Bluehost vs GoDaddy: Overview
In this article we review BlueHost vs GoDaddy and compare their plans, pricing, features, performance and support and share with you the clear winner. If you don’t want to read the entire article we’ll write it here for you…
Introducing Bluehost
Bluehost is owned by EIG and is one of the dominant players in the hosting industry. It’s a decent host and hosts a bunch of WordPress and other sites. WordPress.org has given it the tick of approval so you can be sure it’s excellent!
Their offerings are quite broad and cater for almost everyones requirements, starting out with shared hosting and moving right up through to VPS and dedicated hosting packages.
Getting started with Bluehost is pretty straight forward as they offer a one click WordPress install which will have you up and running in no time. If you want to skip the rest of the article and get started with Bluehost go ahead.
Introducing GoDaddy
GoDaddy is probably more familiar to you than Bluehost, due to their catchy marketing and sometimes racy ad campaigns. Most people probably think of GoDaddy as a domain registrar, but it’s also a sizeable hosting company who competes head to head with Bluehost.
GoDaddy too offers shared, managed WordPress, VPS and dedicated hosting and do a great job taking care of your hosting requirements.
A one click WordPress install means that like Bluehost you don’t need to spend any time on the code side but can jump in and get your site looking sharp with their page builder.
Bluehost vs GoDaddy: Pricing Overview
As both Bluehost and GoDaddy are targeting the entry level users they are both equally competitive and very affordable, although Bluehost is slightly cheaper. If price is the most important thing for you go with Bluehost, starting out for $2.95/mo. GoDaddy starts out at at $5.99/mo, which still is not expensive but isn’t the bargain Bluehost is. If you keep your eye out you might even grab a discount code and get Bluehost or GoDaddy cheaper than advertised.
One thing to take note of is after the initial month, both plans go up. Bluehost goes from 2.95/month to 7.99/month and GoDaddy goes from 5.99/month to 7.99/month. Either way Bluehost is still the winner on pricing.
Bluehost Plans
Starting off with Bluehost, their cheapest plan is $3.95/month for the 1st month and then renews at $8.99/month, and for that you get:-
- 1 Website
- Free SSL Certificate
- 50 GB SSD Storage
- Free Domain for 1 Year
- 5 Parked Domains
- 25 Subdomains
- Automatic WordPress updates
- Staging Environment
GoDaddy Plans
GoDaddy’s equivalent starter plan kicks off at $6.99/month for the first month and renews at $9.99/month, for that you get:-
- 1 website
- 30 GB storage
- Ideal for up to 25K monthly visitors
- Free business email – 1st year
- Website backup protection with 1-click restore
- Free domain ($34.99/yr value)
- Automatic daily malware scans
Unfortunately SSL certificates are not included on their starter plans, but if you move up a few plan tiers you’ll get an SSL included.
Bluehost performance
Bluehost and GoDaddy both claim to have 99.9% uptime and during our testing we experienced robust and excellent performance. GoDaddy is slightly faster than Bluehost but it wasn’t noticeable. We experienced a server response time (or ping) on average of ~360ms.
GoDaddy performance
Bluehost promises 99.99% uptime and we too had no downtime and a robust and reliable hosting experience. Their server response (ping) time was a fraction slower at ~540ms but it’s not something you’d notice and this is truly a tiny difference.
Bluehost vs GoDaddy: Security features
Bluehost is the host that has better and wider security features that come standard. An SSL certificate these days is essential and Bluehost goes the extra mile by including this in all plans. GoDaddy include a malware scan which is nice touch but really should include SSL certificates on all plans.
Bluehost support
In our opinion and after dealing with the Bluehost support we have to say that it was a pleasant and prompt experience. They are recommend by WordPress.org not only for their excellent hosting infrastructure, plans but their friendly and helpful support.
GoDaddy support
GoDaddy really does need to up its support game. It’s nowhere near as fast or as helpful and friendly as Bluehost. I guess that’s part and parcel of being a larger company and not having an emphasis on hosting like Bluehost. Their support agent do get back to you and get the job done, albeit not as prompt as Bluehost.
Bluehost vs GoDaddy: And the winner is....Bluehost!
Overall Bluehost is a definite winner in our Bluehost vs GoDaddy review. For starters Bluehost has cheaper offerings, include more features and they are solely a hosting company meaning that is where they put their focus. GoDaddy is slightly faster if that’s what’s important for you and it’s a decent offering in it’s own right just not as good as Bluehost, but you won’t regret going with GoDaddy.
When all is said and done and the lights come, on Bluehost is the pick so that’s what we would go with if we were you.
You can check out Bluehost here and GoDaddy here.
We hope you have enjoyed this review of Bluehost vs GoDaddy and found it useful!