GoDaddy Website Builder Review

The GoDaddy website builder is among our top recommended options for three reasons: The design-assisted format keeps everything simple, the features are solid (though not exceptional), and it all comes with a great cost-to-value ratio.

In short, GoDaddy is best for small businesses and first-timers that want a fast and simple website.

The service uses a simple, grid-based, drag-and-drop system to which you can add elements like images, text, videos and more. When you need help, contact the 24/7 customer support. You’ll be able to call them up at any time of day and find a solution for your problem – whether that’s building your website or changing your payment method.

We've tested all the top website builder brands on the market, pitting them against a series of quality and ease-of-use assessments. We'll even help you get started with GoDaddy, so you can be sure you're getting the best price. Here's what to know about GoDaddy's own pricing and plans.

In this review:

• GoDaddy Plans
  Does GoDaddy have a Free Plan?
• Does GoDaddy have Hidden Fees?
• GoDaddy Features
• How Does GoDaddy Pricing Compare With Other Website Builders?
• Verdict: Is GoDaddy Worth it?
• FAQs

GoDaddy Plans

GoDaddy offers four different pricing plans: Basic, Premium, Commerce, and Commerce Plus. They're all available with a 30-day free trial as well.

GoDaddy Basic

The Basic plan from GoDaddy costs $9.99 per month and is aimed at those looking for a more robust website for personal use. You'll be missing some great features from the more expensive plans, like SEO and ecommerce, but you'll have your foot in the door for your online presence.

This plan comes with on-the-go editing, a business email (for the first year), analytical and guidance tools, and some limited social media and email marketing features. Plus, as with all plans, you'll still get that 24/7 support that can help with beginners.

GoDaddy Premium

The Premium plan from GoDaddy costs $14.99 per month and it represents the perfect plan for growing businesses that are scaling a bit faster. Compared to Basic, it adds a lot for the money, so it's worth considering if you're larger than a simple small business.

For one, the Premium plan adds a vast array of appointment setting functionality, like repeat appointments and group events, so you can build out your client base even more. You'll also get SEO help, the ability to connect unlimited social media accounts and posts, and the ability to send up to 25,000 marketing emails.

GoDaddy Commerce

The Commerce plan from GoDaddy costs $16.99 per month and is for businesses looking to launch an online store with their website. This is the only GoDaddy plan that offers ecommerce functionality, so don't let those lower prices fool you; this is the plan you need to sell your products. With it, you can list 5,000 products in your online store and fulfill up to 50 orders per month from marketplace and social selling on sites like Amazon, Etsy, Google, and Facebook.

In addition to that (and all the features found in previous plans), you'll get access to flexible payment and shipping options, and promotional features. Simply put, if you're looking for an ecommerce website builder, this plan is the right starter option.

GoDaddy Commerce Plus

But your business will keep growing, and that's where Commerce Plus comes in, costing $29.99 per month.

That's a big jump in pricing, but it comes with higher caps on what you can list and sell: Unlimited products can be listed in your store, and up to 1,000 orders can be fulfilled through social and marketplace. In addition, email marketing sends can be up to 100,000 per month, up from Commerce's 25,000/month cap.

Does GoDaddy have a Free Plan?

Unfortunately, GoDaddy no longer offer its free forever plan. Instead, they now offer a free 30-day trial of all their plans.

No credit card information is needed for the trial, and it offers full functionality, so it's a great way to dip your toe into the GoDaddy world. Plus, you'll have access to the company's 24/7 support as well. If you like the plan, you'll have right up until the 30th day of your trial to add your card information and start paying.

Does GoDaddy have Hidden Costs?

Yes, GoDaddy's pricing plans all come with a big catch: Only the first year is available for the advertised price. After that, the plans' monthly costs will increase when they're automatically renewed.

GoDaddy increased its second-year prices in 2022. Before, second-year pricing increased the non-ecommerce plans by 30%. Now, those percentage are higher, although Commerce's price increase remains at 40%.

Basic increases 21% after the first year, making it $11.99 per month, up from $9.99. Premium increases 46%, and will be $21.99 per month, up from $14.99. Commerce, the plan you'll need for any starter ecommerce operation, increases 46%, kicking it from $16.99 per month to $24.99 per month. Finally, Commerce Plus increases 33%, moving from the already-pretty-high $29.99 a month to $44.99 per month.

