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Jeff Chandler

GoDaddy Launches Managed WordPress Hosting Service

GoDaddy Small LogoAs Marcus Couch hinted at back on November 27th, 2013, GoDaddy has entered the Managed WordPress hosting space. Plans start at $6.29 per month and include DDoS protection, firewalls, automatic updates and an easy one-click migration tool. GoDaddy states that their service will have blistering speed and guaranteed 99.9% uptime.

More Of The Same

GoDaddy has a list of restricted plugins similar to WP Engine. GoDaddy explains that by restricting the plugins listed, it keeps their managed accounts secure. GoDaddy doesn’t have the best track record of being a secure webhost. In 2010, the company experienced a number of malware type hacks on their hosting service as did other major hosting providers such as Network Solutions.

GoDaddy Hacked In 2010
As Reported By Sucuri In 2010

One of the fears expressed by readers was that they would undercut the competition with rock bottom prices. Here is a comparison between a few different WordPress managed hosting providers using their cheapest plan as the lowest common denominator.

  • GoDaddy – $6.99 / month
  • Siteground – $9.95 / month
  • Flywheel – $15.00 / month
  • DreamPress – $19.95 / month
  • Pagely – $24.00 / month
  • Pressable – $25.00 / month
  • Synthesis – $27.00 / month
  • WP Engine – $29.00 / month

GoDaddy Is The Cheapest But That Doesn’t Mean They Win

If price were the only determining factor for choosing a managed WordPress webhost, GoDaddy would win. However, it’s important to note that each company applies different limits and options to their plans. These variations are one of the reasons for the variety of prices. Based on conversations I’ve had with a number of WordPress consultants who deal with webhosting companies on a daily basis, GoDaddy is not on the top of their list as a recommendation to their clients.

According to Donnacha, GoDaddy entering the market should help push prices closer to where they ought to be.

Frankly, the existing “specialist” WordPress hosting companies are useless when a client has anything more than a minor problem. I have long thought that what customers are getting is, roughly, a $10 value for $30, with ridiculous jumps in billing for minor increases in resources. The entry of bigger players such as GoDaddy will, at least, push prices closer to where they should be.

With that said, I don’t think established managed WordPress hosting companies have anything to fear. GoDaddy may have the cheapest prices, but they will have to work extremely hard to earn back the goodwill of the WordPress community.

Low Prices Won’t Be Enough

Since the departure of Bob Parsons as CEO, the company has changed its image from sexy women and hunting elephants to being much more professional as a business. I think GoDaddy has improved in many areas in the past two years but they still have a ways to go. The company has sponsored a number of WordCamps and has been very supportive of the WordPress project. But it’s going to take time and dedication to change the minds of so many WordPress hosting customers who have had a bad experience with the company the past three years. I’m looking forward to the day when I hear people recommending GoDaddy for hosting versus the other way around.

I’d love to hear from customers who are currently using the new GoDaddy managed WordPress hosting service.

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50 responses to “GoDaddy Launches Managed WordPress Hosting Service”

  1. Hi Jeffro
    I don’t use Managed hosting but I am still pretty happy with the speed and reliability of my hosting.

    “GoDaddy entering the market should help push prices closer to where they ought to be.”

    I’ve always thought that managed hosting was very expensive if you only have a few sites so here’s hoping that prices do start to come down.

    • Escalate Hosting does a pretty good job with their WordPress integration, along with a batch of their other scripts they have. Worth checking out, in my opinion

  2. Yeah, without really saying what I feel about GoDaddy, this will be interesting to see how it plays out. Also, having experienced “support” through GoDaddy and WPEngine, well, I have to say, the comparison ends there… WPEngine support alone is well worth the extra dollars. :)

    Now what I am hoping to see at some point is a side-by-side comparison of features, etc of managed hosting including GoDaddy. Not sure how this pricing thing will work out, and like you said cheapest isn’t always better. It looks like another attempt of GoDaddy to win back some people by undercutting the market. : /

  3. I’m glad that GoDaddy has finally entered into this arena. However, from past experience, I do not like their hosting interface.

