GoDaddy Hosting Review – Is it Worth The Money? (2024)

Web hosting is one of the unavoidable costs of running a website. Alongside domains, they are the only expenses you cannot do without. And if you've been around hosting, you surely know about one of the biggest names out there, GoDaddy who has a global presence and a huge customer base. This GoDaddy hosting review will tear this host down so that we can answer some questions.

Are they any good? Does the company provide reliable services for a fair price?

As GoDaddy will likely appear in many ‘best web host’ comparisons, we thought we would take an unbiased look at their pricing to see if they are genuinely worth the cost.

GoDaddy hosting plans

GoDaddy hosting plans are divided into types and then products.

The current hosting types include:

• Web hosting – Web hosting, or shared hosting is the cheapest option. It’s also the lowest performance but it can be useful for new websites, testing and experimentation.
• WordPress hosting – WordPress hosting is designed to offer higher performance for the database-driven content management system.
• Advanced hosting – Advanced hosting is where you’ll find VPS, dedicated hosting and options for enterprise and larger websites.

These types can be a little confusing and GoDaddy doesn’t exactly make it easy. It says there are three main types of hosting when you’re on the All Hosting Options page.

But you’ll also see Web Hosting Plus, WordPress eCommerce hosting and Windows Hosting as sub-types.

It’s not the easiest product lineup to comprehend but with the help of our guide, we think you’ll soon get the hang of it!

We’ll cover them all as each has a popular use case that any of you may find yourselves in.

GoDaddy Summary

Here’s a quick overview of how much GoDaddy charges for its hosting plans.

Pricing is per month.

As most web hosts offer significantly reduced prices to draw you in, we also include the standard renewal rates under ‘Signup saving’ so you know exactly what you’re letting yourself in for.

*GoDaddy includes both VPS and Dedicated Hosting in the Advanced Hosting package but we have separated them for clarity.

All GoDaddy hosting plans

Before we get into the plans, let’s just highlight a few features you get with all plans.

You get 24/7 support, 99.9% uptime guarantee, network monitoring, DNS management, FTP and SFTP, SSH access, email privacy and security tools, fraud protection, spam and virus protection and email aliases.

You also get encrypted storage as standard.

Shared hosting provides frere SSL, free Microsoft 365 Email and free domain in your first year.

Other hosting plans include them for the entirety of your time with GoDaddy. As this can work out an expensive on its own ($9.99+ per year for basic SSL and $12.99+ per year for a domain name), it’s well worth investing a little more in a hosting plan.

GoDaddy doesn’t go into detail about its server architecture until you get to VPS Hosting and Dedicated Hosting where it’s relevant. Otherwise it’s a mystery as to what processors, RAM and speed of drive they use, which is typical with most web hosts. There are other sites if you want to compare web hosting services.

Now that’s out of the way, let’s get to the GoDaddy hosting plans!

All prices quoted are per month, usually paid 1,2 or 3 years at a time.

Web Hosting

Web Hosting is shared hosting from GoDaddy. It's the cheapest option the company offers.

You’ll share a server with hundreds, or perhaps, thousands of other websites, so is more useful for new or smaller website with modest requirements.

You’ll get free SSL, free Microsoft 365 Email and free domain in your first year. You also get daily backups and 1-click install for apps.

GoDaddy doesn’t go into detail about server hardware but does say shared plans feature NVMe storage.

Shared hosting is good for new websites or for experimenting with hosting, WordPress or themes. It’s not as cheap as hosting locally but it’s a way to test designs fully before releasing the site into the wild.

WordPress Hosting

WordPress Hosting is a step up from shared hosting but you’re still sharing a server with other websites.

This time, the server is set up to handle the specific requirements of WordPress such as extra resources for database queries, caching and the use of a CDN.

WordPress Hosting uses ‘only’ SSD storage and less than Shared Hosting. For more money.

You do get free Cloudflare CDN, automatic updates for plugins, a Web Application Firewall (WAF), free website backups, free SSL, 2 free Microsoft 365 Email boxes and a free domain though.

All but the base plan also gets a staging website, ideal for testing and development or as a standby backup.

WordPress eCommerce Hosting is essentially managed WordPress Hosting with access to some eCommerce plugins and support for extra databases and transactional data.

WordPress Hosting is good for websites that have expanded beyond what shared hosting can offer but aren’t yet of a size to justify the expense of a VPS. Think large online communities, medium-sized eCommerce stores or websites with 25k+ daily visitors.

Advanced Hosting

GoDaddy’s Advanced Hosting plan includes both VPS, Virtual Private Servers and Dedicated Hosting.

As these can be popular hosting types in their own right, we divided this section into two.

VPS

VPS hosting is ideal for larger websites or smaller cloud services. You share a server with a limited number of other customers and get access to a defined amount of hardware.

GoDaddy VPS plans include:

You can also double your RAM for each plan for between $5 and $10 extra per month.

As VPS uses different features than shared or WordPress hosting, you’ll see the table differs slightly from before.

VPS are measured by the hardware available. What you do with that hardware is entirely up to you. You could run a website, video hosting platform, cloud app or something completely different.

All VPS plans come with snapshot backups, cPanel or Plesk and access to 4 data centres.

