Bluehost vs. GoDaddy: Which Web Host Is Best for You?

We know you compare our services with GoDaddy’s — and we agree with your approach.  

Your hosting provider is the landlord of your website. And just like you’d need a dependable landlord for yourself, so does your website. That means you must scrutinize the web host’s support, maintenance, and overall infrastructure before signing the contract — just like you would when renting a home.  

While we can claim we’re the best hosts for you, we want to let our offerings do the talking.  

Let’s compare Bluehost vs. GoDaddy and see which one offers the best web hosting. 

Bluehost vs. GoDaddy: Overview

Bluehost has been in the hosting business since 2003. As one of the major hosting providers around the world, it powers over two million websites. While it offers several hosting options, it remains a prime choice for WordPress users since it’s also one of the longest-running WordPress-recommended hosts. 

In contrast, GoDaddy started its web hosting journey in 1997 as Jomax Technologies — which it changed to GoDaddy in 1999. According to W3Techs, 2.5% of all websites use GoDaddy as their hosting partner, taking its website count to about five million. 

Bluehost has the following web hosting offerings:  

Shared web hosting  

WordPress hosting  

WooCommerce hosting  

VPS hosting  

Dedicated server hosting  

Cloud hosting – NEW!  

While GoDaddy has the following:  

Shared web hosting  

Managed WordPress hosting  

Managed WooCommerce stores  

VPS hosting  

Aside from the web hosting offers, both hosting providers also differ in individual plans and service delivery. 

For instance, a modern website requires a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate to offer a secure browsing experience to website visitors. Not to mention, it’s a requirement for HTTPS, which is a Google ranking factor and important for search engine optimization (SEO). 

Here’s how the two web hosts approach SSLs: 

Bluehost offers options for both free and paid SSLs. Content creators and small business owners can easily activate the free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate directly through Bluehost’s control panel. Additionally, Bluehost enhances security with advanced features like DDoS protection and performs weekly offsite backups to safeguard your data against loss or corruption.

On the other hand, GoDaddy also provides free and paid SSL options, but with certain limitations. For example, GoDaddy’s AutoSSL is only included with premium plans. Beginners looking for free SSL on more economical plans might need to resort to third-party services, which typically offer free SSL only for the first 90 days, requiring manual renewal since GoDaddy does not automate this process. 

Furthermore, Bluehost supports its users with a guided server setup or onboarding call, round-the-clock support, and a free migration service, making it easier for users to manage their hosting environment with an included cPanel license. 

Let’s explore other similarities and differences between the two web hosts.

Similar to how you’d examine the home you want to move into, you have to look at the features a web hosting provider offers for your website.

Free add-ons

Both Bluehost and GoDaddy offer a free domain name and free SSL certificate for one year if you sign up for long-term plans.

If you’re hosting your website with Bluehost and are using a plan above Basic, you can continue using the free SSL by opting for Let’s Encrypt after the first year. In contrast, with GoDaddy, you’ll typically have to pay for an SSL afterward since the host doesn’t support the ACME protocol Let’s Encrypt requires.

Besides that, Bluehost also offers a free content delivery network (CDN) with all its plans, including shared web hosting plans. A CDN caches (or temporarily stores) images, videos and other webpage files. It delivers them from a server closest to your audience, speeding up content delivery and improving user experience.

On the other hand, GoDaddy limits its free CDN to managed WordPress plans, which come with a higher price tag.

Hosting infrastructure

Both Bluehost and GoDaddy offer unmetered bandwidth. That means there’s no cap on download and upload speed if your website’s data transfer stays within reasonable limits.

When it comes to disk space, Bluehost’s basic plan gives you 10 GB, while GoDaddy’s economy-shared hosting plan gives you 25 GB.

However, typical websites generally don’t consume more than 3-5 GB of disk space. In fact, if you’re a small business owner and aren’t trying to create a multimedia website, your disk space requirements would likely be below 2 GB.

Regarding uptime — which measures the web hosting service’s reliability — GoDaddy gives a 99.9% uptime guarantee. 

Bluehost, however, takes it a step further with its cloud hosting service, which not only promises 100% network availability but also includes an enforceable SLA that compensates customers during any downtime.  

Other hosting services promise to resolve most downtime issues within 15 minutes and typically deliver 99.9%+ uptime.

Here are the available cloud hosting plans that you can avail of:  

Bluehost vs. GoDaddy: Performance

A 2022 Portent study on website speed found that B2C websites that load in one second have a 2.5x higher conversion rate compared to those that load in five seconds.

In other words, your website’s performance should be your priority, and you should opt for a web hosting provider that offers that performance.