    I used to use nothing but GoDaddy for all of my sites, but when I used the interface, I always found it it very cumbersome, which is why I switched to another provider. I really like using the cPanel interface that my current provider provides. Its quick and easy and I have control over pretty much everything. If I want to create a database, I simply go in and create one. I don’t have to wait for it to be created. In today’s world, speed and control is everything.
    They may be one of the biggest companies around, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are the best.

    If anyone does decide to use their new service, it would be great to hear some feedback on how their interface works or even if it has been updated. I can certainly understand their stance on restricting plugins. A majority of plugins out there are good, but are coded very poorly.

    Even though this new service sounds interesting, I honestly don’t think I will try it. For me, the only good thing they are good for is registering domain names, but even that can be awkward to use at times as well.

    • Hi Thomas, we have worked very hard to make the interfaces very simple and streamlined for this product. I would encourage you to try it out and let us know how we can improve it and the platform.

      We now offer cPanel hosting as well with the familiar interface and functionality.

      Please let me know if you are interested in trying either product out.

      Thanks,
      Felix Gorodishter
      Software Development Manager for WordPress Initiatives

        • I don’t have any screenshots or video off-hand. Currently it is a very streamlined interface that exposed all of your sites and allows you to see your sFTP, database (phpMyAdmin), and DNS / Domain information and a simple way to delete a site and spin up a new one. I’ll work to get some screenshots put together to share.

          sFTP is included with all of the Managed WordPress packages with unique and secure credentials for each site you have.

  4. I noticed that W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache are on their plugin blacklist. Does that mean they’ll be providing their own caching plugin?

      • I guess I just wonder why they’re on the blacklist in the first place. No matter how fast a server is, caching can’t hurt, right? Hopefully there will be a review of their new hosting soon. I’ve had bad experiences with GoDaddy in the past, but this does look tempting if they deliver on everything they’ve promised here.

  5. Only 3 of the sites I manage are on “specialized” hosting plans. All others are in the standard plan my provider has.

    Those 3 are extremely heavy traffic site. So what I say does not apply to those 3.

    Where do you see $6.99? Basic plan is $7.19/month.

    WPE has always been too expensive. $29.99/month, for what?

    I don’t like having restrictions on what I can upload.

    I don’t feel comfortable when someone else is managing my site. It’s like you moving in to an apartment and your landlord setting up your dining room table and telling you what table & chairs you can have.

    I like to manage everything, with the right combination of theme & plugins…you can manage your site (or your tech person).

    If you are letting your host manage your site then I just think you are lazy.

    So unless you are getting the huge amount of traffic youtube, WordPress.com or even Google.com/.ca/whatever you use is getting. Managed Hosting seems…useless.

    • Where are you seeing $7.19/month? If you select the drop down menu for their Starter plan, you’ll see $6.29/month if you sign up for 12 months or the per month price of $6.99/month which is what I used in the price comparison part of the post.

      • I believe Miroslav is quoting a Canadian price (his current web host is in Canada).

        This is a conundrum: I’ve learned to hate GoDaddy from afar for their marketing and reputation (We all know what happened to Hesham Zebida (http://goo.gl/H3qP6t) among others.) now I have to reconcile this. :)

        One site of mine is not yet high traffic but it is high(er) bandwidth due to being somewhat image-heavy. I’ve tried to tune for that and manged hosting is the next likely step but I’ve shied away from that due to the cost. There’s no mention of a limit on the number of databases, but I’m certain there is one. And cPanel availability is not clearly stated for this plan.

        Looking forward to learning more about this.

        • @genesisthemesca The Managed WordPress plans are structured to run only WordPress and do not allow creating additional databases for other purposes. What are you trying to accomplish with the additional databases? With a bit more info, maybe I can help.
          These plans are also not related to our cPanel hosting which would function like you would expect a cPanel host to work.

          Please let me know if you have any questions.

          • Great to have you here Felix. It was poorly worded but I was referring to the occasional need to build with a supplemental mysql database used by data management tools like Advanced Content Types such as used by Pods (http://pods.io).

          • Thanks for the clarification. While we do not support additional databases, you can add custom tables to the one that is associated with your WordPress site as you see fit. We do not limit that in any way.

            Hope that helps.

