GoDaddy Review | Is It Fast And Secure? (Our Expert Analysis)

GoDaddy Review: Is It Fast And Secure? (Our Expert Analysis)

In this article we’ll shed some light on the shared hosting plans available by GoDaddy hosting.

We look deeper at all four shared hosting plans to unveil exactly what is included and excluded.

We begin with a few pros and cons, before covering the hosting plans and customer service and finally tie everything together with our final verdict.

Let’s get straight into it with the hosting plans and features.

GoDaddy Review FAQ

Should you use GoDaddy?

If great pricing, scalable packages and renown reputation is what you're looking for, the Godaddy hosting is for you. With four plans on offer, they will be sure to have the one that suits you. Let's take a look at the pros and cons of Godaddy hosting.

What are the Pros & Cons of GoDaddy?

Pros

99.9% Uptime guarantee – A great uptime percentage shows the time your site will be live. With a guaranteed uptime of 99.9%, your website users will undoubtedly be able to access your site at any time.
Great speed – When we talk about speed, we’re talking about how fast a page on your site loads. A good page load speed is usually under 600ms. GoDaddys page load times hold consistently below 500ms.
Unlimited bandwidth – Providing unlimited bandwidth technically means that your site should be able to handle an unlimited amount of traffic. This is obviously not the case as shared hosting shares a servers’ resources with many other websites, but nonetheless, they do offer more freedom in terms of bandwidth.
Additional services – Although GoDaddys primary business is registering domain names and hosting, they do provide a variety of additional services. With such a wide selection of add-ons, you will have no need to go elsewhere for necessary applications which makes things slightly easier as everything can be done in one place.

Cons

Many hidden costs – GoDaddy sets up their plans in such a way that the first year is relatively cheap, but from year 2 onwards, your costs increaase dramatically. On the flipside of the previously stated pro of having many add-ons in one place, you also have to pay for many additional applications to get your website to the functionality you’re looking for.
Little value in low-end plans – Although the price for the low-end plans look good, GoDaddy hosting has removed most of the value from them to get it there. Necessary features such as a CDN or SSL certificate become add-on features, even backups are excluded. This really does strip much value away from the package because in actual fact, to have a functional website will cost you some more change than the listed price on their site.

What hosting plans and features does GoDaddy offer?

GoDaddy has four options for shared hosting users. These plans are the Economy, Deluxe, Ultimate and Business plans.

The economy plan is set up so that beginners have a cost effective way to host a website. The plan allows for one website to be hosted with 100GB of storage and unmetered bandwidth. The economy plan is priced at $4.99 per month

The deluxe plan provides more space and flexibility for an unlimited amount of websites. The deluxe plan offers hosting for unlimited sites, unlimited storage and unlimited domains. The Deluxe plan can be purchased from $9.99 per month

The Ultimate plans’ main differentiating factor is the power and memory. It boasts 2x the processing power and 2x the memory of the deluxe plan as well as a free SSL certificate for the first year. The Ultimate plan can be purchased from $19.99 per month.

The business plan aims to service those looking for a cost effective way to host an eCommerce site with high traffic. This plan provides VPS power with cPanel ease of use and is said to also provide dedicated resources and a free SSL certificate. With all the power and resources listed, it’s hard to believe that this plan costs only $24.99 per month.

The table below gives a brief comparison between the four plans.

Features	Economy	Deluxe	Ultimate	Business
Number of websites	1	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Storage	100GB	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Free SSL certificate	No	No	Yes	Yes
Processing power	Standard	Standard	2x processing power	VPS processing power
24/7 support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

What is GoDaddy's Customer Service like?

GoDaddy offers two main lines of support to their users; these are live chat and telephone support.

It is important to note that although they provide telephone support 24/7; their live chat support only operates during business hours.

Like many of their competitors, GoDaddy also provide self-help support pages. These pages are a great way to learn useful solutions to common site problems. There are endless articles to read through which cover pretty much any problem that could arise.

As aforementioned, the live chat is only in operation during working hours and therefore you may be able to find your solution in the self-help section quicker than via the telephone.

Finally, GoDaddy also provide a community thread where other users and tech savvy staff are able to share solutions to common issues.

Final Verdict

Godaddy is the largest hosting provider in the world. They have plenty of apps and plugins in one place as well as several packages for you to choose from. If ease of use is what you are looking for, then Godaddy hosting is for you.

Their pricing is great for those who are starting out and are not in the market for too much functionality. Their support is great, and the ease of use is right up there.

We however, feel that because of all the up-sells and the increase in price from the second year, that you would receive more value from one of their competitors such as SiteGround or InMotion hosting.

About the Author Devon Ramages

Devon is our resident online business and social media guru. With a background in digital marketing, Devon has worked in a consulting capacity helping small business scale their reach and engagement online. When not consulting or writing about online business, Devon can be found surfing in his hometown, Cape Town, South Africa.