GoDaddy Review Can You Trust Their Shared Hosting?

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Josep Garcia

Josep Garcia

Author

Cai Ellis

Cai Ellis

Researcher

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According to BuiltWith, 1 in every 20 websites seems to be hosted on GoDaddy. Undeniably, they are a web hosting titan, with around 20 million customers, over 9,000 employees and more than 80 million domains managed.

But this is not a popularity contest...

… Instead, I am about to review GoDaddy, so that you know what to expect from their performance, what the deal is with their support and how much it will really cost you - spoiler alert, their pricing can get confusing.

You can check out our video-review if you don't want to read the full review:

GoDaddy - Should You Really Host Your Site wIth Them?

Let's dive in now.

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 products hosting

  • 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 $14.99 the first year and $19.99 after, not the cheapest (domain name prices vary).
  • 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 around $100 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 $130 per month at GoDaddy.
  • GoDaddy also offers email hosting plans, so you can have a professional-looking address like [email protected]. 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

$8.99

Economy

$11.99

Deluxe

$16.99

Ultimate

$24.99

Maximum

Price Increases on Renewal

The prices above are the cost per month (if you pay for a year in advance), once the introductory prices end (after the first year).

Almost all web hosting providers make very low-priced introductory offers for the first year, to lure you in. Your plan will automatically renew at a higher rate after the first year, and the higher rate is what you will pay from then on.

Since these higher rates are what you will continue to pay (and since the introductory offers vary widely), when comparing different providers, it is always best to look at the renewal prices.

In the chart below, you can see the different introductory prices compared to the renewal prices of all the hosting providers we test.

Web Hosts: Price Increases on Renewal

As you can see, although GoDaddy’s introductory prices may seem quite high compared to other providers, the increase on renewal is quite modest.

So in the end, GoDaddy woks out a little bit cheaper than a lot of the competition.

What Do Their Shared Plans Include?

Economy Deluxe Ultimate Maximum
Websites 1 site 10 sites 25 sites 50 sites
Support 24/7 24/7 24/7 24/7
CPU

Memory

1 CPU

512 MB

1 CPU

1 GB

2 CPUs

1.5 GB

2 CPUs

2 GB

Max. files amount 250,000 250,000 250,000 250,000
Bandwidth Unmetered * Unmetered * Unmetered * Unmetered *
Storage 25 GB 50 GB 75 GB 100 GB
Database

Max. DB size

10

1 GB

25

1 BG

50

1 GB

100

1 GB

SSL certificate Yes Yes Yes Yes
Backup Paid add-on Paid add-on Paid add-on Paid add-on
First-year special price $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 traffic you can get, if your website gets too much traffic or uses too many resources, they’ll request that you upgrade. For more information, check our article on GoDaddy pricing.

The Economy plan is for those only looking to host 1 website (1 domain) and don’t need more than 25 GB of storage. It also comes with a database limitation of 10. An SSL certificate is included now, though.

The Deluxe tier comes with the same specs and features as the Economy package, but you’ll be able to host 10 sites and have 50 GB of storage. It also comes with free SSL certificates now.

If you need a higher performance (e.g. 2 CPUs and 1.5 GB of memory) you can purchase the Ultimate plan. It also comes with free SSL certificate for all your sites. 25 sites and 75 GB of storage are allowed.

With the Maximum tier, you’ll get 2 GB of memory, 50 sites and 100 GB of storage.

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.

GoDaddy Review: Pros & Cons

  • Pros
  • Cons

Pros

  • Easy to use

    I find their interface pretty intuitive to use, I would recommend it for beginners.

  • Speed

    In my latest speed tests, GoDaddy performed really well and was one of the fastest web hosting providers.

  • Uptime

    GoDaddy’s uptime is not the best one, but it’s reliable (more information below).

  • Windows servers

    GoDaddy also offers Windows-based hosting.

  • Bandwidth

    The traffic your site can get with each plan won’t be limited.

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 (but don’t need unlimited space) 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, GreenGeeks or our round up of the best cheap web hosts instead.

And if you’re specifically looking for affordable WordPress hosting, check out our guide to the best low cost hosting providers for WordPress websites.

In our tests, GoDaddy has also proved to be a reliable hosting provider, but it wasn’t the top-performing service. So serious projects like avid bloggers should consider other alternatives like SiteGround or GreenGeeks.

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

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), 10 with Deluxe, 25 with Ultimate and 50 sites with Maximum.

Email Rating

Email accounts are pretty generous at GoDaddy. Get up to 100 accounts with the Economy plan, 500 with the Deluxe tier and 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 the Deluxe package, 50 Ultimate and 100 databases with the Maximum plan *.

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 25 GB with the Economy plan, 50 GB for Deluxe, 75 GB for Unlimited and 100 GB with the Maximum plans. The maximum files (inodes) hosted can’t be over 250,000, which is pretty generous.

Monthly 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 5 FTP accounts with the Economy, 25 with Deluxe, 50 with Unlimited and 75 with the 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. But it’s difficult to understand the lack of backups (more on this later).

