GoDaddy Review: The Number One Website Builder for Small Businesses?

GoDaddy is the fastest way to get a business website live on the internet, and with its affordable plans, it’s one of the best website builders for small businesses.

Of course, speed and price aren’t the only factors that count when choosing a website builder. You want your website to look good, and more importantly, be functional for both you and your customers.

Plus, with more and more customers going to the internet to find services, it’s never been more important to put your best foot forward online.

So, is GoDaddy up to the task? I’ll let you know in this review. I’ll go over GoDaddy’s pros and cons, its pricing, key features, and assess how it compares to the other top website builders on the market.

Pros and Cons of GoDaddy

Here’s what I liked and didn’t like about GoDaddy:

✅ Quick and easy to set up

GoDaddy is the fastest website builder tool, so it’s a good choice if you’re short on time and need your website live ASAP. Its AI website builder assistant, released in early 2024, can create a basic website for you in just two steps, and under 30 seconds.

All I needed to do was answer two questions (“What kind of website do you want?” and, “What are some features your website needs?”) and I was taken straight to the site editing workspace. From there, I could easily get right into altering the preset layout, images, and text to suit my tastes.

If you get stuck during the web design process, the “Next Steps” checklist in the top right-hand corner of the editor ensures you stay on track. You can approach any of the steps as you feel ready, so you’re not forced into one course of action.

GoDaddy, along with other website builders like Wix and Squarespace, has been expanding its AI suite. You can now use AI to speed up the process of not only creating a website, but logos, a business email, and product descriptions too.

✅ Great value for the money

GoDaddy is one of the most affordable website builders on the market, and you get a decent number of features for the price.

Its plans start at $10.99 a month, going up to a maximum of $16.99 for its ecommerce plan, which is the starting price for competitors like Wix and Squarespace.

GoDaddy by no means provides as many advanced features as its more expensive counterparts, but you’ll still get a website equipped with key business features, such as appointment booking, ecommerce functionality, and marketing tools.

✅ Very reliable hosting

Unlike competitors such as Squarespace or Wix, GoDaddy is known first and foremost as a domain registrar and website hosting platform.

That means it’s famous for providing website URL names and owning physical servers that keep websites online. GoDaddy websites have fast page load times, and new users get a free domain for a year.

Load time isn’t something to be overlooked. I’ve noticed that site load times are much slower on people’s favorite website builder, Wix, than they are on GoDaddy. If I found the slow load time frustrating, there’s a good chance your customers will as well.

GoDaddy’s hosting service also comes with daily website backups, and it guarantees 99.9% uptime, which means your website should almost never come offline due to technical failures.

❌ Limited design options

With GoDaddy, there’s less focus on tweaking website design to make it exactly match your vision. This means your website can sometimes look quite generic.

There are just 22 templates (Wix has over 800), which limits the range of visual layout possibilities. This wouldn’t be a big deal if GoDaddy gave users a lot of creative freedom when customizing the templates, but it doesn’t.

There’s no drag-and-drop function on the GoDaddy editor, which means you can’t move specific design elements to unique places. You have to edit elements within predefined sections. This makes it difficult to create a unique website that stands out from the millions of other GoDaddy websites out there.

❌ Limited selection of business features

GoDaddy lags behind competitors like Wix, Shopify and WooCommerce when it comes to the breadth of its business features.

There’s no app store (unlike Squarespace or Wix), so you don’t have many business integrations available. This is extremely limiting if you already have business software you use and like, and it means you’re stuck with GoDaddy’s basic offering.

The built-in business features (social media and email marketing, appointments management, ecommerce) are suitable for small businesses, but they’ll probably feel too surface level for growing businesses.

For example, GoDaddy doesn’t let you customize the checkout page on your ecommerce website, and as your business grows, having uniform branding is important.

❌ Not great for designing mobile-friendly sites

GoDaddy doesn’t let you preview how your website will look on a cell phone when you’re editing your site from a desktop. To do this, you’d need to access your site from your cell phone.

This isn’t very user-friendly, and is a major blow for GoDaddy, when competitors such as Wix and Squarespace do offer mobile previews. If you rely on customers to find your business by using Google Maps, for example, they’ll almost certainly be using the mobile version of your website.

A majority of internet users view websites from their phones, so being able to make sure your website looks good and works on vertical screens is very important.

