Starting a new online business is never easy, and choosing the best web hosting company to match the pace of success you dream of can be tasking. You may have been advised to go with GoDaddy without giving you the better alternatives you can consider. However, one cannot make the best decisions in business without comparing or weighing their options.
Undoubtedly, GoDaddy is a terrific host and delivers some good services. It is one of the pioneers in the web hosting industry with decades of experience and has a great clientele. However, it has its cons in some areas.
If these areas it is found wanting are where you need the most, then it is advisable to consider GoDaddy alternatives that perform better in these areas. As a result, we have done some extensive research on GoDaddy and its services to give you an idea of the quality or value you will receive compared to its alternatives.
Why You Should Consider GoDaddy Alternatives
Many information and articles you will read online while researching GoDaddy will be super positive because they only show the good sides of this web host. However, there are many ugly sides they are not telling, and it might be too late if you later realize after investing in and entrusting your business with GoDaddy.
Most good recommendations are backed by the fact that GoDaddy delivers greatly in some areas, so they assume it is great in others too. But that is never the case.
Here are some weaknesses we have seen that will make you consider GoDaddy alternatives for your next projects.
Limited Essential Features
One of the few reasons to check out the best alternatives to GoDaddy is because its essential features are limited, especially on the shared hosting packages and across other hosting types.
For instance, it limits the number of databases you can create on your hosting account and the size of each database. This is terrible for businesses that are database-driven and have a lot of entries per database.
Another essential feature that GoDaddy limits is the number of websites you can host per plan. For shared hosting, you can only host up to 50 websites, but the limit does not immediately increase to 50. The limit progresses from 1, 10, 25, and 50 websites from the lowest-priced to the highest-priced package. Judging by the prices of these packages, this is not screaming a good value for money.
The worst of the limits on the number of websites can be seen in the managed WordPress plans. These packages are more expensive than shared hosting but can only host one website each! Again, that is not worth investing in, considering that no features can justify the limits.
Another reason to consider GoDaddy alternatives is the limited web space or storage disks GoDaddy offers on the popular hosting types. None of the packages has an unlimited SSD storage feature, making the plans bad investments for media-heavy websites. This is one of the reasons why the inode limit (number of files you can save) is also very small. As a result, you may be forced to host your files on third-party cloud hosting services, increasing your expenses unnecessarily.
Inexistence of Free Email Hosting (Aside from cPanel Webmail)
Email hosting is very important in every online business. It makes up the professionalism of your brand, and marketing is a lot easier and more productive with it. It is also very important for businesses that use emails as a main communication form.
GoDaddy does not offer free email hosting, unlike the better alternatives shown below. Instead, it allows you to create free email addresses or accounts on Microsoft 365 with a limited number of mailboxes which varies by your hosting plan for only one year.
Afterward, you must pay about $2 to $4 per month for each mailbox or email address to keep using them. This increases your expenses unnecessarily, and considering that most GoDaddy alternatives will give you free email hosting forever with better features, it is not worth it.
Terrible or Unavailable Security Features
Security is a crucial part of every online business. Every business has rivals constantly looking for a way to breach its network, steal users’ data, or compromise its operation. At the same, hackers are constantly taking advantage of weak security setups to steal information from several organizations.
Therefore, you must only entrust your business with a secure web hosting provider so you may have peace of mind and run your business better.
However, GoDaddy is not so big on security, which is one reason we recommend considering alternatives. Security features that are completely free on other web hosting companies, GoDaddy charges for it separately and sometimes allows you to enjoy them for the first year only.
The web host does not offer security features besides free SSL certificates on shared hosting packages. These are from AutoSSL and are available for free forever since they automatically renew from the cPanel. However, it is only free for the first year on the starter shared hosting package.
In addition, GoDaddy does not offer free SSL certificates forever on other hosting packages except managed WordPress. It rather gives a free standard SSL certificate for the first year, and it renews at almost $100 yearly afterward.
Furthermore, security features like web firewalls and virus and malware scanning are absent on all hosting packages except managed WordPress. You will have to pay an extra $8 per month for it. Seems like the web host is more interested in making money than ensuring your sites are secure.
Surprisingly, all the features are included in the total pricing of our GoDaddy alternatives, and the packages are even packed with more freebies.
