Bluehost vs GoDaddy Hosting: Which Web Host is Better in 2023?

For anyone considering web hosting for their site, two of the most popular names in web hosting you’re sure to come across are Bluehost and GoDaddy. Both are well-known brands in the web hosting space with millions of customers and great reviews between them. 

Bluehost and GoDaddy both have years of experience, being established around the same time (1996 and 1997 respectively). They both offer different kinds of web hosting services, with GoDaddy offering domain registration and a few other business solutions as well. 

So which of these two web hosting giants is a better choice?  Let’s find out!

Bluehost vs GoDaddy: Web Hosting Comparison Overview

Bluehost and GoDaddy are pretty popular service providers, but what makes their services unique to them? And which of these features are truly important to you as a consumer? 

We’ll review both companies based on what a business owner or new website owner needs from their web hosting service provider.

Either of these companies has a stellar record, hence to get a well-rounded view of what each of them can do, we’ll be comparing both web hosts based on similar factors. These include 

• Speed
• Uptime and uptime guarantees
• Security Measures
• WordPress Integration
• cPanel user-friendliness
• Ease of Site Migration 
• Overall ease-of-use
• VPS hosting features
• Shared hosting features
• Managed WordPress plans
• Hosting Plans and Pricing

Since both service providers offer pretty similar hosting plans and features, this could be a close call in some instances. Ultimately, remember that it is your needs that should influence your choice of a web hosting provider as opposed to marketing and hype.

Performance Comparison

Your web host’s performance has a direct effect on how much traffic you can get to your website. It influences your overall conversion rate, whether its email sign-ups, sales, subscriptions or whatever kind of conversion you need.

So what directly affects the performance of your website? Your web hosting provider has to provide first of all adequate speed and bandwidth to handle lots of web traffic. 

Bluehost vs GoDaddy: Hosting Technology

The kind of hosting technology your provider uses directly impacts your site’s speed and responsiveness. Both Bluehost and GoDaddy have sturdy data centers with cutting-edge server power. 

Bluehost’s AMD-based power center combined with CPU segregation technology amps its overall CPU output while keeping your site safe from viruses and malicious attacks.

GoDaddy uses Intel Core i7 processors on its servers plus you have the option of either Windows or Linux OS-based servers when signing up for their services. Both hosts employ pretty current technology and hardware giving them similar performance. 

Again, Bluehost gives you more power and speed by allowing you to connect your website to Cloudflare CDN for free so you can take advantage of their caching technology. 

Thus a visitor to your website who’s in a different country or region will still get a fast site response.  

Given Bluehost’s limited number of data centers, this is beneficial to all their subscribers.

The Cloudflare option is not available with GoDaddy, but you can still sign up for their paid Website Back up add-on feature for added website security and the benefits of CDN plus malware and virus removal.

Bluehost vs GoDaddy: Storage and Bandwidth

Bluehost is known for its budget-friendly shared hosting prices. With ads in almost every empty slot promises very cheap shared hosting plans, it’s natural to wonder if the quality of their service has taken a hit. 

The good news is, much as Bluehost provides a great experience, especially if you’re not a developer. First and foremost is its generous 100GB allowance for sites to store data. On top of that, Bluehost outshines GoDaddy with its free domain registration for a year. 

You’ll also get a free CDN (content delivery network) and free SSL encryption too. SSL is the standard industry when it comes to ensuring your website and visitors are fully protected when they come to your site. 

In fact with Bluehost’s advanced plans, you get unlimited websites and SSD storage so you can work on multiple websites at a time. You can also enjoy Office 365 subscription for the whole year once you sign up. 

GoDaddy on the other hand also gives you lots of storage, in fact, you get a little more with their basic plan, which gives you 100GB storage compared to Bluehost’s 50GB.  Again, apart from the basic plan on GoDaddy, you’re limited to one website without free SSL encryption. 

With plans that offer multiple websites, your storage allocation is supposed to cover all the websites in your account. Another key factor affecting performance is bandwidth, which determines how many visitors your site can handle without lag.  

Both providers offer unlimited bandwidth, albeit with some unclear conditions. GoDaddy for instance mentions it doesn’t limit how much your site uses, but if your site presents a stability, performance, or uptime risk to their servers, they may require you to upgrade. 

Even Bluehost mentions it may cancel your subscription if you exceed their maximum limit which is undisclosed.

Backups

Backups are a necessity if you’re looking into web hosting. You want a web host that gives you the option to automatically back up your site, given how data losses can happen at any time.

Bluehost offers you an automated solution that doesn’t give you a lot of control, which may be a challenge if you’re looking to control when and what exactly is backed up. 

They offer automated backups at their own time and based on their own criteria (in terms of what exactly gets backed up). Unfortunately, they mention that they are not liable for failed backups or any lost data which technically means you’re on your own with regards to data loss. 

If you absolutely need your data backed up, you can pay for the Site Backup Pro added service at $3/month on their lower-priced plans or get it for free on the higher more expensive plans. 

GoDaddy has its own version of this feature, which bills at $2.99/month to safely store your site’s data.

Winner: It’s a Draw. 