  6. @Chris We have have added caching layers and are working to ensure your sites are fast. We also do our best to automatically purge cache on appropriate events such as adding/updating/deleting posts and comments as well as more administrative functions such as switching themes and plugins.

    @Keith Davis Yep, and the servers are fast :-) But in all seriousness, we closely monitoring the performance of the servers with APM tools to ensure this premium product is offering premium value and premium performance.

    I’m happy to answer any questions you all may have. We have also done a Google Hangout where Kurt Payne and I discussed the product and answered a lot of questions:
    https://plus.google.com/events/c7114b4mj5ks6t2iku7dj4f6928

  8. Hi Godaddy wordpress hosting guy, can you answer a few questions:

    1. Can we have a dedicated IP for our managed wordpress site?

    2. Can we use SSL with our managed wordpress site?

    3. Do you offer a CDN (content delivery network)?

    4. Can we host audio/video content on our site using your hosting?

    5. Do you offer multiple restore points?

    Let me know, I am very interested in hearing more. Thanks!

    • @Robert
      1. We do not support dedicated IPs yet on Managed WordPress but are developing that functionality right now.

      2. We do not support SSL yet, but it is being worked on as the primary reason for dedicated IPs from your first question :-)

      3. We do not currently offer a CDN as part of the plans, and are evaluating solutions for our roadmap. That being said, nothing about the platform will prevent or block you from using any CDN you choose There are even free choices out there such as https://www.cloudflare.com.

      4. You can host any content you wish on the site. It is your hosting, do what you need to be successful :-) The plans do have capacity limits as outlined on the sales page, so as long as you are within those bounds and our terms of service, you won’t hear from us about your content.

      5. Yes. We currently perform nightly snapshots of both your content and your database. We are building out the automated restore capability into a UI right now, but if you need a restore completed, we’ll take care of that for your free of charge.

      Thanks for the questions. Let me know if there is anything else I can answer.

      My team is working hard to deliver the right solution for you all. Please let us know what features and functionality are important for you and why and I’ll be happy to get them prioritized in the roadmap.

      • I like what I hear so far. Probably your biggest hurdle will be Godaddy’s reputation. Some people equate low prices with an inferior service/product. Word of mouth will be your best sales tool. If you can match the offering of the competitors in this space (WpEngine, Pressable, etc.), then you’ll have a winner! What is the timeframe for dedicated IP and SSL implementation?

        • GoDaddy is working hard to turn it around, and as an engineer I’m proud to be part of that change. As long as folks can look past the past and give us a try based on the merits of the product offering, I’d be happy to work with anyone and everyone to make sure we build the right product for your needs.

          I expect SSL to take approximately 1 month of effort to get out there but if you are interested in being on the bleeding edge and help us with our testing, I’d be happy work with you to get your account setup earlier once its in production. Just email me at felix AT godaddy.com if you are interested.

          • How much bandwidth is included in the plans? It says visitors, but what if we upload videos and they get a lot of play and eat tons of bandwidth? Our site will get shut down? Nothing is really ever “unlimited”. Please clarify. Thanks.

          • @Robert The intention of positioning around number of visitors rather than bandwidth was because we feel customers can internalize the number of visitors they get and that is what they value, rather than the bits and bytes it takes to service a visitor. We are truly looking to track visitors and not what the visitor does on the site – text, image or video.

            We will never shut your site down for being too popular. This is not a hard limit – we will not stop your website if you get more than a certain number of visitors. These numbers are a guideline to help you find the right plan. If your site traffic ever does exceed the plan guidelines, our customer service will reach out to you to determine the best course of action.

            Please let me know if this helps clarify our approach and thinking.

  9. There’s always webhostingtalk.com for finding a server company that isn’t a monolith or an unidentified part of EIG if you need an alternative. I have a site on Ninja Lion for a low-budget customer, about $35/yr there and so far reliable, been almost a year. Downtown Host has worked for me as well.

    This isn’t to take away from the GD product if that suits, but some folks like more db’s or using what caching they like, I’m one of those as well.

    When helping a client with a GD account some years ago, I also found the interface awkward, seemed to be meant to thwart migrating away, so it’s good to hear that things are evolving. If it’s for real the word will get out soon enough.

