GoDaddy is among the sweetest choices for beginner sites and any new business e-commerce that doesn’t have a ton of content and traffic. And we would be the first one who admits this.
However, The webhost directory was a big fan of GoDaddy. After utilizing GoDaddy to host our site from 2009-2016, we kind of felt that the company no longer provides quality web hosting as they provided earlier, which we could recommend.
In this GoDaddy Alternatives article, we’ve made a list of the great GoDaddy alternatives for your domain registrations and web hosting to help you to make the switch.
Contents
Why You May Need a GoDaddy Alternative?
GoDaddy is basically the web host which you should stay away from. From unethical practices to excessive downtime, We could write a completely separate and very long article on why you must stay away from “GoDaddy.”
And in case you believe GoDaddy is a better web host, then take a look at these concrete statistics:
Commenters on Customer Affairs (the main reviews website and complaints) provided GoDaddy a satisfaction rating of 1.1 (out of 5 stars). As of right now, one hundred forty-nine consumers provided GoDaddy a 1-star rating, and also, a single consumer gave them a 5-star rating without any feedback inside the comment section.
The most basic problems with GoDaddy include:
- A huge amount of websites are hosted on the same servers, which impacts the overall performance of all the websites onside that server.
- Server downtime is getting worse every single day (outages, 404 errors, etc.).
- While initial startup prices are cheap, the price of renewing your services (domains and hosting) is approximately two hundred percent to four hundred percent more expensive.
- The company doesn’t seem to care about fixing their problems that users are experiencing; that is by far the worst issue of hosting in GoDaddy.
- Poor consumer service that is non-existent as per our experience.
If you could eliminate one or all of the problems above by swapping to one of the GoDaddy alternatives mentioned below, you will be crazy not to pull the plug then call it quits.
1) Accuweb Hosting
You may be thinking that the leader of the GoDaddy Alternatives may be A2 Hosting, SiteGround, or BlueHost, but it’s none other than Accuweb Hosting, who proves to be the ultimate best alternative of GoDaddy.
In our tastings and comparison, Accuweb Hosting highly dominated over GoDaddy, and we were not shocked, as we’ve compared Accuweb’s plans to various others in the past also.
Not just the regular shared or VPS hosting, but this particular host running since 2003 has won hearts throughout its range of hosting plans. Talking about the dedicated server plans, they are currently unbeatable in the world.
You certainly can’t quarrel about the rates, as in this department they are fully generous, and that’s the reason it has earned over a hundred thousand customers. Out of these, the majority are joy-filled beginners; as of right from the very basic plan, they start enjoying great convenience.
Uptime is never an issue, and the same we can say about the speed. Even the least costing shared plans are speedy enough to make you love Accuweb Hosting.
Now, coming to customer support, it’s far better than GoDaddy. You feel as if their support staff members are in a greater hurry than you in solving your problems.
Accuweb Hosting Pros
- Better speed than almost all big hosting providers.
- 24/7 available support staff that never leaves your hand.
- Wide range of hosting plans fulfilling all sorts of demands.
- Migrations and upgrading always prove to be very smooth and fast.
- High satisfaction rate and great reviews on the various major review platform.
- Offers a choice of Windows or Linux servers.
Accuweb Hosting Cons
- You may find domains at cheaper rates from a few competitors.
Final word on Accuweb Hosting
At Accuweb, you’ve got everything, including shared, dedicated, cloud hosting, Windows VPS, Forex VPS, and what to say about reseller hosting! If you want to go for a host, who never lets you feel the need to switch the hosting, then Accuweb Hosting should at the top of your considerations!
Visit Accuweb Hosting
2) SiteGround
SiteGround is the best hosting provider that is suggested by WordPress.org. Out of 786 independent consumer reviews, the hosting service has received a rating of 4.98 from 5.00. When comparing to GoDaddy, SiteGround provides better performance – your website would load in just 1.7 seconds without the utilization of cache and in 1.3 seconds with the cache. On top of that, SiteGround provides reasonable renewal charges on their whole product line.
The SiteGround team consists of geeky tech who love to innovate new techies. They utilize them to craft an amazing hosting solution. And that is the primary reason for the fast, reliable, and server stability they provide. Besides that, they’ve pre-installed software and tools such as SuperCacher to increase your website performance.
SiteGround is a Non-Eig independent hosting company serving the consumer since 2004. They’re probably managing more than 500k domain names.
They offer an exclusive SuperCacher tool for WordPress users to provide optimization on their websites for fast and better loading speed. They utilize a standard control panel that is also beginner-friendly and easy to set up and manage. Their cPanel includes monitoring tools, IP blocker, One-Click script installer, FTP, account and email manager, and many more options.
