In our GoDaddy review, we focus on its website building tools to help you decide if it’s the best website builder for your needs.
GoDaddy: Plans and pricing
You can start your GoDaddy site for free, but there are four GoDaddy Website Builder plans from which to choose once you decide to upgrade. You can choose to pay monthly, but this works out as nearly double the price of paying annually. At time of writing, there is a special offer where the first year is discounted.
The cheapest is the Basic plan, at $95.88 for the first year and $119.88 for subsequent years. You get SSL support, a PayPal button, website analytics, support for one social media platform, five social media posts per month, and 100 marketing emails per month. It’s only really suitable for small personal sites.
The Standard plan costs $143.88 for the first year and $178.88 for the following years. It adds Search Engine Optimization and support for two more social media platforms, and you can make more social media posts, and marketing emails. It’s essentially a starter plan for new businesses.
The Premium plan is priced at $191.88 for the first year, rising to $239.88 after that. You get better support for booking online appointments, unlimited social media posts, and 25,000 marketing emails per month. Your social media and email marketing content creator is upgraded with better templates, fonts, and graphics, and you can accept online payments for services. It’s a good plan for mid-sized service-based businesses.
Finally, if you want to sell products online, you’ll need the Ecommerce plan. It’s $239.88 for the first year and $299.88 for the following years. It includes everything from the Premium plan and adds the ability to sell products directly through your online store and on marketplaces like eBay, Etsy, and Amazon.
Features
GoDaddy Website Builder includes interesting extra features depending on the plan you choose. For example, once you’ve designed your website, you can connect it to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram so you can begin creating branded posts and managing customer reviews.
InSight, GoDaddy’s website metric tool, shows you how your website is performing compared to other businesses like yours. It provides personalized recommendations on how to improve your traffic, website engagement, social presence, and sales conversions.
GoDaddy’s marketing tools are excellent. You can check your performance on each social media platform, do search engine optimization, send marketing emails, and manage your blog.
Interface and in use
The heart of a website builder tool is its user interface. When you begin creating your site, GoDaddy Website Builder asks you to choose a business category and has a bunch of templates that may suit your business. There are so many templates, it’s easy to find one that you would like to build upon. From there, you can choose a theme, color, and fonts.
Adding extra pages is easy, and each section of a page can be replaced by a pre-designed gadget, such as a photo gallery, price list, featured product list, or reviews. There are only about 30 of these gadgets, but they cover all the most important features that you’ll likely want to include on your website.
Support
GoDaddy Website Builder has built-in help resources that appear in a pop-up box when you need them. Even more help is available through the GoDaddy website, with useful how-tos, articles, and blogs discussing how to get the best out of your website. There’s also a community, with thousands of users ready to help.
Free customer support is available over the phone. GoDaddy has over 100 contact centers around the world, so you can get local technical support in your language. There’s live chat too, but when we connected, there was a 22-minute wait to chat with someone.
Security
GoDaddy gives you a free SSL certificate with all GoDaddy Web Builder sites. This encrypts all data between your website and your customers, ensuring privacy and security. When connecting to your website, users’ browsers will show a trusty padlock, so they know that your site is safe.
The competition
If you don’t like GoDaddy Website Builder, 1&1 IONOS MyWebsite is an alternative. It’s MyWebsite Now and MyWebsite Creative plans both cost $5/month, and the initial month is free. MyWebsite Now is a stripped-down version that’s incredibly simple to use, so if you’re finding GoDaddy Website Building too complex, then it’s a good choice.
HostGator Website Builder is one of our favorites. The cheapest plan starts at $3.84 and you get $200 in ad vouchers for signing up. It has fewer templates to choose from than GoDaddy Website Builder, but the drag-and-drop builder is fun to use and there’s good customer support.
Final verdict
GoDaddy Website Builder is a solid product from an industry giant. It’s more expensive than most competitors, but the additional marketing, optimization, and e-commerce tools on offer make it worth it. We like how cohesive everything feels; instead of learning how to use a long list of different tools, you can do all of your website management in one place.
The website building tool itself is in the middle of the pack—it’s not overly simplistic, but you’re kept on-rails in your website design. There are many templates, themes, and layouts, but your website will always follow the general GoDaddy style. We think that this is generally a good idea, though, because you’re forced to follow good website design principles.
We recommend GoDaddy Website Builder to anyone serious about making their website a success, and you can try it out for free to see if it suits your tastes.