Paid Site Migrations
When choosing a new web host for an existing website, you need to migrate your files to the new provider. This process may be tedious for beginners, but top hosting providers have found ways to prevent this issue through free migration services and the provision of useful proprietary plugins.
However, GoDaddy does not offer free site migrations to its customers. Although there is a way to automatically transfer your site if you are on the managed WP package, other hosting types require paid migrations. Otherwise, you have to migrate your sites yourself.
Add-ons & Upsells
Another reason we recommend you consider the best alternatives to GoDaddy before choosing a hosting provider is that it’s pretty dodgy.
While looking at the breakdown of the features in most of the plans, we noticed some were ticked, indicating that they are included in the packages. However, that is not the case.
Some ticked features are not included in the packages but are merely available. Availability means adding them to the package by paying extra, which is optional, while inclusiveness means they come with the plan without additional charge.
Ticks generally mean “included,” so they are misleading. As a result, some of these features are advertised as “inclusive” as part of the add-ons.
In addition, essential features which are supposed to be free are being sold for extra cash, and this does not help the consumer. Thus, GoDaddy only worries about its pocket. It does not care about delivering great value for money.
Choice of Data Center Location
Data centers are the physical locations of your website files and databases. They are where browsers send requests to and get responses from when users visit your websites.
Therefore, your website loading speed depends on the distance between your data center and visitors since your server’s information must travel through that distance while battling network latency.
A fast loading speed leads to better traffic and SEO performance, while a bad one will affect you badly. Thus, it is important that a web host allows you to choose the geographically closest data center to your audience for free.
GoDaddy has about 9 known data centers across North America, Europe, and Asia. However, you cannot choose your preferred data center unless you purchase dedicated or VPS hosting. This is not the case with most GoDaddy alternatives.
Unavailable Customer Support
A crucial reason you must consider a GoDaddy alternative today is customer support. Customer support is very important to the success of your business because no matter what you think you know or your degree of expertise, you will need an agent to help you out someday.
This is why we always recommend a web host with a customer support system accessible 24/7 with many competent agents that will make your life easier.
When we tried GoDaddy out, we were quite disappointed with our findings. First, the information we were looking for about a particular service was not present in the Knowledge Base, and some articles were even with incomplete information with no link to additional readings.
Moreover, despite promising 24/7 customer support, the live chat button was nowhere to be found on its Contact Us page. This is a terrible service from a company of this size and the pricing of its products.
Update: Lately GoDaddy has improved in customer support. They are more accessible and you will get connected with an agent almost immediately after you initiate the live chat support session.
Old Navigation (cPanel)
The account dashboard of the web host is very catchy and easy to use, and we really love it. Its (dashboard) interface is arranged so that you can immediately see what you need to do and click on it to carry out several activities.
File Manager, phpMyAdmin, databases, WordPress installations, server settings, etc., are accessible through the dashboard and at a glance. Thus it is pretty easy to make changes.
However, these pages redirect you to the traditional cPanel, which is okay but very intuitive, in our opinion. The control panel is quite bloated, and anyone unfamiliar with it will find it difficult to navigate since it is not beginner-friendly. This is one of the reasons to consider GoDaddy alternatives because there are better control panels.
Pricing
Compared with some alternatives, GoDaddy pricing is on the high side. As we must have deduced from the above weaknesses, the essential features on this web host are either limited, free for only the first year or sold as add-ons. It is not worth the price.
A quick example is comparing Hostinger’s premium web hosting package with GoDaddy’s Deluxe. The latter costs almost $8 per month with 50 GB SSD storage, 25 databases limit, free email hosting for the first year with 3 mailboxes, 10 websites limit and no security features (firewall, malware scanning). Whereas, Hostinger’s Premium costs only about $3 per month with 100 GB SSD storage, unlimited databases, free email hosting forever with 100 addresses per domain, up to 100 websites, and security features (WAF).
This single comparison indicates how expensive this web host’s plans are.
3 Best Alternatives to GoDaddy in 2024
Since we are already familiar with the areas where the web host is found wanting, the next thing is that we present you some of the competitors that will deliver better services. Here are the top 3 GoDaddy alternatives to consider.
1. Hostinger
Hostinger is one of the best providers in the industry in 2024 and is recommended for hosting any online project you have. Not only that, Hostinger is the best alternative to GoDaddy in all aspects.
