Bluehost and GoDaddy are two of the most renowned web hosts in the industry, with GoDaddy hosting over five million websites as the world’s largest domain registrar, and Bluehost powering more than two million websites.
We wondered which one was better as well so we’ve put both providers to the test to determine the superior choice.
Despite their similarities, Bluehost and GoDaddy differ in crucial aspects that can sway your decision. Factors such as reliability, performance, WordPress integration, pricing, and customer support are essential when choosing a hosting provider.
In this article, we’ll examine both hosting giants, Bluehost and GoDaddy, comparing their web hosting services and features in-depth. Our goal is to equip you with the knowledge necessary to select a better hosting provider based on your specific priorities and requirements.
Table Of Contents
Bluehost vs GoDaddy: Comparison
Before we do an in-depth Bluehost vs. GoDaddy comparison, here’s a roundup of some of their key hosting features. Check out the table below for a snapshot of how they compare.
| Web Hosts | Hosting Type Offered | Storage | Uptime | Pricing | Support Core |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bluehost | Shared hosting plan, VPS, dedicated, shared WordPress, managed WordPress, and WooCommerce hosting | 100GB | 99.99% | Starting at $2.95 per month | 3.5/5 |
| GoDaddy | Shared hosting, WordPress hosting, Business hosting, VPS hosting, Dedicated hosting. | 100GB - Unlimited | 99.90% | Starting at $1 per month | 3.9/5 |
1. Reliability
Whether you’re launching a new site or looking to migrate to a new host, you’ll need a provider that offers reliable uptime. If your server is down, no one can have access to your website.
Consistent downtime causes long-term damage to your brand reputation and SEO. Think about how your readers feel when attempting to access your content only to realize that your servers are down.
Not only that but if your site is frequently down, your search rankings will suffer. Google does not want to list resources in the SERPs users will struggle to access.
Both of the providers are neck and neck and have excellent uptime statistics of well over 99.9% on average. Per data from Pingdom, Bluehost has not dropped beneath 99.9% uptime in the past two years on their trial site.
In contrast, GoDaddy has gone below its uptime guarantee of 99.9% a total of 5 times in two years.
Bluehost doesn’t provide a refund if you have downtime issues. However, they pledge to sort out any downtime-related issue in less than 15 minutes. Yet, in our experience, a fast response time hasn’t always been the case.
GoDaddy offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee refund. If your website servers are below the pledged limit, you can get your money back. However, they’ll only provide a refund for the time your server was down. You won’t get much value from this offer.
Overall, Bluehost seems more reliable regarding uptime guarantees although they don’t provide refunds when they default on their promise.
Winner: Bluehost
2. Performance
Speed (page load time) is an excellent metric for testing the performance of hosting providers. It distinguishes an excellent hosting service from a bad one.
We are in the age of broadband and Long Term Evolution (LTE)[1]; as such, web users do not have a great deal of patience for websites that load slowly or freeze.
The average user has a threshold of three seconds when waiting for a site to load. Websites that take longer to load end up with high bounce rates.
And the more customers leave your website, the more you lose traffic, leads, and potential customers. Besides, a slow website would only be slower when adding media files like images, infographics, and videos.
Dotcom-Monitor ran a speed test to determine the fastest web hosting. They ran the test on two separate but identical WordPress websites. One site was hosted on Bluehost, and the other was hosted on GoDaddy. They used servers in both North and South America.
Take a look at the summarized data on the speed test below.
If you look closely, you can see that Bluehost’s quickest load time was 1.4 seconds with an average load time of 3.3 seconds which is around the three-second user threshold.
GoDaddy only managed a load time of 3.4 seconds and even had an awful load time of 16.8 seconds at a data center in Argentina, South America.
From the averages, you can see that Bluehost was a bit faster than GoDaddy’s. However, compared to other faster options like WPX, both providers are relatively slow. WPX has an average of less than 2 seconds.
Winner: Bluehost
3. Ease of Use
Both companies strive to make it easy for newbies and beginners to navigate around the hosting dashboard.
Unfortunately, the GoDaddy hosting interface leaves much to be desired. The cPanel integration is awkward.
Bluehost provides a great hosting account for customers. What’s more, their customized cPanel makes it very easy to set up a WordPress account.
You can run your site on any number of Content Management Platforms with either provider. Both Godaddy and Bluehost support website builder tools like Weebly or Drupal for users who don’t want to use WordPress.
If you plan to use a specialized CMS like WooCommerce, though, you’re better off looking for a specialized WooCommerce hosting provider such as WPX or Flywheel.
