GoDaddy may be the ‘big daddy’ of hosting services but the biggest isn’t necessarily the best. Established in 1997 as Jomax Technologies, this Arizona-headquartered behemoth today serves over 18 million customers around the world.
It offers almost every kind of website hosting-related service imaginable. This ranges from standard shared hosting and domain names to specialized services like web security and Voice Over IP (VOIP) lines.
Despite its early start and massive market share, doing business with them can at times leave much to be desired. Thanks to the meteoric rise of web technology and broadband speeds, many strong GoDaddy alternatives now exist.
Below is the list of GoDaddy competitors offering, in our opinion, better services at a reasonable price.
TL;DR – Top Alternatives to GoDaddy
For Web Hosting
GoDaddy Competitors & Alternatives
1. TMD Hosting
Website: https://www.tmdhosting.com
For those who haven’t quite met TMDHosting yet – you should. It comes across with an entirely professional facade that hides a warm, yet efficient interior. This host offers a good spread of traditional hosting products backed by strong performance.
Why TMDHosting: Cheaper & Better Performance
TMDHosting serves a global audience out of data centers around the world. You get to choose from almost every major strategic place including the US, UK, Singapore, Australia, and more.
Performance-wise, TMDHosting servers have so far shown themselves to not just be fast, but also very reliable. They’ve seriously been on the rise and many of those pointed their way have had good things to say about them – especially when it comes to customer support.
The user interface for hosting accounts that they offer is intuitively designed and yet comprehensive enough to satisfy most. Hosting here isn’t a hit or miss like many places, but you can be assured of it with their 60-day money-back guarantee.
Read our in-depth TMDHosting review to find out more.
TMDHosting Pricing
Prices for shared hosting with TMDHosting start at $2.95/mo to a high of $64.97 on their Cloud VPS plans. If you’re looking for something even more robust, they do have dedicated servers as well.
2. ScalaHosting
Website: https://www.scalahosting.com/
ScalaHosting may come across as a relative unknown to some, but in truth, this service provider is rather unique. It was born out of a desire to make VPS plans more accessible to the masses and indeed it has done so.
Why ScalaHosting?
This is true in more ways than one. For example, ScalaHosting has not simply brought down the price of its VPS and Cloud offerings but also been quite innovative. This has materialized in the form of its SPanel solution.
SPanel is wholly developed by ScalaHosting and offers users a more affordable web hosting control panel. It is also highly compatible with cPanel, which is great given cPanel’s decision to increase licensing fees as of 2019.
ScalaHosting also has some unique tools like their SShield security manager and the SWordPress manager. While that may be a lot of S-es, it still shows a service provider that’s aligned to the needs of website owners in getting away from high fees charged by established names in the business.
Read our in-depth ScalaHosting review to find out more.
ScalaHosting Pricing
Prices for shared hosting with ScalaHosting start at $3.95/mo to a high of $63.95 on their managed Cloud VPS plans. Custom plans are also available upon request.
For those who are seeking to move away from GoDaddy cPanel hosting, ScalaHosting's Cloud VPS is a fantastic option.
3. A2 Hosting
Website: https://www.a2hosting.com/
A2 Hosting is and will always be close to my heart for various reasons, and for that and more it finds its way onto this list. They were one of the first high-quality web hosts I worked with in the beginning and believe me, I had to kiss quite a few frogs to find them.
Why A2 Hosting?
Offering as broad a range of products as many other top-notch service providers, A2 Hosting has a distinct trait that you won’t normally find. Their confidence in the products they offer is such that they are willing to offer anytime money-back guarantees.
Learn more in our A2 Hosting review.
A2 Hosting Pricing
With this web host you’ll get support anytime of the year and very strong performance on their servers as well. Prices range from $2.99/mo on shared hosting all the way to dedicated managed servers at $290.49/mo.
For developers, A2 Hosting is better than GoDaddy since A2 Hosting is well ahead of the pack in the area of developer support.
4. HostGator
Website: https://www.hostgator.com/
HostGator may not have GoDaddy’s bulk in customer share but it certainly does carry a good range of products. It focuses on core web hosting products such as domain names, shared hosting, VPS hosting, and even dedicated servers.
Why HostGator over GoDaddy?
Of late, the friendly host has also expanded into website builders, offering its own Gator Builder for users looking into rapid development and ease of use. Aside from product range, HostGator also has a decent performance track record.
As an example of this, over the past 30 days, it has managed to keep an impressive 100% uptime and relatively low server response speeds. Overall, it’s a good place to be for most sites as there is much room to grow here.
Read our in-depth HostGator review to find out more.
HostGator Pricing
Prices start as low as $2.75/mo for shared plans up to $39.95/mo on VPS. Of course, if your needs are even greater you can speak to them directly about creating a customized solution.
HostGator can be a strong alternative to GoDaddy as the services offered by both solution providers are very similar.
5. Namecheap
Website: https://www.namecheap.com/
In terms of product range, Namecheap gives GoDaddy a serious run for their money. Aside from the usual web hosting plans, Namecheap also dabbles in extras such as low cost SSL solutions and even some web-based apps like business card makers.
Why Namecheap as Alternative to GoDaddy?
This one-stop service provider is really going the extra mile and has other distinctions as well. It is one of the few registrars that offers a massive range of domain name extensions for sale – plus bundles in domain privacy with their offerings.