  10. @Felix
    Good Godaddy entering into WP Managed Hosting. I have few questions:
    1. Do you support Multisite. If yes, how the sub domain sites are considered as per your pricing plan?

    2. Where the data center is located?

    3. Is this shared managed hosting or dedicated hosting?

    4. Any example WP sites, which are presently hosted on your WP managed hosting?

    Thanks

    • @Jey We’re happy to be here :-)
      1. We do not currently support Multisite on Managed WordPress. It is a feature that is on our backlog.

      2. Currently Managed WordPress is served out of one of our Arizona datacenters. We are planning to expand the service into our other datacenters this year as well. If you are interested in having the service near you or your customers, a CDN could help speed things up in your area, but with our caching it should be pretty snappy everywhere.

      3. The servers are not dedicated to just your site, but they are all dedicated to just this product and only run Managed WordPress – which is how we are able to provide specific optimizations to WordPress.

      4. We have thousands of sites on this service already, but some of the ones I can talk about are:
      http://godaddybowl.com/
      http://wmphoenixopen.com/
      http://for1yearofmylife.com/

  11. @Felix

    The site speed is awesome. Eagerly waiting for the Multisite support.

    Need to give top priority for that.

    • @Jey Happy to hear performance has been awesome for you, we’ve been tuning it to make it go even faster … we enhanced the mobile caching rules this week so that should be even better for your users.

      With regard to multisite support, how would you rank that compared to automated restores for backups, adding staging sites, or SSL support? There’s a lot on the roadmap that customers have been asking for, but these are some of the highlights competing with multisite support.

      Any feedback would be much appreciated.

      • Multisite would instantly be the reason I never went anywhere else. I have to purchase a new hosting plan under my clients name each and every time. I will have no choice but to jump over to Media Temple when the volume is at that point which I would like to avoid if possible because I am assuming the hosting speed will be the same since you are pretty much the same company.

  12. Hi Jeffro,

    Thanks for this post. I just read through every one of the comments posted here to date, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t see anyone who had actually posted about USING this new service from GoDaddy*.

    Well, I just signed up and paid for a year’s worth of the Starter Managed WordPress ($6.29 per month), and picked up the free domain. With a 30-day money back guarantee, I figured what’s to lose? As a rank WP beginner, I’ve been learning a lot about hosting, initial WP hosting account and site setup. I’ve gone half-way through or less now with free-trials now with Synthesis, WPEngine, Pixeno, Flywheel, and SiteGround. I haven’t gotten a dang WP site off the ground yet, but I feel like a bit of an ‘expert-beginner’ in terms of impressions with ease of use, etc etc with WP hosting.

    Within about 20 minutes, I’d signed-up, run through the set-up and incredibly smart GoDaddy WP Quick Setup Wizard (a built-in option in the WordPress Dash Board under Tools), and had a functioning WordPress site. All the basic minimal stuff you want–basic plugin choices (including Yoast WP SEO, and Google Analytics), social integration, page setups, etc etc–in a simple wizard setup. Cool.

    The GoDaddy WordPress Quick Setup Wizard will fill a huge gap and a need for struggling DIY-self setup WordPress-er’s like myself. We just want a complete WP site that doesn’t look too terrible, and functions day-to-day while we tweak it, customize it… (like learning how to make those breadcrumbs look the way we want, make the Genesis category page not show ‘page archives for’ in the browser tab…and stuff we struggle with like that. lol)

    It looks and feels like this GoDaddy WordPress Managed hosting is strictly geared toward the DIY-enduser. Who knows, maybe this GoDaddy service will be a great referral for WordPress Developer Professionals to off-load their “dreaded $500 Budget WordPress Clients” (aka PITA folks like me!) which many of the high-falutin WP professionals are always going-on about?

    Frankly, as a WP-DIYer myself I’ve been struggling with the basic setup, etc etc of WordPress off and on for over 18 months. It’s a part-time interest of mine; I have no budget to pay someone–like the experienced, reputable WP professionals who have commented here–but, I sure am interested in learning and participating and getting through the frustrating learning curves.

    Frankly, I think that GoDaddy and @Felix are on to something here. This service–with its built-in tools–will go far both to fill a huge gap in the WP ease-of-implementation arena which low-tech peeps like myself have needed for a long time.

