Here is a name y’all already know.
GoDaddy is one of the forefathers of web hosting and by far the most prominent provider and domain registrar on the market.
Just look at the numbers:
18.8+ million clients worldwide, 78+ domains managed, over 9000 employees in 17+ office locations.
There isn’t a hosting-related conversation where the GoDaddy name won’t pop up, regardless of the context.
So what’s the hot gossip about VPS web hosting in particular?
GoDaddy Hardware & Features
GoDaddy utilizes 2x Intel E5-2620v3 servers with 15M cache for its VPS solutions. You can take your pick between four managed service plans:
Looking closer, you will notice there isn’t much-added value when it comes to features and extras. The free SSL is available only for the first year. Storage space is HDD instead of the much faster SSD. Bandwidth is unmetered, but you can be sure you will hit various other limits as you start growing.
The three dedicated IPs seemed like a nice touch, but then I dug a little deeper in the service level agreements.
As it turns out, if you don’t start using them until 90 days after your VPS activation, GoDaddy reserves the right to take the unused ones back.
It seems anything remotely good with GoDaddy comes with a catch…
GoDaddy Support
I really can’t determine which customer support I find more useless — GoDaddy’s or the one from EIG-owned hosts. Every time I think I’ve seen everything, they manage to find a new low.
Think I’m exaggerating? Just check out my latest case.
A week ago, I bought a few domains from NameCheap and pointed them to different hosts for testing purposes. It’s a simple procedure really — point the nameservers, create an addon domain in Cpanel, install WordPress, and wait for a short propagation for everything to resolve.
It’s not rocket science, and it worked smoothly with nine out of the ten tested hosts…
The tenth was GoDaddy.
For three days, I went in-and-out of their chat, trying to figure out why my site was not working. They kept repeating “propagation is not over, it takes 24-48 hours,” even though I am well aware that in 90% of the cases it takes much less.
My personal experience dealing with such cases is that, more often than not, a couple of hours are absolutely enough for the nameservers to find their new location.
But OK, let’s say I am among the unlucky 10%.
After a second day with no website, I was back in the support chat. The operator first tried the “propagation” gimmick, but this time 48 hours were over, so I sent him back to double-check. He was now back with a new version — my nameservers were wrong!
I was furious!
If any of the previous operators ran the simplest whois check, they could’ve saved me three days of frustration. As it turns out, my addon nameservers were different than my account NS. There was no way to check them myself, and the operator needed an admin to figure out a 1-minute fix.
It will be best if you imagine you’re on your own and never contact what passes for support.
Our Verdict
The GoDaddy VPS services are generally acceptable but nothing more. You can easily find providers with more features, fewer restrictions, and better support. Still, GoDaddy is not going anywhere, so if you are after an experienced, reliable host — this might be a suitable match.