Both Bluehost and GoDaddy are pretty neck and neck when it comes to performance. Both offer generous and fast SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, secure encryption, and free domain registration for the first year on almost all their plans.

Speed Test – Which Web Host is Faster?

When it comes to web hosting, speed is everything. Statistics show that two seconds is the ideal loading time for a web page for optimal conversions. In fact, a 5-second delay in your page loading time can increase your site’s bounce rate by as much as 38%! 

Faster page loading times mean better conversions and more visitors staying on your site for long, which is good for business. A good web host will provide all the tech and infrastructure to keep your site at lightning-fast speeds always.

Most Bluehost and GoDaddy reviews mention that either provider offers decent speed, but which really comes out on top? We know in terms of storage both have the speed thanks to super-fast SSD technology. Also, both providers support HTTP2 and updated versions of PHP.

So what’s the catch?

For starters, GoDaddy doesn’t have a native caching system to compress files and make them readily available and hence promote fast page loading times. This option is only available on the Managed WordPress plans. 

Bluehost on the other hand offers server-side caching which gives it the upper hand. There is also the option to add multiple plugins available via WordPress that you can download and install automatically to get that added functionality.

Speed Tests

The best way to tell how fast your web hosting is is via a speed test. There are lots of independent service providers like Pingdom and Dotcom-Monitor that provide insights into how your website is performing in terms of speed and conversions.

There have been several tests run on websites hosted by both GoDaddy and Bluehost to compare which has the fastest hosting. 

The test we looked at was run on Dotcom-Monitor via Dotcom-Tools which lets you run one test while observing the speeds of multiple server locations across the globe. 

Usually, the closer a data center location is to the visitor, the faster the site speed or loading time. Thus by checking the speeds of different servers, you can tell if your web host’s overall speed is fast or generally slow. 

The tests were run on both American based-servers including South American, which is captured in the screenshots below. Between Bluehost and GoDaddy, you’ll see there is a 1.9 second time difference in loading time, with Bluehost’s fastest time being 1.4 seconds. 

This is well within the range of optimal page speed loading time. GoDaddy wasn’t bad, clocking in at 3.4 seconds at its fastest which is borderline for high bounce rates. The slowest time came from the South American server, which was over 16 seconds. 

The average page loading times for both put Bluehost slightly ahead of GoDaddy. Bluehost had an average loading time that ranged between 2.5 – 3 seconds and its slowest loading time being 10 seconds for its Florida based data center. This is far better than GoDaddy’s slowest server speed of 16.8 seconds. 

GoDaddy’s loading times averaged 3.5 – 4.5 seconds, meaning you’re more likely to have slower web loading pages if you choose GoDaddy as a web host.

This is further confirmed by users who have hosted multiple sites using both GoDaddy and Bluehost as service providers. 

Website Traffic Tests

Page loading time is one metric of website speed. Another equally important metric is your site’s ability to handle multiple visitor requests without slowing down or crashing altogether. 

This simply means you want your site to be able to handle thousands of visitors per minute all trying to access content on it, without any lag. The tests we have looked at so far only consider page loading times based on how content-heavy the page is. 

We looked at tests that compared how Bluehost’s servers handle multiple virtual user requests on a website using a tool called Load Impact. The tool starts with a few requests and then increases gradually till the requests reach about 100 virtual visitors. 

You can see a screenshot of results below. 

The green line here is to indicate the server’s response time and the blue line shows you how many active virtual users were on the site. It’s clear the server’s loading time was pretty consistent even with increased demand or traffic.

This means your website’s performance will be fast and stable, even with increased traffic and visitor requests, with Bluehost.

Winner: Bluehost.

GoDaddy’s loading times are decent to be fair, but Bluehost’s average page loading times are far superior to GoDaddy’s even with their best effort.

Even in terms of their slowest performing servers, Bluehost’s server still inched past GoDaddy’s by a 6-second gap. 

That combined with Bluehost’s server-side caching, PHP support, and fast SSD storage give it the winning edge in this category.

Uptime Report and Guarantees

Another critical metric in terms of web hosting performance is uptime which simply is how often your website stays online compared to being offline. Uptime is critical because if it is poor, your online store or business may end up bleeding money in terms of lost sales and customers.

Imagine running a paid ad campaign to your website, only to find that your site is offline. Chances are you won’t only lose money in relation to the campaign, but most visitors to your site won’t come back simply because the site isn’t available. 

This can hurt your business reputation especially if you run a blog, agency, or ecommerce store especially if you had content that has gone viral. Your readers or site visitors may leave reviews in forums or on social media which could be very damaging. 

Thus a high uptime ratio is almost non-negotiable and a good web hosting provider knows this. Several factors influence uptime, making it is near impossible for a web host to guarantee 100% uptime. But generally, a good web host should keep your site online at least 99% percent of the time. 

Your hosting provider’s Service Level Agreement (SLA) usually explains what they can and can’t guarantee you in relation to uptime and downtime periods. 

Some service providers may go the extra mile to give you a month’s worth of free web hosting for every hour of downtime your site experiences just to show you how serious they are about their uptime guarantees. 

Others may give full or partial refunds once the uptime percentage drops below a specified number in their agreement.

Bluehost vs GoDaddy: Which has better uptime guarantees?