While in truth they are most well-known for their domain registration business, NameCheap's web hosting packages really do perform quite well too. You can get anything from shared hosting to dedicated servers here, and the use of their WebsiteBuilder tool.
In terms of domain name registration, Namecheap is the strongest competitor to GoDaddy. You can read our review to learn more.
Namecheap Pricing
Prices range from $1.44/mo for shared hosting all the way to $199.88/mo on their dedicated servers. Strangely enough, though only their WordPress hosting plans are powered by Cloud solutions.
6. Kinsta
Website: https://kinsta.com/
More may not always be best and that’s especially true when you know what you’re looking for. For those seeking an ace WordPress hosting provider, you might like to give Kinsta a good look.
Why Kinsta?
This host has thrown caution to the wind and put its entire stock into providing Cloud hosting for WordPress only. It is renowned for the sterling performance offered by their finely-tuned solutions and expertise in everything WordPress.
In fact, even in terms of support, what you’re getting is different. Since they only offer WordPress solutions, not only is their platform optimized for it, so is their customer service team – no more dealing with generic techs!
Read our comprehensive review of Kinsta.
Kinsta Pricing
The Kinsta platform runs on Google Cloud servers which is part of what contributes to its reliability. Prices aren’t cheap though and range from a low of $30/mo all the way to $1,500 even for pre-defined plans. If you need more though, just ask and you will be given.
If you are looking for GoDaddy alternatives for Managed WordPress hosting, look no further, Kinsta is certainly one of the recommended choices.
7. Bluehost
Website: https://www.bluehost.com/
Bluehost may be very US-centric in its hosting servers but that hasn’t really impacted its performance. Overall this host offers an experience that is pretty seamless and is both easy to use and strong in uptime and speed.
Why BlueHost?
Bluehost has the distinction of being one of only three hosts recommended by WordPress.org, which really is quite a big thing. They prove their dedication in this area with the integration of an all-in-one marketing center, dashboard SEO, email marketing, and social media tools with their managed WordPress plans.
Bluehost Pricing
BlueHost prices range from $3.95/mo for shared hosting to a high of $119.99/mo for dedicated servers. Of course, they can also create other plans to suit specific needs.
Bluehost is an ideal alternative to GoDaddy for those who are venturing into the WordPress environment.
Why Go with GoDaddy Competitors Instead?
GoDaddy may have a ton of web services and many users but that doesn’t mean that it should be a default choice for many users. There are more than enough reasons to opt for an alternative to this industry giant.
It’s Publicly Traded
GoDaddy is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (GDDY) and is on the Russell 1000 Component. This means that unlike many private organizations, the company will be under greater pressure from investors to drive a profit line rather than look after its customers.
GoDaddy Splurges on Advertising
Rather than improve on the quality of infrastructure to benefit its customers, GoDaddy has been known to throw huge amounts of money into advertising. We’re not talking about thousands spent on web ads, but massive outlay such as with Nascar and the Super Bowl.
Complex Systems Management
Those who have used GoDaddy will know what I mean, but for some reason, they have a knack of making the simplest things seem impossible. One good example of this is the installation of free SSL certificates, which normally should take just a few clicks.
In GoDaddy, it becomes an entire quest. Why should users have to hunt for workaround solutions to do something so simple that all websites today need? It simply boggles the mind.
All I can say is that GoDaddy seems more focused on selling you more of their stuff than it is helping you run your site well. That's also the reason why buyers choose to do business with GoDaddy competitors instead.
Poor Reliability
Although their servers offer decent performance, GoDaddy isn’t known for having the most reliable hosting around. As an example of this, there was a security breach with around 28,000 hosting accounts compromised in Q4 2019. Also if you look at our monitoring at HostScore – GoDaddy's recent uptime has been tracked at 95.70% – well below what many good hosts will be working at.
Also read –
FAQs on GoDaddy Alternatives
There are many good GoDaddy alternatives in market – A2 Hosting, Scalahosting, Namecheap, as well as Kinsta are some of our top recommendations.
Generally – Namecheap domain registration fees are cheaper and WhoIs Protection is free for life. NameCheap has almost two decades in the business and has built its name from bottom up. Today, it’s one of the most recognized web service providers in the world, having sold more than four million domain names. Learn more.
Bluehost offers cheaper hosting plans and slightly better customer support when compared to GoDaddy. Also – BlueHost has the distinction of being one of only three hosts recommended by WordPress.org, which really is quite a big thing. For features comparison, see BlueHost vs GoDaddy.
In short GoDaddy seems more focused on selling you more of their stuff than it is helping you run your site well. The company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (GDDY) and is on the Russell 1000 Component. This means that unlike many private organizations, the company will be under greater pressure from investors to drive a profit line rather than look after its customers. There are also other reasons which we discussed above.
Yes. GoDaddy has been around for more than 20 years and is the biggest domain name registrars globally. The company is listed in NYSE and valued at $11.8 billion at this point of writing.
GoDaddy makes money from products it has, which is focused in three main segments; web hosting, domain names, and business applications. Learn more in this article.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, more is not always better and there are many good GoDaddy alternatives in existence. A decent web hosting should offer you a few key features – good performance, few problems, and steady customer support.
Even if you don’t know what you’re looking for, as long as a host can meet these general terms and offers you the space you need to grow – it is still a better option than subpar hosting.
