The world's largest domain registrar GoDaddy has been offering web hosting services for several years and recently launched a WordPress hosting package. Since the very beginning when the company entered into the web hosting industry, its services have been controversial as there are a large number of praises as well as complaints on the web.
To find out whether the WordPress hosting service from GoDaddy is high quality and worth purchasing, we have personally hosted a WordPress blog with 100 posts and 200 images on GoDaddy Economy Linux hosting plan for more than half a year. Based on the real experience, we have worked out an in-depth review on GoDaddy WordPress hosting and found that the service has many advantages as well as limitations.
Pros of Hosting WordPress with GoDaddy
Using the WordPress hosting service from GoDaddy, bloggers and webmasters are given the following advantages all of which are free of charge, included in the packages by default.
Easy-to-use cPanel with 1-click WordPress installation
All customers using the WordPress hosting service offered by GoDaddy have full and free access to cPanel, the #1 web hosting control panel that allows users to manage their websites and accounts and to put a close eye on the system configuration of the server and the consumption of server resources.
GoDaddy cPanel control panel is integrated with an auto script installer which is designed to automate the installation of most of the popular open source software including WordPress. With the installer, customers no longer need to do everything by themselves because once they fill in the required information like domain name, the username and the password for the new WordPress site, WordPress will be installed and configured properly automatically.
Web hosting package upgradability
GoDaddy has 3 WordPress hosting packages named Economy, Deluxe and Ultimate, so customers can choose to upgrade or downgrade their packages when the demands of their WordPress sites grow or decrease. In this way, they don't have to pay more than they need.
This feature is important especially for those sites growing rapidly beyond the resource limitations of normal shared hosting but requiring fewer costs and features than VPS hosting.
Outstanding reliability
GoDaddy guarantees 99.9% uptime for all WordPress hosting customers. The company has 9 data centers in the US, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, all of which are equipped with fully redundant UPS power systems and featuring 24x7 monitoring managed by on-site engineers.
According to our own monitoring, GoDaddy has kept the promise successfully. The uptime of the company's WordPress hosting service in the past 30 days is as the following chart.
Enhanced security
GoDaddy has taken many measures to keep the hosted websites away from being damaged. The company has secure firewalls and security monitoring, which ensures that there are least security problems and even if a problem happens, it can be resolved immediately.
Besides, the company secures customers' website data by offering nightly backups, and protects emails by performing automatic email scanning for virus detection and cleaning.
24x7 technical support
To have WordPress users well backed, GoDaddy offers 24x7 technical support with a dedicated support team consisting of professionals with knowledge on WordPress. When getting stuck into troubles, customers are able to get assistance via phone and email.
Besides, there are discussion forums available for customers to seek for help from other experienced ones or give suggestions and solutions to some others that are in problem.
Cons of Hosting WordPress Sites with GoDaddy
Except for the advantages listed and discussed above, there are also some limitations of GoDaddy WordPress hosting service which might be the main reasons that stop webmasters from choosing the service to host their WordPress sites.
The lack of cost-effectiveness
The 3 WordPress hosting packages Economy, Deluxe and Ultimate are priced at $6.99/mo, $8.99/mo and $14.99/mo regularly. With the 28%, 33% and 46% discount offered for the packages respectively, they are currently available at a price starting from $4.99/mo, $5.99/mo, and $7.99/mo – affordable for most WordPress users.
However, what makes the packages not cost-effective is that the features included are somewhat limited. For example, the Economy plan, which is $4.99/mo for annual billing and $6.99/mo for monthly billing, only allows hosting 1 website and comes with 10 MySQL databases and 100 email addresses.
Unsatisfactory WordPress hosting speed
GoDaddy claims to offer fast speed for the hosted WordPress sites. However, there are tons of complaints on the slowness of the web hosting service. To find out the truth about the company's web hosting speed, we have kept monitoring our site hosted on the platform for several months.
Below is the statistics chart on GoDaddy server response speed.
No live chat support available
GoDaddy only allows customers to contact the support team via phone and email. No live chat support is available. This may not be a concern for native English speakers while it is indeed big inconvenience for non-native speakers who need instant assistance but cannot communicate with a support staff fluently on phone.
Low customer satisfaction rate
Over the past years, we have kept receiving complaints on GoDaddy web hosting service. Up to now, we have received GoDaddy reviews from 23 real customers, among whom only 36.4% of them are satisfied with the overall performance, and 31.8% appreciate the quality of technical support from the company. The detailed statistics are as the following chart.
Is GoDaddy WordPress Hosting Recommended?
GoDaddy WordPress hosting service should be a good option for WordPress users desiring beautiful and impressive domain names, good online accessibility and enhanced site security. Even though, it is not recommended for those who want a large amount of server resources at low costs or require fast speed to boost sales or site visits.
Actually, there are many WordPress hosting packages you can found over the Google search and other hosting review sites that come with a good combination of affordable price, excellent reliability, fast speed, and quality technical support, among which BlueHost, Arvixe and A2Hosting are the leading ones.
#
Provider
Highlights
Price
1
BlueHost
1-click WordPress installation and update with SimpleScripts
Free & no downtime WordPress website transfer
$200 free marketing credits for Google, Twitter & Facebook
No hidden fees & anytime money back guarantee
$3.95/mo
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2
Arvixe
1 free domain name for life & unlimited hosted domains
cPanel control panel with Softaculous auto script installer
Daily R1Soft backups & CloudFlare CDN
Use the coupon code BWH360 to claim a 30% discount
$2.8/mo
Visit
3
A2Hosting
cPanel control panel with Softaculous auto script installer
PHP 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, MySQL 5.5 & PostgreSQL 9.1
Server Rewind backups & CloudFlare CDN
Use the coupon code BHSA2Code to claim a 34% discount
$3.95/mo
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