GoDaddy has a Quick pace and uptime but also some drawbacks. Let’s Dive into a Detailed GoDaddy Review.
Choosing the right host for your needs is quite difficult, with a few thousand website hosting providers. Here is our experience with GoDaddy.
GoDaddy is awesome at first, with low fees and some great features.
But if you go through customer reviews and comments, you will see some polarized reviews too.
So what exactly is the case for GoDaddy? Is it necessary to communicate with them or not?
Well, we may want to help you make the selection easier. So we signed up with GoDaddy to verify its performance. We went through all of its features and terms in-depth and wrote this definitive review to make it easier for you to know if GoDaddy meets your needs.
Let’s take a better look.
Table of Contents
General Info & Hosting Overview
| OUR RATING: | Our Verdict:  |
| SPEEDS: | 292 ms (Jan 2022 to Dec 2022) |
| UPTIME: | 99.96% (Jan 2022 to Dec 2022) |
| SUPPORT: | 24/7 Live Chat, Phone, WhatsApp |
| APPS: | WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and 150+ Other Apps with a One-Click Install |
| FEATURES: | Unmetered Bandwidth, 100 GB Storage, Free 1st Year for Office 365 Email and Domain Name |
| HOSTING PLAN: | Shared, WordPress, Cloud, Reseller, VPS, and Dedicated Servers |
| SITE TRANSFER: | Not free ($9.99 per site) |
| PRICING: | Starting at $2.99/month (renews at $9.99/mo) |
Pros of GoDaddy
GoDaddy might be best known for being a website registrar, but they also need to find a way to provide an honest hosting service.
That is, they need solid page speed and uptime for the past two years. Plus, they provide 150+ free integrations for your website and helpful customer support.
All in all, you will say that GoDaddy is reliable. Plus, they’re flexible, too – all pricing plans give you easy third-party app integration with over 150 popular web apps.
And all things considered, their cheapest budget plan is also good value for money.
But let’s go ahead and analyze everything in more detail.
These are the things we liked the most about GoDaddy hosting.
1. Excellent Uptime at (99.95%)
On their joint hosting arrangements, GoDaddy provides adequate uptime. Their 12-month average uptime, as mentioned, is 99.95%.
That is good?
Okay, yes. A 99.95% uptime rate means about 4.5 hours of total downtime per year, which is not unfortunate.
But it is definitely not the simplest either.
In fact, some website hosting services offer average uptime of up to 99.95%. That translates to just half an hour of downtime per year. Of course, 99.95% is the best in the industry.
Still, after trying many other websites hosting services, we will say that GoDaddy is well above average. Your average monthly downtime is around 20 minutes, which is certainly not enough to derail your business during a huge sale or launch.
So even with a couple of major changes in May, September, and November, you’ll believe GoDaddy will keep your site up and running.
Last 12-month average uptime:
- January 2022: 99.98%
- December 2021: 99.97%
- November 2021: 99.82%
- October 2021: 99.96%
- September 2021: 99.84%
- August 2021: 99.99%
- July 2021: 99.99%
- June 2021: 99.99%
- May 2021: 99.89%
- April 2021: 100%
- March 2021: 99.96%
- February 2021: 99.99%
2. Amazing Page Load Time at (518 ms)
This could come as a little surprise:
Over the past 12 months, our GoDaddy test site has displayed a perfect average page loading time of as low as 518 ms.
This is somewhat surprising because years ago, I would not associate cheaper web servers like GoDaddy with such good performance as this.
And fast load times aren’t just for vanity.
In fact, studies have shown that slow load times can make your visitors leave the location faster. In turn, this hurts your program’s ranking (especially on mobile devices) and negatively affects your conversion rates.
Unfortunately, since you won’t be ready to change your web server’s server speed, it is vital to think about it before signing up with a hosting provider. Unfortunately, your hands are tied if your web server is slow at the server level.
Fortunately, backed by our testing, you won’t have to worry about page speed with GoDaddy hosting.
3. Over 150+ One-Click Install Applications
GoDaddy will encourage you to install some powerful third-party integrations on your website. Actually, with one click, you can add more than 150 of the most popular applications on the internet. That includes systems like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal for content management.
Developer-friendly tools like cPanel, MySQL, CloudLinux, Python, and various PHP versions are also included in GoDaddy.
