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Go Daddy Review

7.5
Editor Rating
6.5
User Rating

About Go Daddy

GoDaddy Inc. was established in 1997 by Bob Parsons in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA. What started as a modest domain name provider has now risen to the position of world’s biggest ICANN-accredited registrar. According to their website, GoDaddy manages a whopping 26 million domain names today. Aside from being a registrar, they also provide good, cost-effective hosting solutions to webmasters. In regards to their tremendous success, they’ve said that it was achieved “by providing innovative, competitively-priced products, delivering the highest quality customer service, and by always appreciating and listening to its [GoDaddy’s] customers!”

Plans and Features

GoDaddy essentially provides three hosting plans, the Economy, the Deluxe and the Premium across either a Windows or Linux platform which you specify beforehand. (For Joomla go with the Linux option)

Economy Plan: costing an insane $3.99 per month (with no long-term contract conditions) comes with 5GB of storage and 250GB of monthly bandwidth. This plan also gives you 25 subdomains and the ability to point up to 25 external domain names to your website. Up to 500 email accounts are also allotted to you. If a Windows interface is selected, you get 1 FTP account, MS Access, 1 MS SQL and 10 MySQL databases, and support for such languages as ColdFusion and ASP (with ASP .NET and AJAX). On the Linux side, you get 11 FTP accounts, 10 MySQL databases, and support for PHP.

Deluxe Plan, providing great value at $6.99 per month comes with all the features of the economy plan but adds a lot more volume. Disk space is bumped up to 100GB and monthly data transfer to 1000GB. You can have up to 1000 email accounts; plus, you can host unlimited websites, subdomains and external domain pointers on your account. Linux will give you 25 MySQL DBs and support for Java, Ruby On Rails , Python and Perl.

Premium plan which steps the game up even further. It brings 200GB of storage with 2000GB of monthly data transfer. Email accounts number at 2000 and you get a free SSL certificate which would otherwise cost $24.99 per year.

All plans give you special access to GoDaddy’s Hosting Connection.

Hosting Environment

GoDaddy has its own homegrown Control Panel which you’ll find quite intuitive. This panel can not only help manage your website but also your entire account at GoDaddy. From in here, you can access Hosting Connection, check and configure email, databases, files, and even install numerous applications that come free with your hosting package.

Joomla Features

Joomla!, and many other Content Management Systems, enjoy excellent support at GoDaddy. You can install Joomla on your GoDaddy-hosted sites as a Value Added Application, which is a very simple process.

Tech Support Options

GoDaddy, being a premier web solutions provider, offers a good array of support modes on their website. One is via email, the second through telephone and the third in the form of an extensive FAQ library. Average response time for email queries is hardly a few hours which, for a company of GoDaddy’s size, is an achievement. Telephone is way quicker and more responsive as expected if you’re query needs to be solved right away.

Conclusion

GoDaddy is one of the world’s biggest providers of registry and hosting services. Their hosting plans are very broad and their price seems competitive. GoDaddy is well equiped to host most types of website including Joomla but to they host joomla well? Not the best read the editor review for full details.

Since GoDaddy is not the best Joomla host, here are 3 Joomla hosting companies we like:

All GoDaddy Prices & Plans

Editor review

Overall rating 
 
7.5
Site Speed & Uptime 
 
8.0
Control Panel Features 
 
7.0
Customer Support 
 
7.0
Price 
 
8.0
Reviewed by Steven Johnson on January 27, 2008

Good Uptime but Joomla Hosting can have problems

About the Reviewer

Steven Johnson is a Joomla Professional and
has used GoDaddy for more than 1 year.

Review Summary:

I am sure you have heard of these guys from the commercials but they really should be avoided when looking for a Joomla host.

Pros and Cons

Pros
They answer the phone
Cons
Lots of issues
Large and confusing control panels

Review

Our first experience with GoDaddy was through a client. We converted a flash based site to a Joomla. The client was currently hosting with GoDady and wanted to remain with them. We said sure why not.

The short story is we got everything working but had problems along the way and the site on GoDaddy runs slower than Joomla sites with other hosts. If given the option we would use another host for Joomla sites.

One notable aspect is access to the .htaccess file (for those who are not familiar with this .htaccess helps control the Search Engine Friendly urls among other things) GoDaddy caches this file so any changes you make you have to wait about 1 hour or so to see the results. Kind of a pain particularly if your web developer is on an hourly rate. We are guessing GoDaddy does this because they are so large the need this as an extra security measure.

The Joomla install pretty straight forward. No major issues on configuring the site. We also build and install Joomla sites professionally so when there were issues we were able to find a work around.

Summary
For the person looking for the easy setup GoDaddy is not the best choice. GoDaddy runs their own custom control panel and database setup. Often Joomla tutorials have to be modified to work with GoDaddy.

GoDaddy will work with Joomla but look for other options if you can. HostGator, Rochen and Bluehost all do an excellent job with out any modifications. GoDaddy also seems to run slower as well.

