SiteGround vs GoDaddy: which hosting provider is better for you?

Both SiteGround and GoDaddy are popular and well-known names in the hosting industry. However, they can’t be completely equal, so it’s natural to compare SiteGround vs GoDaddy to learn which one is the better option for you.

SiteGround is the more popular option because of its powerful shared hosting plans, great security features, and low prices. This is why we call SiteGround the winner of this comparison.

On the other hand, GoDaddy is a great option too, with a diverse collection of hosting services and cheap registration of domain names.

Check out this SiteGround vs GoDaddy comparison to see how exactly SiteGround won against GoDaddy based on the price, ease-of-use, performance, security, and customer support features.

SiteGround vs GoDaddy: overall comparison

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SiteGround vs GoDaddy: hosting pricing comparison

SiteGround overall is a more affordable hosting provider than GoDaddy. Even though GoDaddy does offer a cheaper shared hosting plan which costs $2.99/month compared to SiteGround’s $2.99/month.

Now, apart from shared hosting, here are the prices of other hosting services offered by both providers.

GoDaddy does offer more types of hosting services compared to SiteGround, but they are also quite costly. However, since shared hosting is the most popular option, it will be the main point of this comparison topic.

SiteGround’s cheapest shared hosting plan allows you to host a single website with 10GB SSD storage space and free SSL protection. In addition, you get unlimited bandwidth, support for unlimited email accounts, and access to useful tools, like advanced security features, native CDN, SuperCacher plugin, and daily automatic backups. All of that, for only $2.99/month.

On the other hand, GoDaddy's cheapest shared hosting plan also allows you to host 1 website with unlimited bandwidth. You’ll also get 25GB of disk space, a free domain for 1 year, and a free annual subscription to Microsoft 365 email for the 1st year.

The downside to GoDaddy’s plan is that there’s no option for automatic daily backups and no free SSL protection.

Now, when it comes to domain costs, GoDaddy does have an advantage. With GoDaddy, you get a “.com” TLD for just $0.01/year if you get a 2-year purchase – the second year renewing at $18.99. As such, the total cost of getting a .com domain for 2 years is $19.00 total.

In comparison, SiteGround charges a flat $17.99/year for a .com domain. As such, you spend $35.98 in 2 years for a .com domain with SiteGround, making GoDaddy the better option.

Wrapping up

Overall, SiteGround offers a lot more value and features for the money, compared to GoDaddy. is a much cheaper option than GoDaddy. Therefore, SiteGround is the winner of this category, as it brings more value for your money for a lot less.

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SiteGround vs GoDaddy: ease of use

When it comes to SiteGround vs GoDaddy, they’re both great in terms of ease to use. However, SiteGround, with its native dashboard and custom control panel – Site Tools, is more intuitive and, therefore, easier to use. GoDaddy also comes with a native dashboard that takes care of the simple stuff. But, for more advanced options, you get the cPanel. It’s good and functional but can be a bit overwhelming for new users, making SiteGround more beginner-friendly.

With SiteGround, the whole user experience revolves around a centralized dashboard that you access after creating a new account. From here, you get access to your standard settings like account details, available services, websites, billing information, etc.

From the “Websites” area, you get to access Site Tools for each hosted website. The overall interface looks like this:

As you can see, it looks very similar to the WordPress dashboard. You have a left-hand sidebar where you can jump between different settings for your site, speed optimization, WordPress, domain, email settings, website stats, and developer options. You can also pin your frequently used tools to the top and get a quick overview of your site info right underneath it.

Moving on, let’s talk about GoDaddy. The native dashboard is very efficient – it’s super clean and gives easy access to all the basic options. You can even set up your website straight from the dashboard and manage domains, email accounts, etc.

However, for more advanced hosting management options, GoDaddy throws in the cPanel.

As you can see, cPanel looks much more cluttered compared to SiteGround’s Site Tools. You have a “General Information” panel to the right and all the various settings and tools at the front and center.

From the cPanel, you can access your core WordPress files or email settings, manage your databases, domains, activate SSL, and much more. From here, you can also find tools like Softaculous or Installatron to help you install a content management system, such as WordPress, with a couple of clicks.