The company offers an extended range of hosting solutions, including reseller dedicated, shared, special hosting packages for WordPress, cloud hosting, and Joomla website hosting. From large to small, all hosting plans come with free daily backups and a free SSL certificate by Let’s Encrypt, website builder, and CloudFlare CDN.
SiteGround Pros
- User-friendly cPanel User Interface with SSH access.
- Robust staging functionality for Joomla and WordPress.
- You will have a free domain name with your hosting buy.
- You could install Joomla and WordPress with a solo click, and both applications automatically get updated as the latest versions are released.
- Your website is automatically backed up and stored inside a safe directory.
- The thirty-day money-back guarantee protects your buy if you’re not completely satisfied with this web hosting.
SiteGround Cons
- You would need to update to the Grow Huge plan (charges $5.95 a month) to host multiple websites under the same account.
- Windows hosting isn’t available.
- All of the plans have a particular quota on the number of web visiters you could receive every month.
Who Utilizes SiteGround?
SiteGround hosts 500k+ websites and some of the famous brands such as Matt Cromwell, WP Beginner, and Andrew Norcross.
Visit SiteGround
3) A2Hosting
It was built in 2001 with the name of the Iniquinet and then replaced by the name A2Hosting. They provide web hosting solutions with functionalities that could cover large and small business website requirements.
A2Hosting has tons of data centers, which are located in a variety of locations, such as main data centers inside Michigan City, USA, and others are in Europe, Amsterdam, and Singapore, Asia.
You could register domain name using A2 Hosting at the price of only $14.95 per year for .net, .org, .com, .us and .info TLD’s (top-level domains). The renew domain prices are identical to the registration fees.
They provide almost +50 top-level extensions for the registration. Unfortunately, they do not offer free WHOIS privacy features like GoDaddy. However, you could utilize them if you are looking for an extremely incredible GoDaddy alternative about web hosting and for a domain registrar.
Just like all the above-mentioned companies, you could get unique types of web hosting plans like VPS, Shared, Reseller, Dedicated, Managed WordPress hosting, and Cloud-based hosting. The very regular and basic plan begins at $3.92 per month for only one website with data storage and unmetered bandwidth.
SSDs (Solid State Drives) are equipped for the Data Storing to deliver you a cutting-edge speed and max performance. You could get 99.9% uptime availability with unlimited bandwidth and storage, cPanel, and free website migration by selecting them. On top of that, some exclusive functionalities are Turbo (Making your website Speed 20x quicker) as well as A2 Site Accelerator. However, these are available in shared Turbo plans only.
Facing any problem about hosting a website, managing your account, minor or bigger server errors, or whatever issue you are having? You just have to contact technical support 24/7 in the whole year by calling, live chat, Skype, email for experts, and ticketing help. One of the fantastic things is their cash back guarantee. According to the refund policy, you could get the refund within thirty days of the time period, and after that, a pro-rated refund would be provided for unused service.
A2Hosting pros
- Reliable Uptime of 99.97%
- Quickest Page Loading Speed (279 ms)
- 24/7 Malware Scanning and Server Monitoring
- Free Website Migrations (1 to 25 Depending on the Plan)
- Anytime Cash-Back Guarantee
- CMS (Content Management Systems)
- Developer-Friendly Tools
A2Hosting cons
- High Renewal Charges (And a fifteen Days Deadline)
- Slow User Support
- Restrictions on the Cheapest Plans
- Confusing checkout: Even if they’re not as pushy as any other providers (like iPage), their check out is buckled with a lot of add-ons that you likely will not require (like paid SSL certificate).
- On-demand backups are paid separately: If you would like to utilize their on-demand backup to make your own personal backups, you will need to buy their add-on.
Visit A2Hosting
4) BlueHost
BlueHost is a great reputed WordPress hosting over the world and pretty famous among new consumers. They’re considered as the top-rated WordPress managed and shared hosting providers and officially suggested by WordPress. Right now, we are also utilizing their hosting service for one of our websites and found them quite good for the performance and services they offer.
BlueHost was built by Matt Heaton in 2003, owned by EIG (Endurance International Group), and known as one of the twenty largest hosting companies all around the globe. They provide domain name registration at basic prices with reasonable renewal charges.
You could grab domain name only at $11.99 for .net, .com, .biz, .org and .info, extensions. BlueHost provides more than two hundred TLD types, including generic, country-code, and top level TLD domain names.
