GoDaddy Pricing, Plans and Costs: Is It Worth It for Small Businesses?

The price plan for GoDaddy’s ecommerce (web store) is $27.99 per month right now, if you pay for a year in advance. Other GoDaddy pricing plans range from $11.99 to $22.99 per month.

GoDaddy pricing can be hard to find – and even harder to figure out if it’s good value for your small business. But don’t worry, we’ve got all the money facts you need when it comes to GoDaddy.

With over 12 years’ experience in small business advice, we’re best placed to point out exactly how much GoDaddy will cost your business. Thanks to our independent research, we know GoDaddy is good value for money compared to similar products like Wix and Squarespace.

If you’re looking for GoDaddy domain and email pricing, read on because we’ve got it all. Psst, did you know you can get a year of Microsoft Email Essentials for free? Skip to the end for the deal.

GoDaddy Pricing: Summary

Here’s a quick summary of the GoDaddy pricing plans:

As we explain in our GoDaddy review, the platform offers four website builder plans, but only one which lets you build a shop section on your site. This costs $27.99 per month if you pay for 12 months upfront.

Cash flow can be a sticky subject for new businesses, of course. Yet if you’d prefer to pay monthly, the cost increases to a hefty $44.99 pay-as-you-go. Some may see this higher price as a worthwhile startup cost. As your online shop starts to bring in revenue, you may be able to afford an annual subscription before long.

If you can, we’d recommend trying to claw together the $336 for the initial 12 months’ investment as soon as you can. Realistically, it’s a fool’s errand to run a web shop for just a month or two anyway. So unless you’re managing a fundraiser, a pop-up shop or another short-term project, nab a 30% discount with annual GoDaddy payment.

GoDaddy Pricing Plans Breakdown

GoDaddy has increased their number of website builder plans from three in 2021 to five in 2022. Formerly, GoDaddy had a Free, Basic and Premium plan. Now, there are the “Standard” and “Ecommerce” plans as well.

Let’s take a look at each price plan now in detail.

Basic GoDaddy Pricing: $11.99 per Month

GoDaddy pricing for its Basic plan is $11.99 per month (if you pay for one year upfront) currently. So you’d have to pay $143.88 in one go. After that, the renewal price is around 25% higher, so you’ll pay $14.99 per month ($179.88 for the year).

If you only need a website short-term then you can pay $19.99 month-to-month.

So let’s take a look at exactly what you’ll get from GoDaddy Basic:

• Website with SSL security certificate
• Connect a domain name without “.godaddy.com” in it
• 24-7 support including online guides and a phone number: 1-866-938-1119
• Connect one social media platform (send five posts monthly)
• Content creator (for Instagram posts, logo creation etc.)
• Email marketing (send 100 per month)
• Customers can book one-off appointments with you

Website creation can be incredibly fast, thanks to AI-powered design. That’s why GoDaddy made it into our top AI website builders roundup.

At this price level, you can’t do much more than run a very simple business website. Tradespeople and self-employed service providers (such as a tree surgeon, local gardener, make-up artist, dog walker, musical or academic tutor) would benefit most from this price plan, as the booking options are not sophisticated. If you don’t need to take payments, but you’re looking for a virtual business card for customers to look you up online, a GoDaddy Basic plan will suffice.

You won’t get any of these features:

• Product listings
• Recurring appointments
• Take payments
• Search engine optimization (SEO) tips for visibility on Google results

Standard GoDaddy Pricing: $15.99 per month

The new Standard GoDaddy price plan costs $15.99 monthly if you pay for one year’s contract upfront. That amounts to a $191.88 one-off payment. The renewal for the second year costs $239.88 (equivalent to $19.99 per month).

The month-to-month price for GoDaddy Standard is $24.99.