How Much Does GoDaddy Cost?

GoDaddy is in the mid-range of website builder products, with pricing between $10.99 and $26.99 a month (after your first discounted year). It also has a free plan, which is useful for trying GoDaddy out before committing to it.

There are four price plans, only one of which is for selling online. Compare each price plan by clicking the arrows:

Overall, GoDaddy is relatively good value for the money. It’s cheaper than most of its competitors, and gets a decent number of features for the price.

If you’re looking for a more high-tech website, however, you’ll get better value for your money on one of Wix or Squarespace mid-tier plans.

GoDaddy’s Key Business Features

GoDaddy offers the following basic business features on all of its plans:

• Website editor (phone and desktop)
• Appointments booking
• Email marketing (max 100 per month on cheapest plan)
• Social media content creator (with templates)

You’ll have to subscribe to the more expensive plans for more advanced social media, email marketing, and booking features. For example, SEO (search engine optimization) guidance isn’t available on GoDaddy’s cheapest Basic plan.

We’ll go over GoDaddy’s key features in more detail in the following sections:

Bookings management

One area GoDaddy shines in is its comprehensive booking management features.

These are very limited on the Basic plan, where customers can only book one-time appointments through your website.

Once you get up to the Premium plan, however, you’ll be able to set up recurring appointments or group events (useful if you teach in-person classes), and be able to send text or email reminders to your customers.

Booking features can be accessed via the GoDaddy dashboard, from which you can categorize services and add new ones, enable customer accounts, and add staff profiles. There’s also a calendar view where you can track upcoming appointments.

The true selling point of GoDaddy’s bookings system is that businesses can accept payments from customers for just $22.99 on the Premium plan, without having to upgrade to GoDaddy’s ecommerce plan.

Social media and email marketing

GoDaddy has all the basic social media and email marketing features a business needs.

For socials, it integrates with Facebook, Instagram, Google, and Yelp. However, if you’re on the Basic plan, you’ll only be able to choose between one of these platforms. The Standard plan gives you access to three, and the Premium and Ecommerce plans give you an unlimited number.

You can track your social media posts’ engagement, and even reply to customers from the GoDaddy platform (the number of replies is limited on the lower tier plans).

There’s also a content creation app, GoDaddy Studio, which is listed as “Content Creator” in the sidebar of the dashboard. From there, you can design logos, social media posts, and event flyers. GoDaddy’s AI assistant can create instant designs for you by asking you a few questions, but as is the case with GoDaddy’s website editor, you’re a little limited in how creative you can be.

AI is a relatively new addition to GoDaddy’s website builder, only launching in 2024, but it’s definitely sped up the website and brand building process, even if it doesn’t produce the most creative and unique results.

GoDaddy’s email marketing suite has all the basic functions a business needs, from campaign creation to email scheduling and analytics. You’re limited to 100 emails a month on the Basic plan, but this goes up to 25,000 on the Premium and Ecommerce plans.

At the end of 2023, GoDaddy added email automation to its email marketing suite, meaning users can now trigger automatic email templates, replies, and scheduling.

However, GoDaddy’s lack of third-party integrations means that you won’t be able to connect more advanced marketing tools such as HubSpot or MailChimp to your GoDaddy website. This isn’t the case with platforms like Wix or WooCommerce.

Online store

You can only run an online store with GoDaddy if you choose the $26.99 a month Ecommerce plan.

Compared to dedicated ecommerce platforms like Shopify or BigCommerce, GoDaddy’s ecommerce offering is pretty basic. You can list products, run discounts and sales, and accept payments on your GoDaddy online store, but it doesn’t have as many accepted payments as competitors, in-depth sales and inventory tracking, or the ability to accommodate third-party integrations, such as accounting tools.

GoDaddy’s accepted payments including credit and debit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay. At the end of 2023, GoDaddy also introduced a new payments integration, Paze, a digital wallet service used by many US banks.

Its ecommerce tools will be enough for small online sellers, who’ll appreciate the absence of transaction fees for payments, but if you want advanced sales tools, you’re better off going with another website builder.

One example is that if you have an existing POS system for your physical store, you won’t be able to sync online sales with in-store sales using GoDaddy, since it doesn’t allow for many third-party integrations. The only way to do this is to sign up for GoDaddy Payments, and buy GoDaddy supplied card machines.

