The name GoDaddy might be familiar to anyone who has ever watched the Super Bowl, for which the brand has produced commercials that have been both entertaining and controversial. With over 60 million domain names sold and 13 million customers, GoDaddy also happens to be the most popular and largest domain name registrar in the world. They are known for their exceptional service, low prices, and satisfied customers. They even have a website builder tool.
How does their builder rank in the vast field of website builder platforms? We tested it to find out.
Review Outline
Read review sections by clicking the links below:
- Pros and Cons
- Getting Started
- Ease of Use
- Template Selection
- eCommerce with GoDaddy
- GoDaddy Premium
- Noteworthy Points
- Conclusion
Pros and Cons
- Pros
- Cons
- GoDaddy has an excellent customer support team. Being able to run such a large business requires a lot of trained professionals ready to help you at any time with any of your problems. Not only do users receive an excellent level of knowledgeable support, GoDaddy also provides a knowledge base that can answer any questions. If you have any problems with your website builder you can simply open a ticket. Most tickets are answered quickly within a few hours. You can choose from email, live chat, and phone support 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
- Compared to other website builders GoDaddy is almost free. Their cheapest plan, currently priced at $1 per month includes unlimited pages, 150 GB of bandwidth, and 1 GB of disk space – all more than adequate for the average user. This simply cannot be beaten by any of the other major services.
- GoDaddy’s web builder tool is easy for new users. Even if you have never used website creation tools, it won’t be too hard for you to find your way around on this platform. The whole interface is very intuitive and requires little-to-no time or effort to acclimate to the platform. All of the tools are drag and drop and modules can be placed anywhere on a web page. This gives users a lot of creative freedom.
- GoDaddy’s pricing is extremely confusing. Plans begin at $1, but most users will probably pay around $5.99 per month for an option that includes a website builder. On top of that, once you begin adding features that bring GoDaddy’s plans to a comparable level to their competitors, you may notice GoDaddy is more expensive than the competition.
- If you’re relying on people visiting your website from their mobile devices, such as phones and tablets, then GoDaddy’s mobile site options may leave you disappointed. Even though GoDaddy has some great themes to choose from, their focus on mobile versions isn’t quite at the level of other services.
- Feature junkies might find GoDaddy to be lacking. While users get large amounts of storage space and bandwidth, the features pretty much end there. The SEO module, as well as the free SSL certificate are only available with the most expensive plan. Many other features are a la carte.
Getting Started
Creating personal websites like portfolios, blogs, or information pages is a snap using the GoDaddy builder. After choosing your package, simply choose the website builder option and you’re on your way to creating content for your new domain.
GoDaddy’s website builder is a great tool. Adding forms, social media links, Google Maps, images, videos, slideshows, and other on-page features is made extremely intuitive and enjoyable on the drag and drop platform. Users can even add apps like Yelp and Homefinder, increasing the functionality of a site with a few clicks.
Ease of Use
GoDaddy is very easy to use. The website builder uses the popular drag-and-drop, What You See Is What You Get platform. This means that users see exactly what their site will look like before publishing it, without needing to preview it on another page or in a separate application. The tool works similarly to the home screen of any smartphone.
If you would like to use WordPress on your site, you may have slightly more difficulty. Many users complain about setting up WordPress on GoDaddy. In our experience, the process was not as straightforward as on other sites and we understood why so many classified the setup as “intimidating.”
If you run into problems there is an external knowledge base. There you will find tutorials and explanations of how to do all of the basics. It can also teach you some more advanced techniques. Additionally, you can always call customer service, which is one of the most reliable teams we have ever dealt with.
Template Selection
GoDaddy has a great selection of templates. Each theme is fully customizable with some awesome features that you won’t find on even the most popular website builders. They include:
- A library of professional images from Getty.
- A swipe-to-style interface, which allows you to preview different themes with a swipe of a finger/click of a mouse.
- The ability to mix-and-match sections, allowing you to customize your site with different elements from multiple themes.
- Coordinated color sets that always look great.