This web host uses state-of-the-art technologies that consistently deliver great performance and speed. We have tested Hostinger’s services and can confidently recommend it.
Hostinger Summary
Hostinger uses the best performance technologies to set up a suitable hosting environment for your websites and projects. One of them is LiteSpeed web servers.
LiteSpeed web servers are the best in the market, beating Apache and Nginx by a landslide. These servers can handle high traffic with minimal resource usage making them suitable for big projects or sites with a lot of traffic.
In addition, it uses other performance technologies like NVMe SSD storages, HTTP/3 protocol, the LiteSpeed Cache for WordPress plugin (LSCWP), and caching to improve the loading speed of your web pages for better user experience, traffic, and SEO performance. It also provides multiple data centers in more than 8 locations across 4 continents and the choice of choosing your preferred center on any hosting plan. You may also request a free server location change every month.
Hostinger provides commercial-grade security as a part of its hosting plans at no extra cost. You will enjoy free automated backups and a one-click restoration of all your files. Also, you will get free unlimited SSL certificates.
For a higher level of security, you will also enjoy DDoS attack protection to prevent hackers from bringing your server down and a custom web application firewall (WAF) to weed out malicious attempts to access sensitive parts of your server. Also, it is a free malware scanner you can use from time to time.
For account management, it has a proprietary control panel called hPanel. This control panel is an intuitive tool with the same functionality as cPanel. Though, it excludes some unnecessary parts.
It also provides a one-click installer for over 100 web apps which you can install from the hPanel with just a few clicks. This way you can, for example, build a WordPress website very easily.
All these features alone do justice to its position as one of the worthy GoDaddy alternatives.
Hostinger Features
GoDaddy is an incredible host with many features. Here are some of the competitive features that make Hostinger a great alternative to GoDaddy:
- Costs as low as $2 per month
- Free unlimited site migrations
- One-click app installer, free automated backups & staging sites
- Commercial-grade security features (DD0S protection, malware scanner, SSL & WAF)
- Best performance technologies (LiteSpeed servers, NVMe SSD storage, LSCWP)
- Unlimited databases and bandwidth
- Free domain for the first year & free email hosting forever
- Improved control panel (hPanel)
- 30-day money-back guarantee
- 24/7/365 support
Why Hostinger is the Best Alternative to GoDaddy
There are so many distinct factors that make Hostinger a better choice when compared with GoDaddy.
Better Affordability and Value for Money
Hostinger is more affordable than GoDaddy in all possible ways making it the top alternative web hosting service. First, the introductory and renewal prices are distinctively different.
The cheapest plan on GoDaddy, Economy, costs almost $6 per month and renews at almost $10 monthly. This package has 25 GB SSD storage, free hosting for a year and no DDoS protection or firewall.
Whereas, Hostinger’s Single Web Hosting plan costs almost $2 per month with a $4 monthly renewal price. It has a bigger 50 GB SSD storage, free email hosting forever and all the security features the web host has to offer are included. This same pattern (more affordable with better value for money) is valid for the higher packages.
So we recommend Hostinger if you have to choose between the two for the best possible value for money with a very small budget. Purchase the Premium package and enjoy limitless benefits.
Improved Control Panel (hPanel)
Compared with GoDaddy, Hostinger has a better control panel. The hPanel has been personalized so that anyone, including beginners with no experience in hosting and website-related stuff, can easily navigate.
The hPanel interface makes only the stuff you need available on the dashboard, so you don’t get lost in the seas of available options. It groups popular actions under notable and easy-to-interpret markers so you will know where to go for these activities. For example, adding a domain, subdomain, add-on domain, etc., are grouped under the “Websites” mega menu. That’s natural and easy to remember.
Also, hPanel’s interface is better designed compared with cPanel. The design is more modern and beautiful, making the use of the control panel interesting and appealing to customers.
This makes Hostinger a great alternative to GoDaddy to consider based on ease of use.
Better and Available Customer Support
Another reason Hostinger is a great alternative to GoDaddy is its better support system.
Its support agents are available 24/7 through live chats, emails and tickets and are always ready to help customers fix any issue they encounter using its services. At the same time, there has never been a time we could not form a connection with the support through live chat, unlike GoDaddy, which turns off the feature with no heads up.
