How to Leave GoDaddy and Get a Better Web Host and Registrar
Many people are under the impression that GoDaddy is competitively priced, provides reliable service, and is relatively easy to use. This may have been the case 15 years ago, but today, there are many other far superior (and less expensive) web hosting providers out there. In this blog, I outline five reasons you may want to consider switching to another hosting provider too. But before we get into that, I provide a quick refresher about what web hosting means.
Article at a Glance:
Here is a broad level overview of the reasons why I personally don’t like GoDaddy and what hosting providers I recommend using instead:
What Does Hosting Mean?
If you type “web host meaning” into Google you’ll get a lot of different answers, which vary based on the perspective and depth of the explanation. To put it as simply as possible though, web hosting is a service that allows your website’s content to be accessible on the internet. You are essentially renting space on a physical server where your website’s data and files can be stored.
A good web host doesn’t just store your website’s information, but also implements security measures, ensures that data is transferred successfully, and has a reliable customer support team with features such as SSL certificates, business email accounts, and content delivery networks (CDN).
GoDaddy has these extra features, but, as of 2022, there are countless alternatives that provide superior services that are more intuitive and cost less. Which brings me to the number one reason I don’t recommend GoDaddy hosting:
#1: GoDaddy is Expensive
GoDaddy’s prices aren’t only high for basic services like a domain name (at $11.99 for a first time customer, and then renewing at $17.99 in the future), it’s hosting is also overpriced. For example, GoDaddy’s shared web hosting Starter plan costs $3.99 per month, and includes the hosting of one website and 30 GB of storage. If you want an SSL certificate, email, or more bandwidth, it will cost even more. Comparatively Cloudflare offers you all this for free.
#2: Flexibility Issues
GoDaddy is often used as a web hosting service in part because of the free themes it offers to customers. However, all the themes it provides are, as past customers usually report (when it’s too late) not flexible. Changing from one theme to another, for example if you wanted to switch to a WordPress theme from ThemeForest, there is a good chance that you would lose a lot of your current site data in the process. And if you haven’t paid for the backup and restore feature, the situation could easily go from bad to worse.
#3: Terrible Customer Support
GoDaddy has more than 20 million customers around the world, and, if you ask any of them who have had to deal with customer support, they will tell you how disappointing it is. Often you have to wait 48 hours for a response to an inquiry, wait times are long on the phone, and there is also a good likelihood you will be talking to someone who is difficult to understand due to a bad connection or English being a second language. It’s also not uncommon for calls to just drop off and never getting a call back, so having to go through the whole long process of going through their frustrating call system all over again.
#4: Lack of Useful Tools
Many hosting providers provide a lot of free useful tools as part of their hosting plans. For example, free SSL certificate, SSD storage, power cache, reliable data and backup restore features, and privacy protection are often all completely free with a starter plan. However, with GoDaddy, neither their Starter, Economy, nor Delux shared web hosting plan have any of the above tools included for free. It’s just not a good deal.
#5: Slows Down Your Site
GoDaddy used to be the only domain registrar business owners ever heard about. This led them to get a dominant position in the niche. However, they seem to have not invested much into their servers, as most of the time they seem to extremely overloaded. In other words, they host too many sites on the same server, leading to longer load times.
A slower site is not only annoying, but it can be devastating for your SEO (search engine optimization) as well. Google has stressed more than once that a fast site helps you rank better, and as a ranking factor it is only becoming increasingly important in recent years. When you get web design services, SEO content marketing services (which, if you are interested, I recommend you reaching out to my friends at Conceptual Creations), if your site is too slow to load, you are going to be missing out on both traffic from searchers as well as SEO ranking.
If your site is being hosted on GoDaddy and loading a new page seems to take too long, switching to a new
Better Alternatives to GoDaddy Hosting
How to Switch to a New Hosting Provider
- Choose a new hosting provider
- Sign up for an account
- Transfer your domain to the new hosting provider
- Cancel your GoDaddy account
It is pretty simple to do this all yourself, but if you want to make sure the whole process goes smoothly, or you want some advice about which alternative hosting provider to choose, feel free to contact me at 970.443.4844 or message me online!
Happy Hosting!
