What is GoDaddy? Everything You Need to Know

GoDaddy is the name of a specific company. That much is obvious. But that’s probably not what brought you here. You want to understand GoDaddy on a deeper level – and you will.

The first thing to know is that GoDaddy has been around since 1997 and is a major player in a variety of web-based service markets. These include domain registration, web hosting, ecommerce solutions, SSL certificates, professional business email, a website builder, and others.

If you’ve never built or operated a website before, many of the aforementioned terms might be unfamiliar to you. Unfortunately, that lack of understanding coupled with GoDaddy’s clever marketing can lead to buyer’s remorse.

On the flip side, you can avoid the money trap while still taking advantage of what GoDaddy has to offer. All you need is a few minutes to arm yourself with some knowledge.

So grab your favorite beverage, get comfortable, and keep reading.

The next few paragraphs could save you a considerable amount of cash in the long run if you plan to use GoDaddy in some capacity.

An introduction to GoDaddy services 💻

GoDaddy offers seven main services.

We are going to look at each service in some detail along with its respective pricing structure.

1. Hosting plans

In a nutshell, web hosting is a service that sells web server space to individuals and organizations who want to build one or more websites.

The servers are physical pieces of hardware that are located in various storage facilities around the world. When somebody creates and launches a website, all of the associated website files, like images and code, are stored on these servers.

If you’ve ever Googled web hosting or a related term, then you might already be aware that there are roughly four main types of hosting: shared, dedicated, VPS, and cloud. Beyond these, there are dozens of other hosting products that are marketed towards various needs (e.g., WordPress, gaming, ecommerce), but most of these still use one of the four hosting types above. They are just packaged in different ways to fit specific use cases.

Of the four main types, GoDaddy offers shared hosting and VPS hosting. They also have a series of managed WordPress hosting plans, which fall under the broader shared hosting umbrella.

Let’s compare them below, starting with the shared plans.

GoDaddy shared hosting

GoDaddy’s shared hosting plans are perfect for small websites that don’t require ultimate server performance. In this type of hosting, you share your server space with other websites. It starts at $5.99 per month. More information is below:

GoDaddy also offers a separate set of four web hosting plans that are aimed at individuals and businesses with more demanding resource needs.

These are called Web Hosting Plus, and while they are very feature rich, the price tag is also significantly higher. The least expensive one from this series starts at $17.99 per month on a three-year plan and it renews at almost double that amount.

GoDaddy managed WordPress hosting

Next up is GoDaddy’s WordPress optimized shared hosting. As the name suggests, this option is ideal for those who prefer to use WordPress to manage their websites. All of the plans come with WordPress pre-installed and give you plenty of themes and plugins to choose from.

If you’re wondering whether or not you need to choose one of these WordPress plans instead of a regular shared hosting plan in order to use WordPress, the answer is: you don’t. Although they are designed to make it easy for you to build and manage a WordPress website, you can just as easily install WordPress yourself on shared hosting. It’s not hard at all.

However, if you’re feeling on the fence about choosing between regular shared hosting or WordPress hosting, this guide will help you.

One important consideration here is that GoDaddy’s WordPress hosting plans are limited to a single install – meaning you’ll only be able to launch one website per plan – and the pricing starts at $7.99 on a one-year contract. So if you have multiple sites, this can add up quickly compared to the mid-tier shared hosting plan, which let’s you build up to ten websites for the same monthly cost (albeit on a three-year contract).

GoDaddy VPS hosting

In contrast to GoDaddy’s other hosting options, the VPS plans offer a mixture of high performance and customization. Basically, you can choose a plan where the server is configured according to your needs.

A lot of the features that come with VPS are technical in nature and outside the scope of this article, but the short version is that VPS gives you scalable horsepower.

Naturally, it’s also significantly more expensive. The entry-level plan starts at $8.99 per month, but it can go all the way up to $219.99 per month on the highest plan.

GoDaddy reseller hosting

Finally, the reseller program enables you to sell GoDaddy servers as your own to your clients at whatever price you want. There are two reseller plans available.

The basic one lets you host up to 25 client websites, and costs $8.99 per month, while the pro plan costs $14.99 per month and supports unlimited customers.

A nice feature of both plans is that GoDaddy’s customer service reps are on hand 24/7 to provide your clients with assistance, but in a way where they represent your business in customer interactions. In other words, if one of your clients calls, GoDaddy’s agents will answer as your business and not GoDaddy.

2. Domain registration

A domain name is the address that people type into their browser to visit your website (e.g., yourwebsite.com). Although the internet is full of domain names with the .com extension, there are plenty of other domain extensions to choose from like .biz, .club, .net, .today, .xyz, .email, .group, .company, .org, and more.

Selling domain names happens to be GoDaddy’s bread and butter. In fact, GoDaddy is the world’s largest domain registrar by a wide margin and it’s the only registrar that has a double-digit percentage of total market share. ¹

What this means for you, is that using GoDaddy for domain registration gives you access to a whole range of domain name extensions with different registration periods.

