V/S

This Bluehost vs Godaddy review is like a clash of titans. On one hand is Godaddy, which  is the biggest domain registrar in the world and a rapidly growing web host in category of shared hosting and wordpress hosting ; on the other hand is Bluehost, which is one of the most well known web hosts in the world, famous for its aggressive marketing campaigns and cheap hosting plans.

But, there is a serious problem.

Many people using these companies’ service and some fair hosting experts have criticized them for spending too much time and money on marketing, while ignoring multiple aspects of their service quality.

If you go to any review website, you are surely going to find a long and sometimes confusing list of both happy and angry customers.

In this review, we will do a systematic analysis of different aspects of web hosting provided by Bluehost and Godaddy.

This analysis is based on testing data, manual observation of hosting quality, review of other genuine customers and hosting experts, and personal experience.

Let’s do something different.

Get the result of this Bluehost vs Godaddy review first and look at details of reaching to that conclusion later on.

Here is the result  :-   Bluehost is better than Godaddy in overall web hosting quality.

Yes, Bluehost proves to be better than Godaddy when we combine the performance of both hosts in terms of speed, uptime record, support system, security features, plans and pricing, and overall list of important features.

Following are the scores of both web hosts in different fields :-

1 ) BLUEHOST’S OVERALL QUALITY SCORE   :-   7.4 / 10

PRICE                                                   :         7

RESOURCES & FEATURES          :         8

SPEED & UP-TIME                        :         7

SECURITY                                          :         8

CUSTOMER SUPPORT                  :         7

2 ) GODADDY‘S OVERALL QUALITY SCORE   :-   6.8 / 10

PRICE                                                  :         7

RESOURCES & FEATURES         :         7

SPEED & UP-TIME                       :         7

SECURITY                                         :         7

CUSTOMER SUPPORT                 :         6

Bluehost is better than Godaddy.

But, it is far from being the best web host available in the industry.

We have analyzed and tested all the famous and reputed web hosts to find out the best and high performing hosts.

As per our detailed and unbiased analysis, the web hosting companies which perform best in terms of speed, uptime record, support quality, security system, plans and pricing, and overall list of crucial features, are as follows :-

1. A2 HOSTING     –   FAST, RELIABLE & CHEAP   –   Read review
2. SITEGROUND    –   PRO SUPPORT & HIGHLY REPUTED   –   Read review
3. INMOTION    –   SOLID, SAFE & VERSATILE   –   Read review

I myself trust all these 3 web hosts for my own projects. For example, ZENIWO.COM itself is hosted on Inmotion, you can check it here.

If there is no specific and rare reason to go with Bluehost, then, i will suggest you to take a look at all 3 hosts mentioned above. All of them provide shared, VPS, dedicated server and wordpress hosting plans.

Your website will remain safe and sound with above web hosts.

If you still want to read this Bluehost vs Godaddy review, then just continue…

Following are the parts in which this Bluehost vs Godaddy review has been divided, in every part a specific aspect of their web hosting has been compared :-

• Introduction of Bluehost and Godaddy
• Plans and Pricing
• Speed and Up-time data
• Support quality
• Security system
• Overall list of features

BLUEHOST VS GODADDY  :  AN INTRODUCTION 

In this part of Bluehost vs Godaddy review, we will take a look at very basic details about both the web hosts :-

1 ) BLUEHOST 

• Founded in :-   2003, by Matt Heaton and Danny Ashworth
• Headquarters :-   Orem, Utah , U.S.A.
• No. of websites hosted by it :-   More than 2 million
• Hosting types provided :-   Shared, VPS, Dedicated server, Cloud and WordPress hosting
• Famous for :-   Affordable hosting and Feature rich plans

2 ) GODADDY

• Founded in :-   1997 by Bob Parsons ( A former US marine )
• Headquarters :-    Scottsdale, Arizona, U.S.A.
• No. of websites hosted by it :-   Millions of websites and 60 million+ domains
• Hosting types provided :-  Shared, VPS, Dedicated server, Cloud and WordPress hosting
• Famous for :-  Cheap hosting plans  for small businesses

BLUEHOST VS GODADDY  :  PLANS AND PRICING

In this part of Bluehost vs Godaddy review, we will take a look at pricing structure of different plans of both the web hosts.

