GoDaddy Review

GoDaddy is best known as a domain registrar – and, to be certain, it is one of the largest in the world – but they also offer a wide range of other web services, including hosting. You may be able to save money by bundling all of your web needs but GoDaddy has a lot of options so if you are uncertain as to whether or not you need something, you can probably safely skip it for now. Luckily, their site is very informative so you can often learn more about the options offered before you commit to anything.

One of GoDaddy’s weaknesses is that, though well organized, you are forced to pore through the site to find all of the features and options you need. This appears to be a strategic and intentional design meant to compel you to spend more time on the site but it is far from convenient for the end user.

GoDaddy’s hosting is scalable to your needs and boasts a 99.9% uptime. They also boast around the clock security monitoring which is probably a good thing these days, and may become more important in years to come, but is probably not a priority for most sites. Business site webmasters may feel safer with it though.

GoDaddy hosting comes in three sizes: Economy, Deluxe, and Ultimate. The Deluxe package is prominently advertised as the best deal and, for the price and the features it includes, it appears to be. Unlike many host providers though, GoDaddy is pretty stingy when it comes to space, e-mail accounts, and MySQL databases.

GoDaddy claims to have no hidden fees but it charges for literally every feature and option you choose. It does offer a large pool of one-click hosting options – add-ons, utilities, services, and software – that include blogging platforms, forums/message boards, content management systems (CMS), shopping cart software, social networking, and much more. These applications are conveniently categorized for easier access.

The Economy plan is probably all most freelance individual webmasters will ever need. Although disk space is limited to 10 GB, that is actually more than most websites will ever use. The Deluxe package allows for 150 GB disk space – a marked improvement over the Economy plan – 500 e-mail accounts and 25, 1 GB MySQL databases; the Economy plan allows for 100 e-mail accounts and 10 MySQL databases. Most of the hosts reviewed grant unlimited disk space, e-mail, and MySQL databases. Still, few websites are ever going to use all of these, so why pay for something you do not need? GoDaddy also grants Bing, Facebook, and Fotolio credits for each plan. It does not appear to include any Google AdWords credits.

Compared to other web host providers, GoDaddy does not stand-up very well. Again though, few websites will max-out their e-mail accounts or use all the disk space given them, even at the Economy level. All that aside, many of the hosts reviewed offer much more at a competitive price. The major benefit to hosting through GoDaddy is that you only have to deal with one company – that is, if you choose to register your domain through GoDaddy, as well.