No matter how hard you try to love GoDaddy, you gonna end up hating it anyways. They are the slowest and the worst web hosting service that you can possible choose.
Initially, I hosted this website on Bluehost as I got 1 yr free hosting from them from a giveaway. Soon I realized the issues with Bluehost. So, I stated looking for a decent host. Found out an amazing discount which effectively brought down their managed WordPress hosting cost to 0. I signed up and migrated the site from Bluehost via GoDaddy’s migrator.
The first issue I faced was that it wasn’t a smart migrator. It migrated EVERYTHING (even the cache files and useless database tables). As a result, my site was broken. Tried clearing GoDaddy’s cache but it simply didn’t work. Contacted support and after 30 mins, they managed to clear the cache.
It was all good but soon my site started to get deindexed from Google and other search engines. I contacted their support and they blamed Google. Asked Google and they told somehow my site’s robots.txt had noindex tags. Tried removing the file myself but couldn’t (due to permission issues). Contacted support and they couldn’t help. Seeing that, I migrated to AWS Lightsail and I am happy to say, the experience has been pretty great so far.
Overall, GoDaddy’s hosting is slow, their support is terrible and the sites get hacked pretty frequently. Also, their plans are pretty overpriced (Imagine paying 99USD/yr for a SSL certificate where Let’s encrypt gives you one for FREE).
1) Slow Speed due to Overcrowding of Servers
It is a pretty well known fact that GoDaddy servers are overloaded. Without a CDN (with GoDaddy’s caching), my site fully loaded in 5-7 secs and sometimes it took over 10 secs to load! This is ridiculous!
Also, many Reddit users have complained that slow SQL servers are to be blamed too. Apparantly, they host their SQL servers on a different server. The link connecting the SQL server to the main servers is slow.
Their hosting limits are also pretty strict (similar to SiteGround but SiteGround is much better).
2) Sites Always get Hacked
GoDaddy’s security is pretty weak (this is to be expected as they spend a lot of their budget on advertising). If your site gets hacked (and believe me, it WILL get hacked no matter how much precautions you take), they will upsell their so called “Malware and Firewall protection” which will cost you upwards of thousands of dollars BUT it won’t help you. Yes. It is sort of a scam.
In 2019, almost 30,000 accounts on GoDaddy got hacked. My friend’s account got hacked and his domain was redirected to some weird Russian site.
3) Worst Support Team
GoDaddy’s support staff are actually sales staff in disguise. There is a long wait time and if you get connected with a support staff, 9/10 times they will be a member of the sales team who will upsell you at every opportunity. Slow website? upgrade your hosting plan. Website not loading? Switch over to dedicated servers.
4) SSL Certificate costs upwards of $63.99/year
GoDaddy charges you for a SSL certificate. In the era of free SSL certificates, you actually have to PAY GoDaddy for an SSL certificate.
Nearly every other hosting companies provide you with a FREE SSL certificate (even the budget companies) but, GoDaddy will charge you a lot of money for one 🙂.
5) Slow to Upgrade their Software
It can take GoDaddy a LOT of time to upgrade their software. Even now, they are using PHP 7.3 in many of their servers! The worst part? your server might never get upgraded! To get the upgrade, you might hat to pay for an entirely new hosting plan! Upselling as usual!
6) SLOW DNS
DNS server also affects your site’s speed. Their DNS servers are slow too! The best thing to do in this case is to use Cloudflare DNS or AWS Route 53. They are MUCH faster and they provide DNS level DDoS protection (Cloudflare also provides a WAF and CDN and many performance enhancement features).
7) A LOT of Outages
GoDaddy has its fair share of outages. Its so frequent that almost every month, there will be at least one long outage. The outages are alright if you are hosting a small, hobby site. If the site is big, then GoDaddy is absolutely not for you.
8) GoDaddy Steals your Domains
DO NOT use GoDaddy for looking up if a domain is not bought or not. If you did, then its better if you buy it quickly as GoDaddy will buy that domain themselves and will sell it to you for a fortune. I tried this myself and to my surprise, within 5 mins, they bought it and listed a it at a highly marked up price.
9) Highly Priced Plans
GoDaddy’s plans are extremely expensive and the cost doubles during renewal. You get the advertised price only if you purchase a plan for 3 yrs upfront.
10) Bad Reviews Almost Everywhere
Check Facebook groups, hosting review sites, Reddit for a review of GoDaddy. 90% of the reviews will be negative.
Also, they have bought domains like nodaddy.com and domains similar to this to make sure no one can buy them and put up -ve reviews about them.
Verdict
Stay AWAY from GoDaddy. RUN away from GoDaddy.
If you have any queries or suggestions, then let me know in the comments down below.