This analysis will cover all major categories like Shared, VPS, Dedicated server and WordPress hosting.

1 ) SHARED HOSTING

• Godaddy has a plan of just $2.5/month for very small websites. Bluehost does not have any such plan.
• Other than above mentioned small plan, other 3 plans of both hosts are quite similar to each other in terms of no. of websites, bandwidth, disk space and price.
• Bluehost provides automatic backups on a daily basis in all shared hosting plans, whereas godaddy allows it only as a paid option.
• In its largest plan, Bluehost provides 2 special features of Domain privacy and Sitebackup pro, which are quite helpful for many users.
• Godaddy provides Premium DNS and free SSL certificate in the largest plan, which are very beneficial from security’s point of view.

2 ) VPS and DEDICATED SERVER HOSTING

• In VPS, there is a tough fight between two hosts.
• Godaddy provides greater limit of Bandwidth and IP address, whereas Bluehost provides better combination of RAM, bandwidth, storage and pricing.
• Both hosts also provide root access and strong security features in their VPS plans.
• In Dedicated server plans, Bluehost should be preferred due to its cheap pricing, greater limit of bandwidth and RAM, and greater no. of IP addresses allowed.
• Godaddy seems to be too expensive to beat bluehost in dedicated server plans. Its smallest plan is of $170 compared to Bluehost’s plan of $110.

3 ) WORDPRESS HOSTING

• WordPress hosting of Godaddy has been praised for its fair pricing, but has been criticized for having poor performance in comparison to rivals like Inmotion, Siteground, Dreamhost, A2 hosting etc.
• Bluehost has received praise for quality of its feature rich plans and good performance. But it is too much expensive for a small website. Its prices make it an option only for bigger and powerful websites.
• Bluehost’s smallest wordpress plan is of $40/month on renewal. It is extremely high in comparison to web hosts like Siteground , A2 hosting and Inmotion which provides wordpress hosting for less than $10/month. They are also better in hosting quality when compared to Bluehost.

* WINNER *   :-  TIE

• Both the web hosts give strong competition to each other in every type of hosting plan. But remember that A2 hosting, Siteground and Inmotion are clearly better.

BLUEHOST VS GODADDY  :  SPEED AND UP-TIME

In this part of Bluehost vs Godaddy review, we will take look at speed and up-time record of both web hosts. This data has been obtained by monitoring two identical sites on both hosts for a period of more than 3 months.

Tool used to obtain this data is Uptime robot, which is a very reputed tool for such monitoring.

1 ) SPEED

Speed of a website hosted on a particular web host does not remain constant every time.

It keeps fluctuating, but, it definitely has a range in which it remains for most of the time.

Data provided below is based on results of above mentioned testing websites.

• Speed of the website hosted on godaddy remains between 800 ms and 1000 ms for most of the time.
• This performance can not be called very good and is below average.

• Speed of the website hosted on Bluehost remains between 1200 ms and 1400 ms.
• It is one of the worst performance in terms of speed, that we have seen.
• Only few web hosts like Arvixe and Web hosting pad have a worse record .

2 ) UP-TIME RECORD

Up-time data provided below is based on testing and monitoring of more than 3 months.

• Above image shows uptime record of Godaddy.
• Its uptime in last 1 month was 99.99% which is great, but its uptime in last 3 months has been around 99.16 %  which is quite poor.
• It is well below the minimum expectation of 99.9% which we have from a top web host.

• Above image shows uptime record of Bluehost.
• During last 3 months, its uptime was 99.76% which is below the industry standard of 99.9%. But it is not as bad as Godaddy.

* WINNER *  –  TIE 

• Both Godaddy and Bluehost are average performers in terms of speed and uptime.

Take a look at record of following top 3 web hosts during the same period, which is a lot better ( First speed then uptime has been mentioned ) :-

• A2 HOSTING   –  Between 200 ms and 300 ms  –   Above 99.99%
• SITEGROUND  –   Between 400 ms and 500 ms  –   100%
• INMOTION   –  Between 450 ms and 550 ms  –   Above 99.99%

BLUEHOST  VS  GODADDY  :  SUPPORT QUALITY

Most of the website owners has to face troubles which can not be solved by them. In such cases, it is support team of  a web host which help them out.

