Trying to find good GoDaddy alternatives? Fed up with GoDaddy and their slow servers, bad support, and high prices? We honestly can’t blame you…
There once was a time when GoDaddy ruled the Internet—they had the cheapest domains, and best deals out there, with cutting-edge technology and a great interface. Sadly, that time has long passed, and while they’re still a big name in the business, they have really gone downhill (in our opinion). Luckily, there are some amazing alternatives to GoDaddy available today. We’ve taken the time and broken these options down into three main categories: 1) hosting 2) email and 3) domains (since these are the three main services that GoDaddy provides.
One last thing before we go on: if you decide to buy hosting or services from any of the companies on this page, we may receive a modest payment in the form of a commission for referring you. Just know that this doesn’t impact our recommendations at all. Alright, let’s see who beats GoDaddy!
The Top 3 GoDaddy Alternatives (Hosting):
The Absolute Top Alternative to GoDaddy Domain Names:
The #1 GoDaddy alternative for email and email hosting:
Now that you’ve seen the top GoDaddy alternatives in each category, keep reading to see a detailed breakdown of exactly why each company is much superior to GoDaddy.
Hosting more than 2 million websites to date, Bluehost provides a reliable hosting solution for your website at a monthly cost that won't break the bank.
GoDaddy Alternatives with Shared Web Hosting: Top 3 Best Options
#1 Bluehost
If anyone deserves to be listed as the best alternative to GoDaddy for web hosting, it’s Bluehost. They’re one of the most solid shared hosting companies around, and while there are many reasons that Bluehost is a better option that GoDaddy, there are really two that top the list: support and security.
Support
Honestly, GoDaddy’s hosting support sucks pretty bad. For domains, GoDaddy has good support—but for everything else (especially hosting), not so much. Any time we’ve ever used their hosting support we’ve been stuck on a chat with someone who can’t communicate and takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r to respond in a simple conversation—not cool GoDaddy, not cool. There’s also (at the time of writing) no telephone support for GoDaddy hosting products. Guess you can see how much they care about their hosting, right?
In contrast, Bluehost has absolutely killer support. They have 24/7/365 phone, chat and email (ticket) options. They are also the only shared hosting company that we know of that has US-based telephone support for all account levels. What does this mean? Well, if you buy a cheap shared hosting account, you still get phone support from someone on the US. Now, that is awesome!
Security
There have been a lot of high profile breaches and leaks at GoDaddy. For example, they’ve been accused of negligently allowing domain hijacking, as well as issuing flawed SSL certificates and also having problems with e-commerce sites getting hacked.
We can say from our own experience with WordPress sites, that we’ve had more sites hacked on GoDaddy than almost any other platform (except for iPage). In our opinion, they just aren’t as security conscious as other hosts.
Sign up with Bluehost, and drop GoDaddy…the only thing you’ll regret is that you didn’t ditch GoDaddy sooner!
Hosting more than 2 million websites to date, Bluehost provides a reliable hosting solution for your website at a monthly cost that won't break the bank.
#2 SiteGround
SiteGround is literally so awesome, it’s hard for us to think of anything bad to say about them. They are a great company to use and definitely a top choice (if you don’t believe us, look and see where this site is hosted). They provide premium hosting and support at a fraction of a premium price. There are two main reasons why SiteGround is a much better choice than GoDaddy:
Speed & Performance
With respect to the speed and performance of SiteGround, it’s hard to beat them with anything less than a managed WordPress hosting account or a VPS/dedicated server. They are one of (if not the) snappiest web hosts that we’ve used. They manage their system resources extremely well to keep bad actors from hogging bandwidth and they also have their own caching plugin for WordPress to make things extremely fast. Honestly, they blow GoDaddy away in the speed department, and it’s not even close.
Reliability
In our experience, GoDaddy servers are simply slow and unreliable. Our theory for this is that GoDaddy still does most of their business (and makes most of their money) off of domains, so the hosting they have is just something it seems they randomly added after the fact, but not something they really care about. Again, this is just our opinion, but think about it—why do they have such good support for domains and almost nothing for hosting? We think it’s probably because they don’t care about it that much (at least in comparison to their domain business).
That said, we’ve found their servers to be slow, laggy, buggy, and unreliable in general. This is something that we haven’t seen improve despite complaints, so it’s not something we expect them to improve any time soon. This makes SiteGround a blazing fast alternative to GoDaddy!
With more than 2 million domains hosted, SiteGround is one of the best web hosting platforms that deliver fast speeds and excellent support.
