Several years ago, GoDaddy webhosting burst onto the scene with their high-profile Super Bowl commercials. The ads included the ‘racy’ usage of Danica Patrick as a spokesperson along with clever hooks that brought people to their website in droves. Since then, while still using provocative marketing and Patrick as a representative, GoDaddy has developed into one of the largest hosts on the Net. Perhaps what is most interesting about GoDaddy is that they are able to deliver the services and support required by the largest companies while still delivering the affordability required by most.
In fact, GoDaddy is one of the most reasonably priced webhosts for the individual and small business, and unlike with so many other inexpensive hosts, you get cachet. The question, however, is does GoDaddy actually deliver for their small clients, or do they simply exploit them in order to fuel the media blitzes meant to lure in the big clients? So this is what I intended to find out when I opened one of GoDaddy’s Economy 4GH (fourth-generation hosting) plans. In doing so, I sampled the hosting services, rigorously tested the control panel, monitored reliability and put their support team through the paces with a series of increasingly challenging questions.
Value for Money
At face value, the GoDaddy economy plan provides tremendous value for the cost. You get 10 GB of storage, 10 1GB MySQL databases, 100 email accounts, “unlimited” bandwidth and at least $200 worth of advertising credits for Bing, Facebook, Google, Yahoo! and so on. At its most expensive, it costs $4.99 per month, and it requires a three-month commitment. There are no additional fees, so at worst, that is an initial investment of $14.97. You can also get an additional discount if you step up the commitment: $4.49/month for 12 months, $4.24 for 24 and $3.49 for 36. With the 4GH economy plan, you get hosting in a world-class data center, state-of-the-art security, a choice of Linux or Windows, extensive language support, dozens of add-on application and so forth.
GoDaddy guarantees 99.9% uptime across the network, including their economy plans. If they fail to meet that standard during a given month, contact them, and they refund 5% of your monthly hosting fee as a credit. Historically, GoDaddy has not had much trouble maintaining the 99.9% uptime. In 2011, however, they have delivered uptime as low as 99.3% in four of the first six months, including the first month I tested their service. The good news is that GoDaddy provided the credit immediately and without issue. One problem, however, is that you do have to contact them for it, so you need to pay attention in order to take advantage. Fortunately, Go Daddy does make the statistics available to you in the control panel, so it is not as if they try to hide it. Despite the nearly three total hours that my site was inaccessible, performance was otherwise extremely fast and smooth.
Support
At the end of the day, support is usually what separates webhosts at the economy pricing points, and it is not hard to see why GoDaddy has remained so popular. To be frank, I was a little surprised at how friendly and helpful GoDaddy was when I requested the uptime credit and when I challenged their support system. Part of that is due to how brisk they were during my pre-signup chat. When I talked to support via chat, I kept them busy for at least twenty minutes as I asked a series of increasingly difficult question. The support agent, Karen, was great; she never got frustrated, and she even walked me through making changes to my configuration in the control panel. In addition to support by chat, GoDaddy provides telephone support, email support, a knowledge base, a blog, community forums and even groups, which you can use to custom tailor your community experience.
• 24/7 Live Chat
• Phone: (480) 505-8877
• Email (form)
• Support Ticket system
Nothing missing here. As expected with such a big host.
Ease of Use
Setting up the account was very easy to do and I had no problems adding content to my site. The control panel itself is perhaps not the most aesthetically appealing but it works as it should and it was easy to find everything I wanted to find.
We Like
• The OS choice, extensive language support and wide array of applications and add-ons.
• That support agents seem like IT specialists rather than people reading from a script.
• The GoDaddy community, which is far more extensive than any we’ve experienced before.
Important to Know
• They do not honor uptime guarantee unless you ask for it.
• They do not offer a money-back guarantee, at least not at the economy price point.
