In this post, we’re going to compare two of the most popular web hosting platforms HostMonster vs GoDaddy. As we know, hosting a website is as important as securing a domain name for it. For your website to get live and active on the internet, you must host it through a network. Web Hosting refers to the space that you can rent on a server to place your files.
Whenever someone searches for your website, they will be automatically directed to space where your website. Your customers cannot reach your business until you host your website on a server.
There are various servers where you can host your website. These servers or companies will manage every backend concern, such as maintenance and repairing of the servers. A persona can himself build a personal server, but it is easier said than done.
Maintaining a server requires technical knowledge as well as a lot of money for its repairs and up-gradation. Not to mention the powerful computer, you need to be able to run it smoothly without crashing.
It is much more convenient and budget-friendly to hire a hosting company to manage all the related stuff for you. There is a lot of website hosting companies that provide unique, as well as similar features.
Choosing a company that fits your requirement can be tough because of the variety of options. So today, we are going to make this choice easy for you. In this article, we will discuss the two best hosting services available right now and the difference and similarities between them. This HostMonster VS GoDaddy detailed discussion will help you to choose the best company for you. So without further ado, let’s dive right in.
HostMonster Vs. GoDaddy – An Overview
GoDaddy was founded in 1996 by Bob Parsons and is the biggest domain registrar and hosting site. Currently, the company is hosting more than ten million websites on its servers.
HostMonst was also founded in 1996 by Matt Heaton, one of the oldest hosting companies and GoDaddy.
HostMonster and GoDaddy provide many similar features with some differences. Both the hosts offer similar packages, have similar selling points, and even target the same audience in the market. They even have similar hosting plans such as Shared, Dedicated, and VPS.
GoDaddy has some additional hosting plans like WordPress hosting, Reseller Hosting, and WP pro. Both companies are popular because of their low prices and fantastic specs.
HostMonster vs. GoDaddy: USPs of these platforms
HostMonster
- With the HostMonster plan, you get unlimited disk storage.
- You can also host unlimited websites on their domain.
- You can add unlimited add-on domains.
- It also provides you the feature of unlimited parked domains
- Free drag-and-drop site builder.
- You can get a free domain name.
- Other features are accessible like cPanel.
- You get FTP access.
- Access to secure shell
- You can also get added Hotlink Protection.
- All the plans come with Secure email support.
GoDaddy
- You can create a new website or an online store.
- Get personalized domains.
- You can have SEO provided for you.
- Become more visible in local searches.
- You can avail of social media marketing help.
- All your bookkeeping needs are taken care of.
- You can get a business number that you can link to your personal number.
- Professional Web Hosting Services.
Conclusion
Both of these popular hosting platforms have their own USPs. If you need to choose one of these two services on the basis of USPs that they have, you can go for either of them if the budget is not a problem for you. We’ll discuss more pricing below.
HostMonster vs. GoDaddy: Features Rundown
| Features | GoDaddy | HostMonster |
| Starting Price | $5.99 per month for the Starter plan | $12.99 per month for the basic plan |
| Performance | Better than HostMonster but no speed-boosting feature | Slower than Google’s recommended maximum |
| Security | Cheaper than HostMonster as an add-on feature. | Website security can be availed with optional extra and costs more than GoDaddy’s. |
| Speed | Faster | Comparatively Slower |
| Uptime | Average 99.99% | Average 99.96% |
| Explore More | GoDaddy | HostMonster |
HostMonster and Godaddy are two similar hosting platforms that provide similar as well different plans. Now we will discuss their features in detail to better understand which platform will be more suitable for you.
HostMonster
HostMonster is one of the oldest web hosting service providers and is famous for its reasonably priced plans with extremely good support.
User Interactive Easy-to-Use Control Panel
HostMonster is equipped with a modified version of the popular Cpanel, which manages your account. The interface is designed to be user-friendly to make it easier for beginners to start building their website.
The interface is divided into different hostings, add-ons, domains, and account tabs for easy navigation. You can also add quick links of products to buy from the option present at the page’s footer. The interface also provides additional options for people with more experience and knowledge.
Free Domain Names
HostMonster provides various low-cost plans to cater to different hosting needs. All the plans come with a free domain name for a year for new users.
30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
HostMonster offer 30-days money-back guarantee if you are not satisfied with the services, but it does not apply to every service.
For instance, if you took the free domain name and opted for money back, you will receive hosting charges back, but the domain name will incur a charge.