GoDaddy claims to provide a 99.9% uptime guarantee which is impressive. They also offer to pay back an amount for any specified period that the server goes as long as it is less than a full month’s worth of service. 

Bluehost on the contrary is silent on the specifics of their uptime guarantee and what qualifies for a refund, stating that any requests will have to be assessed on a case by case basis. Quite shady for a web hosting giant of their caliber.

The only refunds they have clearly mentioned are zero-fee refunds on any unused hosting periods should you decide to end your hosting subscription with them based on downtime. This is quite unusual compared to other web hosts as most offer some kind of uptime guarantee. 

Uptime Reporting

It’s one thing to guarantee uptime and another thing to deliver on it. GoDaddy and Bluehost promise 99.97% and 99.98% uptimes respectively meaning your site will be down less than 3 hours total in a year which is decent and well above industry standards. 

That’s not to say it can’t be better, as some hosting providers guarantee as much as 99.99% uptime, meaning your site could potentially be down for just 30 minutes in any given 12- month period which is pretty impressive.

Compared to tests of several other web hosts, both Bluehost and GoDaddy held their own. GoDaddy’s average monthly downtime was just under 20 minutes, with Bluehost’s also in a similar range. 

This means you’re sure of your website being online and accessible most of the time whether it’s during a sitewide sale or product launch. We further looked at some tests from the independent website monitor, Pingdom, to further confirm these uptime claims. 

This test shows some websites hosted on both platforms compared over a seven-day period to see how each fared in terms of uptime. 

Pingdom didn’t detect any downtime for the four sites hosted by Bluehost and SiteGround during the seven days of monitoring.

The chart clearly shows that both Bluehost and GoDaddy lived up to expectations. For all four test sites hosted by both service providers monitored over a seven day period, none recorded any downtime.

Winner: It’s A Draw

Both Bluehost and GoDaddy deliver on their uptime claims for this category, averaging about 10 – 15 minutes per month of downtime should that be the case. 

While neither offers an iron-clad uptime guarantee in their service agreement, at least GoDaddy has clearer albeit very limited terms on what they give in case your site experiences prolonged downtime.

Security Measures

Security is of topmost priority in the online space. Protecting your website from malware, malicious, and phishing attacks is key to maintaining your website’s integrity and reputation. It’s also important for visitors and customers on your site to protect their personal information. 

The standard way to keep your website protected is to use SSL encryption which is simply a security protocol designed to help users send information securely over the web. Any data sent via SSL is only recognized by the user’s PC and the server it is communicating with. 

In recent times, most web hosting companies offer SSL encryption or SSL certificates for free with their hosting plans, while some may give you the option to purchase an advanced version as an add-on feature. 

SSL certificates aside, both Bluehost and GoDaddy offer SFTP and SSH access on all plans.

Bluehost vs GoDaddy: Security and Cyber Threat Protection

While both Bluehost and GoDaddy provide SSL encryption the catch is that Bluehost offers theirs for free on all plans, whereas GoDaddy only offers it as a paid add-on when you sign up. 

This means if you choose GoDaddy as a web hosting provider you may be left without website security. Unless you pay an extra $2.99/month for its Website Backup feature which offers automated daily site backups plus malware scans and threat protection.  

Clearly, that will add to your cost of subscription, especially if you want to host multiple sites. 

On the contrary, Bluehost offers free SSL certificates with all its plans with the option to upgrade to its paid add-on feature SiteLock Essentials. SiteLock offers more than standard SSL encryption. You get

• Daily Malware Detection Scans
• File Change Monitoring
• Malware Removal
• Targeted Attack Blocking
• Malicious Bot Protection
• Reputation Management and much more. 

SiteLock essentials will cost you an extra $2.99/month just like GoDaddy’s Website Backup feature but you won’t absolutely need to subscribe for the service as Bluehost already gives you free SSL. 

Again, Bluehost’s integration with Cloudflare CDN provides an added layer of protection, specifically from DDoS attacks which can make your website temporarily unavailable to visitors. GoDaddy however doesn’t offer this protection because it is not integrated with Cloudflare. 

Winner: Bluehost

Bluehost’s free SSL certificates plus daily site backups as well as integration with Cloudflare CDN make it a far better choice in terms of website security. 

While GoDaddy offers website security, you may end up not having any if it isn’t within your budget to pay extra every month for that feature.

WordPress Integration

WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems available on the web today. A staggering 60% of websites are hosted on the WordPress platform thanks to its user-friendliness, large community support, and ecosystem of extensions and plugins. 

Most web hosting platforms today have tried to make it easy to install WordPress on the backend of their sites, however, not all are necessarily smooth. WordPress itself has a very short list of recommended web hosts in which Bluehost is included. 

Bluehost is at the top of the WordPress recommended list and offers speedy and excellent WordPress site installation. With its 1-click WordPress installation, you’ll have your site up and running within minutes. The process itself is pretty straightforward from the backend. 

Furthermore, Bluehost brings more control of WordPress to its cheaper shared hosting plans by allowing you to manage your WordPress site settings from the backend. You can enable automatic updates, trash emptying, and even comment moderation on old blog posts. 