In addition, they both offer a website builder. GoDaddy’s free at the start, while Bluehost’s WordPress builder starts at around $5/month.
Overall, Bluehost slightly bests GoDaddy because of its intuitive, easy-to-navigate, and customized cPanel.
Winner: Bluehost
4. Customer Support
Online reviews tend to be negative as most people, who have had issues with hosting, tend to vent. Fewer people are happy to leave positive reviews. That said, you can get a good idea of Bluehost and GoDaddy customer support from online review sites.
Based on reviews from nearly 2,000 people, TrustPilot scores Bluehost 3.2 out of 5, while GoDaddy support scores an impressive 4.0 from over 20,000 reviews. On G2, GoDaddy has nearly 700 reviews, and the company has a score of 3.9. Bluehost has only about 200 reviews yet, at 3.8, scores slightly lower than GoDaddy.
Bluehost offers support throughout the year, seven days a week which is a requirement for all hosting companies. You can reach the Bluehost support team via phone, chat, ticket, email, and many other options. The support team is stacked with a vast knowledge base to answer all your questions adequately and swiftly.
Both companies have a collection of guides, how-to videos, and FAQs to assist you in solving problems. They both also have interactive platforms where users can meet and interact with other users. For technical issues, all you need is to contact the support personnel via the appropriate communication channel.
The GoDaddy support team also offers an all-year support service with great live chat, an excellent network of international phone support in several languages, and a satisfactory knowledge base.
However, GoDaddy’s team seems more focused on dealing with domain name queries, a reasonable business strategy considering that is a big portion of their business.
Overall, both providers place a premium on providing good customer support. While GoDaddy seems to have a slight edge in online reviews, Bluehost is a worthwhile competitor.
From most of the online reviews we looked at, Bluehost received a commendation for having a crack team of experts to help with specialized queries, but their customer support is notoriously slow.
GoDaddy, owing to its fast customer service, is the winner in this section.
Winner: GoDaddy
5. Price Comparison
One of the most important factors that most people who wish to create an online presence focus on is the cost of a plan. As a result, Bluehost, GoDaddy, and other web hosts are in a fight to offer the cheapest shared plans to consumers.
That’s not a good thing.
If a company is offering very cheap hosting, they normally skim on some part of their business. That often means poor customer support, older servers, more downtime, etc.
You don’t want to be dealing with any of these issues.
Hosting providers that offer very cheap entry plans are famous for driving up prices when renewing your plan. That is why it is essential that you thoroughly look at renewal prices before signing up with a provider.
Nonetheless, both providers have reasonable pricing plans. Here’s a quick Bluehost vs. GoDaddy pricing comparison to help you decide.
Bluehost offers shared hosting plans starting at $2.95 per month and renews yearly at an increased price of $8.99/month.
Each Bluehost plan includes a free CDN program (content delivery network), an SSL certificate, a free domain name, unmetered bandwidth, unlimited websites, domain privacy, a 30-day money-back guarantee, and unlimited storage.
Even if you switch web hosts, you won’t have to surrender your free domain name.
On the other hand, GoDaddy offers three shared plans: Economy, Deluxe, and Ultimate plans. The Economy plan starts at a mouthwatering $1, but like Bluehost, GoDaddy’s price is jacked up to a renewal fee of $8.99 after 36 months.
In addition, the plans come with unmetered bandwidth (meaning you are not billed according to the amount of disk space or bandwidth used) as well as 100 GB storage, and a free domain name.
If your site generates a lot of traffic, both hosts provide VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting and dedicated hosting. Bluehost’s VPS hosting begins at $18.99 a month, and GoDaddy’s starts at $19.99 a month.
Each hosting service has unique packages for users building a business website.
For example, Bluehost offers WooCommerce hosting and a group of eCommerce tools, security, and expert personnel, beginning at 12.95 a month. GoDaddy offers a hosting package with private-server speed and cPanel, starting at $19.99 a month.
Generally, we can see that both hosting providers have competitive plans and prices. However, it’s worth noting that Bluehost has coupons on most of its plans, even though you’ll have to sign up for one to three years to be eligible for coupons or discounts.
Again, Bluehost comes out tops because of its affordable packages and coupons available at different pricing tiers.
Winner: Draw
6. WordPress Integration
One-third of the internet is built on WordPress[2]. That means that a good host should be optimized for WordPress hosting as well.