Therefore, they need honest options that suit everyone, from beginner bloggers to seasoned web developers. What’s useful for some beginners is that they even have a drag-and-drop website builder, which comes with a separate pricing plan (starting at $9.99/month).
4. Great Customer Support
One feature we’re always happy to determine is 24/7/365 customer support. GoDaddy offers exactly that. They need a fast live chat, an excellent international phone support network in multiple languages, and an honest knowledge domain.
In their live chat, GoDaddy has retired the old chatbot, which used to start the conversation by allowing you to select a drag category. Now, after writing your query, you will be connected directly to the support agent (in a couple of minutes).
So to verify their live chat support, we asked them a couple of basic questions about site migration. The responses were well-informed; it took them two minutes to respond on average.
In recent years, GoDaddy has made significant changes to its live chat support. It used to be inefficient because it always seemed like they were trying to market something to you instead of helping you find a solution. However, we are glad you listened to customer feedback and completely redesigned your live chat.
5. Basic Cheap Plan is of Good Value (for Single Basic Website)
When we originally reviewed GoDaddy (in 2019), their cheapest shared hosting plan was way too expensive, and therefore, features were really limited. a minimum compared to the competition.
Now, however, they seem to have taken a 180-degree turn. Currently, the price of the economic plan is only $2.99/month with a 12-month contract. That’s so cheap because it gets.
But for that price of coffee, do you really get any value?
Okay, yes. You get a website, up to 100GB of storage, and unmetered bandwidth. Plus, you’ll get a free domain with any annual plan and free Office 365 email during the elementary year. Some of these features are really useful, and not all hosts offer them as part of their cheapest plan.
For example, several of the opposing hosts we’ve reviewed, like SiteGround, performed well in our tests too. But with them, you get 10GB of storage with the most cost-effective plan – GoDaddy gives you ten times more.
So the overall value you get from GoDaddy’s budget plan for a basic website is great, considering it’s insanely cheap.
However, despite some notable features and a great price, you’ll need to make a couple of compromises with GoDaddy as well. It’s just that you dig a little deeper and realize it’s not that great because it might sound like. We will discuss this more intimately in the next section.
Cons of GoDaddy
Although the value of GoDaddy’s cheapest plan seems good at first, you will find some issues once you take a closer look.
In fact, their low prices contribute somehow to the problems. Namely, the most profitable plan lacks a couple of important features, and there are tons of upsells throughout the checkout process. In addition, the renewal price will be much higher than the discount for the first period.
On top of that, we don’t exactly enjoy GoDaddy’s slightly confusing and vague money-back guarantee either.
So, here are the biggest drawbacks we found, discussed in more detail.
1. Basic Plan Lacks Important Features (No SSL Certificate, Backup, Security, or Site Migration)
The top hosts we’ve reviewed will bring features like an SSL certificate or backups on each plan. In fact, these became commonplace and are almost necessary to run a site today.
Unfortunately, GoDaddy doesn’t offer any of the features mentioned in their basic plans.
Let’s take a look at SSL certificates, for example. Unless you’re already paying for GoDaddy’s more expensive plan, this feature will cost you:
To be honest:
These prices are a bit excessive. Especially since most hosts today will offer you a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate for each and every one of their sites.
Some hosts will also offer you website backup and security for free.
But with GoDaddy, backups will cost you $2.99/month, and website security $6.99/month (rolls over at $9.99/month).
In addition to some or all of them, there is another common feature that GoDaddy doesn’t offer for free:
Site migrations.
Again, many hosts will move a minimum of an existing site to their servers for free. Many of them can even do that within a couple of hours after you’ve requested it, so you don’t need to wait.
However, not GoDaddy. They don’t offer free managed migrations. This feature will cost $ 99.99 per site per database and will take 7-10 business days. Therefore, it is not only expensive but also slow.
If you add all those extra costs over the course of a couple of years, then the GoDaddy hosting will no longer be seen in the background.
And all these additional payment features lead us to our second scam.
2. Recent Uptime Downward Shifts
Data measured for our test site with GoDaddy shows that in May, September, and November 2020, GoDaddy’s uptime decreased. We measure uptime of just 99.89%, 99.84%, and 99.82%, respectively.
Now this doesn’t necessarily mean that GoDaddy can no longer be trusted. Keep in mind that over the course of several years, its uptime has been consistently decent. However, the downside spikes in recent months could happen again if the causes are not resolved soon.