GoDaddy doesn’t give you the option to install WordPress with one -click unless you are on its more expensive managed WordPress hosting plans. 

However, you still have access to WordPress management features like automatic updates and backups from their cPanel WordPress installer available on their shared plans. 

Now if you’re looking for more customized WordPress solutions, then you may have to opt for their WordPress hosting plans which are designed specifically to work with WordPress and provide WordPress-based solutions. 

Both Bluehost and GoDaddy WordPress hosting plans offer more bandwidth, hosting-specific solutions, 

Winner: Bluehost 

Bluehost outshines GoDaddy when it comes to WordPress because it not only is WordPress recommended but offers pretty seamless integration of the platform. 

Bluehost’s custom WordPress management features even on its basic shared hosting plans also give you better overall control of your WordPress site compared to GoDaddy.

Which cPanel is Better?

Once you own a website, you’ll need a backend portal to control how the front end of your website looks. This is where cPanel comes in. As the industry standard to backend site control, cPanel helps you take charge of what your site looks and feels like. 

cPanel is the trusted name when it comes to having total control and room to customize your website’s appearance and functionality. From allowing you to install apps, set up business emails, and even modify security, cPanel is your go-to solution for total control of your website. 

Usually, web hosting providers may customize their cPanel on the back end to make it more unique to their service or may even create a native one from scratch like how SiteGround has. 

cPanel user experience can be somewhat difficult to compare since the experience will vary based on the user’s knowledge of technology and experience as a webmaster. But generally both GoDaddy and Bluehost have tried to make their interfaces easy to understand and use.

Here’s how Bluehost’s cPanel looks like:

Bluehost’s cPanel is clear and pretty straightforward with everything in plain sight. You get simple 1-click app and program installations for apps like WordPress, Magento, Joomla, and several other platforms, all on a custom user interface. 

In fact, a good number of Bluehost reviews praise the ease-of-use of their cPanel even for complete newbies. The only downside may be the ads on display which some users find irritating. Other than that, it is pretty clear. 

GoDaddy’s cPanel is also clear and easy to navigate with well-labeled folders. 

Here is what GoDaddy’s cPanel looks like:

The only difference is with GoDaddy’s cPanel, you may have to shuffle around to figure out which tab does what in order to even get to your cPanel control options. If you don’t go into your website backend often, you may have to fidget around a little bit each time. 

GoDaddy also displays ads on the back end of its cPanel though not as invasive as Bluehost’s. 

Winner: Bluehost

While both GoDaddy and Bluehost have fairly clean and simple to navigate cPanel interfaces, Bluehost wins simply because there is less to be confused about. 

Bluehost’s clean, uncluttered, and easy to navigate cPanel makes it easy to manage your website and install any apps you’ll need to keep your site up and fully functional.

Customer Service and Technical Support

Whether or not you’re a developer, experienced webmaster or newbie, there will definitely be instances where you will need an expert’s support when it comes to web hosting. That’s why customer and technical support come in.

Now customer support can be a gray area for some folks simply because customer experience will vary based on who you talk to. Some folks may love it and leave raving reviews while others may just hate it. 

It is also very subjective because it’s hard to tell if the customer’s issue was justified or it was simply a matter of incompetence of the support staff. You just can’t tell who is at fault from a single bad review. 

Because of this, some hosting platforms like SiteGround even go as far as to give waiting time guarantees to ensure you get timely support and eventually earn a positive review. You can learn more from our Bluehost vs Siteground review.

The good thing is there are lots of Bluehost and GoDaddy reviews that highlight both providers’ quality of customer support. Generally, both platforms offer customer support in multiple forms including phone (toll-free option available), live chat, support tickets, and email support. 

They both also have an impressive collection of articles and user libraries to help complete newbies get started with creating their websites. Bluehost takes this a step further with helpful video tutorials so that complete beginners can get started on their own. 

Bluehost offers year-round, round the clock support. This is critical for the times when your web hosting starts unexpectedly causing problems. There is also Bluehost’s free expert consultation, pre-sales, and sales strategies to help you make the most profit from your site. 

However, some reviews highlight that Bluehost’s support staff may not necessarily have in-depth knowledge when it comes to web hosting. That often led to referring any issues to another department that can better solve the problem. 

Understandably, Bluehost’s resolution time is prolonged by this, sometimes for an extra 24- 48 hours depending on the number of requests in the queue.  

GoDaddy does a little better here. Their phone support is pretty responsive, meaning you can get support staff on the phone within the shortest possible time. 

However, their support staff don’t seem as helpful with web hosting issues as they are with domain registration issues which is a big part of their business. Again, their chat is pretty slow to respond and support staff on the receiving end don’t respond fast enough between exchanges. 

Winner: GoDaddy 

GoDaddy inches past Bluehost slightly here simply because you can get a faster response by phone since at the end of the day, no one likes to work. 

Other than that, both providers have similar quality of customer service in terms of how helpful support staff are and timely resolution of problems.

Which Web Hosting Service Offers an Easier Website Migration

So what happens if you already have an existing website and are simply looking to switch between hosting platforms? This where site migration becomes important. A lot of hosting providers will offer to help migrate your site for free, within 24 hours to a few days. 