In this part of Bluehost vs Godaddy review, we will compare the strengths and weaknesses of support teams of both hosts.

1 ) SUPPORT TYPES 

• Bluehost provides support through all major types of  mediums like Live chat, email, ticketing system and phone.
• Bluehost also provides a huge knowledge base to find answers of frequently asked questions.
• Godaddy provides only phone and email support. It mainly relies on telephone support. Its phone support is available in many local languages including Hindi, English, German , Spanish etc.
• Godaddy does not provide Live chat and ticket support.
• Like Bluehost, Godaddy also has a huge knowledge base for its customers.

2 ) SUPPORT QUALITY

• Bluehost is praised for its highly skilled technical support team and for being generally helpful with its customers.
• But, Bluehost is criticized for relatively long waiting times and for handling multiple customers at a time.
• Godaddy is praised for providing phone support in local languages, for having a huge support team, and for being truly available in 24/7 style.
• But, quality of Godaddy’s support is just average. Neither poor, nor great.
• Sometimes, support team of Godaddy extends the call unnecessarily for 20-30 minutes, just to show that a customer is being helped. Knowledge of their normal support staff seems to be very basic and ordinary.

* WINNER *  :-  BLUEHOST

• Bluehost is good and Godaddy is average. None of them is great or excellent.

Support of Siteground, A2 hosting and Inmotion has received unanimous praise and can be called truly excellent.

I have long experience with support teams of both Godaddy and Inmotion. In my view, support staff of Inmotion is far more helpful, skilled and fast than Godaddy’s support staff. Views of other hosting users are also similar to it.

BLUEHOST VS GODADDY  :  SECURITY FEATURES

It is a well known fact that internet is not safe.

Online thieves and hackers are actively hunting for unsafe sites on internet, all the time.

If a web host is not having strong arrangements to protect the websites hosted on its servers, then hackers will love that host !

In this part of Bluehost vs Godaddy review, we will try to find out, which host is more safe and secure.

1 ) BLUEHOST 

• Bluehost is reputed for being sincere about security of all its customers.
• To provide better security and performance to all the websites, Bluehost uses account isolation technology which isolates different web hosting accounts hosted on a server.
• There are tools like Spam Assassin, Spam Experts, and Spam Hammer to fight against spam.
• Bluehost provides CloudFlare, which protects the websites from hacking attempts, security threats and DDOS attacks.
• It also offers hot link protection which protects the images or content of a website.
• IP address blacklists is a facility provided by Bluehost which allows you to block specific IP addresses which are creating any trouble for your site.
• Sitelock and SSL certificates are few optional and advanced features, which are available at an additional fees.

2 ) GODADDY

• Godaddy is a huge company and it is also considered to be very serious about security of its customers.
• It provides 24/7 security monitoring and protection from DDoS attacks.
• Godaddy offers Sitelock feature. It is a paid service which provides a website-verification certificate and does strict monitoring of malware as well as spam.
• Automatic monitoring of emails is also done for detecting viruses and to clean them.
• Strong security is provided to all the data centers. Restricted access and tight fire security are examples of it.
• Modern and top class equipment is used for firewalls, routers and servers.
• Godaddy use some strict policies to avoid and to face spam and other types of attacks.

 * WINNER *   :-  BLUEHOST

• Both web hosts are quite good at protecting the websites hosted on their servers. Bluehost proves to be better due to some advanced and free features.

BLUEHOST VS GODADDY  :  OVERALL LIST OF FEATURES

It is not possible and needed to mention every single feature of bluehost and godaddy in this review.

But, you will get a basic knowledge about all major features of both hosts in this part of Bluehost vs Godaddy review.

