GoDaddy Review 2021!!

What Products Does GoDaddy Offer?

GoDaddy offers dozens of products and comes with many available plans. So, first let me tell you a bit more about their hosting offer.

• GoDaddy is one of the largest domain name registrars. With them you can get almost any domain extension you are looking for: .com, .net, .org, .law or even .today. A .com domain will cost you $11.99 the first year and $17.99 after, not the cheapest.
• At GoDaddy, there are shared hosting plans available too. It’ll cost you between $8.99 and $24.99 at renewal. With this type of hosting service, you’ll share a server with other clients. It’s suitable for small and medium projects that don’t need top performing servers.
• Like many other hosting providers, GoDaddy has a WordPress optimized shared hosting service. They seem to prepare their servers for a higher WordPress performance, offer WordPress pre-installed and have a selection of themes available. Nothing too exciting if you ask me. It starts at $9.99 a month when you renew.
• GoDaddy VPS plans are for those with special server configuration needs. With the root (administrative) access you’ll be able to configure your server to your preferences. They also come with a higher performance than shared hosting plans. VPS plans at GoDaddy start at $6 a month (self-hosted) and can go all the way up to $174 per month.
• If the higher performance of a VPS is not enough for your site, a dedicated hosting package is your best next option. With these, you’ll have your own server for yourself and won’t have neighbors interfering with your project. But you’ll need a budget for that as dedicated servers start at $149.99 per month at GoDaddy.
• GoDaddy also offers email hosting plans, so you can have a professional-looking address like info@your-business.com. They start at $5.99 per user per month for 10 GB of email storage.
• For the less tech-savvy users, they also have a website builder to create your site with. To be honest, it’s not my favorite site builder as some features come up a bit short (e.g. the blog). Other alternatives like Weebly, Wix or Squarespace seem to me more well-rounded.

But their offering doesn’t stop there, among others they also have a hosting reseller program so you can sell hosting plans to your clients, web design services and SEO consulting.

GoDaddy Pricing: What Do Their Shared Plans Include?

	Economy	Deluxe	Ultimate	Maximum
Websites	1 website	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Support	24/7	24/7	24/7	24/7
CPUMemory	1 CPU512 MB	1 CPU512 MB	2 CPUs1 GB	2 CPUs2 GB
Max. files amount	250,000	250,000	250,000	250,000
Bandwidth	Unmetered *	Unmetered *	Unmetered *	Unmetered *
Storage	100 GB	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
DatabaseMax. DB size	101 GB	251 BG	Unlimited1 GB	Unlimited1 GB
SSL certificate	No	No	Included free the first term	Included free the first term
Email accounts	100	500	Unlimited	Unlimited
Backup	Paid add-on	Paid add-on	Paid add-on	Paid add-on
First-term prices	$5.99 a month	$7.99 a month	$12.99 a month	$19.99 a month
Renewal price	$8.99 a month	$11.99 a month	$16.99 a month	$24.99 a month

* Even if officially they don’t limit the GoDaddy traffic you can get, if your website gets too much traffic or uses too many resources, they’ll request that you upgrade. Check this article for more information about GoDaddy prices.

The Economy plan is for those only looking to host 1 website (1 domain) and don’t need more than 100 GB of storage. It also comes with a database limitation of 10. SSL certificates aren’t included either.

The Deluxe tier comes with the same specs and features as the Economy package, but you’ll be able to host unlimited websites with it, and a maximum of 25 databases are allowed.

If you need a higher performance (e.g. 2 CPUs and 1 GB of memory) you can purchase the Ultimate plan. It also comes with free SSL certificate (for the first term) and unlimited databases.

With the Maximum tier, you’ll get 2 GB of memory.

I don’t like that some basic features you’ll need aren’t included with the shared hosting plans. For example, if you want to have your sites backed up, it’ll cost you around $3 extra a month for 5 GB of storage, and SSL certificates are about $7 extra a month (in a time where most hosting companies offer free Let’s Encrypt certificates!).