Bluehost and GoDaddy both particularly make this process easy but between the two one clearly takes the cake. For starters, both service providers offer paid migration services to make sure your site migration doesn’t turn into a tech headache. 

Bluehost charges anywhere up to $149.99 for five sites along with 20 business emails. This paid service is 100% hands-off and expedited by Blue host’s team of experts. 

All your databases and files linked to your previous hosting account will be moved with zero stress to you. No need to know code or have any tech experience. 

If you’re on a budget, Bluehost has a free migration option for WordPress based sites too, based on specific criteria. One is you need to have already signed up for a hosting account with them. After, you can request a free migration by filling a form in your Bluehost dashboard.

Next, you’ll hear from Bluehost’s migration team who will take a look at other details like your site’s database, size, PHP version and other factors to determine if it qualifies for free migration.

GoDaddy Migration

GoDaddy also offers free website migration services however their service needs a lot more elbow grease compared to Bluehost’s. 

First of all, it’s not done-for-you like how Bluehost’s is. If your site isn’t built on WordPress, you’ll have to do the migration yourself by downloading your site’s files and uploading them to your GoDaddy backend. 

If your site is a WordPress site, the process is a little more streamlined. Simply add it via the “My Products” section of your GoDaddy account, after you choose which hosting plan you prefer and follow the prompts to complete the process. 

Winner: Bluehost.

While both GoDaddy and Bluehost offer free website migration, Bluehost makes the process more painless and hands-off compared to GoDaddy. 

Their team of website migration experts handle everything for you, so you don’t have to worry about data losses or serious errors that may affect your site’s performance.

Bluehost vs GoDaddy: Which Web Host is Better for Beginners?

Web hosting by nature is a somewhat intimidating subject to anyone who isn’t in tech. There are so many terms and so much jargon that it can feel almost overwhelming. A good web host makes using their service as easy and straightforward as possible, even for complete newbies. 

Both Bluehost and GoDaddy do well when it comes to making their service easy to get started with even if you’ve never owned a website before. However, there is a key difference in the kind of support you get with either provider when you are building a site. 

If you’re looking to build your own site from scratch and are looking for a very hands-on approach, GoDaddy gives you more room for that, if you choose not to use their native drag-and-drop builder. 

On the other hand, if you’d like something that is no frills and straightforward without much hand-holding, then Bluehost’s integration with Weebly makes this simple. You can also use Bluehost’s Builder tool which is an intuitive drag-and-drop builder for creating your site in seconds. 

Winner: It’s A Draw. 

Both Bluehost and GoDaddy offer out-of-the-box intuitive website builders that make creating your own site in seconds. Whether you have tech experience or not, you’ll find a website builder solution that you can use on both platforms.

Shared Hosting Comparison

Shared web hosting is by far the most popular choice of hosting for anyone just starting out online. Whether you’re starting a blog or building an online store, shared hosting is the perfect way to feel out what you need for your online business if you’re on a budget. 

In shared web hosting, your site shares a server with several other sites, splitting in resources like storage, bandwidth and RAM, which is part of why it’s cheap. However your site’s performance may take a hit if other sites on the same server suddenly need more resources.

Bluehost Shared Hosting Plan Features

Bluehost is well-known for having some of the most affordable shared hosting prices. The company doesn’t offer month-to-month billing though but only offers annual subscriptions for a year, two-years and three years respectively with prices dropping the longer you subscribe. 

If you’re looking for their cheapest offer, you could sign up for the 36-month deal which gives you $3.95/month billing for the period. If committing to a web host for that long doesn’t appeal to you, you can check out our shared web hosting review for other shared hosting plan options. 

In terms of features, all Bluehost’s shared hosting plans come with unlimited websites and storage except their lowest offer which limits you to just one website and 50GB storage. You also get custom themes, free CDN and free SSL across all plans. 

If you opt for their higher-tier shared hosting plans, you enjoy free automated backups, domain privacy and even a free dedicated IP which can be useful when anyone is trying to reach your website without using your domain name. 

Thanks to the above features, your website’s security even on Bluehost’s shared hosting plans is robust. 

GoDaddy Shared Hosting Plan Features

GoDaddy is better known as a domain registrar but that doesn’t mean their shared hosting plan prices aren’t competitive. If you’re on a budget, you may assume GoDaddy’s shared hosting plans are a little bit pricey compared to Bluehost’s.

But the main difference here is that GoDaddy let’s you pay for a minimum of three or twelve months on sign up, each plan with a steeper discount. That technically means you’ll need less to get started with GoDaddy out the door compared to Bluehost.

Plus it’s easier to switch once your subscription ends after three or 12 months, compared to a year or two years. But what are you really getting in terms of performance at that price? 

Well for starters, you do get 100GB storage even on their cheapest plan, compared to 50GB from Bluehost. 

Like Bluehost, you get unlimited storage and websites but you also get unmetered traffic and a varied number of databases per plan which is important for your site’s performance. 

However the real kicker here is the fact that there is no free SSL unless you pay for their Website Backup feature at an extra $2.99/month. Case in point, you’ll end up spending $48.76 more per annual subscription with GoDaddy, just to get SSL compared to Bluehost.