You could avail Dedicated, Shared, Managed WordPress, VPS servers, and Cloud for WordPress and eCommerce websites. Their hosting plans are affordable, and each plan includes data storage (except for the basic plan) and unmetered bandwidth.
When you select them to host your new or old website, they would please you by providing a FREE main domain name and 0 website setup fee. They offer an improved control panel (Modified cPanel) with extra tools to arrange and manage your website as per your requirement quickly and easily.
BlueHost has a 24/7 support team who are dedicated to providing you full-time services and support. They help you by telephone, live chat, and emails, whereas GoDaddy has particular hours for any live support. Selecting BlueHost means 99.99% server uptime, secure, reliable, and high edge service.
For the refund policy, they provide a refund duration of thirty days. But, fees of additional add-ons such as WHOIS privacy protections aren’t refundable.
BlueHost Pros
- Solid uptime: Basically speaking, our uptime tests with the Bluehost have always been good. However, unlike other providers, they do not provide a Service Level Agreement that guarantees a min uptime.
- The first term is pretty cheap: However be aware of the renewal fees, they’re high.
- Significant storage: Their shared hosting plans offer loads of storage.
- Unlimited bandwidth: Bluehost will not limit the traffic that your websites could get.
- Web hosting plans are quite affordable, and every plan includes data storage (except basic plan) and unlimited bandwidth.
- BlueHost has a dedicated 24/7 service and support team.
BlueHost Cons
- Speed can be better: In our last tests, Bluehost’s speed did not exactly come out at the top. But, it is not terrible either.
- Constant upsells: Their system is packed with rapid upsell pitches, which gets annoying.
- US-servers: Unlike other web hosting companies, you only have the choice to host your website in the US. If your users come from any other regions, they might face having a slow site.
- Fees of additional add-ons such as WHOIS PP (privacy protection) are non-refundable.
- Poor backup choices: The entry-level plans do not have a good backup solution.
Who Uses BlueHost
Bluehost particularly appeals to newbies because it provides the basic necessities for having a WordPress website live. With plans beginning at $2.95 a month, a free SSL certificate and 24/7 live chat support, and domain name added for the first year, small businesses and bloggers could get their blog began.
Visit BlueHost
5) HostGator
We confidently could say it is one of the lowest-priced GoDaddy alternatives for your web hosting because of the lowest prices, fast server speed, and reliable hosting service. As a web hosting provider and domain name registrar, HostGator has made some substantial progress in the past twelve years.
They’re hosting more than nine million domain names. Besides that, Their page loading speed and server uptime are far more superior to a variety of shared hosting companies.
Beginning a website with HostGator is quick and easy. Like each good web host, they offer One-Click CMS (Content Management System) website builder, script installer, and thousands of themes totally free. With the use of a One-Click installer, you could install Joomla, WordPress, or Drupal within a few seconds (60 to 70 seconds).
They transfer at reasonable charges and provide domain registration. You could purchase a domain name at just $12.95 for extension, .net, $12.99 for .com, .co, .info, and .org extensions. With the lowest domain transfer or registry, they provide a user-friendly domain manager and a free domain locker.
You could avail reseller, cloud, shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting packages from the HostGator. There are a large amount of web hosting plans, so you could select the right one as per your requirements. For starters, they provide the cheapest shared hosting plans, which contain all important and required tools and add-ons to make a website. The basic Web hosting plan comes with data storage and unmetered bandwidth, as well as email accounts.
HostGator offers consumer support by Phone call, Live Chat, and Ticketing system; however, their live chat basically takes ten to forty-five minutes to get in contact with their customer. Regarding cash back guarantee or refund, they provide forty-five days’ time.
HostGator Pros
- 99.9% uptime guarantee;
- Windows-based and Linux-based plans both available with dedicated and shared servers;
- Forty-five-day cash-back guarantee;
- Free migration service;
- cPanel and Plesk control panels;
- Courtesy off-site backups;
- 24/7 support.
- Free advertising offers;
HostGator Cons
- Long commitment durations– discounted charges are just available if you commit to the HostGator for some years;
- No free domain registration.
- No Windows-based VPS hosting.
Visit Hostgator
6) WP Engine
WP Engine provides fast hosting servers with their built-in caching tech, and malware, and a secure, protected hosting platform. It’s a highly scalable hosting service, particularly for WordPress websites.
And their expert WordPress technical support is second. After all, if you require optimized hosting for the WordPress website, then WP Engine is the one thing you should consider switching to right now.
WP Engine Pros
- WP Engine pays third-party security firms to take care of the data centers, which means the hosting servers are monitored 24/7 and secure.
