8.GoDaddy

Summary

GoDaddy is a famous domain name registrar and web hosting service provider. The company was founded in 1997 and is now well known almost anywhere in the world. All audiences are covered by GoDaddy's web hosting products including shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated servers, and cloud hosting. Thus you can always find a solution appropriate to your needs and budget.

Shared web hosting plans begin at $2.99/month. For that price you receive unlimited data transfer, 100 GB of disk space, 100 e-mail accounts, and 10 MySQL databases. The web host also provides one-click installation of free add-on applications in categories including blogs, forums, and content management systems. Powered by the newest technologies and equipment, GoDaddy demonstrates excellent reliability and proudly provides a 99.9% uptime guarantee on its network. Thirty-five thousand servers and millions of customers all over the world prove that GoDaddy is one of the leading companies in the web hosting industry.

Nonetheless, the number of complaints from the Internet to this registrar and hosting provider is greater than that for any other web host on the market.

Reliability

Our estimate of GoDaddy's reliability and speed was based on measurements made by Pingdom™. In those tests, GoDaddy's servers achieved an impressive 99.97%* reliability. The servers are also fast enough to suit practically any kind of web site. The average reported response speed was 0,400* seconds.

The web host also offers free daily backups for every account and serious security measures including security breach monitoring and DNSSEC.

ol panel that is, however, absolutely convenient and doesn't leave you puzzled regardless of what you do. All options and settings are divided into sections that are easily accessible.

The central part of the panel lists all of the products you contract from GoDaddy including domains, hosting, and e-mail accounts, and provides an easy way to renew any of them or to purchase additional features as needed. Even if you don't want to upgrade anything, the system asks you whether or not you want to, at every other step.

By selecting a hosting product and clicking "Launch" you switch to the hosting control panel.

All necessary functions are there, sorted, categorized and working perfectly. There are minor issues, though. When, for example, you attempt to create an FTP user, but specify a password that's too short or too weak, it simply fails to create a user without reporting a problem.

GoDaddy includes multiple add-on applications that install with a click. The applications are conveniently split into groups, so you can quickly locate the one you need. After you launch the installation, it is put on the queue and installs silently in the background. Interestingly, GoDaddy offers to upgrade your plan instantly if it doesn't meet the requirements of the software you are installing.

Our test installation of WordPress ran smoothly: it installed quickly and correctly.

We also installed Drupal CMS and, although the process took longer, we experienced no problems or glitches.

For quick deployment of a brand new website GoDaddy offers a point-n-click web builder starting from as low as $4.99/month. You can purchase the builder by signing up for one of the web design plans: WebSite Tonight, Quick Shopping Cart, or Quick Blogcast. All plans also include 10 Fotolia credits.

To summarize: GoDaddy's interface is simple, and, although it is not very intuitive, it still provides efficient ways to perform any task you may need.

Technical Support

GoDaddy offers 24/7 technical support either by phone or online via the ticket system. The support links are available literally from anywhere in the control panel and across GoDaddy's website, so getting in touch with someone from support is one click away at any time.

Our measurements of support response time were one minute for a phone call to be picked up, and one hour and 37 minutes for an online ticket system response. The results are not fantastic but considering the size of GoDaddy's client base they're not bad.

There is a community forum and the FAQ section also accessible throughout the entire website, so you can search for a solution yourself while waiting for support to answer.

Unfortunately, there is no live chat or other instant way to contact the support team.

Conclusion

GoDaddy is undoubtedly a major player in the market, but it isn't generous. For $2.99/month you receive no more than you'd actually require on average – 10 GB of space, 10 MySQL databases (1GB each), 100 email boxes with 100 MB of total storage, PHP5, and various scripts to install. The offer should satisfy 90% of clients and, thanks to full customization, you can modify any single characteristic of your plan independently of all other features.

You get the bare minimum for the price: nothing more, nothing less. You don't get Perl or Ruby on Rails; you can't put multiple websites on the same account; and you can easily run out of disk space if your site requires significant databases.

We also can't avoid mentioning multiple issues that GoDaddy had in the past with billing errors, double billing, failing to stop billing, etc.

Overall, GoDaddy is a reliable and proven place to host a website. For a moderate price you'll receive moderate yet adequate services that you can quickly scale up or down as needed. First class security and straightforward technical support easily compensate for the lack of a free domain name and for the issues you may encounter if you decide to transfer your website somewhere else.