoDaddy complaint, more on that later. To install WordPress and run your website from there,
- Once logged in to your GoDaddy Account, click ‘Web Hosting’
- Click ‘Manage’ and click ‘WordPress’ in the Popular Apps section
- Click ‘Install Now’ and fill in a few details…easy as that.
My GoDaddy Complaint: Website Builder
So my only GoDaddy complaint has been the website builder they offer. I paid for this thing for a year before realizing I didn’t even need it. It’s fairly easy to use and some people like the fact you can just drag-and-drop features around your site but just developing your site in WordPress is just as easy and much cheaper. I got frustrated with a few technical glitches when I was using the GoDaddy website builder but that was 2012 so maybe they’ve worked through them by now.
Another complaint about the website builder is the cost. Your first month is free but then you pay $5.99 a month on the basic plan and up to $14.99 for the Business plan. That’s more than you pay for website hosting!
The website builder does include some nice features like themes and storage but I don’t think it’s worth it. For the price, you can hire a developer to set up your site on WordPress and not have to worry about the recurring fee.
Again, this doesn’t mean you don’t need GoDaddy for WordPress hosting, just that you don’t need the extra sitebuilder fee.
What I like about GoDaddy
So customer service is the biggest reason to go with GoDaddy for your website hosting but the company gets high marks in other areas as well. It’s the largest registrar of domains and all those Superbowl ads bring in a ton of money…which means GoDaddy can outspend other hosting providers in features and service.
- Monthly hosting prices are not the cheapest on GoDaddy but it’s pretty close. It’s a good deal for the extras like customer service and better storage and prices don’t increase as much after the first year.
- GoDaddy doesn’t pack as many websites onto each server so reliability is better and sites seem to load faster. This is a bigger deal than you realize until you’ve been with a WordPress host that crams too many sites onto each server.
- GoDaddy tutorials and the process to get started is pretty easy and help is just a chat away. In fact, I still keep one site hosted on the webhost just to have access to GoDaddy customer service which can answer a ton of tech questions I’ve applied to other sites.
GoDaddy Complaints
The cost and unnecessary nature of sitebuilder is my biggest GoDaddy complaint. If you just call up the sales team and don’t know anything, they are going to talk you into buying the sitebuilder add-on. I’ve heard some people say they had a better experience with the tool but in my opinion, it’s totally unnecessary. Save your money and just have a developer set up your site if you don’t want to mess with it.
- I’ve seen other GoDaddy complaints about recurring charges each year for services. I’ll admit that this was a problem my first year but they always send an email before automatically renewing services and it’s easy enough to stop the auto-pay feature.
- I’ve read other complaints about GoDaddy customer service but these are hard to believe given my experience. Online reviews are always a little iffy. You never know which ones are legit and which are from competitors.
GoDaddy Reviews Summary
I still have one of my sites on GoDaddy WordPress hosting though I’ve moved others to SiteGround and HostGator because of special offers I was given by the companies. GoDaddy offers some great features for new blogs and the price is more competitive.
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If you are starting your first website and don’t know anything about setting up a site, I would definitely recommend GoDaddy. Many of the WordPress hosting providers offer fairly similar technical specs for hosting, the key to GoDaddy is going to be the excellent customer service that will always be available to help you out. There’s a learning curve to starting a website and GoDaddy customer service can make it much easier.