Bluehost vs Godaddy
Bluehost vs Godaddy: BlueHost and Godaddy are among the oldest and most popular web hosts in the world. Both of them host millions of domains and websites and provide nearly all kinds of services expected by developers and website owners. I have used both the services for years and here is my opinion about them. I have been requested by many to prepare to comparative decision about the numerous services and features of both the hosts and therefore I have included all information about performance, page speed, and server up time and customer service including user experience of both the companies.
As both the companies are huge and host millions of customers on their data centres spread across all over the globe, the services provided may vary including the performance at specific locations. However when compared with each other, a generalized opinion can be easily derived.
BlueHost is a subsidiary of Endurance international that also owns major other popular hosting companies like A Small Orange and others. However GoDaddy is a lone tiger with presence in nearly every major country and a market base of millions. While BluHost servers are completely separate from its other peers while being completely owned by Endurance, Godaddy owns and manages all its servers across major regions.
Also Read: Godaddy VPS Hosting Review
Plans and Pricing: Bluehost vs Godaddy
Both BlueHost and Godaddy provide plans for shared and business purposes including dedicated resources. However most users tend to use shared plans as the amount of resources provided in them is enough for them, I would provide detailed information about the varied shared plans provided by them.
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BlueHost Plans and Pricing
- Starter: The starter plan is ideal for beginners as it provides all inbuilt features for quick website deployment without deep technical know-how. Users can host one website and use up to 100 GB of web space. Although the website can consume unlimited bandwidth, the server load must be below CPU throttling limits. Users also get one free domain name that they can keep until they are hosting with BlueHost. Along with that, users can have up to 5 parked domains, 25 subdomains, 100 email accounts with 500mb of storage in each account. The plan is costs only $3.49 per month.
- Plus: The plus plan is ideal for experienced website administrators or people who have already hosting and maintained websites before. It costs only $5.95 per month and offers unlimited resource usage for all parameters including the number of websites that can be hosted, bandwidth usage, server space, email accounts and storage per email accounts. The plan includes a free domain name and comes with marketing offers worth $200. Users can also deploy a global CDN and ne SpamExperts to further secure their websites against DDOS or penetration attacks.
- Business Pro: Priced at $13.95 per month, this is one of the most powerful shared hosting plans in the market. All resources allow unlimited usage and the plan comes with free addons worth $180 per year. It also has 2 SpamExperts with one dedicated IP and one domain privacy feature. The associated SSL certificate is ideal for ecommerce websites and other secure online transactions. You can also backup your website with SiteBackup Pro and therefore enable high maintenance features that increase your page speed and deliver your content through optimized content delivery networks.
Also Read: Bluehost VPS Hosting Review
Godaddy Plans and Pricing
- Starter: The starter plan is ideal for people and businesses who want to have a static website to host only a few web pages. This cannot handle huge traffic and therefore you have to upgrade to higher versions. You can also use the page builder to design your website without any technical knowledge. However if your site sees more visitors, you will have to upgrade to a higher plan. You also cannot host the any ecommece website on this plan. The plans allows users to build 1 website in 30 GB space and 10 email addresses with unlimited bandwidth.
- Economy: This plan also allows you to build only 1 website while you can store upto 100GB of data and create 100 unique email addresses. It is ideal for growing businesses and websites that are getting higher traffic. You can easily host a small blog that can handle upto 300 visitors per day.
- Deluxe: A bit more powerful plan that allows users to build their own ecommerce websites although there is not SSL security provided with the plan. It comes with 500 email addresses, unlimited websites and unlimited bandwidth and storage space. It can help you build most types of websites and can handle upto 500 visitors per day
- Ultimate: The highest plan comes with all things unlimited and can handle upto 1000 daily visitors. You also get 1 year SSL with premium DNS. This is the only plan that can accommodate all your website requirements.