SSL certificates are critical to a website’s security plus they build your site’s credibility and help visitors trust your site more. Given that lots of web hosting providers offer SSL for free, it makes it paying extra for it not an appealing choice.

Winner: Bluehost.

Both Bluehost and GoDaddy offer pretty much the same features on their shared hosting plans. GoDaddy’s hosting plans are a little bit more pricey. You’ll also need to pay extra for website security which is almost mandatory if you own a website today. 

But Bluehost gives you free SSL certificates, giving it the edge in this category.

VPS Hosting Comparison

For websites that have outgrown shared hosting but are not yet up to owning their own server, VPS hosting provides the perfect middle ground between hosting that works like you have your own dedicated server but at a pocket-friendly price. 

VPS hosting is basically you being given dedicated resources like RAM and SSD via a virtual partition on a server as well as more security. So even though you may be sharing the server with other websites, your resource allocation is yours and yours alone, unlike in shared hosting.

Bluehost and GoDaddy both offer VPS hosting plans with very competitive features. 

Bluehost VPS Hosting Features

Bluehost’s VPS hosting plans give you the ultimate value and performance you need from a VPS plan. For starters, Bluehost offers incredible speed, allowing you to choose between two or four cores. 

There are three pricing options of Linux-based VPS hosting to choose from, each with its set of features. The lowest offer is $29.99/month with 30GB of SSD, 2GB of memory while the highest plan offer is $119.99/month for 120GB storage and 8GB memory. 

All VPS plans come with unlimited monthly data transfers and at least an IP address. On top of that, you get redundant storage which helps free up space to handle other important processes.

As Bluehost does (and most other web hosting companies for that matter do) with its shared hosting plans, you pay less when you sign up for longer periods at a go. Bluehost however doesn’t give you the option to have a Windows-based VPS. 

GoDaddy VPS Hosting Features

GoDaddy also has a pretty impressive set of features that make it a viable option for those who want the power of a dedicated server without the hefty price tag.

You get to choose between a low-powered yet cheap option and more advanced plan options.

Again, with GoDaddy’s VPS hosting plans, there’s a Windows-based server option alongside the Linux one, which is important if you’re building on the ASP.net framework.

The specs are limited to 8GB of RAM, 240GB of storage, and a free SSL for one year. That’s a good offer especially if you sign up for a multi-month plan. All GoDaddy’s VPS hosting plans also come with free Office 365 Starter emails just like with their shared hosting plans.

You equally get root access and automated daily backups too. 

If you’re looking for maximum savings, try their Economy Virtual Private server plan under the high RAM option. Choosing to subscribe for 2 years will bring the price down to $9.99/month which is about 50% off.  

Winner: GoDaddy

This is a really close call as both service providers offer comparable features with their VPS plans.

But what makes GoDaddy stand out is the variety of pricing options they have just for VPS hosting. You’ll find something that is powerful and works even if you’re on a budget.

Managed WordPress Hosting Comparison

Given the large number of WordPress based sites today, many web hosting providers offer WordPress hosting. This is simply web hosting that provides WordPress specific features and solutions. 

Even the sales and customer reps are trained to be knowledgeable in all things WordPress so that customers get better support for their WordPress sites. Usually, there are two variants when it comes to WordPress hosting, managed and unmanaged WordPress hosting.

Generally, unmanaged WordPress hosting is for the folks who want complete control and customizability over their WordPress sites. There is little to no automation or added services by your hosting provider. 

Managed WordPress hosting on the other is a more hands-off approach to managing your WordPress site. Here your provider will handle things like backups, performance monitoring, malware, and cyber threat detection plus removal and also premium customer support.

GoDaddy’s Managed WordPress Hosting Features

GoDaddy gives you a choice of four pricing plans for Linux-based WordPress hosting. Their basic WordPress hosting plan starts from $6.99/month and gives you 30 GB storage for one site plus up to 25,000 visitors per month for free. 

You still get automated daily backups, free malware scans, free SSL as well as a free business email for the 1st year. 

The remaining plan pricing ranges up to $15.99/month as an introductory price and gives you unlimited storage, traffic, products, appointment scheduling, SEO optimization, and free premium Woocommerce extensions. 

GoDaddy’s managed WordPress comes with WordPress already installed so you don’t need to spend any time downloading and installing the CMS. 

Once you’re in the backend, you still have the flexibility of creating posts, pages, and adding content to your site like you normally would using their easy drag-and-drop builder. 

Bluehost Managed WordPress Hosting Features

Bluehost comes WordPress recommended, thus it’s natural to expect more from their managed WordPress plans simply because their servers and hosting technology are simply designed to work better with WordPress.

With Bluehost, you get to choose from three plans to choose from. The Build, Grow and Scale plan. These options all give your site the white-glove treatment on the backend. All plans come with

• 20 – 80GB storage
• a monthly traffic quota ranging from 50,00 visitors per month to 500,000 visitors per month.
• lots of premium themes, a free trial of office 365 business email
• Bot and brute force protection
• Free SSL
• Domain privacy and protection
• free Jetpack plugin (both premium and standard versions).

