Go Daddy Review

Go Daddy is one of the most prevalent and well-known global providers of all things websites. From domain registration to site design and web hosting, Go Daddy offers virtually everything you need to build a site from scratch and turn it into a profitable, traffic-generating entity. While competitors may offer slick features Go Daddy lacks, most competing services lack the exposure to compete with Go Daddy in terms of prevalence.

Fortunately, this website hosting service lives up to the hype. Go Daddy offers a variety of website hosting features, different packages and countless additional options, making them a flexible option for hosting a personal or small business website. They're a great website hosting service that is easy to set up and use and has competitive rates and valuable add-ons, helping it earn the TopTenREVIEWS Silver Award.

Hosting Package

Go Daddy doesn't offer much in terms of storage space and monthly bandwidth with their entry-level Economy Plan. Most small business websites aren’t likely to outgrow its 10GB storage space and 300GB monthly bandwidth limits. However, those numbers don't leave much room for ambitious pursuits. You have to purchase at least three months of this plan right out of the gate, which is about the time it takes for a site to expand beyond the limitations this plan imposes on it. When you attempt to upgrade your options, you have the choice of the Deluxe or Unlimited plans. The Deluxe Plan offers much more as far as features go, but there are still limits when it comes to storage space and monthly bandwidth. While users with smaller websites might not have any use for features that don't have any limits, we still regard them as highly advantageous.

If you are worried about garnering site traffic that far exceeds what the bandwidth limit can sustain – potentially causing your site to crash – you should consider Go Daddy’s unlimited plan, which offers unlimited disk space and monthly bandwidth for an extra $14.99 per month. However, be aware that there are three included features that do have limits under this plan: FTP accounts, number of email addresses and total email storage. While the unlimited plan has plenty of appealing features, its steep price tag (especially compared to other website hosting packages) may not make it the best fit for beginning website entrepreneurs.

Ease of Use

You will find that the services Go Daddy has to offer are easy to use, but they can require patience at times. For instance, expect long waiting times for requests (such as installing applications or setting up databases) made on your hosting account. Many users might have an issue with this because there can be a lag when it comes to uploading fresh, new content on your site. While perhaps frustrating, it’s understandable that Go Daddy’s servers can become overloaded given the website hosting service’s overwhelming popularity.

Help and Support

This web hosting service has a wide range of useful help and support options available, which are accessible at any hour of any day. Their online support forums and FAQs section contain a wealth of knowledge for beginners and advanced users alike.

You can also contact Go Daddy’s customer service representatives on the phone or via email. This website hosting service is a large company, managing millions of domains for millions of users, so personal help would be expectedly slower than other services. However, Go Daddy’s support team is quick to respond, and the expected response time for emails is typically within 24 hours.

Site Creation Tools

Go Daddy helps beginners easily set up their site and offers additional site creation tools for advanced developers. In addition to easy-to-use site builders, the website hosting service also offers a variety of professional design services and prefab templates for additional fees. All of Go Daddy’s solutions support several programming languages including CGI (Python and Ruby), PHP, Perl, ASP, MySQL, ColdFusion and FrontPage extensions.

Server Access

Go Daddy has a limit when it comes to how many different FTP accounts you can have. Even if you were to purchase the Unlimited Plan, you would still have to deal with the fact you can only have 50 different users with FTP accounts. While it may sound limiting, we imagine most users (think small to mid-size businesses) aren't going to exceed that number anyway. With the exception of unlimited FTP accounts, Go Daddy delivers every other server feature we sought including anonymous FTP, SSH, Cron jobs and .htaccess support.

Marketing Tools

Go Daddy leaves most marketing tools out of its low-priced website hosting plans. It does offer them in a different section of the website, which took a little investigating for us to find. The website hosting service’s rates are reasonable, with the highest-level plan (Premium) costing about $2.77 per year. Users who want to market their site through email are going to have to expand their efforts on their own once they hit the limit of 5,000 emails per year. For an additional charge, the service also offers SEO tools and search engine submission.

Reporting and Statistics

Every plan Go Daddy offers includes the option to look at site statistics and raw access logs. The website hosting service doesn't provide much information beyond that, such as what data analysis program they use and what you can do with the access logs.

Summary

Go Daddy is a worthy competitor in the website hosting industry, especially given the immense reputation it has managed to build within the last few years. The service provides all the essentials including site creation tools, server access and secure facilities that house their data servers. The setup process is straightforward, and this website hosting service has an option for all levels of management, from beginner to expert. Although it lacks some features found on other website hosting services we came across and we don’t love the fees charged for add-on features, Go Daddy hosting proves to be an efficient and versatile hosting provider.