GoDaddy has really improved since we last used it, and we were surprised by how much we enjoyed their website builder. With GoDaddy, you can build a professional and modern website in no time.
eCommerce with GoDaddy
When we last reviewed GoDaddy, there was virtually no eCommerce option on the site. This is no longer the case. In fact, GoDaddy provides users with some very compelling and competitive reasons to use the platform.
GoDaddy’s selection of store themes is quite good. Storefronts are modern and clean, and the sites are good at scaling for mobile. The platform is zippy and the checkout feature is simple to use.
We really liked setting up a store on the platform. GoDaddy allows users to add unlimited products with up to ten photos each. Inventory management was very easy, requiring just a few clicks for every product to update the description, product features like colors and sizes, and inventory amounts.
The eCommerce platform charges users 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction. This is higher than competitors like Shopify and can really add up over time. Think about it: $2.90 of every $100 you sell will go to GoDaddy. The service does accept credit cards, PayPal, and Apple Pay, which customers will find convenient.
Shipping and taxes are automatically calculated by the system based on the physical location of your business.
GoDaddy Premium
GoDaddy offers a free one-month trial. For a simple website, this is fairly standard. For an eCommerce shop, this is a great deal. Most of the largest eCommerce platforms provide a maximum of two weeks in their free trials.
The Personal plan on GoDaddy costs $5.99 per month after a one-month free trial. Unlike many other services, GoDaddy does not offer discounts to users who pay on a per-year basis. The package is more barebones than other services, offering only a website builder, web hosting, and access to customer support.
The Business plan costs $9.99 per month after a one-month free trial. In addition to all of the features of the Personal plan, the Business plan includes PayPal integration, SSL security, and search engine optimization (SEO) tools. We were surprised that SSL integration was not included with the basic plan.
The Business Plus plan costs $14.99 per month after a one-month free trial. In addition to the features of the Business plan, the Business Plus plan includes a rich email marketing feature, social media integration, and optimized site speed.
Users who want access to GoDaddy’s eCommerce platform will pay $29.99 per month after a one-month free trial. In addition to the features of the Business Plus plan, the Online Store plan includes a built-in shopping cart, the ability to accept credit cards and other payment methods using GoDaddy’s system, automatic shipping and tax calculations, an abandoned cart recovery to remind users about products they left behind, and text message notifications to let you know when orders are placed.
GoDaddy’s pricing models are no expensive, but they are also not as full featured as other competitors. With GoDaddy, you really pay for every single service you want to be included on your site.
Noteworthy Points
One of the most useful features is the ability to backup your website. What does that mean? When you backup your website, simply put, you are creating a copy of it. That copy isn’t active and it stays archived for later use. This is useful if you have a version of your website that is working and you want to make changes to it.
Even though the builder is very simple and intuitive, you can never be sure when your website will display an error. And sometimes those errors can not be undone. That’s when the backup feature comes in handy. Using the backup tool, you can simply restore the last stable version of your website.
We recommend backing up your website every time before you make any changes to it. In addition to that, you should do a backup at least once every fortnight if you are not making any changes. Although it’s very rare, there is a possibility that a server error might occur and some of your website’s data could be lost. A backup requires no special knowledge to make and it takes only a few seconds.
Unlike some other website builders, GoDaddy’s doesn’t have an export function. What that means is that once you decide to stop using the builder, you can’t take your website with you. This is an important consideration when subscribing to their premium packages.
Conclusion
GoDaddy is a website builder worth taking a look at. It has powerful features that enable you to create a site that looks exactly as you want. The mediocrity of the mobile designs can be a drawback for people who are relying on people visiting their website from mobile devices, however.
GoDaddy’s pricing is confusing and not as inexpensive as it sounds. There are many other hosts and website builders with pricing plans that go all out with features, add-ons, and freebies. While GoDaddy is cheap, this is another case of getting what you pay for.
It’s worth giving GoDaddy a try for their website builder alone, but they are certainly not the first company you should consider for your website needs.
