GoDaddy is the big one when it comes to web hosts, and like many I was drawn in by their low prices. I’ve hosted many sites with GoDaddy over the years.
GoDaddy’s customer support, for me, has been excellent. I’ve heard some horror stories about them, but as with most hosts they seem to be isolated events, and mostly in the distant past. Wait times are a pain for any type of customer support, but I usually find GoDaddy’s answers (and actions) to be quick and helpful.
Uptime has been pretty much consistent for me over the years. I have, however, opened my browser a few times and found some of my sites lagging or missing while most of the Internet seems just peachy. These incidents have been few and far between, though, and were always remedied within minutes. In general, I’d say their hosting service itself is quite good.
That’s quite good, not great. GoDaddy is probably in a pretty high percentile for hosting quality, but that’s largely because there are so many garbage hosts out there. These guys provide reliable hosting and decent quality, but there are better hosts out there as well.
If you’re a more experienced user, you can get more for your money at a place like Hostgator, and I’m weighing the benefits of moving my hosting over there for at least some of my sites. I’m starting to notice some performance issues with my sites as well. FTP connections with my servers seem to be encountering more and more errors these days, and there are times when my sites seem to run a little to slowly. This is largely because of the sheer volume of sites that GoDaddy has running off of a single web server — and while most hosts will do this when you’re not buying dedicated hosting, some are more reliable.
I do wish the buying experience were a little friendlier. When buying or renewing any product, you need to plow through way too many special offers to bundle in. If you’re inexperienced, you may worry about needing some of these extras. Chances are pretty good that you do not. I’ve never seen a site that tries to upsell you in the colossal way that GoDaddy does, and that probably remains one of my biggest complaints. In a Web 2.0 world where sites are getting prettier and more usable, GoDaddy seems to maintain one of the most cluttered and tedious shopping experiences out there.
So to sum it up — GoDaddy is a great low-price option with no major show-stopping flaws. If you’re a beginner or running one or two sites, GoDaddy might be your best option. But if you’re running a larger site, or multiple sites, and you know your way around a web server, you might be better off someplace else.
Biggest Pro: Price
Biggest Con: Performance lags at times.
(1 votes, average: 1 out of 5)
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