Here are the features in this price bracket:

• Website with SSL security certificate
• Connect a domain name without “.godaddy.com” in it
• 24-7 support
• Search engine optimization tips (for increasing visibility on search engine results pages)
• Connect three social media platforms (send 20 posts monthly)
• Content creator (for Instagram posts, logo creation etc.)
• Send 500 marketing emails monthly
• Hold one-time online appointments

For a similar price you can subscribe to IONOS Plus, a competitor website builder option. It comes with a dedicated account manager (which you won’t get with GoDaddy), that can help new website makers access industry expertise.

The Standard GoDaddy price package doesn’t offer much more by way of features compared with the Basic plan. The main difference is you’ll get slightly boosted marketing features. Namely, four times the number of social media posts and five times the number of marketing email sends.

This kind of website would suit a small shop owner in sectors such as tool repairs, gift shop or toy shop. Alternatively, this plan would also suit a masseuse, physiotherapist, counsellor or occupational therapist advertizing in-person appointments.

You won’t get any of the following:

• Product listings
• Recurring appointments
• Take payments
• Email or text appointment reminders

Premium GoDaddy Pricing: $22.99 per month

The Premium GoDaddy price plan has increased from $19.99 per month to $22.99 per month (if you pay $275.88 upfront for the year). After your first year, you’ll be charged $335.88 which works out at $27.99 per month.

If you only want Premium GoDaddy for the short-term, you can pay $32.99 per month.

These are the features you get with Premium:

• Website with SSL security certificate
• Connect a domain name without “.godaddy.com” in it
• 24-7 support including online guides and a phone number: 1-866-938-1119
• Unlimited social media platform connections (with unlimited social posts)
• Content creator (for Instagram posts, logo creation etc.)
• Email marketing (25,000 sends per month)

Plus these extra appointment features:

• Customers can book recurring appointments
• Take sign-ups for a group webinar, class or workshop (online or in-person)
• Accept credit card, PayPal and Apple Pay payments for appointments or services
• Send email and text reminders for appointments

At the Premium level, you can finally start to take online payments – but only for appointments booked through your website. Another perk is your marketing options hit the maximum allowance. You’re able to send as many social media posts as you like and up to 25,000 marketing emails each month – these limits remain the same even if you go up a price bracket.

The ideal user for a Premium GoDaddy website is an entrepreneur keen to grow their business through outreach marketing. Anyone who’s keen to host paid online classes and courses would suit this level. For instance, a skills coach, mentor, consultant or another kind of educator.

And here’s what you won’t get at this level:

• Order email automations
• Sell products online

Ecommerce GoDaddy Pricing: $27.99 per month

To sell products online with a GoDaddy website, you’ll need to pay $335.88 for a year’s subscription (equivalent to $27.99 per month). The renewal after that will cost you $479.88 for the next year ($39.99 per month).

The month-to-month rate for GoDaddy Ecommerce is $44.99. However, it doesn’t make much sense to run an online store for just one or two months, so we’d recommend paying for at least one year’s subscription.

Here are the features you’ll get at GoDaddy Ecommerce:

• Everything in the Premium level
• Order email automations
• Add and edit product listings
• Take payments for product sales and appointments
• Add delivery options
• Run sales and discount promotions

GoDaddy Ecommerce is fairly good value for building an online store compared with similar products. With Square you can sell products for free online, so GoDaddy definitely isn’t the cheapest way to go. By contrast, Wix’s lowest-priced ecommerce plan is $28 per month, which is 1¢ more than GoDaddy Ecommerce. GoDaddy is a few dollars cheaper than Squarespace Business at $32 per month though SiteBuilder eCommerce is $11.18 per month with a two-year plan.

GoDaddy Ecommerce is aimed at small business owners looking to start selling items online, or extend their existing business into an online store. You can sell digital or physical products, as well as taking appointment bookings. If you’re running a hairdressers, art gallery, nursery or car dealership then you could flourish with a GoDaddy online store.

Does GoDaddy Have a Free Plan?