Hope this helps!

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User reviews

Average user rating from: 10 user(s)

Overall rating 
 
6.5
Site Speed & Uptime 
 
6.6  (10)
Control Panel Features 
 
6.1  (10)
Customer Support 
 
6.2  (10)
Price 
 
7.1  (10)
Ratings (the higher the better)
Site Speed & Uptime*  
How fast and how much time are there servers up?
Control Panel Features*  
Is the control panel easy to navigate? How useful are the features provided?
Customer Support*  
How responsive and quick is Customer Support?
Price*  
In regards to the money spent each month how well is your money spent?
Overview
Pros and Cons
Comments*
 
Overall rating 
 
1.0
Site Speed & Uptime 
 
1.0
Control Panel Features 
 
1.0
Customer Support 
 
1.0
Price 
 
1.0
Reviewed by zuijiadeai on June 28, 2011

LOST MY MONEY

About the Reviewer

zuijiadeai is a Joomla Professional and
has used GoDaddy for 1 to 3 months.

Pros and Cons

Pros
Nothing good at all. Got cheated anyway.
Cons
Old control panel
Very slow hosting
Very difficult to use. Too many useless comment
Support reply 1 week contrary to 2 hours promised.

Review

I pay USD50 to host my website. Before the website setup my account is gone. I ask them to reactivate my account and they ask me to pay another USD150. I lost my money and my website is not setup. This webhosting service is money sucker. And webhost is using very old technology, old panel , every single step must wait for hours. The control panel is much much worst than many others free web hosting. This is really the worst webhosting I ever know. Better to close the service anyway before many other peoples got cheated!

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20
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Overall rating 
 
3.3
Site Speed & Uptime 
 
4.0
Control Panel Features 
 
4.0
Customer Support 
 
2.0
Price 
 
3.0
Reviewed by mikael on March 03, 2011

I'm moving

About the Reviewer

mikael is a Joomla Intermediate User and
has used GoDaddy for more than 1 year.

Pros and Cons

Pros
Automated install
Cons
Automated install

Review

I have had several problems here. My install of joomla dissapeared recently from the Hosting control panel????

I am moving to comxen hosting great uptime, support and price.

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31
Report this review
Overall rating 
 
8.8
Site Speed & Uptime 
 
9.0
Control Panel Features 
 
8.0
Customer Support 
 
10.0
Price 
 
8.0
Reviewed by Tinahe on April 10, 2010

Go Daddy Rocks

About the Reviewer

Tinahe is a Joomla Expert and
has used GoDaddy for A month or less.

Pros and Cons

Pros
Compared to other hosts Go Daddy has 99% uptime and good support
Cons
Servers are offshore so speed is affected in South Africa

Review

I reccomened Go Daddy to anyone who is serious about making a Joomla site.

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01
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Overall rating 
 
5.0
Site Speed & Uptime 
 
7.0
Control Panel Features 
 
5.0
Customer Support 
 
4.0
Price 
 
4.0
Reviewed by Jeff Pence on October 20, 2009

Great for domains, bad for Joomla

Review

Had a client with a year paid hosting so I used it for a new Joomla installation. Couldn't use my favorite extension (Mighty Extentions) because of no ioncube php loader. Site feels slow and less responsive than my reseller plan elsewhere. Company is great for domain names but I'm not a fan of the hosting for Joomla.

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51
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Overall rating 
 
8.0
Site Speed & Uptime 
 
9.0
Control Panel Features 
 
9.0
Customer Support 
 
5.0
Price 
 
9.0
Reviewed by Hans on January 18, 2009

Leaving GoDaddy VDS

Review

I hosted many sites on a GoDaddy virtual dedicated server for years, and was always happy with the service. Price and Plesk were good, but there is no Joomla support. VDS is also not ready for Joomla without server configuration changes.

Here's why they lost me. GoDaddy was no longer going to support the base server version and needed to reprovision my account on a new machine. Every other host I've been on, moved the sites to the new host and flipped the IP during a maintenance window. GoDaddy want me to back-up and manually restore each site myself, or buy a second package and roll over the account credit when I'm done. Not acceptable service.

These problems do not happen with their shared plans, but if I'm going to move to a shared plan it will be with another company.

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31
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Overall rating 
 
4.8
Site Speed & Uptime 
 
2.0
Control Panel Features 
 
6.0
Customer Support 
 
5.0
Price 
 
6.0
Reviewed by JS on November 25, 2008

Absolutely and unbeliavable slow..Do not recommend

Review

Cheap but not by much, I bought 3 hosting plans for 3 years, they are not going to refund my money. I also purchased domain names for those. They gave me lame excuses, consider I'm an 18 years experience IT manager.

Please save your money and get something reliable as siteground, rochen or even alphaone-tech.com which have them proved to be as 3-4 times faster than godaddy joomla hosting.

