Last month, the big company GoDaddy launched managed WordPress hosting and claimed that the new service can offer one of the fastest, most secure and reliable hosting platforms. Is the statement true in the real world? To get an answer for the question, we have taken a careful review on the service to check its quality. The review is mainly made on price, feature, uptime, speed and technical support.
After analyzing the highlights and shortcomings in the most important aspects, we have given brief ratings to the reviewed product. See details below.
GoDaddy Managed WordPress Hosting Review
Website: http://www.godaddy.com/
Feature
Reliability
Speed
Support
Customer Voice
What Are the Pros?
Although not being perfect, GoDaddy managed WordPress hosting has its own advantages which allow WordPress fans to gain an easier experience. According to our review, the main ones lie in the following aspects.
Rich WordPress Related Features
Offering a managed hosting platform, the new service gets WordPress installed by default, so users, especially beginners, can begin blogging and focus on their businesses without spending time and energy in the installation of the software. Things like creating databases and transferring files have already been done, of course.
For customers who want to transfer websites from other providers, there is an easy-to-use 1-click migration tool which automates the whole process so that they will not be troubled by technical stuff. Besides, the following features are offered for free.
A free domain within annual plans.
100 GB disk storage & 1000s of themes and plugins.
WordPress 3.8, Apache 2.4.3, MySQL 5.5.23 & PHP 5.4.16.
45 days money back guarantee.
$100 Google AdWords credits & $100 Bing search credits.
A High Level of Security
All of the 3 packages Starter, Business and Pro come with many security features to keep the hosted sites away from attacks and malicious damage. For example, WordPress core updates are automated to prevent site vulnerability for those people who usually forget to do such things.
Nightly backups are offered to keep websites away from data loss; redundant firewalls protect them against threats from the public Internet; malware scanning eliminates the problems of operation disruption, sensitive information leaking, etc; and the DDoS protection enables the sites to be always available.
24x7 Technical Support
As one of the largest hosting providers, GoDaddy has been providing effective technical support for its clients around the world. In its offices, there are thousands of experienced support staffs staying on-site 24 hours a day and 7 days a week ready to help. The support team is reachable via email and a toll-free phone number.
We have received the complaint that the company outsources its customer service, but our experience of asking for assistance is: so far so good. The staffs are responsive, patient, and really helpful.
Outstanding Reliability
GoDaddy gives a 99.9% uptime guarantee and explains in its terms of service that if it fails to maintain the figure, customers are entitled to request a credit of 5% of the monthly fee. We have already been hosting a site on the platform for approximately 10 days, and the monitoring result of uptime is quite good. Considering that it still needs a long time to confirm whether the managed service is really reliable, we have presented a statistics chart of the company's Linux hosting service, just for reference.
How About the Cons?
As a newly launched service, the managed WordPress hosting from GoDaddy still has some shortcomings that need to improve. The following ones should be the top factors that stop webmasters from trying it.
Price Value Is Not So Good Considering the Features
With a 10% discount applied, the 3 plans are now purchasable at a price starting from $6.29/mo, $17.99/mo and $62.99/mo, allowing hosting 1, 5, 25 websites respectively. Compared with some other managed services in the market, the price is still acceptable, but it is noticeable that all of the plans lack some important features, such as:
No CDN or pre-installed caching system.
No hosting control panel and Cron Jobs.
No support for SSLs.
Built-in CSS editor is disabled by default.
The blacklisted plugins cannot be installed, including W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache and WP DB Backup.
Live Chat Support Is Not Available
The technical support from GoDaddy is fast and reliable, while the limitation is that the company does not allow customers to get issues resolved via live chat. As a popular support method, live chat is now offered by most companies. The unavailability may cause trouble or inconvenience to customers who need instant assistance but cannot express themselves fluently in English or some other languages the support staff speak.
Customer Satisfaction Is A Concern
We have been devoted to collecting feedbacks for companies and products from real customers for years. So far, we have received 23 GoDaddy reviews which indicate that the company has a 36.4% satisfaction rate in overall value, 36.4% in reliability, 36.4% in control panel and 31.8% in support, which is not an exciting result. Read detailed reviews at this page.
Is the Service Worth Trying?
GoDaddy managed WordPress hosting service is reliable, affordable and easy-to-use, but the limitations in price value, support and reputation make it not a really good choice for hosting the software. Actually, for most blogs and online stores, managed service is not a necessity. A normal package from the following companies should be enough.
#
Provider
Highlights
Price
3
BlueHost
Unlimited disk space, bandwidth, & hosted domains
1 free domain & SimpleScripts 1-click WordPress installer
$200 free marketing credits for Google, Twitter & Facebook
No hidden fees & anytime money back guarantee
$3.95/mo
Visit
2
InMotion Hosting
Free site transfer & automated daily data backups
cPanel with auto script installer Softaculous
No hidden fee & 90 days full money back guarantee
Up to $300 advertising credits for Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.
$3.49/mo
Visit
3
WebHostingHub
Softaculous for 1-click WordPress installation and update
Latest versions of PHP, MySQL, Perl, Python & ROR
99.9% uptime & 90 days full money back guarantee
$200 advertising credits for Google, Bing & Twitter
$3.99/mo
Visit
Note that the services from the companies in the table above are recommended not only by us but also some other leading review sites like HostingReview360.com.