This adds up quickly. The Economy plan jumps from $8.99 to $17.50 a month when these must-have add-ons are purchased. Not so ‘Economy’ anymore.

GoDaddy Review: Pros & Cons

GoDaddy is one of the largest domain name registrars and reputable hosts. Their performance is good and offers tons of web storage. However, it lacks some features like backups, SSL certificates and staging areas.

Let’s check out the main pros and cons in detail:

Pros

Cons

Easy to use: I find their interface pretty intuitive to use, I would recommend it for beginners.Speed: In my tests, GoDaddy offered OKish speed.Windows servers: GoDaddy also offers Windows-based hosting.Storage: All your files combined can’t be more than 250,000 files (inodes). That’s the only storage limitation they have – quite generous.Bandwidth: The traffic your site can get with each plan won’t be limited.

Expensive: They don’t offer the cheapest deals out there. They become even more expensive when the basic add-ons (backups and SSL certificates) are purchased.Uptime: Sadly, GoDaddy’s uptime is below the 99.05% standard, more information below.No backups: Unless you purchase their paid add-on, there’s not a backup system in place.No SSL: If you want to have your site SSLed (pretty important these days), you’ll need to pay for a certificate.Missing advanced features: Sadly, GoDaddy doesn’t come with some advanced features like staging areas or Git repositories that may come in handy for developers.No migration services: Unlike some other hosting providers, they won’t help you migrate your websites from another host.

But you are probably wondering when is it a good idea to use GoDaddy and when it’s not. Let me give you a couple of examples.

When to Use GoDaddy’s Hosting?

First of all, you should set aside some budget for hosting, as GoDaddy comes out a bit pricey, especially when you start adding the basic add-ons.

I would suggest GoDaddy’s shared hosting for those looking for a host that’s very generous with the storage and doesn’t measure your traffic.

GoDaddy also offers Windows-based hosting services, this may be a good argument to convince some.

When Not to Use GoDaddy’s hosting?

I would not suggest GoDaddy if you need an affordable hosting provider, check DreamHost and GreenGeeks instead.

In our tests, GoDaddy has also proved to GoDaddy be a reliable hosting provider speed-wise, but had a bad uptime ratio. So serious projects like avid bloggers should consider other alternatives like SiteGround or DreamHost.

Finally, those looking for advanced options like staging areas, server-side caching or CMS (e.g. WordPress) optimization options may want to check out other alternatives.