The Build plan gives you free premium WordPress themes while the Grow and Scale plans offer more features on top of the Build Plan. The Grow plan gives you SEO and business review tools, up to 10GB of video compression, and priority support. 

The Business review tools here simply let visitors to your site leave positive reviews on Yelp, Google, Yahoo and Bing directly from your site. 

The Scale plan provides unlimited video compression, unlimited and on-demand backups as well as site restore, priority chat, elastic search or live ticket support as well as Paypal integration. 

Like GoDaddy, Bluehost doesn’t need you to install the CMS as it comes already pre-installed. 

All you need to do is log in to your backend to create and upload content as needed. Apart from that, you also get a free WordPress migration tool so you can export any existing sites as .XML files. In fact, Bluehost’s website migration is free for single WordPress sites. 

If you have up to five sites with 20 email accounts, that may cost you an additional $149.

Winner: GoDaddy

With so many added features like SEO support, business review tools, video compression Bluehost is a great choice for Managed WordPress hosting.

However, GoDaddy’s pretty impressive suite of features at both budget-friendly and premium prices gives you more room to choose and better value. Plus they offer unlimited visitors and traffic on their highest priced plan which is still cheaper compared to Bluehost’s premium plan.

Hosting Plans & Pricing Comparison 

Clearly, both web hosting giants try to pull their weight in the price department. With either option offering steep introductory price discounts with cutting edge features, what dealbreakers should you be looking out for? 

Ultimately, you want the option that provides the best value for money. You may also want to look at renewal prices as well. Given that it is industry practice to give steep discounts for longer subscription periods, you may be caught off-guard when it’s time to renew your subscription. 

That aside, Bluehost and GoDaddy offer comparably priced web hosting with features not too far apart.. Nonetheless, we wouldn’t recommend choosing a web hosting provider based on price alone, as reliability and customer support are more important factors. 

Bluehost Pricing

Shared Hosting

Arguably, Bluehost is known for its very cheap hosting prices especially if you sign up for 36 months from the onset for which you’ll pay only $3.95/month. However you will pay $9.99/month on renewal for the same plan for 12 months and $8.99/month for a 36-month period.

On the most basic shared hosting plan you’ll get 50GB, 1 website, a free domain, CDN and SSL certificates. You can also benefit from their 30-day money back guarantee in case you’re not pleased with the service.

All other advanced shared hosting plans give you unlimited websites and storage. The Plus plan and Choice Plus plan both offer free Office 365 for 30 days. The Choice plus plan gives you domain privacy and automated backups as well. 

VPS Hosting

In terms of VPS hosting, Bluehost offers three plans to choose from ranging from $19.99/month for the cheapest plan up to $59.99/month on the highest priced plan. Its features are pretty simple with no frills; lots of bandwidth and at least one unique IP address across all plans. 

The Standard and Enhanced plans both give you 2 cores, 30 and 60GB storage, 2GB and 4GB RAM respectively. You also get 1 and 2 TB of bandwidth on either plan. The Ultimate plan gives you 4 cores, 120GB SSD, 8GB RAM and 3TB bandwidth. 

Managed WordPress Hosting

If you own a WordPress site, you’ll benefit from Bluehost’s managed WordPress hosting plans. Designed to give you unique WordPress based solutions and done-for-you site management.

Managed WordPress hosting from Bluehost comes with automated backups, malware scanning,  domain privacy and protection, site performance monitoring, the Jetpack plugin and a free office 365 trial for 30 days. 

Plans start from $19.95/month for 20GB web storage and 50, 000 visitors per month, to $29.95/month for 40GB storage and 150k visitors monthly. 

The highest priced option gives you 500,000 monthly visitors and 80GB storage plus Paypal integration at $59.99/month making it ideal for ecommerce websites. There are also other free add-on services like SEO and business review tools. All the above prices are introductory offers.

GoDaddy Pricing

GoDaddy is better known for offering cheap domain registration services, but its web hosting plans are quite competitive. It is really a matter of what you need versus how much you want to spend. 

Shared Hosting

GoDaddy keeps up with the industry practice by offering low introductory prices giving you their lowest priced plan at $5.99/month for the first 36 months you subscribe after which the plan renews at $8.99/month. 

Their minimum plan gives you 1 website, 100GB storage, unmetered traffic/bandwidth, free Office 365 email for the first year as well as a free domain for the first year. All other shared hosting plans give you unlimited websites, storage and bandwidth.  

The Deluxe and Ultimate plans give you free DNS which is equivalent to domain privacy as well as free SSL certificates for $12.99 and $19.99/month for the first 36 months respectively. 

The plus here is that unlike Bluehost that doesn’t give you the option to sign up for less than 12 months at a time, GoDaddy lets you subscribe for 3,12, 24 or 36 months at a time. So if you’re looking to test them out short-term, you have an option. 

They also have a 30-day money back guarantee as well, just in case you’re not satisfied with the service within the first month. So you’re covered on all fronts here. 

VPS Hosting Plans

GoDaddy’s VPS hosting plans offer up to eight choices split between two categories, standard RAM options and high RAM options. Also they currently have up to 37% discount on their VPS plans all through renewal periods. 

