GoDaddy Review

In a Nutshell

GoDaddy offers an assortment of hosting-related services and is a widely-recognized brand name. Understandably, because of its size and popularity, it’s received its fair share of mixed reviews throughout the years; loyal users stick with it and seemingly love everything about it, while other reviews take on a more skeptical bent — namely, complaints about their customer service.

 Overview

GoDaddy is a reliable host (with a 99.9% uptime and industry-leading page load times) at a very reasonable price and plenty of good introductory deals and flexible services. Many customers use GoDaddy Hosting to support their online projects, so the company is surely doing some things correctly. Users of all skill levels can easily buy a domain, build a site and then publish it to the web. The company provides excellent tools for users to create, customize and promote their websites. Simply put, GoDaddy is a massive and efficient web hosting machine.

Perhaps due to its size, its ability to provide excellent customer support is at times put to the test. While GoDaddy's customer service is readily available, at peak times you may be placed on hold for extended periods when call volume is heavy. And if you're not quite tech-savvy or sure of what you're doing, you may find it slightly difficult to convey what you need to support staff. 

You get a free domain for the length of your initial plan when you sign up for the Annual (or longer) Web Hosting plan. Plus, they add free Office 365 email for the first year; 125+ free applications including WordPress, Drupal and Joomla, unmetered bandwidth, unlimited storage with Deluxe, Ultimate & Maximum plans; free premium DNS with Ultimate & Maximum plans; a free SSL certificate (for a year with the Ultimate plan, free for the full term with Maximum plan). And lots of Business Hosting, VPS Hosting and Dedicated Server Hosting options for bigger web projects. GoDaddy is a full-featured web service. So, if you have some technical know-how — or experience in setting up a site — GoDaddy is a fantastic option.

Ideal For

With so many hosting plans, domain options, and other special features, GoDaddy can accommodate nearly every type of online project. Its popularity alone attracts many first-time web builders. You might think that it would be an excellent option for pretty much anyone looking to establish an online presence, but I haven’t found that to always be the case; GoDaddy is ideal for a user that has a little bit of web admin experience or is planning on creating a very simple site. Customers looking to set up a GoDaddy WordPress site, for example, should have little trouble doing so. Conversely, I’m reluctant to recommend GoDaddy for the first-time ecommerce customer. There are so many fantastic tools and services that can support your store, but they can be tricky to use, and customer support may be hard to reach at times.