VPS is good for large website, large learning management systems (LMS), larger eCommerce stores and companies with very demanding websites.

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated Hosting is the ultimate hosting plan where you have your own server based in the cloud.

Like VPS, dedicated hosting is measured on the hardware available rather than the number of websites you can create with it.

Dedicated Hosting uses SSD storage set up with RAID-1. You also get access to 2 data centres as part of the package.

You can downgrade to HDD storage for between $10-$20 per month but we can’t imagine anyone would want to!

You can use cPanel or Plesk, have built-in network security including DDoS protection and 99.9% uptime.

Dedicated Hosting is good for companies that have IT expertise on staff and who want to manage their own server without the upfront cost of purchasing one.

Web Hosting Plus

Web Hosting Plus is a hybrid hosting plan that uses modified VPS servers with a smart dashboard to make managing it simple.

Web Hosting Plus uses SSD storage with NVMe as an option. You get access to 2, 4, 8 or 16 CPUs and dedicated access to RAM, free Microsoft 365 Email boxes, daily backups, free SSL and free domain.

Web Hosting Plus is good for web developers who want to offer hosting as part of the service. It’s also useful for larger companies that want to host multiple websites or fewer, larger sites with significant daily visitor numbers.

Windows Hosting

GoDaddy’s Windows Hosting product is for web apps or websites that utilize ASP.NET, ASP, .Net Core, and SQL server.

All hosting servers use Windows Server 2019 and offer free Microsoft 365 Email, FTP access, SQL database, free domain, 24/7 monitoring and 1-click installer for apps.

The cheaper plan is restricted to a single site while more expensive plans offer unlimited websites, unlimited storage and bandwidth.

GoDaddy doesn’t go into detail into server architecture but we expect it to reflect higher server tiers from other plans, with SSD storage, fast RAM and decent processors.

Windows Hosting is good for websites that require Windows-specific resources such as ASP.NET, ASP or .Net Core.

Hosting extras from GoDaddy

GoDaddy also offers some extra products that some of you will want while others won’t.

Website Security

One product you may want to consider is the Website Security product. This is split into multiple products, but is essentially SSL, malware scanning and removal, backups and recovery.

There are several types of SSL certificate available. Hosting plans include basic SSL. This should be enough for most non-eCommerce websites.

If you need something stronger, you can pay more for managed SSL, domain validation SSL, multiple domain SSL, organizational validation SSL, Wildcard SSL and extended validation SSL.

You may or may not want any of these. Expect to pay $6.99 per month for Website Security.

The various SSL packages are priced separately.

Website backups

Most non-shared hosting plans some with some form of backup but you can have more if you don’t mind paying.

You can back up to remote storage or the cloud and access a 1-click restore facility in return for $2.99 per month.

This is arguably less valuable as many higher tier plans include backups. If you use WordPress or Joomla, there are free plugins that can help with this too so there’s no need to pay extra.

GoDaddy vs the competition

Now you know what you get for your money with GoDaddy, how does it stack up against the competition?

As we use InMotion hosting at CollectiveRay, let’s compare the two.

Price is per month.

Let’s compare them in a little more detail.

The table below shows the cheapest and most expensive shared hosting plans from each provider and what you get for your money.

As you can see, InMotion is cheaper than GoDaddy and offers more for your money.

The cheapest Core plan uses SSD storage while the Pro plan moves up to NVMe. You also get unlimited email addresses, marketing tools, caching, security and free SSL with all plans.

Let’s now compare GoDaddy’s Dedicated Hosting to InMotion’s. They are at the other end of the scale to shared hosting so let’s see what’s what.

InMotion hosting is cheaper here too. And, except for RAM and a slightly slower processor, offers more storage than GoDaddy.

GoDaddy hosting costs – Conclusion

As you can see, GoDaddy covers just about every conceivable web hosting scenario with its plans.

Whatever the size and scope of your website, there’s a plan that delivers the resources you need at a palatable price.

It’s not the cheapest, but not the most outrageous pricing either.

The organization of the plans is a little haphazard but once you figure out the plan types, what’s included and what isn’t, it’s easy enough to figure out.

So, at these prices, is GoDaddy a good bet?

Mostly, we think GoDaddy is a good bet.

Offering sensible pricing, decent introductory discounts and optional added extras is a good way to go. While 99.9% uptime isn’t quite as good as 99.99% (offered only on dedicated plans), it’s plenty enough for most uses.

It’s a shame we don’t know what type of servers some plans use or how many other websites you’ll share them with, but that’s the same for many web hosts.

All in all, if you choose GoDaddy, you won’t be using the cheapest host but you’re unlikely to be disappointed with what you get.

About the Author

Author: Daniel LukeWebsite: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniellukepe/Email: daniel@collectiveray.com

Daniel is a web designer and developer. He has been a developer for the last 10 years working with various WordPress themes that allows him to compare and contrast different themes, understand the strengths and weaknesses to develop factual, real-world reviews. He is also a mobile app developer and technology reviewer. Over several years, he has developed his own mobile apps, both on Android and iPhone. This hands-on specialisation in mobile and web development allows him to be an authoritative voices when it comes to technology reporting.