Also Read: Hostpapa Vs Godaddy Vs Hostgator
Performance and Reliability: Bluehost vs Godaddy
In all my hosting experience, I have come across hundreds of hosting companies and all of them try to provide the necessary hosting and performance benchmark to their users. However maintaining server performance in not an easy task. When I was hosting with Godaddy, I was quite furious with their performance. I had setup and was managing a wordpress based website with only 1000 visitors per day and had chosen their ultimate plan. I was supposed to get uninterrupted service but every time I tried to upload more than 10 pictures to the website through the CMS, the RAM consumption shows 512MB full and the server used to shut down. I was also sent a warning regarding high resource usage. If the server cannot handle simultaneous upload of more than 10 pictures, then how on earth could we expect it to function properly when the traffic increases. Fortunately the traffic was minimum and they didn’t charge me for high bandwidth usage. Except the bandwidth, each of their parameters showed that I was crossing the allowed limits.
In case of Bluehost, I had as usual chosen the Business Pro plan that allowed maximum flexibility. In my one year of hosting on their platform, I never faced any such high resource usage warnings. I used to upload and download dozens of files at the same time and my website received more than 10,000 visitors every day. I was quite satisfied by their service until I had to more to a cloud service to expand my operations.
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Page Speed
Bluehost support all major methods of page speed optimization including Google’s recommendation for Apache’s mod_pagespeed module. However Godaddy doesn’t even allow users to modify any kind of configuration to increase performance. In one of my tests, Godaddy fared average in terms of page speed while BluHost was among the top 2-3 hosts that excelled in fast loading webpages. As page speed depends on a number of factors including caching and bandwidth availability. I would highly recommend users to go with BlueHost if they are concerned about their slow loading website.
Server Uptime and Downtime
The one thing I found good about Godaddy is its server uptime. Their servers nearly never go down. And the reason is also obvious. They have multiple servers spread across all over the globe and they store their data across all of them ready to be deployed in case other servers go down for some unprecedented reason. However BlueHost was not bad either. They carry out monthly maintenance tasks on their server and that is the only time their server goes down. If you are running a high traffic receiving website, you must go with Godaddy with a higher plan and try to optimize their servers for your requirements but if you can manage to handle a 6 minute downtime every month, I would recommend you to go with BlueHost.
User Experience and Customer Service
Both the hosting company’s user interface is well designed and makes it easy for the administrators to find their way through. However when compared with each other, BlueHost’s UI is definitely better than Godaddy’s. As you will notice, while hosting and browsing through Godaddy, most of the time you ll end up at unwanted place like the auction room or the domain management section. But that is not the case with BlueHost. Users can easily find their way through everything and the website is well designed to provide all important aspects of their hosting service right in front of their eyes.
About customer service, you’ll hate Godaddy the moment you call their customer service. You ll kept in a queue that is never less than 5-6 people and by the time your issue is resolved, your website would have already caused the damaged. But that is not the case with BlueHost. You can instantly start a chat with a BlueHost customer service person right from the hosting control panel. You can also email them your problem and they get back within 1-2 hours.
Upgrades and Migration
Both the companies allow users to upgrade or downgrade anytime they want but when it comes with migrating a website from an existing web host to a new one, Godaddy certainly fares better than BlueHost. I have read numerous reviews were customers have complained about a damaged host migration in terms of BlueHost but In terms of Godaddy, there are hardly any such complaints. If you can handle the migrations by your own, then it is always better to do it yourself and you can find numerous guides online that could help you migrate effortlessly. Hwever if you have a complicated website and the configuration needs additional documentation then you better prodice those documentation to the customer service agents before the migration begins.
Also Read: Godaddy Domain Name Registration Coupons
My Recommendation : Bluehost Or Godaddy?
Based on the above review, you can already guess my recommendation. You should go with BlueHost if you want a stable website with all the best features without any restrictions. However Godaddy has its servers all across the world and provides great offers to attract newcomers. I would recommend you to buy the services from Godaddy and then migrate to a better host when your plans is about to end.