If anything, 2021 has shown us how much potential the internet carries when it comes to simplifying people’s lives. With the rise of smartphones, everyone’s a tap away from accessing any information they need, buy whatever they set their mind to, pay their bills, or even work while on the move.
That being said, if you’re looking to capitalize on this trend, transforming your idea into an online product might be the best option for you. Whether it’s selling your own paintings or handmade products, showcasing your new app, or simply getting your message across, doing so through your own website is the best decision when starting a business.
Creating a website is practically a child’s play, having so many advanced site builders to choose from. However, you’d first need a hosting provider to host your website on a server.
We’ve dealt with tons of hosting services in the past few years and found out that Bluehost and GoDaddy are two of the best such services when it comes to reliability, speed, support, and price. So, we’ve decided to present you with a detailed study of their features and compare the two to see which one does a better job.
Why Choose Bluehost or GoDaddy?
The reason we decided to show off these two platforms isn’t that they are the best at everything. There are always superior options out there no matter what product you’re looking at.
However, if you’re looking for a cheap option to start and grow a business, Bluehost and GoDaddy are two of the most decently priced hosting providers when you consider the plethora of great features both of them offer.
The numbers also speak for themselves. Bluehost powers up over 2 million websites and has a team of 750+ members, while GoDaddy serves more than 20 million entrepreneurs from 14 offices around the world.
Both platforms are similar in regard to the services they offer, but also quite different when you dig deeper into their specialties.
Read on for an in-depth analysis of the most important aspects surrounding Bluehost and GoDaddy.
Let’s Compare Bluehost and GoDaddy
In this article, we’ll observe Bluehost and GoDaddy from 7 different angles. To properly evaluate these platforms we tried their hosting packages, put their features to the test, and analyzed the final products.
To make our assessment as unbiased as possible, we went over hundreds of customer reviews, saw what they have to say about the two web hosts, and got a better perspective on the facilitating impact these platforms have on their customers. We’ll include a section about it in this article since customers’ satisfaction is an important aspect when comparing two products.
The service that outperforms its opponent will be declared a winner in the respective category. At the very end, we’ll witness who scored the most wins and we’ll crown them a champion of today’s battle.
These are the 7 aspects that Bluehost and GoDaddy will compete in:
- Hosting Plans
- Performance, Uptime & Speed
- User Experience
- Migration Capabilities
- Customer Support
- Pricing
- Customer Reviews
May the best one win! Let’s begin.
1. Hosting Plans
We’re immediately getting down to the nitty-gritty and taking off with the top feature offered by these platforms – their hosting packages. Both Bluehost and GoDaddy are famous for the managed WordPress hosting plans, but they offer much more than that. Let’s see what they have in store for us.
Bluehost
Let’s just start by saying that Bluehost offers a myriad of hosting packages. We’ll try to concisely sum them up here, so you’ll get a better picture of what’s what:
- Shared WordPress Hosting – this includes three hosting plans that are intended for basic WordPress websites and come with a free SSL certificate and a free domain for the first year;
- Managed WordPress Hosting – three more plans with better scalability that are more suitable for websites with a higher amount of traffic;
- eCommerce WordPress Hosting – two plans meant for online stores that include key tools that make selling online possible;
- Shared Hosting – four plans with which you can host any type of website and get a free content delivery network included along with the free SSL certificate and domain;
- VPS Hosting – three plans for more demanding websites that require better server specs;
- Dedicated Hosting – the last three plans that are intended for websites that need ultimate performance, security, and control.
GoDaddy
It’s the same situation with GoDaddy. Let’s break down all of their packages here:
- WordPress Hosting – four plans optimized for WordPress use that offer a straightforward interface and a free domain for the duration of the hosting plan;
- WordPress eCommerce Hosting – one plan designed to best suit an online store with over 40 free WooCommerce extensions;
- Web Hosting – the four most economical plans that GoDaddy offers, intended for all types of basic websites;
- Business Hosting – four plans that serve as powered up eCommerce hosting plans, to up the speed of a high-traffic plugin-heavy online store;
- VPS Hosting – eight more plans that are ideal for developers or web-designers to fully set up a server and manage their own projects;
- Dedicated Server – the last eight plans intended for resource-intensive web apps that have to serve large traffic quantities.
Winner
It’s obvious that both services go above and beyond to customize their offerings in order to fit each particular need and requirement. We feel that it’s more than fair to declare a draw in this first category.
2. Performance, Uptime & Speed
Some of the main factors that you need to consider when choosing a web host are how fast the page loading times will be and if they own a quality server infrastructure.
Bluehost
The platform owns pretty robust and powerful servers that use CPU segregation tech and run on AMD power centers to enable their Linux-based hosting. To put it simply, this setup is great for protection against viruses and malware.
That being said, Bluehost offers excellent uptime of 99.96% of the time. That would be less than two hours of downtime a month, which doesn’t get any better with any available hosting service on the market.
