8 GoDaddy Alternatives & Why You Need One

According to Builtwith, GoDaddy hosts over 17 million websites and is the most popular provider of shared, dedicated, and VPS hosting in the entire world.

Known for its competitive pricing and easy setup, GoDaddy is one of the best web hosts. It offers several different types of hosting, including shared, business, VPS, dedicated, and WordPress plans. On every plan, you get unmetered bandwidth, multiple databases, plenty of storage, and one-click installation for WordPress and other popular content management systems.

However, GoDaddy is not the right solution for everyone. Whether you’re looking for more support, more services, or a more intuitive control panel, there are plenty of alternatives to GoDaddy. Let’s look at some of the best options below.

GoDaddy Alternatives

1. Liquid Web for Dedicated Hosting
2. Nexcess for Ecommerce Sites
3. Siteground for Customer Support
4. WP Engine for Enterprise Companies
5. Flywheel for WordPress Agencies and Freelancers
6. DreamHost for Affordable Plans
7. BlueHost for Shared Hosting
8. Hostinger for Beginner-Friendly Control Panel

1. Liquid Web

Ideal for: Dedicated Hosting

Why Use Liquid Web over GoDaddy: Liquid Web is specifically designed for growing small and medium-sized businesses and their designers and developers. Liquid Web does more than offer web hosting — it also offers customers help picking their hosting plan, migrating their site, and fully managing their hosting environments.

Its dedicated hosting packages in particular are what set it apart from GoDaddy. Liquid Web offers 100% uptime, built-in backup drives, default off server backups, multi-level DDoS protection, and fast SSD storage. GoDaddy does not.

Pricing: Liquid Web offers over 14 hosting packages. Its major ones are dedicated, cloud, VPS, and managed WordPress hosting. Here’s the pricing of each type of solution below:

• Dedicated: starts at $169 per month
• Cloud: starts at $265 per month
• VPS: starts at $15 per month
• WordPress: starts at $9.50 per month

Liquid Web Website Examples: Liquid Web hosts websites of all types sizes, from the social game site Game of Thrones Ascent by Beamable to the home improvement retailer Home Depot.

2. Nexcess

Ideal for: Ecommerce Sites

Why Use Nexcess over GoDaddy: GoDaddy and Nexcess are both great options for hosting a WooCommerce site. Their most basic WooCommerce plans offer a free SSL certificate, daily backups, one-click staging sites, and a CDN. But Nexcess offers even more features, like image compression, image lazy loading, and automatic plugin updates — and its plan costs less.

Nexcess also offers specific hosting for Magento with built-in security and performance optimization features for creating a fast and secure ecommerce site that scales. Since GoDaddy doesn’t have a specific plan for Magento, Nexcess is a better fit for a Magento store.

Pricing: Nexcess offers four types of hosting. Its Magento managed hosting, WordPress managed hosting, WooCommerce managed hosting, and cloud hosting plans vary in price, depending on the tier you choose. Here’s the pricing of each type of solution below:

• Magento: starts at $34.50 per month
• WordPress or WooCommerce: starts at $13.30 per month
• Cloud: starts at $49 per month

Nexcess Website Examples: Nexcess is chosen by many ecommerce web development agencies, including Netalico, Inspry, and Built Mighty, to host their clients’ sites.

3. SiteGround

Ideal for: Customer Support

Why Use SiteGround over GoDaddy: There are two main factors that set SiteGround apart from GoDaddy and other competitors. First, SiteGround is officially recommended by WordPress.org. Second, it has a fast support team with advanced WordPress expertise available 24/7. Thanks to their support team, WP starter wizard, and managed auto-updates of the WordPress core software and plugins, among other factors, their customer satisfaction rate is at 98%.

It’s important to note that SiteGround can host websites on other platforms like Weebly, Drupal, and Joomla as well.

Pricing: SiteGround offers four types of hosting plans: non-WordPress web hosting, managed WordPress hosting, WooCommerce hosting, and managed cloud hosting. These solutions vary in pricing, depending on the tier you select. Here’s the pricing of each type of solution below:

• Web Hosting: starts at $3.99 per month
• WordPress or WooCommerce: starts at $3.99 per month
• Cloud: starts at $100 per month

SiteGround Website Examples: SiteGround is the host of choice for bloggers, small business owners, and website-building professionals at agencies like AdCo and Webnology.

4. WP Engine

Ideal for: Enterprise Companies

Why Use WP Engine over GoDaddy: WP Engine is a great alternative for two groups specifically: those looking for a more feature-rich basic plan, and those looking for a more advanced enterprise solution. You’ll likely pay more for WP Engine hosting in either case, but you’ll also get more than you would with GoDaddy hosting.

For example, with WP Engine’s lowest-tiered plan, you’ll get daily backups, one-click staging, caching, and automatic core, theme, and plugin updates. With GoDaddy’s basic WordPress plan, you’ll have to pay extra for daily backups, and you won’t get one-click staging unless you upgrade to a higher plan. You can only schedule updates, not automate them, and for caching, you’ll have to download a plugin.