Yes, you can use GoDaddy’s website builder for free and launch a live website without paying a cent. You can even practise uploading product listings on the free plan, though you’ll have to upgrade your subscription to start selling them. Luckily it’s very clear which features are outside of your current price plan, so you won’t accidentally overspend. Using the simple drop-down list to edit different parts of your website, you’ll see red text explaining which features are in the next price plan up. If you like, you can upgrade your subscription in a pop-up window from within the website editor which is very convenient and transparent in terms of charges.

Is GoDaddy’s free plan enough or should I opt for a paid plan?

All websites built on GoDaddy’s free version contain banner adverts, which you can see in the above image. To be fair, these adverts are no longer as large and garish as they used to be. On the whole, though, having such obvious website builder promotion on every page of your website does come across as a little on the amateurish side. If you’re looking to give the most professional image possible, we’d recommend upgrading to at least the Basic GoDaddy pricing plan.

It’s very difficult to scale up your business using only the free GoDaddy plan because the features remain limited. You’ll never be able to sustainably grow your online sales unless you upgrade to the ecommerce package. Product listings are the major set of features you can’t get on the GoDaddy free plan. Considering the GoDaddy Ecommerce option is better value than several other comparable website builder plans, we reckon it’s a smart move to choose the online store package with GoDaddy.

GoDaddy Domain Pricing

GoDaddy domain pricing is usually not the best deal compared with other domain name registrars. GoDaddy has some pretty appealing discounts on the first year of a two-year domain registration. However, purchasing a domain is a long-term investment, and you should look to hold a domain for at least a decade. With that in mind, the first year discount doesn’t necessarily amount to much in the long-run.

The exact price of your domain name will vary according to the words you want it to contain. However, we’ve researched some indicative examples:

As you can see, GoDaddy is only the cheapest domain registrar in one out of four of the examples. This goes to show it’s a good idea to shop around and compare domain registration prices across a couple of registrars before committing to one in particular. Although many domain registrars also come with a website builder product, you don’t need to sign up to this. However, in the case of GoDaddy the website builder is included for free with domain registration.

With GoDaddy domains you can also add extra security for $9.99 per year which requires two-factor authentication for domain transfer. Similar protection is offered by Domain.com for $12 per year, and for free from Namecheap. Additionally, GoDaddy charges $0.24 for annual ICANN (domain registration) fees for many top-level domains (TLDs) – this is the same as Namecheap.

GoDaddy Email Pricing

GoDaddy email pricing varies according to whether you buy it as a standalone product or as part of a wider package. It’s hard to compare GoDaddy’s email pricing with other providers because Wix and Squarespace, for instance, both offer Google Mail rather than Microsoft.

With GoDaddy, Microsoft 365 Email Essentials (10GB email storage, approx 50,000 emails) is $7.99 per month as a standalone product. However, it’s currently on sale for $1.49 per month for a three month term. Sale discounts also apply to email packages with more memory if paying for a longer-term contract. Pricing below is for one user (currently discounted as of November 2022).

GoDaddy Pricing: Microsoft 365 Email Essentials

• One month: $7.99 per month
• Three months: $1.95 per month
• 12 months: $2.99 per month
• 24 months: $3.99 per month
• 36 months: $4.49 per month

GoDaddy Pricing: Microsoft 365 Email Plus

50GB email storage (approx 250,000 emails)

• One month: $8.99 per month
• 12 months: $5.99 per month
• 24 months: $6.99 per month
• 36 months: $6.99 per month

GoDaddy Pricing: Microsoft 365 Business Professional

50GB email storage, Office Online and Office Desktop

• One month: $21.99 per month
• 12 months: $10.99 per month
• 24 months: $14.99 per month
• 36 months: $15.99 per month

In addition to the above, you can choose to add on Advanced Email Security for $6.99 per user or Protect Against Data Loss (email backup) for $3.99 per user. Each of these are charged per month.

You can also get a free year’s worth of Microsoft Email Essentials with a 12-month subscription to GoDaddy’s website builder.