When it comes to speed, Google prefers websites hosted on servers that have significantly low TTFB (under one second). This is preferable for your SEO and Bluehost has a TTFB that’s 0.434 seconds, meaning it passes Google’s benchmark.
They are pretty opaque about the location of their servers, as it appears they are located just in Utah, USA.
GoDaddy
GoDaddy’s server infrastructure consists of hardware powered up by Intel Core i7 processors which enable both Windows and Linux-based hosting.
However, the platform offers a decent uptime of 99.90% and a TTFB of 1.242 seconds which is a little bit above Google’s recommended threshold of under 1 second.
Just like with Bluehost, GoDaddy’s servers’ locations aren’t public knowledge, but a few years ago the company announced that they were moving from their privately owned data centers to Amazon’s AWS cloud services.
Winner
Both services try hard to excel in their performance and provide powerful servers, however, Bluehost does a better job when it comes to uptime and speed. So, the first win goes to Bluehost in this battle.
3. User Experience
Working your way around your new hosting dashboard shouldn’t be a pain in the neck. Everyone wants to spend more time growing their business rather than figuring out where to find the file manager, so naturally, UI/UX should be one of the top priorities of every hosting provider.
Bluehost
Bluehost really shines in this segment. The platform uses the industry standard cPanel – a control panel that’s intuitive, easy to navigate, and accessible with only one click from Bluehost’s website.
Its interface is clean and straightforward and you can access everything you need, even install WordPress, with a single click.
Additionally, Bluehost’s cPanel is customizable to make your experience even friendlier.
GoDaddy
Not dissimilar to Bluehost, GoDaddy implements a cPanel as well. The dashboard is pretty sleek and straightforward, even though things can get a bit confusing if you’re looking to manage multiple websites through it.
What also separates it from Bluehost is the fact that it’s a lot harder to get to the cPanel in the first place. The account management interface could use some polishing up to make things more intuitive.
Winner
It’s the second win for Bluehost. We found the service offering better functionality and control than GoDaddy, whether you work with a single website or you’re upscaling multiple projects.
4. Migration Capabilities
Users constantly switch between hosting providers. Being frustrated with your web host isn’t anything new, as not many turn out what they claim to be. This section is dedicated to everyone looking to switch sides and migrate their websites to Bluehost or GoDaddy.
Bluehost
Bluehost is pretty great when it comes to website migration. Besides the manual download and upload of your existing website’s files that you can perform yourself, Bluehost offers a free migration service for WordPress, of course, if you sign up for a hosting plan and your WordPress site satisfies some basic technical criteria.
However, if your site is more complex and requires experts’ assistance, Bluehost offers a professional migration service that allows the transfer of up to 5 websites. Their team of specialists will do all of the work and you don’t even have to move a finger. Note that this service costs $149.99.
GoDaddy
Things are a bit trickier with GoDaddy. They do offer basic WordPress migration, just like Bluehost does, and the process of doing so isn’t hard, but unlike Bluehost, you have to do the work yourself.
If you need to migrate a non-WordPress website, GoDaddy offers a helpful guide on how you can do so.
However, if you own a heavy-coded website and find the process risky, it’s unclear whether GoDaddy offers to help you migrate it for free since they don’t have any prices disclosed.
Winner
Things are looking great for Bluehost, as it claims yet another victory! Migration is pretty doable with GoDaddy as well, but not as accessible as Bluehost.
5. Customer Support
Time is money in today’s world. The quicker and more efficient customer support is, the more time you’ll save on having the problem fixed, so it’s always good to have reliable help at hand whenever anything on your website breaks or malfunctions.
Bluehost
The service offers an abundance of channels through which you can reach customer support – you can pick from email, live chat, and phone support, all available 24/7/365.
They also provide an extensive knowledge center full of information on anything that you might need.
What’s great about the platform is that it supports solving issues through a ticketing system and their tech team is pretty efficient and knowledgeable.
GoDaddy
GoDaddy is most helpful if you give them a phone call. Although it’s better to explain a quarry in a written form, GoDaddy’s support is geared toward verbal communication.
Similarly to Bluehost, they also offer 24/7 live chat and a knowledge base. Considering they’re more popular than Bluehost, they offer a vast community base where real users help each other.
However, they don’t support resolving issues through tickets. We’ve dealt with tons of hosting providers throughout the years and this is a serious pet peeve of ours.
Winner
It looks like someone’s locking in on that gold medal. Bluehost defeats GoDaddy in yet another category.
6. Pricing
Our second-to-last category is the pricing category – sometimes, the decisive factor when choosing between two products. Let’s find out which of our two contenders offers better value for your money.