Let’s see where Bluehost and GoDaddy stand in different performance metrics:

Load time

Load time refers to the time it takes for a user to enter a URL in the browser and the page to fully load. Typically, it should be as low as possible since visitors might abandon a webpage if it takes too long to load.

Load time depends on a bunch of factors — website size, plugins and more — so let’s see what independent testers have to say:

Bluehost vs. GoDaddy: Load time comparison

	Bluehost	GoDaddy
WinningWP	1.17 seconds	1.20 seconds
Tooltester	2.07 seconds	1.44 seconds
WP Dev Shed	0.65 seconds	1.20 seconds

Uptime

Uptime, as mentioned above, is a measure of a hosting provider’s reliability. Measured in percentages, it defines how much of the time a system stays operational for use.

While you might want a hosting provider that offers 100% uptime, the associated costs might not make sense for a small business or content creator. Instead, you can go for an uptime equal to or higher than the industry standard of 99.9%.

Here’s how the two web hosts compare in uptime according to independent tests:

Bluehost vs. GoDaddy: Uptime comparison

	Bluehost	GoDaddy
WinningWP	100%	100%
Tooltester	99.95%	99.95%
WP Dev Shed	100%	99.98%

Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are three performance metrics Google uses to measure a webpage’s overall user experience.

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures how long it takes for the most relevant content to load.
• First Input Delay (FID): Measures how long it takes a webpage to respond to user input.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures a webpage’s visual stability.

For instance, say you’re trying to click a login button and it suddenly moves down as another page element loads. In that case, the webpage isn’t visually stable and will have a poor CLS score.

Here’s how the two web hosts compare in Core Web Vitals according to an independent tester.

Bluehost vs. GoDaddy: Core Web Vitals Comparison (data from MamboServer)

Core Web Vitals	Recommended Benchmarks	Bluehost	GoDaddy
LCP	< 2.5 seconds	0.5 seconds	1.4 seconds
FID	< 100 milliseconds	0 milliseconds	0 milliseconds
CLS	< 0.1	0	0

Bluehost vs. GoDaddy: User interface

Both Bluehost and GoDaddy offer user-friendly custom control panels you can use to find what you need and perform the tasks you want.

Bluehost user interface

When you sign into your Bluehost account, you’ll see the following user interface:

You can find shortcuts and guides to get started on the first page. To navigate your account, you can use the menu on the left-hand side. For example, here’s what happens when you click on Websites.

You can add a new website to your account from this tab and set it up by following the intuitive directions on the screen.

From the website’s management area, you can log in to WordPress and configure a variety of settings, including:

• Enabling and disabling automatic updates.
• Activating and deactivating plugins.
• Modifying security settings, including turning on SSL and scanning WordPress core files.
• Managing website cache settings.
• Controlling user access and tracking backups.

If you want to see advanced settings, navigate to Advanced to open Bluehost’s cPanel dashboard.

Via cPanel, you can manage your email accounts, monitor resource usage, edit website files and much more.

GoDaddy user interface

When you sign in to your GoDaddy account, you’ll see the homepage with products and services, including domains you own and hosting plans you’re using. You can also click Manage to open detailed settings, which can vary depending on the product.

GoDaddy website hosting

If you open detailed settings for Linux hosting or GoDaddy’s economy hosting plan, you’ll get a Linux hosting dashboard — which is built on top of cPanel. You can use it to access the hosted website and its admin dashboard — WordPress admin in this case — and cPanel admin for the hosting plan.

Besides that, the dashboard also offers tools such as phpMyAdmin, File Manager and FTP Manager.

For more tools, you can, once again, try cPanel admin. However, the cPanel dashboard GoDaddy uses is slightly outdated — 102.0.24. In comparison, Bluehost is using 102.0.32.

GoDaddy managed WordPress hosting

If you opt for a WordPress hosting plan, you won’t get a cPanel with GoDaddy. Plus, the hosting dashboard will be different from that of Linux hosting.

While you’ll be able to tinker with your website via Settings, you’ll have limited control without the flexibility of a cPanel dashboard. That’s also one of the reasons why it’s borderline impossible to configure a free SSL with GoDaddy’s WordPress hosting plans.

Bluehost vs. GoDaddy: Website management

Now that you’ve gotten used to the user interfaces, let’s see how smoothly you can perform common tasks with them.

Installing content management systems

Content management systems (CMSs) let you build your website without coding know-how. Typically, users default to WordPress since it’s the most popular CMS with tons of support and a large community.

With Bluehost, you can install WordPress by clicking My Sites > Add site > Create New Site and then following the directions on the screen.

In contrast, GoDaddy doesn’t offer a straightforward option to install WordPress. You have to click Install Application to access the Installatron installer.

Once in the Installatron installer, click WordPress to open its installer and click Install this application.

Afterward, you can configure several settings, including where you want to install WordPress and the domain name you’ll be using. Once you’re done, click Install to begin the installation.

