GoDaddy

GoDaddy is a popular domain registrar and web hosting service. You can use the service to register your domain and to develop and manage your website. Alternatively, you can buy domain names from GoDaddy for websites hosted elsewhere.

This document looks at the hosting plans offered by GoDaddy and compares them to those offered by alternative web hosts. It explains how to get started with a GoDaddy website, and what would be involved in migrating an existing site to GoDaddy. It also explores what tools are compatible with GoDaddy’s hosting service.

Before you decide on a web hosting plan, you should analyze your needs in the following areas:

• Storage space requirements: A simple, informational website consisting of text and a few images will not require much space. 1GB is more than sufficient for this type of website. On the other hand, an eCommerce site with a wide range of products, each with images, may occupy hundreds of gigabytes or more. If you include video clips, they can be very storage-hungry.
• The expected volume of traffic, which dictates how much bandwidth you will need.
• The goals of your website.
• The type of hosting you require. Generally, there are three levels of hosting:
  • Shared Hosting: Your website is hosted on a machine shared with other clients. The web host is responsible for managing the machine, and you share resources with other clients. This type of hosting is generally slower and less secure than other levels, but much cheaper.
  • Virtual Private Server (VPS): You have the use of a virtual machine. This behaves as if it were an entire machine, and you can install your software on it to meet your requirements. It is hosted on a large physical server along with virtual machines belonging to other clients. It’s faster, more secure, and more flexible than shared hosting. It’s up to you to manage the virtual machine.
  • Dedicated Server: In this plan, you have the use of an entire physical machine located at the host’s premises. This is very much faster and more secure than other options. Again, it’s up to you to manage your server.
• Any other requirements you may have, such as business email addresses, domain registration, and specialized software.

GoDaddy mainly aims to meet the requirements of individuals and small to medium businesses. It has a wide range of plans to meet various needs. It features a simple-to-use website builder, although it’s also possible to use content management systems (CMS) such as WordPress. The GoDaddy website builder is popular with beginners, but may not allow the level of customization you’d need for more advanced sites.

99% uptime is guaranteed, and each website is protected with state-of-the-art security. In most cases, GoDaddy offers 24/7 support by phone, live chat, or SMS. However, the support process is a little complicated, requiring you to complete a form, and sometimes wait in a queue. In some countries support may be restricted to certain hours of the day. In general, though, GoDaddy support has a good reputation.

GoDaddy is particularly suitable for:

• First-time site builders
• Those requiring a high-quality and affordable VPS

One of the main advantages of GoDaddy is that you can scale plans as your business grows. You can start with a shared hosting plan and graduate to a VPS or dedicated server when you need to.

GoDaddy offers a free plan that allows you to test most of the features for 30 days, then revert to a limited-feature bare-bones website. You can retain the limited-feature website indefinitely, provided it remains active.

The free plan is sufficient for hosting a simple, single-page site without a custom domain. With the free plan, the site URL always ends in godaddysite.online. This may be sufficient for use cases such as family websites, temporary websites for small clubs or charities, and starter websites to gain an online presence.

The primary use case of the free plan is to allow you to experiment with GoDaddy’s features and decide exactly which ones you need when you come to choose a paid plan. You have 30 days to convert to a paid plan before you lose access to advanced features.

Purchase domains linked to sites hosted elsewhere

If your site is already hosted elsewhere, or you have found a hosting plan better suited to your needs, you can still use GoDaddy to register your domain.

Domain names vary in price depending on the popularity of the requested URL. GoDaddy’s prices for registering a domain are comparable to other registrars. Most paid hosting plans come with a free domain for the first year.

Shared Hosting Plans

These are suitable for most small businesses and offer several useful features. If you need a Windows environment to include Windows tools or a WordPress site, GoDaddy can accommodate these requirements.