In addition, the web host has a better Knowledge Base that has every question you need to know about its services. It also has many tutorials on carrying out many activities with illustrations and helpful YouTube videos. With this, they have a 10/10 from us for support.
Free Unlimited Site Migrations
Another important gesture that makes Hostinger a better choice is unlimited free site migrations. It allows customers to submit website migration requests to Hostinger professionals so that they can move them for you while you relax and do nothing.
This is unlike GoDaddy that does not offer free professional migrations services. It makes your transition to the web host very tedious and expensive if you have to pay a professional.
Migrating to Hostinger manually is also pretty simple, and we have explained the process step-by-step. Check out our easy guide to migrate your site to Hostinger from any web host.
Conclusively, Hostinger is a better alternative to GoDaddy if you have a lot websites to move from your previous host.
Superior Performance Technologies
Hostinger is an alternative web host that is better than GoDaddy regarding performance technologies. It uses LiteSpeed web server software, while GoDaddy uses Nginx.
According to a test done by CyberPanel, the average response time of Nginx was 604 ms, while LiteSpeed gave a 29 ms average response time.
This means that the technologies Hostinger uses will give you at least 2o times better performance and speed than GoDaddy’s technologies. If you want great SEO performance, then you know the right choice.
Furthermore, regardless of your hosting package, you can choose your preferred data center location upon signup, unlike GoDaddy. Also, you can change your data center location every month for free.
Why Hostinger is Better Than GoDaddy
- More affordable
- Better value for money
- Free unlimited migrations
- Better speed performance, & uptime
- Free email hosting
- Better customer support
- Improved control panel
2. SiteGround
SiteGround is one of the best alternatives to GoDaddy. It is one of the best web hosting companies and is highly rated among experts and its customers.
The web host delivers great services across all hosting types and has been doing this unfailingly for a long time, keeping smiles on the faces of its customers.
SiteGround Summary
SiteGround offers better value for money compared with GoDaddy, making it an interesting alternative. One of the fortes of this web host is security.
SiteGround is extra serious about security, as it ensures that your data does not get into the wrong hands. It presents sophisticated security features available on all hosting packages without additional or hidden fees.
These measures include DDoS protections, SSL certificates, and automated backups. It also provides redundant storage by storing a duplicate of your data and files on another drive at a separate data center. This way, your files are not lost forever if your data center has a catastrophic issue.
It also has a custom web application firewall (WAF) set up to prevent hackers from accessing restricted parts of your site or server and an anti-AI bot that blocks brute-force attacks directed at your sites or applications. It also has a plugin you can use to improve the security of your WordPress website.
In addition, SiteGround is seasoned in performance technologies, as it delivers one of the best website loading speeds on the internet. To achieve this, it uses SSD storage, Nginx servers, and several caching technologies like HTTP/3 protocol.
It also has a custom PHP version for faster PHP executions and a custom MySQL setup to process databases faster, leading to faster loading speed. This giant web host does not stop there. It also has a custom web optimization plugin for performance improvement.
The web host has a proprietary control panel called Site Tools for management. This control panel works just like the traditional cPanel, but it is a lot better in terms of features and ease of use. It makes it quite easy for beginners to navigate.
This web host also has one of the best customer support in the industry. The support team is quite competent and responds to questions in seconds, solving more than 98% of queries in one contact. It’s never taken more than 30 minutes to solve an issue in our experience. The support is multilingual, with more than 4 languages, including English.
If you’d like more information, here is our in-depth review of SiteGround.
SiteGround Features
Here are some of the features that show that SiteGround is one of the strongest GoDaddy alternatives:
- Costs as low as $3 per month
- Free SSL certificates
- Automated backups, staging websites
- Sophisticated site security (DDoS, brute-force, anti-AI bot, security plugin, malware scanner)
- Free site migrations plus a free WordPress migrator plugin
- Easy-to-use proprietary control panel (Site Tools) & one-click app installer
- Free email hosting and migrator
- Multiple data centers and free CDNs
- Stellar 24/7 multi-lingual customer support
- 30-day money-back guarantee
Why SiteGround is Better than GoDaddy
Here are some of the reasons why SiteGround is an alternative that is preferable to GoDaddy:
Better Value for Money
To compare these two hosts in terms of their hosting packages, we will use their managed WordPress hosting packages.