Comparing WP Engine’s enterprise solutions with GoDaddy’s dedicated hosting plans, you’ll see a similar pattern. WP Engine offers 99.99% uptime, the highest level of security (SOC2 Type II), code-level monitoring and insights, and headless hosting, among other features and services — GoDaddy doesn’t.  

Pricing: WP Engine offers three types of WordPress hosting plans. Its managed, ecommerce, and enterprise solutions vary in pricing, depending on the plan size you select. Here’s the pricing of each type of solution below:

• WordPress: starts at $25 per month
• Ecommerce: starts at $63 per month
• Advanced Solutions: Will have to contact the support team.

WP Engine Website Examples: WP Engine powers enterprise WordPress websites like Pandora, Volvo, and Yelp.

5. Flywheel

Ideal for: WordPress Agencies and Freelancers

Why Use Flywheel over GoDaddy: Flywheel offers a more affordable alternative to WordPress agencies and freelancers than GoDaddy. It offers workflow tools that freelancers and agencies need to collaboratively create WordPress websites for themselves and for their clients, as well as features like caching, CDN, staging sites, and daily backups to keep your sites fast, secure, and reliable — all on its lowest plan. To get these same features, you’ll have to enroll in GoDaddy’s Managed WordPress Pro plans, which are more expensive.

Pricing: Flywheel offers managed WordPress hosting plans as well as plans for its Growth Suite solution (client-focused hosting for growing agencies). Here’s the pricing of each type of solution below:

• WordPress: starts at $13 per month
• Growth Suite: starts at $113 per month

Flywheel Website Examples: Flywheel is used by over 35,000 creative agencies and brands, including Expedia, Spindrift, and Mere Agency.

6. DreamHost

Ideal for: Affordable Plans

Why Use DreamHost over GoDaddy: Like SiteGround, DreamHost is officially recommended by WordPress.org. It also offers several benefits to WordPress sites in particular, including a WordPress website builder and automated migration plugin. DreamHost will also install WordPress for you. Its monthly WordPress plans (including renewal rates) are also the lowest of any host on this list. This means that setting up a WordPress site with DreamHost will be a bit easier, faster, and cheaper  than with GoDaddy.

It’s important to note that you can build your site on a platform other than WordPress, and still host it on DreamHost.

Pricing: DreamHost offers multiple types of hosting, including shared, VPS, and WordPress-specific plans. Here’s the pricing of each type of solution below:

• Shared: starts at $2.95 per month
• VPS: starts at $13.95 per month
• WordPress: starts at $2.95 per month

DreamHost Website Examples: DreamHost is a popular host among freelancers and businesses, like Sofia Kaman Fine Jewels and Craft-o-Graph.

7. BlueHost

Ideal for: Shared Hosting

Why Use BlueHost over GoDaddy: BlueHost is the third web host officially recommended by WordPress.org. Its cheapest shared hosting plan offer many of the features that GoDaddy’s does: unmetered bandwidth, diskspace, a free domain for a year, and more. But BlueHost offers additional features, including a free SSL certificate and CDN, on its lowest plan. Since GoDaddy doesn’t, BlueHost’s most basic shared hosting plan is a better fit for most businesses and individuals starting out.

It’s important to note that BlueHost offers hosting for sites built on platforms other than WordPress as well.

Pricing: BlueHost offers nearly every type of hosting. Its main options are shared, WooCommerce, and managed WordPress hosting. Here’s the pricing of each type of solution below:

• Shared: starts at $2.95 per month
• WooCommerce: starts at $12.95 per month
• WordPress: starts at $9.95 per month

BlueHost Website Examples: Powering over two million websites, BlueHosts hosts everything from ecommerce sites like Wendy Luxe, LLC. to lifestyle blogs like Fearlessly Oma.

8. Hostinger

Ideal for: Beginner-Friendly Control Panel

Why Use Hostinger over GoDaddy: Hostinger is similar to GoDaddy in terms of hosting services, features, and pricing. One major difference is the control panel. Like many web hosts, GoDaddy has cPanel. Hostinger, on the other hand, custom built a control panel called hPanel. With both tools, users can manage web hosting accounts, FTP users, and email accounts, monitor bandwidth, disk space, sub-domains, and park domains, and install software like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, among other things. But hPanel is hosted, organized, and designed differently to offer a better user experience. Beginners in particular might prefer it over cPanel.

Pricing: Hostinger offers multiple plans for shared, cloud, and VPS hosting. Here’s the pricing of each type of solution below:

• Shared: starts at $1.39 per month
• Cloud: starts at $9.99 per month
• VPS: starts at $3.95 per month

Hostinger Website Examples: Hostinger suppers over 29 million customers, ranging from the cosmetics consultancy business makingskincare to the news site Asianpopnews.com.

Which hosting service is best?

Which hosting service is best depends on a wide range of factors, including what type of hosting you want, what type of business you are, what your budget is, how much traffic you get, and more. Evaluating the key takeaways and use cases of the hosting providers above will help you pick one that’s best for your unique needs and goals.