Server Speed

GoDaddy has got faster and faster over the last three years. 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 OK 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 PHP version 7 and 8, 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

4.1

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 website, the higher search engines will rank it. So, website load times matter!

As you can see in the chart below, GoDaddy performed really well in our latest web host speed tests, with an average page load time of just 1.44 seconds.

Web Hosts: Page Load Times

However, that hasn’t always been the case, as you can see in the speed results from the last three years in the table below:

2020 2021 2022
Page Load Time in Seconds
GreenGeeks 2.39 1.56 1.29
A2 Hosting 3.15 2.01 1.30
GoDaddy 3.40 1.94 1.44
Cloudways 2.32 1.73 1.46
SiteGround 2.14 1.54 1.56
Hostinger 4.19 1.61 1.63
WP Engine 2.21 1.65 1.66
Namecheap 1.60 1.69
Dreamhost 3.28 1.84 1.75
Kinsta 2.98 1.77 1.82
Bluehost 3.07 2.87 2.07
IONOS 1.95 2.32
InMotion 4.36 2.75 2.58
iPage 4.19 2.76 2.60
HostGator 3.77 2.78 2.72

Results in seconds

The chart below compares the renewal price of different hosting companies to the average page loading speeds that they provided in our tests.

Web Hosts: Page Load Time vs Price

As you can see, GoDaddy did very well, providing the third-fastest load times for prices that are lower than most of the other hosting companies!

While there are several steps you can take yourself to make WordPress faster and fix a slow website, a fast web host is the biggest contributor to the speed of your website.

So this is a big bonus for GoDaddy!

GoDaddy Uptime Test

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.

You can see the result of this year’s web host uptime tests in the chart below. GoDaddy did OK, with an uptime score of 99.95%.

Web Hosts Uptime Levels

You can compare this year’s result to the previous two years in the table below:

2020 2021 2022
Uptime %
SiteGround 99.97 100 100
WP Engine 99.99 99.99 100
Namecheap 100 100
Kinsta 100 100 100
InMotion 99.73 99.95 100
A2 Hosting 99.99 99.98 99.99
Cloudways 100 100 99.99
HostGator 99.91 99.99 99.98
GreenGeeks 99.98 99.98 99.97
GoDaddy 99.90 99.96 99.95
Hostinger 99.48 99.92 99.95
Bluehost 99.96 99.99 99.95
iPage 98.45 99.85 99.95
Dreamhost 99.99 99.96 99.83
IONOS 99.93 99.71

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

GoDaddy has done OK for the past two years after a slightly poor performance in 2020. There are much better (and worse), web providers in terms of uptime than GoDaddy, though.

GoDaddy Review: Do I Recommend It?

Overall, I think GoDaddy offers a solid product to host small websites. I liked:

However, it has a couple of hidden downsides that you should know about. Some basic features like backups aren’t included in their already pricey plans – in the end, GoDaddy can get expensive.

Advanced features like staging areas are also missing, and they don’t offer migration services for new accounts. This may be a deal-breaker for developers or agencies. Sadly, it’s less than stellar uptime record makes this provider not a good choice for larger sites.

> Try GoDaddy 30 days without risk or read more in our guide to the best web hosting!

I hope you found this GoDaddy review interesting. But if you have any question, please leave comment and I’ll try to help you out.

GoDaddy Alternatives

I think most projects could be hosted using GoDaddy without serious issues (if the backup add-on and SSL are added). However, this doesn’t mean that GoDaddy is the best option for your project.

Let me go over a couple of scenarios so you can compare GoDaddy to other alternatives:

  • I would say that DreamHost and A2 Hosting offer the best price to quality ratio
  • I’ve found the best support at SiteGround, DreamHost and InMotion, no doubt about that.
  • GreenGeeks and A2 Hosting are the top performing providers for speed.
  • SiteGround is the best performing, affordable provider for uptime.
  • For those needing a hosting provider with a lot of WordPress features (e.g. staging and speed optimization), I would recommend to check SiteGround out.

> But, if you still want to go with GoDaddy, you can try GoDaddy 30 days without risk

The authors

Learn more about us

Josep Garcia

Content Manager

Hi there, I am Josep Garcia. Since 2014 I've been testing and writing about website builders and hosting services, and I share all my learnings at Tooltester.com. Today I am not an active staff member anymore, but I do hope you enjoyed this article. And if you have any questions, please leave me a comment below.

Cai Ellis

SEO Manager

Hi! My name is Cai. Over the years, I've used countless hosting providers, built innumerable ecommerce stores and picked up a bit of SEO know-how too. If you've got questions about these or any related subjects, I'll be happy to help!

Learn more about us

We keep our content up to date

14 Dec 2022: Added performance data and charts
15 Mar 2022: New GoDaddy plans limitations and features
17 Sep 2021: Performance update and new rating
08 Oct 2020: General update and new rating due to bad uptime
12 Jul 2019: First review

THE BEHIND THE SCENES OF THIS REVIEW

This article has been written and researched following a precise methodology.

Our methodology

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