GODADDY vs BLUEHOST

by Nate Shivar

GoDaddy has the brand, pricing, and mind-share in the website industry. BlueHost is one of the oldest and most reputable shared hosting companies on the Internet. Here’s my comparison of BlueHost vs. GoDaddy for best choice in web hosting. So let’s dive in and compare GoDaddy vs. BlueHost for best web hosting company for anyone just starting out or running their own website.

Price

Comparing BlueHost and GoDaddy on price is quite difficult for 2 reasons. First, they both run frequent specials (see BlueHost’s current deal here & GoDaddy’s here), so their pricing is never going to exactly align in the short-term. Second, GoDaddy offers tiers of service for their shared hosting, whereas BlueHost offers 1 tier – unlimited everything for 1 price. EDIT 9-28-2014 Bluehost now offers tiers, but their old single plan is called “Plus.” The new tiers consists of a super cheap, but limited Starter plan, and a Business Pro tier with a couple domain upsells. The tiers on Bluehost and GoDaddy are apples to oranges – with a different tiering focus for each. Here’s an approximate cheat sheet for now –

BlueHost Starter Plan = GoDaddy Economy Plan
BlueHost Plus Plan ~ GoDaddy Deluxe Plan (GoDaddy Deluxe caps the number of databases you can have)
BlueHost Plus Plan ~ GoDaddy Ultimate Plan (BlueHost Plus does not include an SSL)
BlueHost Business Pro ~ GoDaddy Ultimate Plan (GoDaddy Ultimate does not include dedicated IP address or domain privacy)

I’ve set up websites for clients who use GoDaddy and BlueHost. I currently have 1 website hosted on GoDaddy. What I’ve found the pricing trend to be is that BlueHost is cheaper long-term (ie, after a year), and is always cheaper for what you get in features.

If you are looking for a super dirt cheap hosting solution for 1 small website (with storage limitations) – GoDaddy is generally cheaper with specials, but Bluehost’s Starter plan is comparable and usually just a dollar more expensive after promo.

BlueHost’s Plus plan pricing is $9.99/mo for unlimited everything – unlimited databasesand unlimited storage, and domain mapping. They will often discount it to $5.95/mo if you register for a longer time period.

GoDaddy has a couple comparable plans. The Deluxe is very similar to the Bluehost Plus plan, except it caps the number of databases (ie, WordPress websites) you can have. It is slightly cheaper with yearly at $8.99/mo and discounts often down to $4.99/mo. The Ultimate package is standard pricing $14.99/mo with discounts down to $7.49/mo. It has unlimited databases, but also adds on an SSL & premium DNS – which are not especially needed by most websites.

So if you are really in a pinch for cash and want something super-cheap – no matter how limited – GoDaddy and BlueHost tie on the lowest tier pricing. If you are looking for truly unlimited features (especially if you have multiple websites or lots of media uploads planned) & don’t need the SSL certificate or premium DNS (usually these are best purchased separate from hosting anyway) – then you’ll get a better long term deal on web hosting with BlueHost plans – especially their Plus plan.

But pricing isn’t the end all, be all – let’s look at usability.

Usability

When you sign up for hosting – you don’t get a website, you get a place to “put your website” – as it were. So you get a dashboard to operate your hosting account – add domains, install files, manage databases, install WordPress, etc.

Since it is the backend of a server – it’s not going to be super-user friendly, but it’s also nice to be able to install and manage your account without having to learn programming.

BlueHost uses a backend called cPanel – which is the industry standard. Typically, cPanel comes with an unpolished, but straightforward interface. With their 2014 re-brand, BlueHost has really polished the backend, and organized it with different tabs to reduce the appearance of clutter. They have also added several educational options in addition to the big green Install WordPress button.

In July 2013, GoDaddy had a proprietary backend that was sleeker and more straightforward than cPanel, but became frustrating, limiting, and unwieldy if you ever tried to build out multiple sites on the account.

With GoDaddy’s Fall 2013 re-brand, they officially switched over to the industry-standard cPanel, just like BlueHost. They did customize it a bit to make it more user-friendly like BlueHost.

In July 2013, I said that – “for deciding between BlueHost vs. GoDaddy on usability, it all depends on what type of usability you are looking for. If you are a beginner who wants an easy to use setup – and never plans on really changing anything else – GoDaddy wins. It has a sleeker, easier interface on it’s web hosting backend. If you are looking for long-term usability with the flexibility and options to meet whatever project you are trying out – BlueHost wins.”

After both the rebrands and GoDaddy switching to cPanel, they are really just about the same. I like BlueHost’s small educational touches, but GoDaddy’s integration with their other heavily used products (like domains) is a big plus as well. For usability, I’d say they are a tie. It’s really personal preference. But kudos to GoDaddy for switching over to cPanel.

