GoDaddy Managed WordPress Hosting (In-depth Review 2020)

GoDaddy is a web host and domain register giant. They have been providing top class hosting services along with the world’s largest domain register title.

We have been testing its managed WordPress hosting. The results we got are amazing. As they say, they are “blazing fast”. Yes, they are correct. But some conditions may apply.

Here we are going to show you inside the GoDaddy MWP environment and make you believe with the real uptime and speed results.

GoDaddy Managed Hosting Plan and Features

Currently, GoDaddy is offering four WordPress hosting packages called Basic, Deluxe, Ultimate, and Pro 5+.

GoDaddy provides almost the same benefits to all package but the package differences are based on storage, visitors and some extra features like free SSL, reports, etc.

We have tested our prototype WordPress site on the Pro 5+ plan. We are going to show you the inside dashboard and tech features lately on this page.

As per the GoDaddy, the MWP hosting benefits are here:

99.9% uptime promise and money-back guarantee
CDN Boost for faster load times of up to 50% (New)
High-performance load-balanced servers
Free 24/7 support
Built-in signup forms powered by Gravity Forms ($59.00/yr value)
Automatic WordPress core software and security updates
One-click migration tool
Access to thousands of free themes and plugins
For beginners: Pre-built sites and drag & drop page editor
Latest version of PHP 7
SFTP access (Deluxe and Ultimate plans)
Free Microsoft Office 365 email for one year with the purchase of annual plan
Temporary domain name
Automatic daily malware scans
Free daily backups with 1-click restore

Inside the GoDaddy Managed WordPress cPanel

We have checked the top managed WordPress hosting environment’s dashboards. GoDaddy has one of the simplest User interface and experience. Here is the hosting cPanel. Have a look!

Here is how you can easily manage your WordPress site.

Basically, you will have two sites (one is your production, another is staging site). Although every WordPress site will be set up on a temporary domain first as you can see ours on GoDaddy testing. You can add your main domain later. Also, you can just install the staging site by 1-click. Keep in mind that WordPress core, Themes and Plugins update will be executed automatically. Sometimes that could trigger unexpected error though.

Currently, PHP 7 is set by default. You can change to version 5 if you want.

You can’t browse the file manager like shared hosting cPanel. GoDaddy uses a secure file transfer protocol. So you will get an sFTP/SSH credentials. You need FileZilla to get access.

Recently, GoDaddy added CDN features to boost the page load time. This means your content will be cloud-hosted around the world. It really works fine for us. We saw the page load time reduced by 50%. That’s really awesome! We will show the evidence in the speed testing review.

Regarding database access, you can easily log in to phpMyAdmin easily.

GoDaddy WordPress hosting’s backup and restoring plan is great. GoDaddy takes backup every day. Just in case, your data disaster or you got hacked, just 1-click restore files and database features will do the job for you.

Take a video tour inside the GoDaddy managed WordPress hosting.

Uptime Monitoring

We have used Pindom’s service to monitoring the GoDaddy hosting uptime. We actually saw amazing results with NO downtime. Here is our data for 7 days.

The average response rate is 405ms which is GREAT. Generally the response rate 0-1000 ms is considered FAST.

We sneaked into the Pingdom test results log. We saw the response rate within the USA is under 200 ms where the ping from Europe is a little bit higher. Although that can be negligible.

Page Speed Performance

We have tested a few pages on different locations using Pingdom. The results are fine now. Before activating the CDN option, it was really taking time.

Check out our Pingdom and GTMetrix data below.

We have tested a home page, a long scroll page and WooCommerce shop page with a single product as well in different locations in the world. All of them are heavy loaded non-optimized pages. For example, the home page size is around 9MB.

We noticed heavy page load time at the initial stage which was 7 sec. Later after we activated the CDN features, the page load time reduced by 50%.

Pingdom Page Speed Test Data

We have tested our non-optimized prototype home page which is around 9 MB in Western US, Europe, Australia, and Asia region.

The average result is satisfactory. We see the page load time is after CDN activated is GREAT, reduced by approx. 50%.

Also, we have tested our another prototype long scroll page which has full-size images. The page size is 4MB and the page load time is 422 ms!

Have a video tour to inside the Pingdom tests.

GTmetrix Page Speed Data

We also checked the website on GTmetrix. Our tests were made for six different locations in the world with unthrottled internet and CPU speed.

The results we got are pretty same. Although GTmetrix shows different page load time based on the testing desktop internet and caching conditions.

Here is the data.

We looked into the tests and what we discovered is the Time to First Byte (TTFB) is less than 100ms in some cases. The First Contentful Paint triggered within 450ms. That’s considered fast. Also, the DOM and page onload time completed within 3 seconds.

Check out the GTmetrix results in the video.

Google PSI Data

We checked the site on Google Page Speed Insights. Despite our prototype website and its pages are not optimized, we got 76 out of 100. But the speed test data metrics results we saw are satisfactory.

The first meaningful paint and contentful paint both within 700ms which is considered fast.

Time to interactive data is average. Because our site is not optimized. So you will have some things to do.

The FID(First input delay) within 200ms is average.

Support

In GoDaddy, you can get support 24/7 from their experts. We have had a lot of chat, phone calls which turned out a good result most of the time.

Their phone support is open 24/7. You may have to wait on their busy day. But the weekend is pretty faster to get a support agent.

Their very popular chat support opens All Day Mon – Fri (US time). Most of the time you may have to wait BUT we know some proper time to get engaged with.

Try contact at the Morning(US time), you will be #1 to get a support agent.

We have tested at the EST 5 PM. We got the #1 place.

That’s awesome!

When you talk to them, you need to remember your GoDaddy secret PIN code to be verified it’s you.

The support tech guys are very polite and resourceful.

Apart from the phone call or chat, GoDaddy has great numbers of a resource like a community forum, blog, and knowledgebase you can use anytime.

Security

GoDaddy MWP hosting always monitors security issues. BUT if you want them to remove malware or fix the hacked site, you need to PAY!

Besides, you can’t get access to regular web hosting cPanel. Rather you will get secure FTP login and SSH(Secure Shell) privileges.

You will automatically get your data backed up every day. So in case if your site gets hacked or damaged, you will easily able to restore by just 1-click.

In WordPress, Godaddy automatically installed Sucuri Plugin for security. It will block unauthorized login attempts and file protection. Also, it will harden the security firewall.

Pricing

GoDaddy WordPress hosting is not that pricy like Kinsta or WPEngine or other top WordPress managed hosting providers.

You will get 30% discount on their SALE season. Currently, as of 23rd August, the Basic plan starts from 6.99 USD. Although you need to buy 3 years if you want this 6.99 USD per month offer.

For a year plan, the cost will be 9.99 USD per month.

The price is very affordable. Visit this link to buy Godaddy WordPress hosting.

Conclusion

Well, GoDaddy is good. Not that high to meet our expectations, but good when you host one small or medium size site.

We saw in the tests that page size is matter. GoDaddy performs very well even when the page size is around 10MB or plus. So, you need to optimize the page very well.

Their CDN makes a huge boost to its customers recently. We are very very pleased with the result. You will get the most out of it if your site is worldwide.

GoDaddy support is top-notch. We are pleased with their tech guys and support agents’ dedication and skills.

Again, the pricing is very reasonable comparing the top tier MWP hosting provider.

Let us know what do you think or any questions in the comment box below.