Pre-built Designs
HostMonster offers different pre-built website designs that can help you to get a fully functioning website within a few clicks. You don’t require any coding skills for the customization and make all the changes through its drag-and-drop feature.
There are various site builders integrated with the platform as well that you can use to create beautiful websites. Some of the builders are Concrete5 and Weebly.
Easy-Site Migration
You can easily migrate from another platform or can migrate up to 5 sites with 20 email accounts.
HostMonster also provides some additional features to optimize your website.
Pay-per-Click Advertising
You can select the most relevant keywords and run a PPC ad campaign on it.
Search Engine Optimization
HostMonster provides you a detailed report of the overall score of SEO calculated by an algorithm. In this report, you can get information about these topics:
- Visitors: The number of people visiting your website.
- Site Review: You can track technical issues like long loading time or missing SSL certificates.
- Ranking: Understand the ranking of your website on different search engines.
- Competitors: You can check your ranking against your competitors.
- SEO-Friendly: You can check your links, titles, site structure, and metadata for optimization.
- Content quality: The website provides you tips for creating high-quality content.
- Mobile-friendliness: You can check the performance of your website on mobile devices.
- Popularity: You can calculate and manage your backlinks.
- Social Media Shares: You can keep track of the total shares of your website on social media.
GoDaddy
Performance and Uptime
One of the defining features of the platform is its 99,9% uptime guarantee. You can always rely on GoDaddy to run your website efficiently 24/7. The company goes out of its way to keep its promise.
Strong Datacenter Infrastructure
GoDaddy has one of the largest global infrastructures of massive 320,000 sq. ft in Phoenix. The data center is equipped with the following features to provide uninterrupted services.
- There is an uninterrupted power supply to all the servers.
- Powerful temperature control system to keep all the servers and supporting equipment at optimal temperature.
- Various conduits to protect power and also fiber cabling.
Also, the massive data center has high security with technical assistance staff 24/7. Due to this amazing hardware and software setup, all the GoDaddy website loads extremely fast.
Speed
GoDaddy takes pride in themselves on the speed of their hosting and websites. All of the websites have an optimum performance with a focus on e-commerce platforms.
Security
Even the simplest hosting plan provided by GoDaddy ensures the satisfaction of its customer when talking about security. Both secure shell and spam protection are provided in GoDaddy’s introductory shared hosting plan.
GoCentral Website Builder
This website builder provides you over 100 templates that can be created and customized to develop your website. Premium plan users can benefit from these 300 different template styles, while the personal plan includes 50 styles.
WordPress additional add-ons
You get a lot of additional support if you are a WordPress user. Some of the added advantages are :
- They make sure plugins are always up-to-date for protection against hacks.
- They create a daily backup of your website to provide you easy restoration.
- You can easily restore your website with one click.
- There are numerous pre-built websites for WordPress that can be customized.
- SEO visibility feature is available in most of the plans.
- There are thousands of WordPress themes and plugins.
- The reduced loading time of your website.
- 23/7 expert technical assistance.
Additional SEO tools
GoDaddy offers a variety of affordable digital marketing tools.
- “Get Found” lists you in various important directories.
- GoDaddy materials concentrate on beginners.
- Excellent Content suggestion to make your content SEO optimized.
- All plans include Email Marketing forms plans to attract customers.
- All GoDaddy templates have mobile-friendly designs.
- The email program also allows you to analyze the track opens, click-throughs, and social shares.
Conclusion
Both of these websites offer huge lists of features which you can choose from according to your requirement. It all depends on what is best for your business. So, we suggest that you compare the features that these websites are offering with what your business needs and then make a decision.
Hostmonster vs Godaddy
Load Impact Test
Having seen complaints about load issues, we decided to test both the host servers using Load Impact.
HostMonster
We send 60 virtual users to the site over six minutes to check its performance. There were few HTTP errors, but that was not such a big concern. However, we saw over half of the user request faced errors.
The response time dropped to zero after the first 36 user requests. Well, the website could not load for any more users after that point. The excessive HTTP errors hint at plenty of users hosted on a single server.
They promise a 100% uptime, but it is no more what it used to be. Well, it could be the hit of a provider outage that incite fears in users mind.
GoDaddy
The Load Impact test results were not exceptional, either in the case of GoDaddy. The standard load time went up to 1.42s. It displayed a linear relationship between VU load time and virtual user count.
