Go daddy wordpress hosting review

Rock-solid uptime. Excellent 24/7 customer support. Windows- and Linux-based servers. Email tightly integrated into Microsoft apps. Managed WordPress hosting.

Base-level shared hosting plan lacks a month-to-month payment option. Skimpy email offering. Dedicated hosting lacks email.

GoDaddy is a feature-packed web hosting service that boasts rock-solid uptime, excellent customer service, and flexible website-building tools, but meager email offerings and shared hosting limitations prevent it from achieving top honors.

Go daddy wordpress hosting review SSD storage, and 25,000

If you plan to start a business, you need a web presence. That means you need to choose a web hosting service to provide a foundation for your website. Fortunately, GoDaddy is good for personal and commercial hosting purposes, thanks to its dependable uptime, Linux- and Windows-based servers, excellent customer service, and other features. GoDaddy's well-rounded packages fall just shy of those offered by Editors' Choice award-winning HostGator and DreamHost, but it is more than capable of satisfying your web hosting needs.

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Shared Server Packages

GoDaddy charges a monthly fee for its Linux- or Windows-based shared web servers. but it reduces the price if you commit to a multi-month or annual package. Unfortunately, GoDaddy requires you to sign up for its pricier Deluxe or Ultimate plans (starting at $10.99 and $16.99, respectively) for the option to pay for hosting on a month-to-month basis (the basic Economy plan requires you to sign up for a minimum of three months). This may not have much (if any) impact on businesses, but a cash-strapped blogger may not appreciate GoDaddy's lack of a single-month option in its Economy package.

GoDaddy's Economy basic shared hosting package ($7.99 per month) includes a free domain name, 100GB of storage, the ability to host one website, unlimited monthly data transfers, and a relatively skimpy 100 email addresses. The Deluxe plan (starting at $10.99 per month, or $5.99 per month with an annual commitment) builds on the Economy package by adding unlimited storage, unlimited website hosting, and 500 email addresses. The Ultimate package (starting at $16.99 per month, or $7.99 per month with an annual commitment) adds a premium DNS management tool, 1,000 email addresses, and a one-year SSL Certificate.

GoDaddy has solid shared hosting plans, but HostGator still reigns as the PCMag Editors' Choice for shared web hosting services. Like GoDaddy, HostGator boasts unlimited domains, storage, monthly data transfers, and a choice of Linux- or Windows-based servers, but it tops its rival by offering unlimited email across the board.

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Dedicated Server Plans

GoDaddy's dedicated servers come in many Linux and Windows configurations. The plans start at $129 per month, and you can outfit the servers with up to 32GB of RAM, 1.5TB of storage, and 20TB of data transfers per month. The 32GB RAM total is 16GB more than what's offered by Arvixe -the PCMag Editors' Choice for dedicated servers-but GoDaddy loses points because the plan doesn't include email. That's a separate purchase.

Furthermore, Arvixe's impressive unlimited monthly data transfers bests GoDaddy's offering, as well as those from Bluehost (15TB), SiteGround (5TB), and many other web hosts.

Hostwinds may be the PCMag Editors' Choice for VPS hosting, but that doesn't mean that GoDaddy doesn't have quality virtual private server packages. GoDaddy's VPS plans (starting at $29.99 per month) offer Linux- or Windows-based servers, and unlimited domains and email. That's good stuff.

So why does GoDaddy fall short of winning the VPS hosting Editors' Choice award? Hostwinds offers unlimited monthly data transfers (with GoDaddy you're limited to 8GB), superior website-building tools, and a simpler WordPress setup. Still, GoDaddy's VPS is a capable option for people who want a web hosting solution that's more powerful than shared web hosting, but don't want to pay dedicated web hosting's relatively expensive cost.

WordPress Hosting

GoDaddy gives its version of WordPress hosting the white-glove treatment with four tiers of Linux-based managed WordPress hosting. Signing up has its advantages. GoDaddy has thousands of WordPress themes and plug-ins, and it offers nightly backups and automatic WordPress software updates. Like other managed WordPress hosts, GoDaddy doesn't require you to install the CMS, as it comes preinstalled. Once you're logged into WordPress, you can create posts, pages, and galleries as you would with any other self-hosted WordPress site.

The Basic $7.99-per-month plan comes with one domain, 10GB of SSD storage, and 25,000 monthly visitors. Deluxe ($9.99 per month) ups the storage and monthly visitors to 10GB and 100,000, respectively. It also adds site staging and an SEO plug-in. The $14.99 per month Ultimate plan builds on Deluxe by offering 30GB of storage, 400,000 monthly visitors, malware scanning and removal, and the ability to host two sites. Developer ($24.99 per month) serves up 50GB of storage, 800,000 monthly visitors, and the ability to host five sites.