If you plan on operating your website for longer than a year, you should factor these prices into your budget.

GoDaddy Features

GoDaddy has come far in the past few years. Several years ago, we rated it in the bottom half of the website builders we'd consider recommending, but since then it has made strong headway in improving its design through adding templates and boosting customization options.

Our rating for GoDaddy's design functionalities sits at 3.9 out of 5 stars now, which is a 14% increase since our previous evaluation, while the entire service has increased 11.6% overall. Here are a few top features worth mentioning.

ADI

GoDaddy’s Artificial Design Intelligence function is impressive and the templates it generates look pretty good. GoDaddy also generates specific text and images which will fill out your templates. While it’s likely that you’ll end up deleting this content, it can be really helpful in starting out if you’re not certain what you’re going to fill your site with.

Intuitive Editor

When you come to edit the content on your website, you’ll find GoDaddy’s sidebar based page and content editor easy to get to grips with. It explains each element in jargon-free terms, and you’ll be able to see all of the changes you make in real time.

Adding elements to each page is very easy: Simply click the big + button and you’ll be presented with a list of potential additions which are tailored to your site. So if you’re running a restaurant website, menus or reservation forms will appear at the top of the list before, say, text boxes or a PayPal donation button.

It all adds up to a streamlined user experience — our testing puts the service's ease of use at an impressive 4.1 out of 5 stars.

GoDaddy Studio

GoDaddy expanded its capacity for in-house visual content creation in July 2021 with the introduction of GoDaddy Studio (formerly Over). This feature is available to all GoDaddy customers at no extra cost and is packed full of lots of really useful tools to aid with content creation.

For instance, there's a broad selection of curated templates for you to choose from that can then be customized with your own copy, images, and colors. The Studio can help you excel at all sorts of tasks, from creating business cards to product posts for your website.

GoDaddy Studio will really expand your digital marketing horizons; it can help you build branded content for social media, create YouTube thumbnails and channel banners, and design Instagram adverts. For users who've used similar content creation tools before, there is increased capacity to customize with fonts, royalty-free photos, and graphics. There's also a handy suite of image-editing tools – so there are very few instances where you'll have to go off-site to find a design function or feature you need.

This is all well and good, but it's fair to say GoDaddy Studio still lags behind other software like Canva, which also lets you create visual content for your website or social media page but has many, many more features, is marginally easier to use and integrates with other apps and programs.

Help and Support

While GoDaddy does have excellent 24/7, on-the-phone support, it lacks other support options that have become standard practice for other website builders.

There is no online chat or email support. GoDaddy’s knowledge base is also lacking in depth when compared to other website builders. That said, our evaluations found GoDaddy's customer rating to be 4.2 out of 5 stars, which is above the average and indicates that they're keeping their customers well-served.

Domain Hosting

We're reviewing GoDaddy’s GoCentral website building platform in this article, but the company also offers a domain hosting service – domains are, basically, the website URL that your browser visits. For example, “tech.co” is our own domain. GoDaddy will also host WordPress domains, and you can even get a GoDaddy expert to build a bespoke site for you.

With the right deal, you can get a website domain for $1.99 a month for the first year, although the price jumps to $8.99 a month after the year's over. Visit GoDaddy through our link here to get that special deal.

How Does GoDaddy Compare with Other Website Builders?

From Wix to Squarespace, you'll find plenty of affordable website builders with great features, robust analytics, stylish templates, and fine-tuned customizability.

Our research team has taken a number of the world's most popular website builders out for a spin – take a look at some the competitors below to make sure you make the right decision for your website building needs.

Wix

Our testers ranked Wix as our top ecommerce website builder overall, bar none. It'll create more interesting websites, and comes with better sales features. Plus, it has website design functions that are easier to use than GoDaddy — even though that's one of GoDaddy's strengths.

Plus, it comes with an impressive 4.8 customer approval score out of a possible 5, handily beating GoDaddy's also very good 4.1 star rating.

 Squarespace

Another big contender in the website building world, Squarespace offers unbeatable help and support options alongside a great user experience. It also comes with a great value-to-cost ratio, thanks to a starting price that puts its starting price a full two dollars under that of Wix — although both services run deals frequently, so you should check their current prices before picking which option is for you.

GoDaddy FAQs