Bluehost
- Shared WordPress Hosting – “Basic” – $2.65/month (renews at $8.99/month), “Plus” – $5.45/month (renews at $11.99/month), and “Choice Plus” – $4.95/month (renews at $16.99);
- Managed WordPress Hosting – “Build” – regularly $29.99/month ($9.95/month on 36 months term), “Grow” – regularly $39.99/month ($24.95/month on 36 months term), and “Scale” – regularly $59.99/month ($39.95/month on 36 months term);
- eCommerce WordPress Hosting – “Standard” – normally $24.95/month ($9.95/month on 36 months term) and “Premium” – normally $39.95/month ($25.95/month on 36 months term);
- Shared Hosting – “Basic” – normally $8.99/month ($2.65/month on 36 months term), “Plus” – normally $11.99/month ($5.45/month on 36 months term), “Choice Plus” – normally $16.99/month ($4.95/month on 36 months term), and “Pro” – normally $26.99/month ($13.95/month on 36 months term);
- VPS Hosting – “Standard” – $18.99/month (renews at $29.99/month), “Enhanced” – $29.99/month (renews at $59.99/month), and “Ultimate” – $59.99/month (renews at $119.99);
- Dedicated Hosting – “Standard” – $79.99/month (renews at $119.99/month), “Enhanced” – $99.99/month (renews at $159.99/month), and “Premium” – $119.99/month (renews at $209.99).
GoDaddy
- WordPress Hosting – four plans from $6.99/month to $15.99/month;
- WordPress eCommerce Hosting – $15.99/month (renews at $24.99/month);
- Web Hosting – four plans from $5.99/month to $19.99/month;
- Business Hosting – four plans from $19.99/month to $59.99/month;
- VPS Hosting – eight plans from $4.99/month to $99.99/month;
- Dedicated Server – eight plans from $129.99/month to $419.99/month.
Winner
Both platforms are affordable and price their packages at about the same level, however, GoDaddy wins its first point in this battle, since it offers clearer pricing on renewals and doesn’t have so much upselling as Bluehost.
7. Customer Reviews
Lastly, we’ll take a look at what real users have to say about their experiences with Bluehost and GoDaddy.
Bluehost
“I’ve been using Bluehost to host multiple sites for several years now. I currently use both their shared and dedicated hosting services. The value, quality, and service that they provide has always been good for my needs. Whenever I’ve had an issue, I’ve always used their live chat function which has quickly resolved whatever problem that I’ve had. Even with so many hosting options out there, I will continue to choose Bluehost for all of the reasons I have listed.” – a positive experience by Kevin Rhodes (11/23/2020)
“Charged me twice
I asked for a refund because I accidentally didn’t unmark the boxes for all the features. They said they were issuing the refund, I checked my account the next day and was instead charged twice and had no refund. When I called to speak to them they said they had no record, conveniently, of the second charge. My bank is filing a dispute with them.” – a negative experience by Cece Williams (11/14/2020)
GoDaddy
“My experience can be depicted as rapid and intense. In a few clicks I obtained everything I wanted. Your descriptions and videos are very effective and easy to understand even for me, not a hands-on nerd. Thank you for your huge work and support.” – a positive experience by Vittorio (11/26/2020)
“Lately we have experienced significant downtime that lasted for hours not being able to access website or emails. I spent almost an hour proving the technical support representative that the website is not just down for me, but for everyone. The down time lasted at least for 6 hours.” – a negative experience by Kostiantyn T. (9/16/2020)
Winner
We’ll use top reviewing websites to decide a winner in this category:
| Bluehost | GoDaddy | |
| Mouthshut | 3.29/5 | 2.01/5 |
| Trustpilot | 2.0/5 | 4.1/5 |
| G2 | 3.7/5 | 3.9/5 |
| TrustRadius | 7.2/10 | 7.5/10 |
| Sitejabber | 2.26/5 | 3.6/5 |
| Total: | 18.45 | 21.11 |
It’s safe to say that people value GoDaddy a bit higher than Bluehost.
Conclusion
Let’s recall who won in the 7 categories we discussed above:
- There was a draw in the first category – Hosting Plans;
- Bluehost won in categories 2-5;
- GoDaddy won in the last 2 categories.
That makes Bluehost the overall winner with 4:2. Congratulations!
Both Bluehost and GoDaddy make for decent hosting options. They are affordable, modern, accessible, and reliable. Bluehost might be a bit faster and easier to use, while GoDaddy seems more transparent and trusted. It all depends on your particular needs and requirements.
Anyway, if you’re interested in running a WordPress website, there’s a hosting service that beats both Bluehost and GoDaddy in all of the above categories by a long shot.
Enter WPX Hosting!
WPX Hosting is a much younger company than Bluehost and GoDaddy, hence much less popular. However, every feature that it comes packed with makes it an optimal choice as a web host.
It is reasonably priced, has a very intuitive interface, and comes with incredible customer support that has a 30-seconds response time and is available 24/7/365.
Recently, it has been deemed as the fastest hosting provider by many prominent names in the industry, as it relies on its own super-spec CDN.
What’s more, you’ll get tons of amazing freebies even with their entry-level plan. Among them are:
- A cloud-based CDN;
- Site speed optimization;
- Site migration within 24 hours;
- Malware detection and removal;
- Daily backups;
- SSL certificate.
If you’re still not convinced, with a WPX Hosting subscription you’ll be helping hundreds of homeless dogs from Eastern Europe find a loving home.