Our experience with GoDaddy
Support and service is good, however not easy for beginners. Hosting comes with built-in cache so design changes are difficult to manage, and their firewall blocks many users so you lose traffic.
Our rating
3.0 / 5
Reviewed by the PremiumPress team.
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Caching and firewall caveats
In practice, the experience for PremiumPress users tends to be mixed.
GoDaddy's shared hosting includes fairly aggressive built-in caching that can interfere with edits in a visual page builder. This is a common issue with any host that puts its own cache in front of WordPress in place of letting the site's own caching plugin do the job.
Some users have also reported that its network-level firewall blocks legitimate visitors more aggressively than other hosts on this list. That can quietly cost you traffic, with no obvious error message pointing to the cause.
We suggest testing with real visitor traffic, not only your own browser, before you rely on GoDaddy for a business site where the launch matters.
Pros
- Good support and service
Cons
- Not beginner-friendly
- Built-in cache makes design changes difficult
- Firewall blocks legitimate visitors, costing you traffic
About this review
- Reviewed by
- PremiumPress team
- Our rating
- 3.0 / 5
- Our verdict
- Mixed Reviews
- Customers worldwide
- ~20 million
- Support: phone & chat
- 24/7
- Control panel
- cPanel
- Daily backups
- Mid-tier and up
Plans and pricing
| Plan | Best for |
|---|---|
| Shared | One-click WordPress installer and a basic website builder |
| Managed WordPress | Managed updates on AWS-based infrastructure |
| VPS | Sites needing more control than shared hosting |
| Dedicated | Dedicated resources for busy sites |
Our review, in detail
Who is GoDaddy?
GoDaddy is one of the largest domain registrars and hosting companies in the world. It was founded in 1997 in Phoenix, Arizona as Jomax Technologies and took the GoDaddy name in 2006. It has been publicly traded on the NYSE since 2015.
Some figures give a sense of its size:
- Fifth-largest web host in the world by market share, in recent industry rankings
- Over 62 million domains under management
- Roughly 20 million customers, most of them small and micro businesses
- $4.6 billion in revenue in its 2024 fiscal year, with over 5,500 staff
Beyond domains: hosting and add-ons
GoDaddy is best known for domain registration and is accredited by ICANN, the body that oversees the global domain name system.
It also sells shared and managed WordPress hosting, VPS, dedicated servers, SSL certificates and website-builder tools. In recent years it has moved more of this onto Amazon Web Services, in place of running everything from its own data centers.
The company owns and runs several top-level domain registries, including .biz, .club, .us and .co. That gives it an unusual position as both registrar and registry for parts of the domain name system.
Watch the checkout. GoDaddy has historically bundled add-on security products there, such as SiteLock malware scanning. Review them carefully before accepting, because these extras add to the recurring cost of a plan that looked cheap at signup.
The pattern is common among large, publicly traded hosts that rely on a low headline price to win the first sale.
Who it's built for
With its size and brand recognition, GoDaddy is often the default choice for people buying a domain and hosting in the same checkout. It targets small businesses and individual entrepreneurs first, ahead of agencies or enterprise customers with more demanding technical needs.
Its cPanel hosting plans include:
- A one-click WordPress installer
- A basic website builder, for customers who have not chosen a theme yet
- Standard daily backups on mid-tier and higher plans
- 24/7 support by phone and chat
The support is useful because many customers come to GoDaddy for a domain first and hosting second. They often need basic setup help and are not yet familiar with server administration or WordPress hosting terms.
That is a real convenience the first time you launch a PremiumPress site from scratch.
Ready to get started with GoDaddy?
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This review is our own opinion, based on our experience and feedback from our customers. Your experience may differ.