The cheapest standard RAM plan starts at $4.99/month for 1GB RAM, 1 CPU core and 20GB SSD storage making it pretty affordable compared to other VPS hosting plans. The remaining plans offer 2, 4 and 8 CPU cores plus 4, 8 and 16GB RAM per plan ranging up to $69.99/month.

High RAM plans start from $9.99/month up to $99.99/month giving you the same CPU cores as the standard plan, but 4, 8, 16 and 32GB RAM with up to 400GB SSD storage. You also get to configure your server to your preference on all plans. 

Managed WordPress Hosting

Finally, GoDaddy’s WordPress hosting plans are also competitively priced, starting from $6.99/month up to $15.99/month. All plans come with website protection and 1-click restoration plus daily automatic malware scans. 

Like Bluehost, their most expensive plan is designed to suit large ecommerce businesses, offering features like appointment scheduling, unlimited products, appointment scheduling, zero transaction fees and real-time shipping rates. 

While some may argue they can get some of the features in their most advanced VPS plan via free extensions or plugins on WordPress, it’s still nice to get these already baked into your hosting at no extra charge.

Winner: It’s A Draw.

Bluehost has the lower priced option when it comes to shared web hosting at $3.95/month if you subscribe for 36 months.  

GoDaddy does a similar thing with their shared hosting prices, giving you steeper discounts for beyond 12 months. However you pay $5.99/month when you sign up for 3 years without free SSL except on higher priced plans. Bluehost gives it to you for free on all plans.

Bluehost vs GoDaddy: Pros and Cons

Now that we’ve seen what both web hosts have to offer, let’s really weigh them based on their perks and downsides. If you’ve been unclear up to this point about which of these popular brands to go with, this section will help clear it out for you. 

As always, keep your business needs in mind here, especially if you’re going for VPS or Managed WordPress hosting as both companies have a few features that makes those plans distinct. 

If you’re however debating on shared hosting, you’re pretty much going to be picking apples from apples. 

Both of their cheapest plans give you 1 website with Bluehost offering 50 GB of storage, unmetered bandwidth, 1 free domain, and 5 email accounts whereas GoDaddy gives you 100GB storage and up to 95 more email addresses. 

Move a step higher to Bluehost’s $4.95/month plan and GoDaddy’s $4.99/month plan and you’ll find almost everything is unlimited. The only difference being GoDaddy caps email addresses at 500 but Bluehost gives unlimited email addresses. 

Bluehost Review

Bluehost has made its mark as one of the most affordable options when it comes to shared web hosting. Aside from competitive features like unlimited websites and storage, you also get free SSL certificates on all plans. 

They are also one of the few web hosting companies that are recommended by WordPress, making them ideal for users who are looking to build websites using WordPress. 

Thus their Managed WordPress plans offer pretty impressive features including daily backups, malware scans and even business review and SEO tools. Nonetheless, Bluehost isn’t without its downsides. 

Pros

• Impressive uptime and page loading times.
• Clear, easy to use and navigate interface.
• Free, completely managed website migration for WordPress sites.
• 30-Day money back guarantee.
• Free SSL certificates and impressive website security.

Cons

• No option for Windows-based hosting
• No cloud hosting
• No option to pay monthly.

GoDaddy Review

GoDaddy built its name as a domain registrar but its web hosting plans are packed with excellent features meant to position your website for success. 

Its shared hosting plans may not be as cheap as Bluehost’s and you will have to pay extra to get website security on its lower-tier web hosting plans.

GoDaddy however lets you pay for three months and then 12 months, allowing you to get started with less without having to commit for a year or more. You‘re also protected by their 30-Day money back guarantee.

Again, GoDaddy’s interface may be a little cluttered and not the easiest to navigate for some folks. Plus, the many upsells like website backup and other add-on features can be overwhelming while still inflating your overall subscription costs. 

Nonetheless, you get more variety across their other hosting plans like Windows-based, Managed WordPress and VPS hosting. You still get responsive customer service and above standard speed and uptime on all their plans.  

Pros

• Responsive phone and live chat support.
• Windows and Linux-based server options.
• Full Microsoft office integration.
• Wider variety of plans and custom server configuration for VPS hosting.
• Affordable managed WordPress hosting plans.
• 30-day money back guarantee.
• 100GB storage on minimum shared hosting plan.

Cons

• No cloud hosting.
• No free SSL certificates on lower shared hosting plans 
• Little technical support with free site migration.

Bluehost vs GoDaddy FAQs

Should You Use Bluehost or GoDaddy for Your Website?

Both Bluehost and GoDaddy are well-renowned giants in the web hosting space. Bluehost offers very low shared hosting prices as long as you don’t mind signing up for 36 months at a go. 

Apart from low prices, they do incredibly well in terms of speed, uptime and ease-of-use. So choose Bluehost if user-friendliness, site speed and price matter to you. 

GoDaddy offers relatively cheap shared hosting plans, though not as cheap as Bluehost for extended periods. You get more variety and cheaper plans to choose from especially when it comes to Managed WordPress and VPS hosting plus customer support that you can reach fast. 

Choose GoDaddy if you’re looking for budget-friendly Managed WordPress, Windows-based or VPS hosting plans.