Is Godaddy WordPress Hosting Good?
Want to start a website on the WordPress platform and considering Godaddy managed WordPress hosting for your website but confused if Godaddy managed WordPress hosting any good?
Well, you’re not alone. It happens to everyone (including me).
When we try to find the best for ourselves, we do research, search for options, and read reviews about the product we want to buy.
Godaddy is undoubtedly the largest domain and web hosting provider in the World. They are known for their excellent services that are pocket-friendly.
Since WordPress is most popular Content Management System in the World and millions of websites are running on this platform, Godaddy has launched a specialized web hosting service for WordPress known as managed WordPress hosting.
This is a special kind of web hosting specially designed and optimized for the WordPress. Unlike the regular shared hosting, where you have to install, manage and taking care of backups of your website, the managed hosting do all of these tasks for you.
It comes with preinstalled WordPress, easy to use control panel and weekly free backups features. You can even migrate your WordPress website from other hosts to Godaddy using the free plugin provided by the Godaddy without any downtime.
We’re one of the actual users of Godaddy managed WordPress hosting and in this review, we will discuss the pros and cons of Godaddy WordPress hosting services.
But before we jump into the good and the bad about Godaddy, let’s discuss what you should know about a WordPress hosting provider before you sign up with them.
Which Web Hosting Service is Best for Your WordPress Website/Blog?
Now suppose you decide to go with self-hosting your blog on WordPress platform, but then the question is which hosting service to choose out of thousands of web hosts out there? The simplest answer to this question is – One which is good. But then how do you define a good web host? Here are some points which might help you to determine which host to choose for your blog –
Reliability –
Reliability of the host is of the utmost importance. Once your blog starts and grows big you wouldn’t want your services to be affected just because your Webhost isn’t reliable enough. So whenever choosing a Webhost always check for its reliability beforehand by customer reviews about the host or by trying a trial pack if the host provides one. You can get Webhost reviews on their respective community forums, social media or on a site like ours. You should also check the terms and conditions of the web host to know how much uptime they are guaranteed and what compensation they will provide if they will not be able to meet their promise.
Pricing –
There is no point in buying a host which you can’t afford. Always check for the best pricing and plans from different popular Web Hosting providers and choose plans which aren’t too heavy in your pockets. Usually, all web hosts offer multiple plans to choose from, pick the lowest plan at the beginning and upgrade to the higher plans as and when required.
Limitations –
Many web hosts impose limitations on the use of servers according to the plans subscribed by the user. Some impose a monthly bandwidth limit with views limit while some impose disk space usage limits or limit on other resources like RAM, CPU etc. Though almost all web hosts have limits in their plans so always compare different web hosts and their limitations before settling on one.
Uptime –
Though this isn’t a major issue for the big players in Web Hosting business, still you should always check if the web host has at least 99% uptime. Websites being down for larger periods can severely affect your business so it is necessary to get a host with good uptime.
Should You Buy Godaddy WordPress Hosting?
Godaddy is one of the big names in the domain and hosting business. They have a huge customer base and provide quality services for cheaper prices when compared to their counterparts.
Godaddy and WordPress are the two most recognized names in the Web development community. Godaddy has been there in this business since a long time and has around 71 million domains under its name as of now and its hosting business has around 5 million sites under its umbrella.
Around 27% of the WordPress blogs are hosted on Godaddy. If such a huge portion of people prefer Godaddy as their hosting partner there must be something that Godaddy is doing right to get so much attention from customers.
Here are some of the benefits or features of Godaddy WordPress hosting that can prove to be the deal buster for many people who are looking to start their self-hosted WordPress blogs.
9 Pros of Godaddy-
1. Dedicated Managed Hosting Platform For WordPress Websites
This is one the greatest feature of Godaddy.
Godaddy offers their WordPress hosting on a platform specially build for WordPress sites. The WordPress platform optimizes the speed, reliability, and security of your site.
The users of managed hosting platform do not get a regular cPanel but they get a full fledged Control panel specifically designed for managing WordPress sites.
The panel can be used to migrate existing WordPress blogs from different hosts to Godaddy or to manage the existing blogs and websites.
2. Godaddy Hosting Plans are Way Cheaper Than Competitors
When compared to other service providers out there Godaddy has one of the cheapest plans available starting as low as $4.00 per month.
While the competitors like WpEngine, charge you $29 per month for the same kind of plan, Godaddy’s pricing stands out.
The basic plan that cost $4 per month for the first year, provides users with 1 website and 10 GB of SSD storage. This plan has a limitation of 25000 visitors per month but if bought annually you can get a free domain.
Moving on to a bit higher budget you can avail the Deluxe plan which cost $4.99 per month and supports 1 website along with 15 GB SSD storage and 1,00,000 monthly visitors. It also provides SSH/SFTP access and free SEO plugin. If you buy the plan on annual basis you can also get a free domain.