    I don’t know a whole like about the extent that others have built and implemented set-up wizards into the WordPress dashboard, but it seems like the SetUp Wizard GoDaddy have put in place with their new managed WP hosting will be a new example of what is possible in terms of end-user-oriented WP backend extensibility and setup tools.

    Oh, and did I mention that GoDaddy gives you the option, at initial set-up to build out your WordPress site on a temporary url, and then to migrate it to your permanent domain in the future when you’re ready? Brilliant.

    During the first steps to setup your account, there is also a decent looking, built-in wizard page (a few entries) to automatically migrate your existing site to your GD WordPress hosting account via FTP access. I cannot vouch for it–I have no current site to migrate–but the interface looks simple enough. And if this works, its the easiest I’ve seen.

    I also was also not a fan of much of GoDaddy’s past leadership or image choices (e.g., jacka$$ former-leader BP; bulls**t, sophomoric marketing, etc etc), but I’m willing to give a risk-free trial for an excellently priced, great-sounding product a fair chance. And, so far this beginner has been surprised with what I’ve found. Sweet.

    I’d say that the WordPress Community–especially the ton of us WP-DIYers out here who struggle with the frustrating aspects of WP site setup–may be embracing GoDaddy’s built-in, easy-to-use, set-up wizards and end user tools with relief and open arms. I consider what they’ve done to be a significant contribution to the community. So, thanks! Good for you. You go GoDaddy.

    (*My comment here is not any kind of affiliate referral bs. Note I’ve not included a website either–cause I don’t even have a functioning one to include yet.)

    • Good to hear from a user.
      I would be moving over my sites and all my client sites if I did make the move.

      Bearing that in mind, it was good to read…

      “During the first steps to setup your account, there is also a decent looking, built-in wizard page (a few entries) to automatically migrate your existing site to your GD WordPress hosting account via FTP access. I cannot vouch for it–I have no current site to migrate–but the interface looks simple enough. And if this works, its the easiest I’ve seen.”

      Post a link when you are up and running I’d be interested in taking a look.

      • Hi Keith, thanks. I only have the temp url of the basic WP install that GD offered (I clicked on that install option) for the time being.

        As I was was going through the entire GD wizard this morning (for about 60 minutes), I was capturing and annotating screen-saves of each option and feature–so I could effectively capture my beginner’s first-impressions while they were fresh per se. I plan on writing about them later this week as the final evidence of the process–in the first blog post–on my newly minted website which resulted from that process. (I hope that made sense.)

        I didn’t click on the last “Publish” button at the end of the wizard, because I didn’t want to commit anything until I have more time to continue the captures and finish the A-Z experience of first-time setup all the way to the final example of a finished WP site.

        Seriously, GD offers a very clear, 30-day money back guarantee. Based on my noodling around, I’d recommend you pay the $75.48 USD ($6.29/mo plus free domain) and play with it first-hand. It would be well-worth it to familiarize yourself first-hand, right?

        If things are different with GoDaddy UK (money-back guarantee, etc) at your end, let me know. I’m happy to load up my 31ea screen shots to SkyDrive, send you a link so you can at least see my raw first-impressions later today. (My email is myname at gmail).

        As a WP Pro yourself, I’d also be interested in your first impressions. (Maybe as a beginner, I just don’t know any better? Or, is it a legitimately cool, ground-breaking, new kind of WP site setup tool?)

        If you do have any ‘Pro-WP-Guy’ first-time impressions of the GD WP hosting, I’d love to include you and them in my developing blog post. Pls send any such stuff like that to my email too. Cheers, Mate.

    • @Steve Wharton
      Thanks for posting your initial review and I look forward to reading the full post. The entire team @GoDaddy was inspired reading.

      We definitely want to expand the functionality of Quick Setup.
      Please let us know if there is anything we can do to make you more successful with WordPress.

      • Does Godaddy plan on having 24/7 live chat support in the near future? That would be of invaluable help many times.

        • @HammerThor The short answer is yes, we definitely plan on having live chat. I do not have an ETA, but it is currently available for server products and will be coming to other such as Managed WordPress in the future. Please don’t forget, Our phone support is state-side so you can call 24/7 as well.