I couldn't believe how slow and painfull the access time was.

Trust me, get something else, I realized for plain html pages, 1998 style, or frontpage amateur sites is ok. but not for CMS content, and do not even dream to get decent performance if you are going to use sql databases.

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141
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Overall rating 
 
7.5
Site Speed & Uptime 
 
5.0
Control Panel Features 
 
8.0
Customer Support 
 
7.0
Price 
 
10.0
Reviewed by Jeff on July 22, 2008

Absolute worst host

Review

I cant believe all these positive reviews! They must be from people who havnt been with them long, or who are purely lucky because my experience with them was absolute misery.

I still rated them fairly because its really not a bad deal, you get what you pay for in with godaddy. You get all the flashy displays, spoonfeedings you want, and an easy way to get your site online (assuming it stays online).

Outside of the cosmetics, you really dont get a good uptime. I say that because while your site may be online, you can barely access it due to them overselling the crap out of their accounts. I did a reverse DNS and saw they had about 800+ other sites installed on my IP which explained why it was so slow during peak times.

The next thing is the support. I will give them credit and say that they have excellent phone support, even if the reason your calling them is bad. For instance, in my case - I called to complain about the speed, and while they were quick to blame it on the network and other uncontrollable conditions, they were extremely nice over the phone. I guess this has its merits.

The next thing is their ability to run Joomla. Well back when I was with them the first time it was almost impossible to install Joomla - since they they started the Hosting Matropolis thing which is basically a spiced up Fantastico you can find on 99% of the Linux hosts out there. Even with that I still wouldnt recommend someone hosting with them.

Final thoughts: Pay that extra $5 a month or whatever it is to find a dependable host who has a little more focus on the quality of service, that is the ability to actually serve a website, not only the customers needs.

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50
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Overall rating 
 
8.8
Site Speed & Uptime 
 
10.0
Control Panel Features 
 
5.0
Customer Support 
 
10.0
Price 
 
10.0
Reviewed by Michelle Rogers on June 10, 2008

Good for the starter...

Review

GoDaddy is great for the person starting out, and you can't beat the prices. I've never had any problems with them at all, though I do find all the millions of adverts everywhere, the the constant pressure to buy more from them, kind of annoying. But otherwise, no problems. I run my professional JOOMLA website on it, as it's a very simple website with no bells and whistles...just the basics...and that kind of site can be run at GoDaddy no problem. I've run it at GoDaddy for 4 years now, and it's always up and always working

The control panel used to be hard to use, but recently they've tried to improve it a little with some new software and set up...it's a shame they've not switched to C-panel though. But, if you're not in and out of your control panel a lot then it's fine.

For my more complicated sites, though, I had to use a different hosting company, as GoDaddy can't really support the complicated JOOMLA site very well yet, and control panel they do use is a bit convoluted and hard to navigate, so for sites where I do need to access those things a lot I found GoDaddy wasn't the best.

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22
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Overall rating 
 
8.3
Site Speed & Uptime 
 
10.0
Control Panel Features 
 
5.0
Customer Support 
 
8.0
Price 
 
10.0
Reviewed by David Griggs on June 08, 2008

Why wait til I move

Review

I've hosted four sites with GoDaddy in the past 7 years. They are excellent for the beginner. Price is a steal. Service is excellent. BUT... when I needed to add more features to my site... GoDaddy just wasn't there. They already get my money so why bother. So I move one of my websites to BlueHost.... one click installs and MUCH MUCH FASTER paging.... BlueHost has all the blood/guts that I could hope far.... GoDaddy has all the hipe.

Love ya GoDaddy, but you got to go!

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41
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Overall rating 
 
9.8
Site Speed & Uptime 
 
9.0
Control Panel Features 
 
10.0
Customer Support 
 
10.0
Price 
 
10.0
Reviewed by Gary Brown on April 24, 2008

GoDaddy is slower for Joomla site

Review

GoDaddy is excellent in many respects. The only issue regarding a Joomla site is that their MySql database is not localhost meaning the database is on a separate server. I have setup identical Joomla sites at GoDaddy, LunarPages and BlueHost and the GoDaddy site is much slower to load pages. Another person I work with did a similar thing to test his Joomla site and found the same result.

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Visit http://www.godaddy.com for more details

Hosting Plan Features

Disk Space:
150GB
Data Transfer:
1500 GB
Refund Policy:
None
Domains Hosted:
Unlimited
Domain Registration:
$1.99
Price:
$6.99
Edit DNS Zone File:
Yes
Control Panel:
custom

Joomla Features

Joomla Auto Install:
No
Fantastico:
No

MySQL Features

MySQL Databases:
25
phpMyAdmin:
Yes

Support Options

Email / Help Desk:
Yes
Phone Support:
Yes
Member Forum:
Yes

Company Details

Company Headquarters:
Scottsdale, Arizona
First Year in Business:
1997

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