#3 WP Engine
Some people think that GoDaddy is a high-end option for personal business web hosting—the thing is, they’re not at all. Yes, they offer managed WordPress hosting, but it doesn’t hold a candle to an actual premium WordPress host like WP Engine. Yes, WP Engine is a little more expensive, but you truly get what you pay for in this situation. Here are two ways that WP Engine great alternative to GoDaddy:
Amazing WordPress Hosting
WP Engine is pretty much the best WordPress host in existence. If you’re hosting WordPress, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better host. From amazing support to all of their WordPress-specific features, they are really the top of the heap when it comes to dealing with WordPress. If you’re hosting a high-quality personal site or a business website, you should seriously consider WP Engine.
Awesome Backups
The backups that WP Engine does are pretty awesome—and this is all included in the plan. They’re also able to easily restore sites from a backup with just the click of a button. GoDaddy doesn’t have anything like this and in our opinion, their managed WordPress hosting can’t even come close to WP Engine
From top-notch customer support to industry-leading WordPress-focused tools and features, WP Engine's premium web hosting service won't disappoint.
The Best Alternative to GoDaddy Domain Names
#1 NameCheap
It’s really hard to beat NameCheap, and that’s why they’re our top choice for an alternative to GoDaddy as a domain registrar. They have super cheap prices, amazing support, and are simply one of the best out there. Don’t believe us? Check and see where Instructify.com is registered…
Namecheap is the best alternative domain registrar to GoDaddy, thanks to its wide range of domains, lower yearly costs, and straightforward pricing plans.
Although GoDaddy does a heck of a large amount of marketing and has some great super bowl commercials, they kind of suck as a registrar. They’re more expensive than a lot of other companies and don’t offer anything more for the money. Here are two of the main reasons why:
They’re Way Too Expensive
This isn’t 1995 where there are only one or two registrars to choose from. It’s really easy to find registrars that are far superior to GoDaddy.
One problem with GoDaddy is that they try to hook people into their system by offering $0.99 domains, but then charge $20+ for renewals with $9 for privacy. This is absurd, and stupidly expensive. You can register a domain on NameCheap for less than $10 with free privacy, and they don’t upcharge to at renewal. This is definitely the way to go!
They’re Constantly Trying to Upsell You
GoDaddy is always trying to sell you some extra garbage that you don’t need. So called premium features and other nonsense that’s always annoyingly popping up in your admin panel. It’s stupid that they try to drum up additional business this way, but they can’t seem to resist. NameCheap doesn’t do any of this nonsense and their interface is plain and easy to use like it’s supposed to be.
Namecheap is the best alternative domain registrar to GoDaddy, thanks to its wide range of domains, lower yearly costs, and straightforward pricing plans.
The Best GoDaddy Alternatives for Hosted Email
#1 Bluehost
GoDaddy’s hosted email is about as bad as their web hosting…it’s (in our opinon), unreliable and lacks good support. Our favorite choice for hosted email this year is Bluehost, without a doubt!
Hosting more than 2 million websites to date, Bluehost provides a reliable hosting solution for your website at a monthly cost that won't break the bank.
If you’ve seen our email hosting recommendations before, you might be wondering “why did you stop recommending Amazon WorkMail?” That’s a great question! There are really two reasons: pricing, and support. Let’s take a look at both!
1) Bluehost is far less expensive than WorkMail as an alternative to GoDaddy if you need more than one inbox.
Because WorkMail charges per inbox, these charges can add up fast and can be more costly if you have multiple users. Yes, it’s true that you can use multiple forwarders/aliases with WorkMail and even GoDaddy for free, but that doesn’t help if you have users who need inboxes.
Even if you’re paying the standard renewal rate for Bluehost, it’s still much cheaper than WorkMail for multiple email accounts, especially as those accounts start to add up! To save on Bluehost, to save on Bluehost, you can click any of our links and get a lower price.
2) Bluehost support is far better and cheaper than WorkMail.
Hosting more than 2 million websites to date, Bluehost provides a reliable hosting solution for your website at a monthly cost that won't break the bank.
The problem with AWS is that unless you pay extra, there is literally no tech support. There’s basic billing support, and forum support (which can be iffy), but there is no actual ticket-based support.
This really sucks because if you need help, you’re stuck waiting on the forum. They do technically offer support, but it’s $29/month at the time of writing for the next best tier—that’s insane!
There are some more in-depth details to be covered on a separate hosted email review, such as Microsoft Exchange support (which Bluehost does happen to offer), G Suite for Gmail (for when you want to use Gmail with a custom domain), and some other alternatives. But that’s coming this year on Instructify, so stay tuned!
FAQs
The top GoDaddy competitors are Bluehost, SiteGround, and NameCheap.
GoDaddy may be cheap at a glance, but its unreliable service may cost your business more in the long run. Bluehost and SiteGround are reliable options and great GoDaddy alternatives.
Namecheap is better overall as it has better customer support and pricing packages,
Hosting providers like Bluehost and SiteGround typically include a free domain name for the first year of your membership with them.