What this means is the website load speed went down with a rise in user count. When tested for 100 concurrent users, the standard load time rose to 3 seconds. The test results displayed a negative spectrum, given the best WordPress hosts.
GoDaddy boasts a 99.9% uptime guarantee. They will give you account credits if they hit over 44 minutes of downtime in a month.
Ease of use
No web host would create unwanted hassles for you. Any web host would try to limit the nuisance to a minimum. While they equally strive to offer as much support to you as possible.
On a personal note, the data and experience reveal that first-time users will likely have fewer issues using HostMonster.
Signup process
The signup process is a play of five minutes for both hosts. You won’t face any problem signing up for these hosts. However, they both try to sell plenty of stuff during checkout.
We ask new users to stay extra careful and not end up buying features that they’ll not use.
User Interface
HostMonster: The user interface uses a bright font on a dark background, making it hard to read key payment metrics during checkout.
However, site migration won’t be a problem when you switch your site hosting. They have an easy-to-use cPanel.
GoDaddy: They have an intuitive user interface making it way easy for beginners. GoDaddy comes with a clean and clear cPanel. It is a little bit customized, but it is quite easy to use.
Even Hostmonster uses a traditional cPanel, making both of them comfortable to use.
Backup Policy
Backups are a reliable back door to restore your website data in case it gets hacked or lost. Prepping up your backup policy is one of the first things you should think about before setting up your account.
GoDaddy is a sweet spot. Well, GoDaddy offers free daily backups on all WordPress hosted sites. However, it would be best to buy the GoDaddy website backup tool to back up your other sites.
HostMonster runs free backups with a twist. First, they do not give away any useless backups. So, you will have just one website version at any given time.
On top of that, they offer courtesy backups as a bonus. That means they are doing it as a favor. So, your backups are not guaranteed. If they choose not to backup your site any longer, you will be left astray.
What you can do is buy the Site Backup Pro or grab the Codeguard tool to create authentic backups of your website. You can set up your backup anytime you wish and configure automatic backups too.
HostMonster erases backups even for a day older than thirty days. It’s better to download backups and retain a copy of your data.
Firewall
Both HostMonster & GoDaddy come with a standard Firewall Web App that thwarts off SQL injection attacks and cross-site scripting threats.
CDN
Content Delivery Systems are a great pick to enable faster load time for your website. It hosts your website cache across the global servers to help your site visitors get quick access.
GoDaddy comes with CDN support, but users need to set it up on their own.
HostMonster offers free CDN access across all its plans. All you need to do is activate it from your cPanel.
The clear winner here is GoDaddy. Why are we saying that? Just because GoDaddy servers come with better speed than HostMonster.
HostMonster vs. GoDaddy: Customer Support
Some issues may arise unless you are a technical person with existing knowledge of running a website. In such a case, you might require assistance from trained technicians. Therefore, good customer support is very important for a good platform.
HostMonster
The HostMonster provides technical support to their customers 24/7 through telephone support lines directly to the technical teams. You can also talk to the billing, sales, service compliance, and verification department directly through their customer support.
HostMonster also provides support in the form of live chat.
GoDaddy
GoDaddy provides excellent tech support through their trained specialists through chat, email, and phone. You can contact them anytime to get your technical or any other issues fixed immediately.
The time consumed for a problem to be fixed ranges from 0 to 10 minutes at most.
Conclusion
Both of these websites have excellent customer support, which will help you resolve your query in no time. So, in this section, we’ll call it a tie and let both these services take half a point each.
HostMonster vs. GoDaddy: Pricing
| Plans | GoDaddy | HostMonster |
| Free plan | No | No |
| Starting Price | $5.99 per month for the Economy plan | $12.99 per month for the Basic plan |
| Paid Plans | 1. Deluxe is for $7.99 per month with benefits:
2. Ultimate is for $12.99 per month with benefits:
3. Maximum is for $17.99 with package:
| VPS Hosting plans 1. Basic is a plan for $12.99 per month 2. The Plus is a plan for $17.99 per month 3. The Choice Plus is a plan for $19.99 per month 4. The Pro plan is for $33.99 per month |
| Usage limits | Free domain with an annual plan Free Trial Professional Email Free WordPress migration tool | Free SSL Certificate One Free Domain Registration Unmetered Bandwidth |
HostMonster
HostMonster offers four different plans for VPS Hosting:
- Standard
- Enhanced
- Premium
- Ultimate
The Standard plan costs $59.99 monthly and comes with a Dual CPU (Cores), RAM (ECC), 30 GB SAN Storage, cPanel & WHM with Root, 1 Dedicated IP, and 1 TB Monthly Network Bandwidth.