SiteGround GoGeek package starts at $8 per month. This package can host unlimited websites with 40 GB of storage space and free unlimited email hosting. On the other hand, GoDaddy’s managed WordPress Deluxe costs around $12 per month with 40 GB SSD storage and can only host one website.
When compared together, the renewal price of SiteGround is higher, but the value the package presents justifies the higher price. While you can host an unlimited number of websites on SiteGround, GoDaddy will allow only one. Hence, you would need another plan to host additional websites, doubling your expenses. Thus if you have 3 websites, the feature you will be gaining is storage space which does not justify the extra money spent.
Moreover, the free email hosting is not forever as it is on SiteGround. So it has another advantage making it an alternative that can easily replace GoDaddy as a first choice.
Superior Security and Performance
Generally speaking, SiteGround is a better alternative to GoDaddy regarding security and performance.
Unlike GoDaddy, which holds back on security features like DDoS protection, web application firewalls (WAF), malware scanning, etc., it makes available all it has to offer for all hosting plans. Thus, they all come at no extra cost, and you don’t have to upgrade your account to access any features.
At the same time, even though they both use the same web server software, Nginx, SiteGround’s better performance technologies give it a greater advantage. The improved custom PHP and MySQL make SiteGround websites load faster, especially when hosted on CMS that mainly uses PHP, like WordPress. Therefore, you will get better loading speeds for your sites, and it will improve your SEO performance.
Additionally, it has more than 24 data centers and CDN locations worldwide. This is a lot more than GoDaddy’s. Thus, it gives customers more options for data centers, and the CDNs help deliver great loading speeds regardless of their physical location.
It Has Better Customer Support
SiteGround customer support is the best in the industry as of now. It offers multilingual support in more than four languages and is available 24/7, unlike GoDaddy.
The support agents’ response time and expertise surpass that of its counterpart.
Furthermore, SiteGround Knowledge Base and tutorials are quite easy to learn and follow, making them the best tools for beginners. The tutorials are well illustrated to give readers an idea of the texts. Also, there is hardly any important information you need that has not been written about and posted on its website, unlike GoDaddy.
Thus, if you want to enjoy customer support, we suggest that you choose SiteGround as an alternative to partnering with GoDaddy.
Greater Control Panel (Site Tools)
Site Tools is one of the reasons SiteGround is a better alternative to GoDaddy. It is intuitive and more beginner-friendly, with a lot of functionalities.
For instance, Site Tools has a feature that allows you to pin your favorite actions on its dashboard to easily access them. That is not the case for cPanel.
Additionally, it has a very powerful “search and replace” feature that allows you to search for words, phrases, etc., and replace them with another site-wide. This is very helpful for correcting errors that might be occurring from a new SSL installation, and you can also use it to change the entire domain name of your site easily.
Why SiteGround is a Superior Alternative to GoDaddy
Here is a quick list of what SiteGround does better:
- Better customer support
- Greater performance and security
- Better value for money
- Easy and free site migration
- Superior control panel
- Free email hosting forever
3. InMotion
Our last alternative to GoDaddy is InMotion Hosting. InMotion is another web host that is big on delivering great services to customers all over the world consistently.
It has a lot of affordable hosting packages and, despite this, delivers great performance, creating great value for money.
InMotion Summary
It is a great host that uses some of the best performance technologies to create an optimized website hosting environment while maintaining affordability.
InMotion uses an UltraStack server configuration, a combination of Nginx web servers and technologies like Redis object caching, Nginx proxy caching, and Brotli compression. These technologies make PHP execution, database processing, and media transfer at least 20 times faster than normal, leading to great loading speed and a higher potential for SEO success.
It also has a one-click installer for over 100 web apps and gives you access to several eCommerce tools you can use for your online stores. You can access this through the cPanel.
The hosting packages offer free security features like SSL certificates, hack & malware protection, automated backups, and DDoS protection.
You will also get free email hosting and $150 advertising credits for Microsoft or Google ads. Finally, InMotion has a signatory 90-day money-back guarantee on its hosting packages as long as you are on a 6-month or yearly subscription.
