Picking the right host for your website can be a stress-inducing task. There are too many options available, and if you don’t know where to start, it can make the entire process even more confusing. To help you out a little, here is a comparison between two of the most popular names in the hosting industry—DreamHost and GoDaddy. Both of these hosting companies offer many types of hosting services, and today, we’ll be pitting them against each other to find out which one is better. To start things off, here is a comparison of their shared hosting plan.
Contents
| DreamHost | GoDaddy | |
| Â |  |  |
| Price | Check Price at DreamHost.com | Check Price at GoDaddy.com |
| Hosted Sites | Starter: 1 Unlimited: Unlimited | Economy: 1 website Deluxe: Unlimited Ultimate: Unlimited Maximum: Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Storage | Starter: 50GB Unlimited: Unlimited | Economy: 100GB Deluxe: Unlimited Ultimate: Unlimited Maximum: Unlimited |
| Databases | Starter: 6 Unlimited: Unlimited | Economy: 10 Deluxe: 25 Ultimate: Unlimited Maximum: Unlimited |
| Domain | Free | Free |
| Free SSL Certificate | Yes | Economy: No Deluxe: No Ultimate: Yes Maximum: Yes |
| Daily Backups | Free | Paid |
| cPanel | No | Yes |
| Customer Support | 24/7 chat Knowledge base | 24/7 chat and phone Knowledge base |
| Money Back | 97 days | 30 days |
Plans and Prices
DreamHost offers cheaper shared plans.
GoDaddy and DreamHost both offer several types of hosting. For GoDaddy, the available hosting services are: shared hosting, WordPress hosting, eCommerce hosting, business hosting, VPS and dedicated servers. DreamHost offers shared hosting, VPS, dedicated servers, WordPress hosting and cloud hosting.
When it comes to pricing, DreamHost has GoDaddy beat. For instance, DreamHost’s cheapest shared plan is priced at $3.95/month, while GoDaddy’s cheapest starts at $5.99/month. It’s the same story with other hosting plans, such as WordPress and VPS, except for dedicated server hosting. GoDaddy offers better pricing with their dedicated server hosting. The cheapest GoDaddy dedicated server plan starts at $129.99/month, while DreamHost’s cheapest starts at $149.00/month.
Both hosts offer discounted prices for the first term, then when it’s time for renewal, their prices skyrocket. If you are going to sign up with either hosts, you should keep that in mind, and go for longer terms for better discounts. DreamHost offers a 97 day money back guarantee for their shared hosting plans, while GoDaddy offers a standard 30-day money back.
Features
DreamHost offers more useful features.
Both hosts give you fairly basic features, but DreamHost provides users with more useful extra features. Here’s a look at some notable features for both hosts, starting with DreamHost.
- 97 days money back – A longer period to get your money back is always a good thing. However, the 97-day period is only for their shared hosting. For other hosting plan, the money back is 30 days.
- Daily backups – Free automated daily backups are great because if you ever encounter issues on your site, most of the time, the easiest solution is to restore your site to a previous version.
- Free site migration – DreamHost offers free site transfers via their automated plugin. This is helpful for users with existing sites on other hosts.
- Free SSL on cheaper plans – This is a standard feature and the only reason that this is listed here, is because GoDaddy does not give out a free SSL certificate on their cheaper shared plans.
For GoDaddy, here are the features worth mentioning.
- More data center locations – Having more data centers should improve your loading times. GoDaddy has more server locations than DreamHost.
- cPanel – GoDaddy uses the standard cPanel, so users with experience won’t have to get used to a proprietary control panel.
- Phone support – Some users find that they are more comfortable speaking to another person rather than typing, so having phone support is a plus. DreamHost only offers a phone callback option, and you have to pay extra for it.
As far as features go, they both could do better. As it is though, DreamHost offers more useful features, so this is something that you should keep in mind when deciding which host to go with.
Performance
DreamHost performs better than GoDaddy when it comes to loading times and uptime.
One advantage that GoDaddy has over DreamHost is that they have more server locations in the US, as well as outside the country. DreamHost’s data servers are located in Virginia and Oregon. GoDaddy, on the other hand, has data servers in Arizona, LA, Chicago, Virginia, Amsterdam and Singapore. This should help GoDaddy when it comes to load times, especially for visitors from outside the United States.
As for their actual performance, DreamHost, surprisingly, has faster load times. While GoDaddy had faster load times for servers tested outside the U.S., they were lagging behind when it comes to U.S. servers. DreamHost had an average speed of 500-600ms, while GoDaddy had an average of 750-800ms.
When it comes to uptime, DreamHost has an uptime guarantee of 100%, while GoDaddy offers a 99.9% guarantee. DreamHost’s 100% guarantee is not realistic, and the results reflect that. They had an average uptime of 99.95%, which is far from the 100% that they promised, but still good enough. GoDaddy, on the other hand, had an uptime of 99.94%, which is also good.
Performance-wise, DreamHost wins over GoDaddy, in both uptime and speed.
Verdict
DreamHost offers better performance and features than GoDaddy.
In this showdown between DreamHost and GoDaddy, DreamHost comes out ahead because they offer more useful features and slightly better performance. If you are looking for a shared, WordPress or VPS hosting, DreamHost offers more affordable plans with better features. However, if you are looking to get a dedicated server, GoDaddy might be the better option. While they both offer similar pricing when it comes to dedicated servers, GoDaddy provides more resources, better hardware and better features.
FAQs
It depends on the type of hosting that you are after. For shared, WordPress and VPS hosting, DreamHost offers better prices and features. However, if you are looking at getting a dedicated server, GoDaddy has the better offers.
No, they use their own proprietary control panel.
DreamHost is a good hosting company with affordable plans, decent features and good performance.
Yes, they are reliable. They have an uptime guarantee of 99.9%, and from what we’ve seen, they’ve been able to deliver on that promise.