The Enhanced plan costs $71.99 monthly and comes with a Dual CPU (Cores), RAM (ECC), 60 GB SAN Storage, cPanel & WHM with Root, 2 Dedicated IP, and 2 TB Monthly Network Bandwidth.
The Premium plan costs $107.99 monthly and comes with a Triple CPU (Cores), RAM (ECC), 90 GB SAN Storage, cPanel & WHM with Root, 2 Dedicated IP, and 2 TB Monthly Network Bandwidth.
The Ultimate plan costs $143.00 monthly and comes with a Quad-Core processor, RAM (ECC), 120 GB SAN Storage, cPanel & WHM with Root, 2 Dedicated IP, and 3 TB Monthly Network Bandwidth.
For Dedicated Hosting, there are three different plans:
- Standard
- Enhanced
- Premium
The Standard plan costs $169.99 per month and comes with a 2-core, 4-threads Intel Xeon processor, 3 MB Cache, and 4 GB RAM with 2×500 GB RAID 1 and gets a Network Bandwidth of 5 TB. You also get a Free Domain Name, cPanel & WHM with Root.
The Enhanced plan costs $239.99 per month and comes with a 4-core, 8 threads Intel Xeon processor, 8 MB Cache, and 8 GB RAM with 2×1000 GB RAID 1 and gets Network Bandwidth of 10 TB. You also get a Free Domain Name, cPanel & WHM with Root.
The Premium plan costs $289.99 monthly and comes with a 4-core, 8-thread Intel Xeon processor, 8 MB cache, and 16 GB RAM with 2×1000 GB RAID 1. It gets a Network Bandwidth of 15 TB. You also get a Free Domain Name, cPanel & WHM with Root.
GoDaddy
GoDaddy offers three different hosting plans catering to the needs of both individuals and businesses.
The Economy plan costs $5.99 per month for a single website, with 25 GB NVMe storage, Shared RAM and vCPU resources, a Free WordPress migration tool, a Free SSL Certificate, and a Free SSL Certificate.
The Deluxe plan costs $7.99 per month for ten websites, with 50 GB NVMe storage, Shared RAM and vCPU resources, a Free WordPress migration tool, Free and unlimited SSL for all your websites, and a Free SSL Certificate.
The Ultimate plan costs $12.99 per month for 25 websites, with 75 GB NVMe storage, Shared RAM and vCPU resources, a Free WordPress migration tool, Free and unlimited SSL for all your websites, and a Free SSL Certificate.
App Integrations and Installations in Both HostMonster vs GoDaddy:
The shared hosting plans of the two web servers are compatible with WordPress and other popular content management systems such as Joomla, Drupal, and Magneto. Both companies provide access to the MOJO marketplace where you can buy all sorts of things from themes and templates, plugins, and apps. Both hosts also offer one-click app installation, so new users don’t have to worry about lengthy set-up processes.
Website Migration Service
We believe that all web hosts should offer at least one free site migration for all new users. GoDaddy is one such host and charges $ 99.99 per site to migrate. Very expensive. In fact, it’s so expensive that we wouldn’t encourage anyone to pay that much for single-site migration.
It gets a little better with HostMonster, however. The company offers more or less the same free website migration policy as Bluehost: $ 149.99 for five websites and 20 emails from a single account. If you want to transfer your site yourself, you can use a free file transfer protocol provided by HostMonster. We can tell you for free, although it’s probably not worth it.
There are other hosts like HostGator that offer the service for free. Here you can see how HostGator compares to GoDaddy.
Website Builders
Unless you plan on building a WordPress site or using any other content management system, you need a website builder to help you create the right custom site. While most web hosts use third-party solutions, GoDaddy uses a tool called GoCentral that allows you to build your website.
It works like the builders of popular websites like Wix and Weebly and comes with numerous templates.
GoCentral has more than three hundred drag and drops templates and designs. So designing a website is no longer drag and drop (you need a drag and drop, maybe a little slide). However, GoCentral is only free for a trial period for the first month.
