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GoDaddy Review: Web Hosting Review |
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| Easy for beginners but very limited; a lack of blog and shopping cart are disappointing | |
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GoDaddy has made itself popular with its too-hot-for-TV Superbowl ads and sports personality spokespeople, making it the rock star of web hosts. It's an excess that spills over into the site's dizzying array of options, so many options that it was difficult to find one that would match the same criteria as other web hosts we reviewed. The most basic web host plan lacks a site-builder, which we see as a standard feature. On the other hand, the most basic plan with a sitebuilder, the Website Tonite plan that we review here, doesn't allow you to upload (or FTP) a site that you've created offline.
The Website Tonight plan has a hosting cost of $3.99 per month for three years (which includes a current 20%-off promotion), but domain privacy (which we recommend on any domain registration) is an additional $9.95 per year. It also does not include the domain registration after the first year, an annual cost of $9.99, something that's free or heavily discounted with some other web hosting companies. Twelve months of hosting is $4.49 per month, if the three-year commitment doesn't work for you. Website Tonight gave us a five-page site, which we built with a very nice WYSIWIG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. It really is one of the nicest you'll find and some great bonus features such as the ability to add animated intros with sound. However, a five-page site is rather limiting, particularly when a blog is not included as a standard feature. You get 50MB of storage and 1GB of bandwidth. These are fairly low in general, but probably adequate for the five-page site. Because GoDaddy's offering is a bit different our download speed and server response tests aren't truly applicable. We were able to look at its uptime. Over our testing period they came in at a virtual 100%, just four minutes of downtime over two months. If you're willing to forego the site builder and create your page on your own, you can get the comparably priced Economy Hosting Plan. It offers more of the traditional web host offerings such as osCommerce and Zen Cart commerce solutions, and Wordpress for blogging. Website Tonight can be recommended for those who want a quick, easy-to-use site builder, and who won't want to move up to uploading their own site. All-in-all it comes in cheaper than Yahoo!'s Small Business site, which offers similar ease-of-use (though Yahoo!'s plan is more fully-featured and scalable) Fortunately, GoDaddy provides plans for web hosting for as few as three months (though your price goes up to $4.99), so there's an easy way of trying it out without much commitment. GoDaddy offers a pro-rated refund policy. As usual, domain names are not refunded. |
| Cheapest Plan: | $3.99/mo 3 years |
| 1 Year Plan: | $53.88/yr; $4.49/mo (annual commitment); $4.99/month (three months commitment) |
| $ Back Guarantee: | Prorated refund; No refund on domain |
| Domain: | $1.99/yr |
| Support: | Email, Phone |
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