GoDaddy Deluxe Review: Great Value Web Host

With over 20 million customers, GoDaddy is one of the largest web hosts. In fact, it claims to be “the best web host in the world” and offers a full range of domain registration, hosting, and email services with bolt-on options such as an online store, marketing tools, and backups.

We have tested the Linux-based Deluxe Hosting product, but we have comparable options for Windows-based and WordPress hosting, as well as dedicated servers for the most demanding customers.

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GoDaddy Review: What Do You Get for Your Money?

Deluxe Hosting allows you to publish 10 websites and up to 50 subdomains occupying a total storage of 50 GB. There are 25 databases shared between them, each of which can host up to 1 GB of data. Bandwidth is unlimited unless usage “presents a specific risk to the stability, performance or uptime of the server”. If so, you will be notified by email and may need to upgrade or limit website resources.

All GoDaddy websites come with a free auto-renewable SSL certificate, and when you sign up for 1 year or more, you get 1 free domain from various popular TLDs (Top Level Domains) and 12 free Microsoft Office 365 You can also get 3 mailboxes. A few months on 10 GB of storage. These mailboxes, even if associated with your account, are not automatically activated, but will be renewed at the current rate if you choose to use them and do not subsequently cancel them (currently 3 All £86 VAT included) ) from Year 2. Don’t worry if you don’t want to use them. You can create up to 500 email addresses from your control panel and access them via webmail or external clients.

All this for £7.19 per month including VAT. However, after signing up for 3 years prepaid, the plan will renew for £11.99 per month. If you can’t commit that long, there are 24 and 12 month options for £8.39 and £9.59 per month respectively, which renew again at the end of the term for £11.99. Still too long? It’s also available quarterly for £10.79 for the first three months and £14.39 per month thereafter, after which you’ll no longer be eligible for free domains and matching emails.

Deluxe is one of four Linux hosting plans, ranging from economy for 1 website (£4.79/month for 3 years) to up to 50 sites (£17.99/month for 3 years). Pricing is pretty simple, with each plan offering the same set of features, just varying in quantity depending on the price. Then you have 2GB of memory available.

Storage starts at 25 GB on the Economy plan and increases by 25 GB in each price tier, reaching 100 GB in the highest tier. All of this makes it very easy to decide if it’s worth upgrading and what you’ll get as your online activities become more ambitious.

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GoDaddy Review: Hosting Basics

Behind the scenes, the most common administrative tasks have been pulled out of the wider cPanel interface for quick and easy access. As a result, phpMyAdmin, File Manager, FTP Manager and Backup Controls are each a single click away.

Basic tasks such as pointing an external domain to GoDaddy (half of which, of course, requires DNS changes on existing hosts), installing applications, updating PHP, etc. are displayed on the front page of the dashboard, No need to dive into the full interface. If you only want a quick tweak. Security notifications are also displayed here, so you won’t miss them.

By default, our account was set to use PHP 7.4, which will reach end of life in 2022. Easy click-to-patch jobs. You can likewise downgrade to 7.3 or 5.6 if you have specific needs.

GoDaddy Review: Is it Easy to Create a Website?

By default, two “special” FTP accounts are configured. They cannot be modified or deleted, as they are used to manage administrative tasks such as accessing files outside public directories and accessing logs. Apart from these, you can set up 25 additional FTP users for her, so you don’t have to give unrestricted access to your account to others who need to upload and manage files.

The integrated application browser includes one of the most comprehensive app libraries. Usual suspects like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and phpBB sit alongside 125 other sites that include business essentials like Wikis, Calendars, Forums, Magneto, Nextcloud, and Roundcube. At the time of writing this review, WordPress is at version 6.1.1, Drupal at version 10.0.0, and Joomla at 4.2.6, the latest builds.

The installer is easy to navigate. For example, WordPress setup is a single page operation and you can leave the defaults if you prefer. In practice, you change the username, password, email, title and tagline, but if you’re a new user who doesn’t want to mess around with the installer, you can make at least four changes in your WordPress dashboard.

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GoDaddy Review: Any Extra Features?

All tiers include webmail access, virus and spam protection, Python and Perl, ImageMagick, 256-bit email encryption, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. This guarantee is not as generous as you might think, as the coverage is only up to 5% of your charge for the affected month and can only be set off against future payments. This is not cashback. Nevertheless, the overall bundle is a flexible, generous, and scalable offering that you’ll struggle to find what you’re missing.

GoDaddy can also handle domain registrations for a reasonable first year fee. For example, a .co.uk or .com domain will cost him 1 pence per year for his first three years.

If you prefer Windows hosting, there are also options starting at £4.79 per month for 3 years. So is his VPS hosting with root access, dedicated servers starting at £11.99/month, and dedicated WordPress hosting for his first three years at £7.19/month.

I was impressed with the level of online help available. There is extensive, well-written documentation for most features, and lots of background information that obliquely relates to the various features of the hosting account. For example, a comprehensive index of registration and management requirements for various TLDs, videos on working with your WooCommerce store, videos on using social media to grow your business, and a lively online community that makes a simple hosting provider a publishing destination. can be changed to You will want to keep using it for the long term.

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GoDaddy Review: Should I Sign Up?

If you’re happy to sign up for the full three years, GoDaddy’s Deluxe hosting package is a bargain. After your original contract expires, you’ll only pay £1.20 per month per site, even if you renew for the full £11.99. We think this is very worthwhile. On top of that, yes, it’s well worth adding to your shortlist.

If you can’t fully commit for the first three years, you’ll of course pay more, but even at £9.59 a month for the first year, the price for one year is still competitive.

Unlimited bandwidth, daily backups, 25 databases, and 50 GB of storage are an attractive bundle that should suit most home and small business users’ needs. It’s true that the biggest savings come to those who want a long-term contract, but the 1- or 2-year options aren’t expensive at all.

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