Your WordPress installation will be ready in a minute.

While it sounds simple, it’s not the one-click WordPress installation you might expect. Also, the directions aren’t as intuitive.

Similarly, you can install other CMSs, like Joomla, via Softaculous in Bluehost and Installatron in GoDaddy.

Managing WordPress updates and third-party applications

Bluehost lets you manage your WordPress site outside the WordPress admin.

You can enable or disable updates for WordPress core, themes and plugins via Websites > Manage Site > Settings.

Similarly, you can enable or disable WordPress plugins from the Activation status column.

GoDaddy doesn’t offer anything similar. You have to head to WordPress admin to manage updates and third-party applications.

Testing changes to your website

Your website also needs design changes and functionality updates from time to time. While you might close your physical office during renovations to avoid affecting client relationships, your digital office can typically use a replica — a staging site — for experimentation.

Bluehost offers this staging website via the Bluehost plugin. Once in the WordPress dashboard, navigate to Bluehost > Staging and click Create Staging Site to create a replica website.

GoDaddy, on the other hand, doesn’t offer a staging site with its economy plan. You have to opt for its managed WordPress plans to enjoy the perks of a staging site. And that means you’ll be paying extra.

Bluehost vs. GoDaddy: Customer support

More than a web hosting provider, you need a web hosting partner — a service you can rely on when you need help. Let’s see how Bluehost and GoDaddy fare in this aspect.

Both Bluehost and GoDaddy offer 24/7 live chat and phone support. In addition, GoDaddy accepts queries via text messages.

Still, having just the typical customer support channels doesn’t cut it. You need an excellent support team that answers your queries promptly.

To see how the two web hosts compare, we tested out both web hosts’ live chat anonymously.

First, we tried the live chat on Bluehost’s website.

We decided to ask about website migrations since it’s often a matter of concern for website owners looking to switch to a better hosting provider.

And we got an answer within three minutes. Bluehost’s customer support confirmed that Bluehost offers website migration — and there’s no limit surrounding cPanel, either.

Second, we tried the live chat on GoDaddy’s website.

However, GoDaddy didn’t have an available support agent, and the live chat showed a wait time of 20 minutes.

GoDaddy’s support agent was available after 23 minutes.

We asked GoDaddy’s support agent about website migration, too. However, they said GoDaddy doesn’t offer free website migration.

While GoDaddy’s support was also helpful, the long wait time can be frustrating if you’re trying to troubleshoot a critical error with your website. Besides that, if you own an eCommerce store, you’ll be losing customers each second you wait for an answer from customer support.

Bluehost vs. GoDaddy: Value for money

While features, user interface and customer support matter, your wallet has the final say. After all, you can’t go for a hosting provider with premium support if it means paying more than your budget permits.

Here are GoDaddy’s pricing plans for its shared web hosting:

For a price of $5.99/month, you get:

• Standard shared web hosting.
• Free SSL for the first year.
• Free domain name for the first year.
• Daily backups.
• 25 GB storage.

And more.

Now, here are Bluehost’s pricing plans for shared web hosting:

By paying $2.95/month, you get:

• Standard shared web hosting.
• Free SSL
• Free domain name for the first year.
• Free CDN.
• 10 GB storage.
• Premium customer support.
• Feature-rich custom dashboard.
• Staging site.
• AI site creation tools

And more.

In other words, by paying less than half the price of GoDaddy’s economy plan, you get a better hosting package with a free CDN, free lifetime SSL, AI site creation tools and premium customer support with Bluehost’s Basic plan. 

Not to mention, the Bluehost control panel makes managing a WordPress site a breeze by letting you manage updates and third-party applications outside WordPress admin.

Bluehost vs. GoDaddy: Which web host is best for you? 

If you’re a beginner or a new website owner, you need a landlord who can also serve as a friend. You’ll also need a customer support team that can help you out whenever you get into an issue. 

At Bluehost, we believe we can be that hosting partner and friend. We offer 24/7 premium customer support with all our hosting plans. Besides that, you also benefit from free lifetime SSL (for plans above Basic), a free CDN and more. 

Our VPS/Dedicated hosting solutions are powered by the latest generation hardware, including AMD EPYC 9534 CPU Chips and ultra-fast NVMe SSD Storage Drives, ensuring top performance and quick data transfer with PCIe 5.0 technology. This setup is ideal for high-traffic websites and applications, supported by a 10 Gbps network with unmetered bandwidth. 

If you’re looking to build a website for the first time, check out our WordPress hosting plans. The Bluehost control panel makes WordPress management simple. On top of that, we’re a WordPress-recommended partner and will always be ready to assist you as needed.

Bluehost vs. GoDaddy FAQs