If you want a simple online store that integrates seamlessly with a POS system, and doesn’t cost the moon, Square is a cheaper option, and is one of the best ecommerce platforms for small businesses.

Help and support

GoDaddy’s customer support options are healthy: there’s a phone line, with the company readily publishing their number online.

By comparison, Wix makes it a bit awkward to talk to someone on the phone; you’ll have to click through online options and request a callback. Squarespace doesn’t even have a customer service number.

You also don’t need to upgrade to a higher plan to access over-the-phone customer care with GoDaddy, as is the case with Wix.

GoDaddy also has a community forum, and help center, where a lot of common questions get answered. You have a fair chance of getting real help on the GoDaddy community forum, too, as opposed to the Wix equivalent, which is full of spam comments on its posts.

What Kind of Business is GoDaddy Best For?

GoDaddy is best for small businesses that want to get online quickly, are new to website builders, and aren’t hung up on having the most aesthetic site on the internet.

Who it’s definitely not for are ambitious online merchants that need scalable sales tools, or businesses that market themselves on having a trendy and modern aesthetic. For scalable online stores, you’re better off with Shopify, WooCommerce or BigCommerce, and for a beautiful website, Squarespace is your best bet.

Here are some examples of business types that’d get along well with GoDaddy:

Service-based small businesses:

Hairdressers, pet grooming, fitness classes, online consultation

If you want customers to be able to book appointments with you online, GoDaddy is a good choice.

For consultants, coaches, or therapists who don’t always do in-person meetings, you can allow customers to book Zoom meetings on your GoDaddy website, or add a link to your preferred virtual meeting platform.

Hairdressers, beauticians, yoga teachers, and other in-person business owners can easily manage and advertise all their bookings and services with GoDaddy.

Just bear in mind you’ll only be able to take payments for appointment bookings at the Premium subscription level, which renews after the first year at $21.99 per month. Still, GoDaddy’s lack of transaction fees is appealing for local businesses for whom every penny counts.

Time-poor businesses owners with no need for a high-tech website:

Clinics, private carers, plumbers, mechanics

GoDaddy is one of most beginner friendly website builders out there, that’s part of its appeal.

If you can edit a text box, then you can edit a GoDaddy website. You don’t need to know code to use it, and GoDaddy’s lack of complex features actually works to its advantage when it comes to usability.

Platforms like Wix, which has more features than GoDaddy, tend to be less user-friendly because of this.

If you work in a busy industry like the care profession, youth work, animal rescue or similar, you might want a website to help promote your business, but not have the time or energy to do this.

GoDaddy can be a great help in this regard, and if you don’t really care about making your website unique, you can basically let the AI assistant do all the work for you, you just need to answer its questions.

How Does GoDaddy Compare to Competitors?

We’ve touched on a few points of comparison above, but it makes sense to look at GoDaddy’s subscription packages in direct comparison with its rivals:

You’ll get unlimited storage and bandwidth on your GoDaddy website, same as you will with Squarespace, but not Wix. That’s worth bearing in mind if you want to upload videos and large images to your website.

The lack of transaction fees with GoDaddy is also appealing, but by no means unique (it’s also the same with Wix and some Squarespace plans). There’s also fewer payment provider options with GoDaddy than Wix, which could put off some customers from making purchases with your business.

If you’re looking for the absolute cheapest option, the IONOS website builder is the way to go, although be warned, it’s even more basic than GoDaddy.

Does GoDaddy Have Good Customer Reviews?

GoDaddy generally has good customer reviews. Expert Market had a group of ordinary customers test the GoDaddy website builder, and they rated it a 4.6 out 5.

Here’s a look at the feedback we received from GoDaddy customers:

GoDaddy has mixed customer reviews on third-party review websites. It’s got a high TrustPilot rating of 4.7/5, but poor reviews on platforms like Sitejabber and ConsumerAffairs.

Negative reviews complain about hidden costs (especially when it comes to web hosting), increasing prices, and slow customer service.

It’s hard to draw any conclusions about GoDaddy from such mixed responses, but if I can advise you on anything, it’s a good idea to look closely at GoDaddy’s pricing structure before you sign up for a premium plan to avoid any nasty surprises.

Methodology: How We Tested GoDaddy