- You get the choice to select the data center for the account to max the performance of the website – available locations are United Kingdom, United States, and Japan.
- You could work on the project to completion and then “push” or transfer the install to the client.
- You get a staging place where you could test plugins and make your website changes before publishing them to your website.
- WP Engine provides an automated website migration plugin that you could utilize to transfer your website free of charge.
- You don’t require to install external caching and other performance plugins.
WP Engine Cons
- WP Engine is a WordPress hosting service, so you won’t be able to utilize it for Drupal, Magento, Joomla, or any other external framework.
- If you exceed the monthly quota for visitors, you would be charged additional fees ($1 for every 1k visitors over the limit).
- WP Engine prohibits the utilization of some plugins.
Final word on Utilizes WP Engine
In nations like the US, India, Australia, etc. WP Engine is expected to dominate over a few big guns in the hosting industry. WP Engine is trusted by more than 60k companies and also small bloggers, including National Geographic, Yelp, and Reader’s Digest.
Visit WP Engine
7. InMotion Hosting
Kinda like SiteGround, InMotion Hosting is a total upgrade over GoDaddy. A ton of websites is changing their web hosting and transferring to InMotion because of their enhanced performance, basic onboarding process, unmatched customer service, and reasonable renewal fees.
In other words, InMotion is in a totally different league. Besides that, they maintained an ideal hosting rating from the CNET (one of the biggest tech news and product review websites on the internet), so you could rest easily.
In our opinion, their domain rates are higher than any average as they do not provide free WHOIS PP as NameCheap does. But they do provide a free domain name with a Business Hosting’s “Launch” plan that prices $4.99 per month with fifty percent savings.
InMotion provides a very normal packaged “Lite” at $2.49 per month that is highly suitable for new business and websites.
They provide reseller, dedicated, shared, VPS, and WordPress hosting packages. Their hosting plan comes with disk storage and unlimited bandwidth, so no restriction on the monthly traffic (Except for the Launch plan).
Beginning a website on InMotion is quick and very easy utilizing one-click installer scripts. With every hosting plan, you will have a free domain and website backup function too. InMotion utilizes SSD’s for data storing to offer 20x faster website loading stability and speed.
Compared to GoDaddy, their servers are lightning-quick when it comes to website loading time.
Visit InMotion Hosting
InMotion Hosting Pros
- InMotion Hosting implements well with extra external frameworks such as Joomla, WordPress, Magento, and Bold Grid.
- You get a regular basic drag and drop editor, website builder, and website templates when you purchase hosting.
- You get a free domain name after purchase hosting.
- InMotion Hosting would provide you a $250 advertising credit for Bing, Google, Yahoo, and Yellow Pages.
- The ninety-day money-back guarantee protects your buy if you aren’t satisfied with the hosting web service.
- You could select a data center located on the West or East coast.
InMotion Hosting Cons
- The Launch plan (charges $3.49 a month) permits you to host two websites under one account.
- After you sign up, you’ve to finish a manual verification process using the phone to fully activate the hosting account (this deducts spam and fake customers on their servers).
- The Launch plan isn’t suitable and ready for e-commerce.
Final word on InMotion Hosting
InMotion Hosting hosts more than 450k websites, including Operations Rescue, The Best Schools, and Christian Patriot. certainly, InMotion has delivered as per expectations, and that’s the reason it’s there in our recommendation list.
Visit InMotion Hosting
8. Fly Wheel
The flyWheel is a wonderful WordPress platform that is suggested by WordPress.org. The hosting service provides everything you are required to manage and run a WordPress website without sacrificing your performance.
A huge advantage of switching to FlyWheel is websites generally load in only one second, which is a huge boost for SEO (search engine optimization). The ideal part about switching to FlyWheel is the fact that they provide reasonable cost for managed hosting.
FlyWheel Pros
- You could clone an existing website and recreate it as a new website.
- You could manage all of the websites from one attractive dashboard.
- FlyWheel backs up all of your web files and stores them at a secure location automatically.
- You have the choice to select the data center location for your website.
- Every website gets its dedicated IP address.
- You could utilize and install whichever plugin that you desire.
- You could utilize the user-friendly staging place to test your website changes and install updates before including them on your website.
FlyWheel Cons
- The flyWheel is for WordPress websites and doesn’t work with any other frameworks.
- The flyWheel is not as famous as some of the managed hosting services.
- You would be charged additional fees or asked to upgrade to a bigger plan if you go over the monthly quota for traffic.