InMotion Features
Here are some of the features that make InMotion Hosting a top alternative to GoDaddy:
- Costs as low as $3 per month
- Free domain and SSL
- One-click app installer
- Free email hosting
- Unlimited bandwidth and databases
- Improved security and performance
- Free website builder
- Multiple data centers
- 24/7 customer support
- 90-day money-back guarantee
Why InMotion is a Great Alternative to GoDaddy
Now that we know some of the essential features of InMotion let’s take a deeper look at what makes it a better choice.
Better Affordability and Value for Money
InMotion is generally and conveniently more affordable. It also provides better and more competitive features, making it a reliable alternative to GoDaddy.
Take the starter shared hosting packages of these web hosts, for example. InMotion’s Core costs less than $3 per month with 100 GB SSD, 10 email addresses forever and can host 2 websites. This plan has all the essential features you need, including security setups.
On the other hand, GoDaddy’s Economy price is almost $6 monthly. It can host only one website with 25 GB of web space and 2 mailboxes for a year. Clearly, InMotion is cheaper, and its better features give it greater value for money.
Some essential features here are also sold as add-ons, while InMotion offers them free. Therefore, we recommend going for InMotion if the need to choose between the two web hosts ever arises.
Greater Security Features and Improved Performance
Unlike GoDaddy, which offers security features except for backup and sometimes SSL as add-ons, InMotion has all of them available for use on any hosting plan with no extra pay.
At the same time, the UltraStack configuration of the hosting environment of your server is more powerful than GoDaddy’s and delivers better performance and loading speeds for your websites.
Superior Customer Support
InMotion Hosting’s customer support is also available 24/7 and has numerous seasoned agents who are always on seat and willing to answer your questions or fix issues.
Therefore, it is, in all aspects, better than GoDaddy. To learn more, check our InMotion Hosting review.
How InMotion is an Alternative Which is Better Than GoDaddy
- More affordable and better value for money
- Better customer support
- Free email hosting forever
- Security features included in hosting packages
- Better storage offering
- Longer and more friendly money-back guarantee
GoDaddy Alternatives: At a Glance Comparison
GoDaddy | Hostinger | SiteGround | InMotion Hosting | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Hosting Plans | Shared/managed WordPress/dedicated/VPS | Shared/WordPress/Cloud/VPS/CyberPanel/Minecraft | Shared/WordPress/Cloud/Woocommerce | Shared/WordPress/cPanel/VPS/dedicated/ |
Pricing | Starts around $6 per month | Costs $3 per month | Initially costs around $3 monthly | Introductory price is $3 per month |
Renewal | Renewal costs about $10 monthly | Renews at around $6 per month | Renewal is almost $15 monthly | - |
Website Migration | N/A | Free unlimited sites | Free unlimited sites with a WP automigrator plugin | Free migration |
Data Centers | the USA, UK, India, Singapore | the USA, Europe, the Netherlands, Lithuania, the UK, Brazil, Singapore, India | the USA(4), Brazil, Spain, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Singapore Australia | the West and East Coasts |
Data Center Location Choice | Yes - on some hosting types | Yes - on setup, and free relocation request monthly | On setup for free, and relocation request ($30) | Yes - on setup for free |
Uptime (Pingdom) | 99.96% | 99.98% | 99.99% | 99.985% |
Account Management/Dashboard | Unoptimized account area with cPanel integration | Proprietary modern and easy-to-use hPanel | Modern, customized and beginner-friendly Site Tools | cPanel |
Customer service Expertise and Response Time | Below Average | Excellent | Great | Excellent |
Freebies | A free SSL certificate and domain for one year | Unlimited SSL certificates forever, free domain for a year, email hosting, automated daily and weekly backups, website builder | SSL certificates forever, a free domain, email hosting, automated backups, migrator plugin, security plugin | Unlimited SSL certificates forever, a free domain, email hosting |
Conclusion: What Service is Better than GoDaddy?
Hostinger is the best alternative to GoDaddy in 2024.
It is more affordable and has more features that translate to better value for money, better account management, and ease of use. Its overall speed and performance are unmatched. Thus, we recommend purchasing a Hostinger plan rather than a GoDaddy plan.
At the same, SiteGround and InMotion are pretty incredible alternatives to GoDaddy. They are also more affordable, give better performances, and are packed with features to give better value for money.