Bluehost vs. GoDaddy

Bluehost vs. GoDaddy: Specs

Plans and Pricing

Bluehost wins this one clearly. When looking at the most affordable web hosting options offered by both Bluehost and GoDaddy, Bluehost’s basic plan purchased for three years totals $178.20 and renews at $359.64. GoDaddy’s, on the other hand, costs $287.64, but renews at $459.63

I also found Bluehost a better value overall, offering custom WP themes to get started and even ecommerce plans. You get a lot of bang for your buck and Bluehost’s guided onboarding makes signing up with each plan a cinch. Throw in the fact that Bluehost has more web hosting options available, it’s simply the more compelling option between the two.

Winner: Bluehost is cheaper, offers more hosting options, and a more consistent pricing structure which will save you money in the long run.

Features

At a glance, both Bluehost and GoDaddy seem to offer the basic features you would expect from a good web host: free domain, unmetered bandwidth, website migration, and storage space. However, there are some key differences worth noting.

With a third of all websites running on WordPress, there’s a decent chance you’ll at least probably be considering building your website with this popular toolset — whether for blogging or building an ecommerce site. Both Bluehost and GoDaddy claim to offer the best WordPress hosting features. However, WordPress hosting is an area where Bluehost slightly edges GoDaddy.

As one of the three hosts recommended for WordPress hosting by WordPress, Bluehost has a WordPress-centric dashboard, allowing you to manage your site with ease. It also includes essential features such as WordPress themes, a WP staging environment, and free WordPress migration.

Furthermore, Bluehost makes it easy for you to get your WordPress site off the ground through its ready-to-use customizable themes.

Bluehost and GoDaddy offer the industry-standard features: a free SSL (secure sockets layer) certificate, which ensures the security of your site by encrypting the data being transferred to and from the site with 256-bit encryption, CDN, and a free domain for the first year.

Bluehost is now offering features to build your online store, which make it an ideal deal choice for getting started and versatility.

Winner: As an officially recommended hosting provider from WordPress, ecommerce features built in, and guided onboarding, Bluehost takes this one.

Bluehost vs. GoDaddy: Features

Performance and Uptime

As with most web hosting providers, Bluehost and GoDaddy have similar uptime rates, clocking in at being up 99.9% of the time even though GoDaddy is the only one of the two with an actual uptime guarantee.

While GoDaddy offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee and consistently meets or exceeds those levels. Unfortunately, it seems that GoDaddy has blocked external site monitoring tools for the last several years, which makes it very difficult to get up-to-date information. It had great uptime and reliability for years before blocking this information.

While Bluehost doesn’t guarantee uptime, it does have a solid track record with an average uptime of 99.854% over the past 30 days and an all-time rate of 99.94%.

If you host your site on Bluehost, count on it being up and running virtually all the time.

Winner: Bluehost wins by offering slightly more stable uptimes despite no guarantee, and for being more transparent with uptime data.

 Security

Both Bluehost and GoDaddy offer standard security features such as a firewall for your site, data encryption and regular threat monitoring. GoDaddy’s plans come with standard security features, such as a firewall for your site, data encryption, and regular threat monitoring.

However, GoDaddy offers useful extras, like daily malware scans and data backups to help you keep your site secure in an attack. All hosting packages come with a free daily malware scan. This automated feature will see if your site has been infected with any type of malware. If there is a problem, it will notify you so you can take care of it yourself or work with GoDaddy’s support team.

Winner: GoDaddy wins thanks to some very helpful extras that give it the edge over Bluehost.

Support

It’s great that Bluehost and GoDaddy offer 24/7 customer support via chat, phone, and email. Bluehost has a team of in-house WordPress experts who are on standby 24/7 to help you with any concerns. GoDaddy offers 24/7 chat and phone support, knowledge base, how-to videos.

While overall, Bluehost’s support seems good, its support chatbot made it difficult to reach a live person. When we finally got into the queue for a support representative, it took a long time for a support rep to come online to help. In one instance, it took almost an hour over two chat sessions before we were able to get connected to a support technician.

I didn’t have these kinds of problems with GoDaddy, whose chat reps were generally responsive and knowledgeable. I really loved browsing their videos, though — they’re helpful and well-produced.

Winner: GoDaddy wins easily with fast, responsive support reps and helpful tools.

Recent Improvements

Of course, Bluehost and GoDaddy are great at implementing new features and keeping on top of customer feedback and fixing bugs.

However, I felt that Bluehost had the upper hand here by not just maintaining the product, but also going the extra mile and thinking a bit outside the box. Bluehost’s improvements have centered around making signup even easier with ready-to-go templates and a website builder. It has also introduced Online Store plans to reach those users who want to sell their products and services.

Also, I was impressed with the introduction of Bluehost’s WordPress Academy to help users learn more about web hosting, for free.

Winner: Bluehost continues to push forward to improve it offerings and easy-to-use features.

Final Thoughts

It’s clear that Bluehost and GoDaddy are great web hosting providers. Bluehost is the perfect option for new WordPress sites and those just get started in web hosting. However, GoDaddy is ideal for businesses with high-traffic and the need for more websites.

That said, you really can’t go terribly wrong with either, and a lot will depend on your needs and preferences.

How We Evaluated Bluehost vs. GoDaddy

I test web hosts based on the following factors:

• Plan value: What plans are available, and do they offer a good value?
• Ease of use: Is the dashboard easy to navigate?
• Support: How fast can you get help when needed, and is support genuinely helpful?
• Features: What features does the host offer, and how do they compare to similar competitors?
• Security: Does the host offer SSL certificates, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack protection, backup services, and scans for viruses and malware?
• Speed and uptime: Does the provider offer a fast, stable environment for your website? How does it perform in tests, and what kind of servers does the hosting company use?
• Recent improvements: What has the host done lately to update its technology and services?

Learn more about our review methodology.