Final word on FlyWheel
Flywheel has played a role in the success of several websites, and a few of them are considerably huge. FlyWheel successfully hosts everything from huge Fortune 500 companies to starter WordPress websites.
FlyWheel hosts 50k WordPress websites, including Social Assurance, Streamlined Studio, and Hive Digital. As a result, we happily recommend FlyWheel in our list of GoDaddy Alternatives.
Visit FlyWheel Hosting
9) GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks is especially known as a green energy powered web hosting company and one more top-notch and awesome GoDaddy alternative. It’s a personally owned company built by Trey Gardner in 2008 with the goal to offer pollution-free web hosting.
They’re one of the leading web hosts who commit to utilizing 300% renewable energy achieved with windmills. This company has multiple data centers situated in Phoenix and Chicago, US and Toronto, Canada.
They do not provide domain registration individually. However, you get a free domain with every hosting account. There is every type of plan available for purchase, such as Reseller, Shared, VPS, WordPress managed hosting, and Dedicated Servers. All the plans come with essential features and tools to manage your sites.
For enhanced and high speed, they utilize SSD drives for data storing. Though you get a ton of great functionalities and SSD storage for every plan, however, their charges are affordable and low.
You could purchase a shared hosting account only at $2.96 per month, which comes with domain names, unlimited bandwidth, email account, MySQL databases, storage, and definitely 99.9% uptime.
With every plan, you will get a free transfer and domain registration, free site migration, SEO tools, and a ton of other stuff. The GreenGeeks provides an improved and user-friendly cPanel. On top of that, they offer Google free nightly backup service and App integrations.
Like any other alternatives of the GoDaddy mentioned above, GreenGeeks has a dedicated consumer support team to support you 24/7 by phone call, live chat, and email.
A lot of tutorials are conveniently available on youtube based on managing sites and how to host a website in the knowledge base part. Now, it is clear that GreenGeeks provides ideal features with affordable charges, but if you have doubt whether to utilize them or not, then there are thirty days (Refund policy) to get cashback.
GreenGeeks Pros
- Upgraded server hardware & enhanced network infrastructure
- A huge range of hosting plans suitable for all the type of hosting needs
- At first, you will get Free domain name registration
- innovative data center based on renewable energy, state-of-the-art
- data transfer and Unlimited web space for shared hosting plans
- Ideal for Reseller hosting – five different plans available
- Helpful tutorials explaining how to do awesome popular tasks
- Consumer support via live chat, an email ticket system, or phone
GreenGeeks Cons
- GreenGeeks site Builder is different yet not the ideal choice
- Dedicated hosting plans and Relatively expensive VPS
- Hefty renewal price on shared hosting after initial sign-up
- Repeated user problems over fraudulent billing problems
Visit Greengeeks
GoDaddy Alternatives for Domains
GoDaddy provides constant promotions and deals where you would be capable of buying a domain name for a couple of bucks a year. If you choose to purchase the domain name from GoDaddy, it’s best to pay 2 – 3 years in advance to have a good deal. Besides that, you would avoid paying their high renewal charges.
However, in case you’re planning to dump GoDaddy altogether or looking forward to a domain registrar that provides more functions, here are the ideal GoDaddy registrar alternatives:
NameCheap is one of our favorite places that we utilize to purchase our domain names because of their simple domain management and intuitive interface options. The initial price to purchase a domain name would cost you some bucks a year.
The major difference is that NameCheap is cheaper when it is time to renew your domains. All domain name registrations provide a one-year subscription to WhoisGuard’s private privacy.
Final Verdict on GoDaddy Alternatives
Switching to a new hosting service isn’t something each one is interested in doing. Besides that, We understand that there are a ton of GoDaddy supporters out there, and that’s totally fine. Poor site performance was why we’d ended our relationship with GoDaddy for good.
We hate GoDaddy; we feel that they have the resources and potential to turn things around and enhance their services to keep up with the competition. Unfortunately, this isn’t any direction that they’re interested in going at this time.
Until they choose to make necessary changes, Ecommerce Sprout would never recommend GoDaddy.
If you’re completely dissatisfied with GoDaddy’s services and require to make the switch as soon as possible.
Then any of the alternatives mentioned are excellent places to switch to.
Here is what our experts say:
- If you require to transfer an existing one or register a new domain name, then go with NameCheap.
- If you feel that you’ve outgrown your shared hosting account or are required to improve performance for the WordPress website, go with Accuwebhosting or WP Engine.
- Go with Accuwebhosting or SiteGround if you require a reliable shared hosting provider at an affordable price.
Is there any reliable GoDaddy alternative that we might have missed? Let us know in the comments section below.