Wrapping up

If you’re new, having this many tools right up your face can feel scary and overwhelming. And so, for this round of SiteGround vs GoDaddy, we’re giving the win to SiteGround for being more intuitive and beginner-friendly.

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SiteGround vs GoDaddy: performance

We compared SiteGround vs GoDaddy in terms of performance and SiteGround takes the lead again. It outperforms GoDaddy in having twice as little downtime and faster loading times, which makes SiteGround a much more reliable and faster hosting provider.

For more accurate results comparing SiteGround vs GoDaddy performance, we tested both hosting providers up close for two months.

Uptime and response time

With SiteGround, we got 99.99% uptime. During this time, we experienced 3 outages totaling 7 minutes of downtime. Compared to the average downtime in the industry, this is excellent! SiteGround guarantees a 99.9% uptime, so you don’t have to worry about your website not being available for long periods of time.

In terms of response time – the time to fetch the first byte of data and the HTTP headers – we got an average of 217ms. To give you a better idea, the market average is 600ms, which carries SiteGround to the top-tier.

Now, moving to GoDaddy, we recorded an uptime of 99.98%. Just like the other hosting provider, the site experienced 3 outages, but the downtime was more than double, reaching a total of 16 minutes. Still, it’s within the industry standards, and you are promised a 99.9% uptime guarantee.

The average response time was also good, reaching 341ms and staying within the industry average. However, it’s worth mentioning that it was slightly inconsistent, varying from a maximum of 447ms and a minimum of 280ms.

Overall, SiteGround has better uptime and faster response time, earning it the win in this round.

Website Speed

Website speed performance is just as crucial as other measures. You wouldn’t want your visitors to leave because of a slow website, would you? That’s why we compared SiteGround vs GoDaddy in terms of speed measures as well.

Before examining the results, it’s important you understand what the terms that we’re going to use mean:

• LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): The time taken for the largest graphic on the web page to load. According to Google, an LCP of less than 2.5s is considered good.
• Fully Loaded Time: The time taken to fully load every element on a web page and execute all JavaScript. The industry average is 3 seconds.

Now that you understand what the results mean, let’s look at how SiteGround performed on GTmetrix.

We got an LCP of 872ms and a Fully Loaded Time of 1.1s. Both figures are well within Google’s recommendations as well as the industry averages, which is excellent!

Moving on, we evaluated how GoDaddy performed on GTmetrix. We recorded the same time for LCP and Fully Loaded Time at 1.5s. Both measures are within industry averages but noticeably slower compared to SiteGround.

Overall, SiteGround is more reliable with 99.99% uptime compared to GoDaddy’s 99.98%. It’s also faster with 872ms LCP, 1.1s Fully Loaded Time, and 217 average response time. GoDaddy lags far behind, scoring 1.5 for both LCP and Fully Loaded Time, and 341ms as the average response time.

Wrapping up

SiteGround takes the win in reference to website performance against GoDaddy. While both providers offer 99.9% uptime, SiteGround experienced twice as less downtime. The loading and response times of both providers were within the industry averages, however, SiteGround was still much faster than GoDaddy.

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SiteGround vs GoDaddy: website security

SiteGround offers a much more comprehensive and robust security solution compared to GoDaddy. It's no surprise considering that SiteGround goes in our most secure hosting providers list. The reason for that is you get access to many advanced security features for free with SiteGround.

SiteGround offers the following security features for free:

• 24/7 Network Monitoring: server status is checked every 0.5 seconds to ensure everything is working properly.
• Free SSL: every SiteGround plan comes with a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate.
• Automatic Daily Backups: all of your files are automatically backed up every day and stored on remote servers.
• Custom Firewall: Constantly updated rules to safeguard you and your site from emerging threats and bad actors.
• AI Anti-Bot System: automatic detection and blocking of bot traffic.
• Dedicated Security Plugin: All SiteGround plans get a dedicated security plugin to protect you from DDoS attacks, scan for malware, and automatically update plugins and themes.

