GoDaddy Hosting

GoDaddy Web Hosting Review 2017

In this review, we’ll be taking a look at GoDaddy web hosting. Though GoDaddy is perhaps most popular as a domain registrar, they also offer affordable shared web hosting with surprisingly good performance.

Once known predominantly for their racy Super Bowl commercials, GoDaddy handles everything from domain registration, to web hosting, and even to WordPress management with their acquisition of ManageWP.

GoDaddy offers a variety of helpful hosting services for you to take advantage of. They also performed in the top tier of our real-world tests which, to be honest, we were not expecting.

Keep reading to take a peek at our testing data and learn more about the features of GoDaddy hosting.

Overview of GoDaddy Hosting Features

Here’s what you can expect when you host your website with GoDaddy:

• Unlimited bandwidth
• Unlimited storage (100GB on cheapest plan)
• Unlimited websites (1 website on cheapest plan)
• One-click WordPress install
• 24/7 DDoS protection and security monitoring
• 99.9% uptime guarantee
• Global data centers
• 24/7 support via phone, email, and chat

That’s what the marketing department says! But now let’s dig into the real data and see how GoDaddy hosting performed…

GoDaddy Web Hosting Performance – Real Testing Data

To get an idea of how GoDaddy performs, we set up a test site at their Scottsdale, Arizona data center.

Overall, GoDaddy performed in the top tier of all of our tests. They weren’t #1, but definitely within the top 4-5 shared hosts, which is impressive given the competition we put them up against.

First, we tested Time to First Byte, which is essentially a basic measure of how quickly a web server responds. Lower times are better. GoDaddy’s response time was 0.57 seconds. While not the fastest time, this was good for 5th place among the shared hosts that we tested making it a fairly competitive time.

Next, we calculated the average page load time for our test site. GoDaddy’s average page load time was 2.19 seconds. Again, this was good for 5th place when compared against the other shared hosts we tested. It even beat out some of the more expensive managed hosts.

Finally, we took a look at GoDaddy’s uptime. We wanted to verify two things. First, we wanted to see whether or not GoDaddy’s uptime matched their guarantee. And second, we wanted to see how GoDaddy’s uptime compared against the other shared hosts that we tested.

With GoDaddy, our test site experienced 99.98% uptime. This both beat GoDaddy’s 99.9% guarantee and ranked 4th out of any of the shared hosts we tested. Again, an impressive result.

Overall, GoDaddy performed favorably in our real world tests. There were no glaring issues and they were consistently in the top 5 of all the shared hosts we tested.

GoDaddy Hosting Data Centers

The data center where your site is hosted is the actual physical location where your hosting server is. It’s an important consideration because physical proximity has an effect on page load time. Therefore, you always want your data center to be as close as possible to where your target readers are located.

GoDaddy currently operates an impressive nine data centers spread across the world. They have various centers across the USA as well as overseas data centers in Amsterdam (for Europe) and Singapore (for Asia).

The variety of locations offered by GoDaddy is definitely a plus. Many budget shared hosts limit you to just North American data centers. This isn’t a problem if your target audience is in North America. But if you’re targeting Europe or Asia, GoDaddy is great for you.

Is “Unlimited” Really Unlimited?

Like all other hosts, unlimited bandwidth doesn’t mean you can send unlimited visitors to your site. Your traffic is still limited by the processing power allocated to your websites.

According to GoDaddy, “Should your website bandwidth or storage usage present a risk to the stability, performance or uptime of our servers, we will notify you via email and you may be required to upgrade to a Virtual Private Server or Dedicated (Private) Server, or we may restrict the resources your website is using”.

While this won’t affect the vast majority of sites, if your site gets a huge amount of traffic (100,000+ monthly visitors), you might want to consider going straight to dedicated hosting).

GoDaddy Support and Documentation

GoDaddy offers a variety of support channels. You can contact them via phone, email, or live chat. This support is also available 24/7, so you can get help whenever needed.

For those who like self-help, GoDaddy also has a small knowledge base. When compared with other hosts, this knowledge base is not especially comprehensive, though.

GoDaddy Shared Hosting Plans and Prices

Like most shared hosts, GoDaddy offers three different tiers of plans.

Their Economy plan offers support for one website, 100GB of storage, and unlimited bandwidth. Plans start at $3.99 per month ($7.99 per month upon renewal).

Their Deluxe plan upgrades that to unlimited websites and storage starting at $4.99 per month ($10.99 per month upon renewal).

Finally, their Ultimate plan offers double the processing power as well as unlimited websites and storage. It also includes premium DNS and one year of a free SSL certificate. The Ultimate plan starts at $7.99 per month and renews at $16.99 per month.

Should You Choose GoDaddy Hosting?

Overall, we think GoDaddy is a solid hosting choice for most users. While it wasn’t the absolute fastest in our tests, it was consistently in the top tier. Combined with competitive pricing and global data centers, that makes GoDaddy one of the better shared hosting options out there.

Give it a try and if you’re not happy you can take advantage of GoDaddy’s 30-day money back guarantee.