However, no matter what you get as far as usability goes – you will inevitably run into problems. And that’s where customer support comes in

Support

GoDaddy and BlueHost both boast the full gamut of support options. They both have a deep knowledgebase and FAQs. The both offer 24/7 email, phone, and chat support. And they both have active user forums.

BlueHost has a 3 minute wait for phone support

While GoDaddy’s has an 11 minute phone wait time

Now, judging customer support is always going be a bit anecdotal, especially if you don’t need to utilize it much. Your phone or email rep is a person – and so on any given moment, your experience might be better than mine (for example, my experience with Comcast support has always been fabulous FWIW)

Based on my experience with both companies – and talking with people who use both as well – I’ve found GoDaddy’s support to be adequate. I always have to wait several minutes on the phone. I always have to explain a couple times what my issue is. But overall, they get the job done, and my problem fixed. No horror stories – just nothing super-special.

BlueHost on the other hand has always provided me fast, fabulous support. I’ve spoken with them via phone and email, and had great experiences with them both times. From my other friends and sources – I’ve found that it wasn’t a one-off. BlueHost has highly rated customer service, and seems to deserve it.

So in comparing BlueHost and GoDaddy – BlueHost comes out on top with customer support.

Hosting Features

Based on new tiers & features As mentioned in the pricing section, both GoDaddy (“Economy” and “Deluxe” and “Ultimate) and BlueHost (“Starter” and “Plus” and “Business Pro”) offer tiers that don’t quite line up which throws direct comparisons off a little bit.

The absolute core features of any hosting plan are – the number of websites (domain names that can be assigned to a website on the account), databases (the number of unique website installations on the hosting account), and disk space (how much stuff you can put on your server).

If you know that you only want 1 super-cheap place to host 1 small website – then you should consider GoDaddy’s Economy package or BlueHost’s Starter plan. They both limit your websites, storage, and databases – but equally. It’s actually a pretty solid head to head comparison.

When you look at the other plans, things get slightly more complicated. But the key feature to call out is databases. BlueHost doesn’t limit them on the Plus plan. GoDaddy caps them at 25 on the Deluxe (which otherwise is comparable to the Plus plan). On the flip side, GoDaddy’s Unlimited plan does do unlimited storage, databases, and domains – but also adds SSL certificates and Premium DNS to the plan. Both of which are not really necessary for a non-ecommerce website…and are usually cheaper and better if you buy them separately anyway (ie, like domain registrar).

Another important features of hosting is the memory limit – especially if you are setting up WordPress hosting. Memory limit is how much resources your shared hosting account is allocated to produce your website every time a visitor loads your site (ie, more memory = faster load time, and more visitors allowed before crashing).

Both BlueHost and GoDaddy used to set pretty low initial limits before 2014. However, BlueHost has their’s set to 256 megabytes by default. GoDaddy does not. I’ve found back ways that you can increase it on your GoDaddy account…but it’s a real pain. Not a pain worth $12 extra per year.

That example carries over to several other features – whether it’s multimedia support, database support, or courtesy backups – BlueHost has a much stronger core feature offering vs. GoDaddy. However, as covered in the usability section – that’s not always a plus. The ability to run Ruby databases or setup a Listserv (as you can on BlueHost) doesn’t always mean something to someone who just wants to set up WordPress hosting.

BlueHost really wins on core feature offering – especially when you look at price tiers. However, I set aside a separate rubric of extra features to consider. Features that aren’t technically part of the web hosting – but come with the hosting package.

Features – Extras

While both BlueHost and GoDaddy come with 1-click WordPress installs – GoDaddy comes with the easiest. GoDaddy also provides Premium DNS and beats BlueHost on free ad money (they both do Google, but GoDaddy offers Bing & Facebook money).

GoDaddy also offers a free “website accelerator” – which is basically a content deliver network run off their global network (if you said huh? – a content delivery network is basically a way of staging your website at different places in the world to offer faster delivery). I’ve never tested GoDaddy’s content delivery network, but if it works – that would be a pretty sweet extra feature. EDIT 9-28-2014 BlueHost now offers a CDN with their Plus plan. They both offer a free domain for a year with web hosting. But in the end, I threw this rubric in to even the scales on features because BlueHost still wins on overall features due to the flexibility they provide in their hosting plan.

Conclusion

So – who wins Bluehost vs. GoDaddy in 2014? It depends on who you are and what you are looking for. If you are looking for the best overall deal on web hosting – especially WordPress hosting, then BlueHost is going to be your best bet by far (see their plans with promos)

I would caution that the usability factor does go against BlueHost, so if you don’t mind the limitations of GoDaddy – and just want something that you can click, click, set up and forget – then you should check out GoDaddy.