GoDaddy Shared Hosting Details

criterion	rating	comments
Ease of Use		I have to say that registering can be a bit tricky, there are way too many add-ons offered at check out. Their cPanel-based backend is easy and intuitive. Perhaps their support materials could be a bit more detailed.
Domain Names		GoDaddy will give you a free domain for the first term if you purchase a 12-month (or longer) deal.With the Economy plan, you can only have 1 domain name (website), the other plans will let you have as many domains as you wish.
Email Rating		Email accounts are pretty generous at GoDaddy. Get up to 100 accounts with the Economy plan, 500 with the Deluxe tier and GoDaddy unlimited with the others. There’s not a direct email storage limitation. *
Databases		All databases are limited to Where your servers are 1 GB of size. With the Economy plan you can have up to 10 databases, 25 with GoDaddy the Deluxe package and unlimited with Ultimate and Maximum plans *.
Applications		Using their cPanel you’ll be able to easily install all sorts of applications like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal or Magento.
Webspace Limit		The storage is limited to 100 GB with the Economy plan, the higher plans offer unlimited web space. However, the maximum files (inodes) hosted can’t be over 250,000, which is pretty generous.
Monthy Data Transfer Limit		GoDaddy doesn’t meter the traffic you can get with any of their plans. However, if your website uses too many server resources they may require you to upgrade your hosting account.
FTP Accounts and Secure FTP		Create up to 50 FTP accounts with the Economy and Deluxe plans, and unlimited accounts with Ultimate and Maximum tiers. Secure FTP connections are allowed and SSH access too.
Server Location		You can choose between servers in America, Europe and Asia.
Security Features		They seem to monitor your server’s security and possible attacks (e.g. DDoS) 24/7. I can’t get my head around why SSL certificates are paid extra. It’s also difficult to understand the lack of backups (more on this later).
Server Speed		Although GoDaddy’s speed is not as good as SiteGround’s or DreamHost’s, their hosting server is fast and shouldn’t disappoint you. They also offer the latest PHP version, which will give you an extra speed boost. Sadly, they don’t offer a server-side caching system and their shared hosting doesn’t come with dedicated speed optimization plugins for WordPress and similar CMSs.
Uptime		In our latest test, GoDaddy offered bad uptime rates.
Backups		They only offer a database backup, but after speaking to support I am unsure how often is it run and what exactly is backed up. You’ll need to purchase a paid add-on for having proper backups, which starts at around $3 a month for 5 GB of backup storage.
CDN		It doesn’t include a CDN out-of-the-box. However, you can always add an external service like CloudFlare.
Server Features		With GoDaddy, you can use the latest PHP version (at the moment 7.3) and MySQL for your databases. Using other programming languages like Python or Perl is also possible. Advanced features like staging areas or Git repositories are missing. You can also get a Windows-based server instead of a Linux one.
Refunds and Guarantees		If you purchase a 12-month hosting plan or longer, you’ll have a 30-day money-back warranty. You have a 99.9% uptime service level agreement.
Assistance and Support		You can reach GoDaddy via live chat or phone. I didn’t have to wait long to be connected with an agent, however, the quality of the support could be better. I wish their learning materials were a bit more detailed.
Overall Rating	4/5	GoDaddy’s performance is good and their support isn’t terrible. However, they can be a bit overpriced as you’ll need to add some add-ons (e.g. SSL and backups) to have a fully functional hosting service.

* All your files combined (storage, databases, emails, etc), can’t be more than 250,000.

GoDaddy Performance Tests

I checked GoDaddy’s performance to see if they are a reliable hosting provider. I’ve tested their uptime and speed using several tools: StatusCake, Pingdom, GTmetrix and Google PageSpeed Insights.

GoDaddy Speed Test

No one wants to have a slow hosting provider. Website visitors hate having to stare at a blank page that never seems to load.

This can cost you conversions as visitors will go elsewhere if they have to wait too long to read your content. And of course, the faster your site the higher search engines will rank it.

Test	Average Loading Time
5 GTmetrix test	3.32 s
5 Pingdom test	0.99 s
5 PageSpeed Insights (Google)	3.208 s

With an average loading time of 2.50 seconds, GoDaddy wasn’t the top-performing host in our tests, but they were not too far from GoDaddy SiteGround at the top of the list with an average loading speed of 2.10 seconds.

Is GoDaddy’s Uptime Good?

The uptime measures how much time your website was online. Believe it or not, hosting providers can’t always guarantee that your site will be online 100% of the time.

Having a 99.95% uptime (or 0.05% downtime) is considered a good result. So if you are serious about your website, you should always aim for this. Otherwise, you may get punished by search engines and of course you’ll be offering a poor user experience to your visitors.

	2019(Percentage)	2020(Percentage)
Kinsta (3 months test)	No data	100
Cloudways (3 months test)	No data	100
DreamHost	100	99.99
A2 Hosting	99.93	99.99
WP Engine	No data	99.99
GreenGeeks (3 months test)	No data	99.98
SiteGround	99.98	99.97
Bluehost	99.98	99.96
HostGator	99.94	99.91
GoDaddy	99.97	99.90
InMotion	99.97	99.73
Hostinger	99.62	99.48
iPage	99.66	98.45

To monitor uptime I use StatusCake, a tool that checks each website every 5 minutes.

I am not happy with GoDaddy’s uptime performance. As you can see in the above table, they had an uptime of 99.90% – not even close to the 99.95% you should be aiming for.