- Hey guys, my name is Christian Taylor.
Welcome back to Craylor Made,
where I like to talk about all things branding, marketing and entrepreneurship.
So, before we even start this review, I will just say I am biased.
If you've watched my channel before, you know I strongly dislike GoDaddy,
but just like I've done in the past with their website builder,
I figured it was time for me to give GoDaddy a fair chance with their web hosting,
How can I really say, "I don't like GoDaddy," when I haven't tried all their products?
So, that's exactly what we're going to do today.
And with that said, let's get right into the video.
GoDaddy offers a wide variety of hosting options ranging from basic shared hosting to dedicated servers.
I thought it would be fun to try out the Basic Economy shared hosting plan for 3 months,
and this is my experience.
We start out with the thing I hate most about GoDaddy: the upsells at the initial checkout screen.
For once though, it's not too bad.
GoDaddy has the 36 month option pre-selected, but that's not really a big deal.
I think they make it pretty clear and you can easily change it to the 3 month option.
The only upsell they have pre-checked is website backups for $2.99 a month.
And, you know, I don't really have a problem with them pre-checking that box,
because, if you've watched my channel before,
you know that I'm obsessed with automatic backups for web hosting.
I think it's a must for everyone to have.
So if they decide to upsell it, and they're pre-checking it suggesting that you get it,
I'm actually fine with that.
Now with that being said, we do have to take price into account.
With the lowest 3 month option, the cost breaks downto $10.99 a month.
And when we add $2.99 a month to that for backups, you're now paying $13.98 a month for hosting.
We could significantly get the cost down to $8.99 a month if we paid annually,
but that means spending $107.76 up front.
The rest of the upsells are definitely not worth it.
I wouldn't get GoDaddy's website security option,
as there are tons of free security plugins for WordPress sites like WordFence.
Even if you did want to pay for something, I would seek out a reputable WordPress plugin,
instead of using whatever GoDaddy is offering.
And whatever you do, do not check the SSL certificate box.
You should never pay for an SSL certificate these days.
If you set up your site using CloudFlare, which I have a tutorial on doing over here,
you can easily get SSL functioning on your website 100% free.
Even if you did want to buy an SSL certificate,
you should not be spending more than $10-$20 a year for this.
By the way, one quick thing I noticed is that, you can renew your web hosting,
month to month for $10.99 a month, after the initial 3 month period.
And GoDaddy includes one free year of office 365 email hosting,
even if you only select the 3 month period.
So, it's critical to disable auto renew, otherwise you'll start getting charged,
for something after a year you probably didn't realize you had.
And, that's GoDaddy being GoDaddy.
They always do this.
They always have to check some box or hide something for you,
that's giving you something you don't even realize you have, and then after a year goes by,
it's like, "Surprise! We charge you for something you've had this whole time,
and you haven't been using, and now you get to pay for it."
But I digress, that's enough about the pricing.
How is the hosting experience?
Well, setup is easy and intuitive, as I would expect from GoDaddy.
They have a fairly standard cPanel hosting experience that I personally am a fan of.
You can install applications like WordPress with a few clicks,
use the robust File Manager, manage SQL databases,
anything you would ever want to do with your web hosting.
GoDaddy is definitely competitive from a management panel standpoint.
Sadly, I had reliability issues with GoDaddy's hosting.
If there's one good thing I can usually say about GoDaddy,
it's that the reliability and interfaces are typically spot on,
but that just wasn't the case in my testing.
My uptime monitoring showed that my site only had a 98.97% uptime.
And, oh! That's not great at all for web hosting.
I'd like to see a 99.9% uptime or better with web hosting.
So, for that reason alone, I'm reluctant to recommend GoDaddy.
GoDaddy continues the trend with a decline in support quality.
I've said in the past that GoDaddy typically has great support.
But ever since the introduction of the GoDaddy guides widget, things have just gone downhill.
After my GoDaddy Website Builder review, the GoDaddy team reached out to me,
to chat about some of the issues I experienced with their support system.
The guys at GoDaddy were nice and said they're constantly working on improvements.
But unfortunately, I still experienced some crippling problems.
I was unable to chat in at all in my main browser window,
no matter how many times I refresh the page.
So, I tried opening an incognito tab in my browser and the chat did start working but,
I find it strange that I should have to go through all this trouble just to get the chat working.
Similar to A2 hosting, I was quoted an unusually long wait time of 60 minutes to chat with a rep,
but I actually got connected almost instantly.
Unfortunately, the weird technical glitch started happening again.
After the rep asked for my customer number and support pin, I was suddenly unable to send replies,
they just vanished to nowhere: never to reply again!
The issue with GoDaddy support appears to be primarily tech-related,
and not necessarily support-rep related,
but it still greatly affects the overall support experience.
Getting help at your web host needs to be easy and convenient.
And GoDaddy didn't demonstrate that to me.
So in the end, should you consider using GoDaddy for web hosting?
Unfortunately, no!
There's just not enough value there for the price.
I can see that GoDaddy is constantly evolving,
and this is the least obnoxious I've ever seen GoDaddy from an upsell perspective.
That's encouraging to see,
but it's distressing to see them slipping on the technical side.
A 98.97% uptime is simply not acceptable at any price point, let alone $14 a month.
So, who would I recommend instead?
Well, if you're looking for basic shared hosting, I would recommend Namecheap or DreamHost.
If you're hosting a WordPress website and have a little more to spend, I would recommend cloudways.
Another host I like is WP Engine.
They're definitely not cheap and they aren't a good option for a casual blog or landing page.
Stick to Namecheap or dreamhost for that.
But, if you want the best WordPress hosting money can buy, it doesn't get any better than WP Engine.
I'll have the hosts I mentioned linked below,
and I'll also link to my ultimate WordPress web hosting comparison,
where I go more in depth on these hosts and more.
So, are you going to use GoDaddy for web hosting?
I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments down below.
If you like this video, do be sure to hit that subscribe button,
and click the bell so you don't miss when I release new videos.
With that said, I will catch you guys next time.