GoDaddy also offers domain protection against threats, like domain hijacking, accidental expiration, and data exposure. Basic privacy protection is free of charge, but you can upgrade to higher plans that offer more.

You get one free domain name with any hosting plan you buy from GoDaddy. But you’d need to renew it at the normal rate every year. The rate varies, depending on the domain extension you choose.

That said, you do have the option to buy a standalone domain name. Generally speaking, a .com domain name will be costlier than, say, a .biz domain name.

3. Ecommerce solutions

GoDaddy’s ecommerce solutions help users build an online store. They come in two flavors:

• Online Store, which combines GoDaddy’s AI-powered website builder with GoDaddy Payments and other features like shipping and tax calculators to power your ecommerce site. It starts at $20.99 per month on a one-year contract and lets you test it out before making a payment.
• Managed Hosting for WooCommerce, which is not all that different from the managed WordPress hosting, but with WooCommerce bundled in for the purposes of running an online store. It starts at $24.99 per month on a one-year contract.

The first option is cheaper, easier, and faster to get started if you’re a total beginner with very little technical knowledge. The WooCommerce plan makes more sense if you are already familiar with WordPress or are willing to set aside some time to get comfortable with it.

Both solutions will let you sell unlimited products, manage customers, track your revenue, launch email and social media campaigns, adjust taxes, and calculate shipping fees on physical products.

In addition, GoDaddy’s payment acceptance system integrates with popular payment gateways, like PayPal, Stripe, and Square. It also has a unique service called Pay Links, which lets you create and share links to accept payment and then send them via email, text, QR codes, and social.

The free plan charges you 2.9% + 30¢ per Pay Link transaction and there’s a premium plan as well, which lowers those fees and comes with other benefits. Note that if you choose the WooCommerce plan (instead of the Online Store plan), that you have additional payment options with even better rates.

4. Website builder

As the name suggests, a website builder is a tool that lets you easily create a website without needing to have much technical knowledge. In other words, it makes web design accessible to the average person.

As with many online tools these days, GoDaddy’s website builder is powered by AI. This significantly speeds up the process of creating a website from scratch. All you have to do is describe your vision with some level of detail, and the builder will generate a site for you within a minute or so (depending on complexity).

If you prefer a more traditional approach, GoDaddy also offers many pre-designed templates. These are modifiable so you can choose one that is roughly what you’re looking for, and then edit it to get exactly what you want.

You can try the website builder for free and even build a whole site with it, but if you want to actually make it go live on the web, then you’ll need to pick a paid plan. The pricing starts at $9.99 per month on a one-year term.

5. SSL certificates

SSL is a digital certificate that authenticates a website’s identity. In simpler terms: it ensures that a website is secure enough to be navigated. Most legitimate websites have an SSL certificate these days because not having one means that few people will find your website, and of those, even fewer will visit it.

To give you an idea, this is what you will see if you try to click on a website in Google Chrome that doesn’t have an SSL certificate:

Not exactly inviting, is it?

An SSL certificate not only removes this warning screen, but it also displays a lock icon in the browser address window, confirming security.

In short, having an SSL certificate is a must-have for websites. Some of GoDaddy’s hosting plans offer SSL certificates for free, while others will give it to you free for the first year. You can also buy a standalone certificate. A basic one will cost $69.99 per year on a three-year contract.

If you decide on a cheaper GoDaddy hosting plan that doesn’t include a free ongoing SSL certificate and you’d like to keep your costs down, you can also get one from Let’s Encrypt. It’s a bit cumbersome and requires you to manually stay on top of reissuing it every 90 days, but it is a possibility.

6. Professional email

Besides hosting web servers, GoDaddy has partnered with Microsoft to offer email services so you can have a professional-looking email, like media@skatergirl.com, instead of the generic skatergirl@gmail.com. Pricing starts at $1.99 per user, per month on a one-year contract and renews at $7.99 per month.

7. Microsoft 365

You probably already know that Office 365 is a service offered by Microsoft in which you get to access tools like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Skype, OneDrive, among others. Along with the professional email, Microsoft 365 is a perfect bundle for businesses. Pricing starts at $10.99 per user, per month on a one-year contract but renews at $14.99 per month.

Making sense of GoDaddy’s offerings 🧠

Think about whether the features of any given plan are truly something that you will need for your purposes or if they are just unnecessary extras. While it can be tempting to buy a bundled product from GoDaddy and the convenience of having everything in one place can’t be denied, it can also get very expensive, very quickly. This is because many of the plans virtually double in price upon renewal.

If you’re willing to spend a little time learning more about what you need to launch a website, you’ll realize that you can often create your own bundle at a significantly lower price by choosing a viable GoDaddy alternative. On the other hand, if you have money to burn and convenience is your highest priority, then GoDaddy can be a great option.

If you have any questions about GoDaddy, feel free to drop them in the comments section below.