The Ultimate plan costs about $7.99 per month and can give you 2 websites and 30 GB of SSD storage. This plan has a limitation of 4,00,000 monthly visits which are more than enough for a well-settled blog with good monthly traffic. The plan also comes with 1 free SSL certificate worth $ 69.99 for 1 year and ongoing malware scan & removal for 2 sites.
You also get free SEO optimization support with the ultimate plan. The plan comes with an SEO wizard that provides step-by-step instructions to optimize your site with SEO fundamentals to get your site seen on major search engines, like Google.
If you own a blog with huge monthly traffic, you can buy the Developer plan which will cost you around $15 per month, where you can host up to 5 websites in 50 GB SSD storage. It supports a whopping 8,00,000 visitors per month. This plan also gives one free SSL certificate for 1 year which can be renewed next year by paying around $70. All these plans come with access to 1000s of themes and plugins, free daily backups and one click restore and 24/7 support with one-click migration tool and one business email free for the first year.
All these plans come with access to 1000s of themes and plugins, free daily backups and one click restore, 24/7 support, one-click migration tool and one business email free for the first year.
3. Easy upgrades
Upgrading to the next bigger plan is pretty easy with Godaddy. If your website is growing fast and it needs more resources to grow further, you can anytime upgrade your plan to the next bigger plan. Just pay the extra amount and Godaddy will take care of the rest. It is not required to shift your website to the new plan, Godaddy will increase the resource limit from the backend.
4. SSL certificates
SSL certification is very important from the security point of view of the website. Godaddy provides free SSL certificate with the higher plan for 1 year. If you’re using the lower plans, you can buy an SSL certificate for $70 a year. SSL certificates also help to improve the organic ranking of your website on search engines.
5. Security against cyber attacks
DDoS attacks are becoming common day by day, these kinds of attacks can cripple the website and critically damage it. Godaddy, to counter such attacks also provides the users with around-the-clock security monitoring and protection against DDoS attacks too. Godaddy also provides free ongoing malware scan & removal to make sure your website running safely.
6. One-click staging
Staging feature is really helpful for WordPress users. You can make changes to your site and test them in a staging environment before putting them live. The feature only comes with Godaddy’s Managed WordPress hosting, the regular hosting doesn’t support this feature.
7. SSD storages to speed up your website
Godaddy WordPress hosting provides SSD storages to its users for ultra fast data transfers and the data is hosted on well load balanced servers which are specially optimized for WordPress.
8. Fast and Reliable
Godaddy has a special platform which is designed especially for WordPress with the goal to boost speed and security of the blogs hosted on its network. Godaddy has huge networks which are strong enough to easily tackle even the huge amounts of traffic you may get on your blog. Godaddy claims to have 99.99% uptime. Certains benchmarking tests on Hostbenchmarker showed that Godaddy on the Ultimate plan gave upto 99.96% uptime with the best being 100% and the worst being at 94.72%
9. 24/7 Customer care
Godaddy has a very active and good customer care service. If you ever face any issues or have any kind of doubts you can easily raise a ticket and within a couple of hours, you will get your query resolved. Godaddy also provides Online chat option with Customer care service. If you have any doubts regarding any plans or features you can initiate an online chat with customer care representative and get your queries solved.
2 Cons Of Godaddy WordPress Hosting
1. Limited Data Storage Space
Though other hosts also limit the data storage space given to users Godaddy goes to a greater extent of limitations when compared with other hosts. The number of databases are also limited and since each WordPress installation requires a different database you can’t install more than the available number of databases.
2. Custom hosting panel
I won’t say it is a big drawback of Godaddy but some users may find it difficult to use a custom panel as most of the hosting users use cPanel to manage their hosting. The custom panel provided by Godaddy has some limited features only, this is because the web hosting is managed by the Godaddy.
Godaddy WordPress Hosting vs Regular Hosting
You can host a WordPress site on both regular hosting and managed WordPress hosting but if you’re more concerned about the website optimization and loves the speed, Godaddy managed WordPress hosting is the right option for you. The managed hosting platform specially designed for the WordPress and offers lots of features that don’t come with the regular hosting e.g one-click staging, temporary domain name, SSD storage, one-click migration tool, free daily backups and much more.
Is There any Godaddy WordPress Hosting Coupon Available?
Yes, Godaddy provides a $1 per month hosting coupon for the basic plan. Although the $1 per month pricing is only valid for a year, from next year onwards, you have to renew your plan at the regular price.
Which Godaddy Managed WordPress Hosting Plan Should I Choose?
As we have mentioned earlier in this article, you should start with the basic plan and upgrade to the higher plans as and when required. If you own one than one website, the ultimate plan and developer plan are two options for you. We ourselves are using their ultimate plan for two of our websites and till now we have not faced any kind of problem with their services.
Conclusion
Godaddy and WordPress are the two names which go hand in hand whenever web development is considered. This combination of Godaddy hosting and WordPress is unbeatable as it provides value for money and great reliability. If you ever plan to start a new self-hosted blog or want to move your current blog to a different hosting, Godaddy hosting is the best choice to go for.