To help you keep track of any changes, we will continue monitoring GoDaddy and let you know as soon as we hear about its performance.
3. Lot of Upsells
All the missing features that we discussed above cause tons of upselling during the signup process. In fact, GoDaddy has become somewhat infamous for selling more. The rationale for offering numerous upsells is to extend the final price you are paying because the starting prices for the plan are absurdly low.
The first upsell you come across has to pay with the monthly cost of the hosting plan. Backed up for the duration of your chosen plan, the amount you pay upfront can vary greatly.
A short three-month plan has a significant monthly cost: of $9.99/month. So for the simplest value, you may need to sign up for 12, 24, or 36 months, getting a monthly price of $2.99, $5.49, or $6.33, respectively.
With such offers, you may be tempted to push straight for an extended plan. But this suggests that you will have to invest a larger sum of cash upfront, which means a much longer commitment.
And this is often just the main of the many upsells.
GoDaddy will also try to sell you tons of extra services at the checkout. For example, they will automatically opt for certain website backups that will cost another $5.99/month for the duration of their plan.
Just that additional sale will already double your price.
And it doesn’t stop there, either. You will see upsells for SSL certificates, backups, and “essential website security,” as mentioned above, which refers to malware scans and updates.
GoDaddy’s checkout process may want a minefield, where you’d like to carefully observe each step before accidentally paying two or three times the asking price.
And as if that wasn’t enough.
4. There are even larger renewal rates
All GoDaddy plans to follow the industry-standard pricing trick where they double or triple the value when it’s time to renew.
The economy plan, for example, will increase to $9.99/month once you renew, compared to the initial $2.99/month. That is nine times the first price. And you won’t get additional features or better performance. You will only have to pay more.
When choosing a pricing plan and its duration with GoDaddy, you need to carefully calculate all costs to determine the simplest option for your needs. You will pay a lower monthly fee with lower-tier plans, but your SSL certificate will renew for a better price. However, the most expensive plan already includes free SSL for all of your sites for the duration of your subscription.
So if you have multiple sites, it would add up to push the most expensive plan for the longest duration. This way, you avoid a minimum of SSL renewal costs.
But you may also want to look at other cheap web servers before making your choice.
GoDaddy Pricing, Hosting Plans & Quick Facts
Here’s a short rundown of the hosting plans for GoDaddy:
| Economy Plan | Deluxe Plan | Ultimate Plan | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $2.99/month Renews at $9.99/mo | $9.99/month Renews at $14.99/mo | $12.99/month Renews at $19.99/mo |
| Websites | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | Unmetered | Un-metered | Unmetered |
| Storage | 100GB | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Email Accounts | Unlimited | Un-limited | Unlimited |
| Other Features | • Free Email ($23.88/yr value) | • Free-Email ($23.88/yr value) • Unlimited Subdomains | • Free Email ($23.88/yr value) • 2x Processing Power and Memory • Free-SSL Certificate • Premium DNS |
Quick Facts:
- Money-Back: A pretty confusing money-back offer for 30 days.
- Website migration: no free transfers. Managed Cost of Migration: $9.99 per site. It will take 7-10 business days for the migration.
- Free domain: Free for the length of the original yearly plan (12, 24, 36 months, etc.).
- Ease of registration: Registration is very simple.
- Payment methods: All the big credit cards and PayPal are accepted.
- Hidden Fees and Clauses: A bit confusing refund policy and terms like “If a Hosting Service has already been performed, then it is non-refundable (if it has not already been performed, you are eligible for a refund within 30 days after the transaction date) “.
- Upsells: tons of upsells. Price variation for the duration of the initial term, site migrations, backups, SSL certificates, security, and more.
- Account Activation: Quick account activation.
- Dashboard Control Panel and Experience: cPanel.
- CMS and App Installation (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): Many 1-click install options with the most popular open-source applications.
Do We Recommend GoDaddy?
Yes.
GoDaddy has great uptime and fast page load speeds. They work well with the most popular web applications you want. And thus, the starting price for the most profitable plans is still a good value despite lacking several important features.
GoDaddy offers a lot of upsells for basic features that you would assume were included for free (SSL, backups, etc.). Adding any of them could double the value of your plan. But together, it might cost other web hosting providers a lot.
So while GoDaddy’s overall performance is good, they do have a few drawbacks. However, they are still a reliable host.
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