Bluehost is one of the best hosting services for running a WordPress website. Bluehost is an official WordPress partner, and WordPress rates Bluehost as one of “the best and brightest of the hosting world.”
Bluehost has three WordPress plans to help you run your site: WordPress web hosting, Managed WordPress hosting, and Online Stores. You’ll get an easy-to-use WordPress dashboard to help you set up, monitor, and customize your site’s appearance and performance.
Bluehost integrates with several themes and plugins such as Yoast SEO, Jetpack, WordFence Security, MonsterInsights, and WP Smush.
To ensure that you never have to worry about keeping your WordPress up-to-date, Bluehost offers automatic WordPress updates with the right security features to keep your website safe and performing at an optimum level.
GoDaddy is not too far behind in WordPress web hosting. The host has four WordPress web hosting plans: Basic, Deluxe, Ultimate, and eCommerce.
Each plan comes with a free SSL certificate, a free domain, and a free business email. Just like Bluehost, GoDaddy has several themes and plugins to help you run your site.
Overall, both Bluehost and GoDaddy offer several features for running a WordPress website. If you have to choose between the two, we’d recommend going for Bluehost since they are WordPress experts.
Plus, they are official WordPress partners, and they’ve had WordPress’ stamp of approval since 2005.
Winner: Bluehost
7. Website Migration
If you’re using a different provider but looking to move to Bluehost or GoDaddy, you’ll want to avoid unwanted technicalities associated with site migrations. Both Bluehost and GoDaddy fall short in this department as many other hosting providers offer migration for free.
Bluehost provides a professional website migration service for a one-off fee of $149.99. They will migrate up to five websites and 20 email accounts. They have specialists and experts that understand the migration process and specialize in delivering stable migrations.
All your files and data will be moved from your old hosting provider to your Bluehost account swiftly.
Bluehost also has a free migration offer for WordPress websites, however, it is a one-time use only. You cannot have used the free migration offer previously. This service is only accessible to you within the first 30 days of signing up for a Bluehost account.
To take advantage of this offer, complete the “free migration contact form” in your Bluehost dashboard.
The Bluehost team will evaluate your site’s WordPress version, database size, and PHP version to determine if your website qualifies for a free transfer. However, the offer covers the transfer of only one website and emails are not included.
Unfortunately, GoDaddy doesn’t provide automated website migration. You’ll have to transfer files to your website manually, which can be a tiring and frustrating process if you’re not tech-savvy. WordPress users can migrate their site to GoDaddy through your new GoDaddy account’s “My Products” section.
Overall, Bluehost is the only provider that offers a website migration process and a team to help you with any website migration issues. Overall, while both Bluehost and Goddady both scored poorly in regard to website migration, Bluehost is the better choice.
Winner: Bluehost (But both hosting providers scored poorly in this department)
F.A.Qs
What Is So Special About Bluehost’s WordPress Integration?
What’s so special about Bluehost WordPress integration is that installing WordPress on Bluehost is as simple as clicking a button. There are many different plugins available for WordPress, and Bluehost offers a staff of customer support representatives that are experts in the platform.
Can I Use Bluehost and GoDaddy Together?
Yes, you can use Bluehost and GoDaddy together. Using a combination of services to manage a website is a prevalent strategy nowadays. If you want to host a WordPress website, you can get a name through GoDaddy and then utilize Bluehost’s shared hosting.
Is Bluehost Good for Beginners?
Yes, Bluehost is good for beginners. It is simple and straightforward, and it serves both novice and seasoned webmasters well. Due to its user-friendliness, WordPress is the platform of choice for many inexperienced webmasters, and Bluehost offers an excellent hosting service.
Bluehost vs. Godaddy: Which One Should You Choose?
In this post, we’ve pitted Bluehost vs. GoDaddy, to see which of them is best. From our comparison, Bluehost stands out as the overall best provider of the two.
Bluehost has a better speed ratio and significant uptime based on proven data. The two features are the most important factors to look at when deciding on a web hosting provider.
Bluehost and GoDaddy are great at hosting WordPress sites, but it’s worth noting that Bluehost seems to have more expertise with WordPress sites.
Although GoDaddy isn’t a terrible web hosting provider, they excel the most at domain registration. Bluehost also provides domain registration, but GoDaddy is a better choice.
Also, GoDaddy provides better customer support. In terms of pricing, both providers seem to be neck and neck.
Overall, we recommend going for Bluehost for your hosting needs as they offer better speed, uptime, and expertise for web hosting.
Our #1 Recommendation: Bluehost
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