Other than this, SiteGround also offers domain privacy as a paid security add-on. It costs $12 for the 1st year and $24 for renewals.

In comparison, GoDaddy offers super basic security options – features that you just can’t do without. On top of that, if you want extra security, it charges a hefty fee.

Here’s what you get for free:

• 24/7 Network Monitoring: GoDaddy offers 24/7 network monitoring to protect your site from threats, but there’s no mention of how frequent the checks are.
• Free SSL: Only the two most expensive GoDaddy Shared hosting plans offer SSL certificates. Considering that most hosting providers give them for free, it’s quite surprising that the Economy and Deluxe plans don’t include an SSL.

All other security features are accessible through paid add-ons. The Website Security add-on is a single package that combines an SSL certificate, a Web Application Firewall (WAF), and an anti-malware system. However, the whole thing costs $4.75/month - that’s even more than the basic plan itself.

Wrapping up

Overall, SiteGround is a more secure provider than GoDaddy. To compare, SiteGround offers a lot more security features included in their plans for free and only a few additions for an extra cost. While GoDaddy offers very few security features for free and you have to pay additionally to get a comprehensive security suite.

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SiteGround vs GoDaddy: customer support

When it comes to SiteGround vs GoDaddy, the results are quite similar in terms of customer service. Both of them offer 24/7 support over the phone and live chat. However, SiteGround can be contacted via tickets too.

With that being said, the SiteGround support system is designed to make it more of a “help yourself” system, something DIY folks like. Every page contains helpful widgets providing useful tips on what each button, tool, or feature does. On top of that, you have a vast knowledge base filled with helpful articles and how-tos.

Yet, if you run into some technical issues and need human assistance, you can always give SiteGround’s super helpful and friendly agents a call. If you prefer texting rather than speaking, you can also start a live chat. This will trigger the smart chatbot, which will either direct you to a potentially helpful knowledge base article or connect you to a support rep, which, by the way, replies very fast.

In comparison, GoDaddy’s customer service approach is very conventional. You get a vast knowledge base known as the Help Center, which contains hundreds of tutorials and answers to FAQs. But if you want a human to help you, you can reach out either via phone or live chat.

From our experience, the support team is knowledgeable and helpful. However, we did experience some issues while trying to connect to the support team over live chat.

Wrapping up

All in all, this aspect of the service could almost be considered a draw between SiteGround vs GoDaddy as both of them offer excellent customer support. But we have to give the win to SiteGround because of its thoughtful and helpful widgets across the interface.

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SiteGround vs GoDaddy: final recommendations

And that brings us to the end of this SiteGround vs GoDaddy showdown. As you can see, SiteGround beats GoDaddy in every single department.

Now, to wrap things up, let’s take a look at the scoreboard:

SiteGround offers more value for your money than GoDaddy and, additionally, it offers better performance and access to advanced security features. It’s also easier to use, making it a better option for beginners who are looking for a powerful hosting service.

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However, GoDaddy is a pretty great provider for scaling your site or needing a better variety of hosting options. Choose this provider if you have experience in the hosting world or want to build a personal website.

Alternatives to SiteGround and GoDaddy

Both SiteGround and GoDaddy are popular hosting platforms. SiteGround is known for its powerful infrastructure and advanced features, whereas GoDaddy is more affordable.

However, it’s worth mentioning that these two aren’t the only options available. Here are a couple of alternative hosting providers that you might be interested in.

Hostinger

If you’re looking for the most bang-for-the-buck, affordable hosting provider, then Hostinger is my recommendation. The prices start as low as $2.51/month, for which you get a custom beginner-friendly UI, great uptime, fast load time, all the basic security features, and 24/7 customer support. That’s hard to beat!

Visit Hostinger

Bluehost

Bluehost is an excellent hosting provider for beginners and small businesses. Pricing starts at $2.95/month and offers great WordPress-centered features, reliable customer support, and good security. It also offers access to tons of business-focused tools and advanced features like staging, convenient website management, and much more. Whether you’re looking for a service to host a blog or start a business, Bluehost works for both.

Visit Bluehost

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