Still, 1&1 remains the Editors' Choice for WordPress hosting. The top dog gives you the option of Linux- or Windows-based WordPress hosting, starting at $6.99 per month. Additionally, 1&1 offers tons of flexibility. All of its managed WordPress plans have unlimited email, unlimited visitors, automatic malware detection and removal, automatic WordPress updates, and a curated list of recommended WordPress plug-ins and themes. Plus, 1&1's managed WordPress plans offer far more storage than GoDaddy's. In fact, the fittingly named Unlimited plan boasts bottomless SSD-based disk space.

Setting Up a GoDaddy-Hosted Site

GoDaddy's new free Website Builder is called GoCentral. It's a completely responsive-design tool, which means you get a good-looking and functional mobile website alongside the desktop website you build. For $29.99 per month, you can add a capable web store. But, in general, the new GoCentral service so far lacks much of what you find in the site-building competition, such as a gallery of third-party widgets, a blogging tool, and any kind of image editing.

Email Hosting

GoDaddy tosses in email accounts with each shared hosting plan, but not with its dedicated hosting plans. If you want to purchase email, here's the breakdown: Email Essentials (starting at $4.99 per month, or $3.99 per month with a two- or three-year commitment) gives you 5GB of email storage. Online Essentials (starting at $9.99 per month, or $7.99 per month with a two- or three-year commitment) ups the email capacity to 50GB, and adds 1TB of cloud storage. Business Premium (starting at $14.99 per month, or $9.99 per month with a two- or three-year commitment) raises the email storage capacity to 50GB, increases the OneDrive storage to 1TB, and adds unlimited web conferencing and access to online Word and Excel. Premium Security (starting at $24.97 per month, or $14.99 per month with a two- or three-year commitment) tosses in encryption and Microsoft Office mobile apps.

I found it a simple endeavor to set up my GoDaddy email, as the web host prompts you to create one during the web hosting sign-up process. I simply selected the domain to which the email address would be associated and entered an email handle and a password.

E-Commerce

GoDaddy has ditched its old Quick Shopping Cart e-commerce software in favor of a new $29.99 per month GoDaddy Online Store. The new offering boasts many features, including secure checkout, SEO tools, store themes, and unlimited product listings.

Setting up shop with the new tool is straightforward and easy. You select a theme, add products, pricing, and images, and pick your preferred payment and shipping methods. If you plan on using your website to sell products, GoDaddy Online Store is an excellent choice.

Security Features

GoDaddy offers SiteLock (starting at $17.88 per year), a service that provides a site-verification certificate, app scanning, and spam and malware monitoring. Depending on the package that you select, SiteLock scans up to 500 of your website's sub-pages to find network vulnerabilities and removes malware.

You can also purchase Secure Sockets Layer certificates (starting at $69.99 per year), the software that's represented by a green padlock in your web browser when you visit, say, a financial institution's website. If you plan to sell products via your website, consider an SSL certificate an essential purchase, as it safeguards the data exchange between a customer and your servers.

Dependable Uptime

Website uptime is one of the most important aspects of a hosting service. If your site is down, clients or customers will be unable to find you or access your products or services. You do not want that. Fortunately, GoDaddy is quite dependable.

I used a website monitoring tool to track my GoDaddy-hosted test site's uptime over a two-week period. Every 15 minutes, the tool pings my website and sends me an email if it is unable to contact the site for at least one minute. The data revealed that GoDaddy is remarkably stable.

Excellent Customer Service

GoDaddy has 24/7 telephone support and live web chat support. I placed a call on a weekday afternoon and spoke to a customer service rep less than a minute later. I asked about the differences between shared and managed WordPress hosting and experienced the best customer support of any of the web hosting services I've tested so far. The rep was friendly and knowledgeable, and he gave me the details on the WordPress hosting's nightly backups, theme and plug-in compatibility, and automatic software updates.

The next morning, I fired up GoDaddy's customer service web chat and asked an important question: How do I import my existing WordPress.com blog? A few seconds later, a GoDaddy rep appeared in the chat and pasted a link that answered my question. GoDaddy's prompt and helpful customer service is very impressive.

Money-Back Guarantee

GoDaddy offers a 45-day money-back guarantee. That's lengthier than the standard 30-day refund window, but doesn't compete with DreamHost 's impressive 97-day money-back guarantee.

Who's Your (Go) Daddy?

GoDaddy has many business- and consumer-friendly options, and it also offers incredible 24/7 customer service. On the other hand, GoDaddy offers a skimpy amount of email and doesn't have month-to-month plans across the board. Still, if you're looking to quickly set up a website, GoDaddy has the tools you'll need for a successful launch.

If you want to dig deep into the process of creating a website. please check out our in-depth primer.

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For more than a decade, Jeffrey L. Wilson has penned gadget- and video game-related nerd-copy for a variety of publications, including 1UP, 2D-X, The Cask, Laptop, LifeStyler, Parenting, Sync, Wise Bread, and WWE. He now brings his knowledge and skillset to PCMag as Senior Analyst. When he isn't staring at a monitor (or two) and churning out Web hosting, music, utilities, and video game copy, Jeffrey mentors, practices Jeet Kune Do, blogs, podcasts, and speaks at the occasional con. He also collects vinyl and greatly enjoys. More »

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