These options are adequate for the majority of small to medium businesses. They may not be suitable if you have:

• Very large disk requirements
• High traffic
• A need for very high-performance
• Tight security requirements
• Specialized software

In those cases, either a VPS or dedicated server may be the answer.

VPS Hosts
GoDaddy offers a range of VPS options. These are generally offered as 3-year subscriptions. They may be either Windows or Linux-based. In general, you will need to manage the server yourself.

They are suitable for organizations that need high performance, better security or specialized tools.

Dedicated Servers
You may choose a dedicated server if you have:

• Very high bandwidth
• Rigid security requirements
• High usage of resources such as CPU, disk or RAM

Various plans are available, including fully-managed and self-managed. Pricing is available on request from GoDaddy.

Marketing Plan
For an extra charge, GoDaddy offers a marketing option on top of other plans. The premium plan includes:

• SEO assistance
• Website optimization
• Social media marketing
• Social media advertising credit
• Email marketing
• Reputation management
• Photoshoot
• Brand guide

You can learn more about these options and other plans here. 

GoDaddy may not always offer the best deals for very simple websites.

For dedicated eCommerce websites, it may be worth comparing pricing and features offered by GoDaddy to plans offered by eCommerce sites such as Shopify, BigCommerce, and Squarespace.

For those with specialized requirements, it may be better to look at more flexible hosting plans such as AWS, or even budget VPS hosts such as Hetzner.

GoDaddy has published a guide on how to start creating a website. It’s worth reading this before you begin, as it contains information that will help you make the right choices.

Here are the steps you’ll need to follow to get a basic website up and running on GoDaddy using the built-in website builder.

1. Access www.godaddy.com in your browser, and sign up for an account. Choose ‘Start for Free’. This will activate your free website. You can choose and pay for your plan later.
2. Create a basic site by selecting options that best apply to your business. It’s worth watching GoDaddy’s short tutorial video, Getting Started with Website Builder, which explains the steps involved.
3. Manage your settings. This is important, as you can customize settings used for linking to your social media accounts and for SEO optimization.
4. Customize your website. You can now add your text, images, and other resources to your website. You can find an excellent third-party tutorial here. This explains exactly how to use the website builder.
5. Preview, publish, and test your website.
6. Unless you plan to stay with the free option, you should now choose and purchase your paid plan.
7. Either buy a domain or link your site to an existing domain.

If, however, you wanted to build your site with Wordpress, you’d need to first choose and buy a Wordpress-enabled plan from GoDaddy.

There are two aspects to migrating to GoDaddy from a different web host.

• Transferring or linking your domain
• Migrating your website

Transferring or linking your domain

If you want to continue registering your domain with the original registrar, you need only link your GoDaddy site to your domain. This is not ideal, since you would then have to renew your domain separately to your web hosting plan.

If you want GoDaddy to be your domain registrar, you need to transfer your domain. See GoDaddy’s transfer guide to find out what’s involved.

Migrating your website

It’s not usually possible to directly transfer pages created with one website builder to a different builder. You can transfer a site built with WordPress to another WordPress site. But you can’t do this if, for example, your original site was built with Wix and you want to move to GoDaddy’s website builder. Your migration may involve transferring, among other things:

• Images
• Databases
• Videos
• Text

GoDaddy’s migration guide will help you plan and carry out the migration.

The following content management systems (CMS) can be used on GoDaddy:

• WordPress
• Joomla
• Drupal

GoDaddy supports the following for eCommerce solutions:

• WooCommerce
• Magenta

Additionally, email marketing tools MailChimp and Constant Contact can be integrated with GoDaddy sites. GoDaddy supports MYSQL and Maria databases, and you can use FileZilla to transfer files to your site. In terms of analytics tracking, GoDaddy integrates well with Google Analytics.

Almost any tool can be loaded onto the VPS and dedicated servers, but the shared hosting plans are very limited as to what software you can use.

If your site is custom-developed, you would need to discuss your requirements with GoDaddy’s support center to make sure all the tools you need will be available.