          • Wonderful news! This is coming along very nicely, and I know I’ve made the right choice. Thanks for the quick update Felix!

  14. You asked to hear from GoDaddy managed hosting customers. I like GoDaddy because they have excellent service and they give good information. I started with shared hosting, and just moved to try out their managed wordpress hosting. You asked to hear from people using it.

    I just did migrate an existing site that I had with GoDaddy. I’m right now set up on the temporary domain. I’m gonna try to figure out how to change it to the permanent. But, just the switch… was so simple. The screen just asked for my ftp info and log in info of my existing website domain… and ZAP! It was done. It’s cloned on the managed site with a temporary domain name. It’s typical, really, of GoDaddy.. making things ez for ppl who are doing something for the first time.

    I already knew that a managed site is going to limit plug-ins that will create a conflict… which, to me, is part of their protection against me doing something that will mess things up. I decided to try GoDaddy for a month on managed hosting. I didn’t even review their blacklisted plug-ins.

    But, their service department is so helpful, that when I was talking to Eric there, when I said I was going to try the managed hosting… he just offered to send me the blacklist and emailed it immediately. That’s what they are like… doing things for you that are the extra mile. I believe I have talked to Eric a couple of times, and to me, he sold me on GoDaddy because of his service.

    So, then I looked at the list (which I was going to blindly accept anyway), and it’s not really restrictive where people should be concerned. It eliminates the basic caching and security plugins that will conflict because they are already taking care of it. And, if another plugin conflicts elsewhere, they give you options that work with their program.

    Before trying the managed hosting, I used security plug-ins. I appreciate the security plug-ins I had. But, the reality is that they themselves conflicted with other plug-ins I wanted to use. So, there were restrictions that were “built-in” outside of using managed hosting. In other words, using security plug-ins rather than managed hosting really does have “restrictions” due to the conflicts that are inherently created thereby in my experience. (One example… I couldn’t use the “User Switching” plug-in with a security plug-in because I changed the login for security… and it conflicted. Now, I have the security GoDaddy provided… and I can use that plug-in with their program. And I really wanted to use that plug-in during set up of my sites to see what different user roles are seeing in their dashboards. So, so far, having just switched to managed hosting, my use of plug-ins has effectually been expanded, not restricted.)

    I read what you said about GoDaddy being hacked. My thought is that what happened years ago happened to numerous providers at the time. And, I don’t know if the other managed programs existed at that time (managed hosting is a new level of service) to fairly compare against GoDaddy and the other providers who experienced a breach those years ago. Being a newer user who wasn’t effected by what happened several years ago, it’s not a consideration for me.

    I am completely comfortable at this time with GoDaddy in trying them out for managed hosting. They will do backups for me, and if my site gets hacked… they will fix it for free. (I don’t think that another managed hosting service is automatically going to be better at security than GoDaddy today even if there was an incident a few years ago in my personal view and buying decision.)

    I’ll know more later about the functionality of the managed hosting. I am just starting out with this managed hosting program as a one month trial. But, because I have needed some help on some things that more experienced users wouldn’t need help on, and GoDaddy has been very helpful.

  15. I guess I am one of the first to try the godaddy managed hosting. I must say, that we just finished developing a full e-commerce platform with SSL and other than the cost of SSL 100% of all other managed wordpress hosting companies make you pay at least $10 more a month for SSL. I am truly impressed so far with the speed and reliability of the GoDaddy managed wordpress hosting offering. It’s too bad they don’t allow a staging environment but how could I complain with the price. A coupon code later and i’m paying a whopping $1 a month for a managed wordpress hosting plan for the next 12 months! In all seriousness the backups work perfect and the speed of the site is tremendous for the cost. Next up is to purchase a dedicated ip for $6 a month and I am actually a believer. I never thought the day would come but it’s true…thank goodness for the clients low budget or else I would have never given it a chance.

  16. Hi, will multisite support be made available soon? I was disappointed to find that it isn’t supported after purchasing the whole year plan :( I hope it will be supported across all pricing plans though! :)

  17. @Henry K
    I contacted go daddy right before I went with the checkout process and turns out multisite is still not supported. That is a deal breaker for me. What is up godaddy? any plan supporting wp mu anytime soon?

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