1 ) BLUEHOST

• No. of websites and email accounts  –  Limited in its smallest plan, but, in higher plans, these things are unlimited.
• Bandwidth and disk space  –  Disk space is limited in smallest plan. In other plans, both the things are unlimited but they have few practical restrictions.
• Free domain name  –  Free for first year on buying annual plans.
• Website Builder  –  A free drag and drop website builder is provided, which is quite simple. I personally like to use a third party website builder called DIVI builder.
• Control panel  –  Highly popular and industry standard C-panel is provided with an improved interface.
• Content Delivery Network ( CDN ) –  A basic version of Cloudflare is available for free, which can be enabled without making any coding changes.
• Backups  –  Automatic daily, weekly and monthly backups are available and they can be restored very easily.
• WordPress 1 click installer  –  It is available to download and install all major software related to wordpress.
• E-commerce –  Most of the important and popular software of e-commerce are supported by Bluehost. It also provides specialized e-commerce hosting known as woo-commerce hosting. My personal suggestion is that Siteground and A2 hosting are better for e-commerce due to their excellent performance.
• Money back guarantee  –  Full refund in first 30 days, and if you cancel after 30 days you receive a prorated refund for the remainder of your hosting term.
• Account isolation technology is used to ensure fair resource allocation to every website hosted on a server.

2 ) GODADDY

• No. of websites and email accounts  –  Limited for two small plans and unlimited for bigger plans.
• Bandwidth and disk space  –  Limited storage space for 2 small plans, but bandwidth is unlimited in all plans as long as you follow their fair usage policy.
• Free domain name  –  Free for first year on buying annual plans ( not in smallest $2.5 plan ).
• Website Builder  –  A free drag and drop website builder is provided, which is very easy to use and is good for basic websites. But it does not have too many advanced features.
• Control panel  –  Industry standard C-panel is provided for linux hosting and another popular software called plesk is used for windows hosting.
• Content Delivery Network ( CDN ) –  You will have to use a third party service to take benefit of CDN.
• Backups  –  Paid option is available for backup and restore service in all plans other than the smallest plan.
• WordPress 1 click installer  –  It is available and allows to install all major applications like wordpress, joomla, drupal etc.
• E-commerce –   It is not an e-commerce specialist and i clearly warn you to avoid it for such sites. I confidently recommend Siteground, A2 hosting, Inmotion and Dreamhost for e-commerce websites due to their excellent performance.
• Money back guarantee  –  30 days for annual plans and 48 hours for monthly plans. Godaddy has a poor reputation for troubling its customers when they are leaving them.

* WINNER *  :-  BLUEHOST

• Godaddy clearly lags behind in terms of overall features. Bluehost provides more features and their quality is also very high.

After completing this lengthy, in-depth and fair review, it’s time to declare the result of this Bluehost vs Godaddy review.

Before that, let’s do a small recap of results of different sections of this entire review :-

• Plans and pricing   –   TIE
• Speed and up-time   –   TIE
• Support quality   –   BLUEHOST  wins
• Security features   –   BLUEHOST  wins
• Overall list of features   –   BLUEHOST  wins

Godaddy is neither a poor nor a great host, it is just an average web host.

To be honest, i am not a big fan of Bluehost also, because of its poor speed and uptime record. I do not use it for my individual projects as better options are available.

But, Bluehost is not a poor host, even after having some negative sides, i clearly find it to be a good web host having many positive sides.

So, result of this review is very clear  :-  Bluehost is not excellent but it is a good web host, and Bluehost is better than godaddy in overall web hosing quality.

         * FINAL WINNER *   :-   BLUEHOST

In the end, let me remind you that following web hosts have emerged as top 3 web hosts as per our detailed testing and fair analysis :-

1. A2 HOSTING     –   FAST, RELIABLE & CHEAP   –   Read review
2. SITEGROUND    –   PRO SUPPORT & HIGHLY REPUTED   –   Read review
3. INMOTION    –   SOLID, SAFE & VERSATILE   –   Read review

I highly trust these 3 web hosts for my own websites.

Proof of this is the fact that ZENIWO.COM itself is hosted on Inmotion, you can check it here.

 NOTE :-  I am an affiliate of some of the web hosting products mentioned on this blog. I will receive a small compensation, if you buy web hosting plans through the links provided on this page. Click here to read the full  Affiliate disclosure.