HostMonster offers two website builders, one of which is the popular Weebly website builder. Weebly is a free and optimized search engine. However, you only get six pages with the free version. Here is the kicker. To get more pages, you need to buy a bigger plan. Like GoCentral, Weebly is a drag-and-drop editor with lots of themes and templates.
The other website builder offered by HostMonster is Concrete5. It is an open-source content management system that allows you to create your website in minutes. It’s also optimized for search engines.
Do They Provide Free Domains?
If it were up to us, all web hosts would provide a free domain for at least a year with all their hosting plans. In the case of GoDaddy and HostMonster, however, this would be a little pointless as both hosts provided a free domain with all the plans.
Conclusion
When it comes down to the pricing of these two products, GoDaddy takes a definite lead. Its packages are super affordable and are highly effective for all types of users. On the other hand, HostMonster has very expensive packages that will end up digging a hole in your pocket if you are a beginner.
FAQs
Q1. Which of these two provides better speed for my websites?
Ans - GoDaddy provides better speed for your websites. While there are booster packages available on either of these two platforms, GoDaddy optimizes your website to give the best possible results.
Q2. Hostmonster vs. GoDaddy, which is more cost-effective?
Ans - GoDaddy has better packages that are easily affordable, the services that GoDaddy offers in the packages also make it more cost-effective.
Q3. Which of these two websites can provide me more uptime?
Ans - HostMonster provides 99.96% uptime in comparison to GoDaddy's 99.99%. While the difference doesn't seem much, it can make a huge difference when it comes down to a website's performance.
Q4. Can I get my money back from both these websites if I don't find either of these websites useful?
Ans - No, you don't have the option to get your money back from both the websites. You can only get your money back from HostMonster within thirty days. However, HostMonster packages are really expensive and can cost you a fortune if you are just starting out or have a small budget.
Q5. Which of these two websites provide better security?
Ans - If it comes down to security, GoDaddy is the best option between these two services. GoDaddy provides shell and spam protection in all GoDaddy's hosting plans.
Q6. Which is better, GeneratePress, or Genesis?
Ans - While GeneratePress comes for a superior price, it lacks many necessary features that GeneratePress offers. According to us, GeneratePress is highly preferred over Genesis. And, you will agree with us once you give GeneratePress a try.
Q7. Do I have to renew the membership to keep using the theme every year?
Ans - You need to update your membership only if you wish to receive their support and updates. Even if you don't pay its annual subscription, you can still keep using the theme without any worry.
Q8. How many websites does GeneratePress support?
Ans - GeneratePress is a theme that can be used on any number of websites you wish. However, it is important to note that you will have to share your premium license code with the websites you wish to use this theme for.
Q9. What are the third-party integrations that GeneratePress supports?
Ans - GeneratePress supports many third-party integrations like GenerateBlocks, Elementor, Beaver Builder, etc.
Q10. How many websites does GeneratePress premium support?
Ans - GeneratePress premium supports unlimited websites.
Q11. Are there GeneratePress tutorials available?
Ans - Yes, there are many GeneratePress tutorials available on the website.
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HostMonster vs GoDaddy: Conclusion
It is important to have certain features and qualities in the hosting platform that you consider for your eCommerce venture. Having optimum speed, uptime, etc. is highly crucial if you want to have your website rank at the top of SERPs. These things are also important for a better end-user experience.
In this review, we have given you a comparison between two top hosting services in the hope of helping you make the right choice. Here is a list of all the features that these websites offer for a quick review.
HostMonster
- User-friendly interface.
- One free domain name for a complete year
- 30 days Money back guarantee
- Design-templates
- Easy Website Migration
- Pay per click Advertising
- Search Engine Optimization
- A 99.96% uptime guarantee
GoDaddy
- Strong Datacenter Infrastructure
- Lightning-fast website speed
- Additional WordPress add-ons
- 24*7 telephonic customer support
- Highly cost-effective and affordable prices
- Optimized Performance Speed
- GoCentral Website Builder
- A 99.99% uptime guarantee
If you ask me my choice, it’s fairly simple to guess. In my opinion, GoDaddy should be the obvious choice if you are looking for a web hosting solution. Not only is GoDaddy an old player in the market with years of experience and credible feedback from its customers, but it is also more economical than HostMonster.
Additionally, GoDaddy gives you additional uptime, which is a big plus. The speed of the websites’ functionality is also better. It also provides a Website Builder, which is a highly efficient tool. While there are some highly commendable features of HostMonster, they are not enough to triumph over GoDaddy.