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GoDaddy web hosting's own website is a flurry of activity, with various packages, plans, additional services and special offers all vying for your attention. Don't be frustrated by all the information! Here's what you need to know: GoDaddy is one of the most popular web hosting companies on the market today, with rock-bottom prices and plenty of options. In other words – if your site is ready to grow, GoDaddy will be right there with you.
(And yes, GoDaddy is also one of the best-known web hosts thanks to infamous Super Bowl ads that were a little on the racy side... racy for web hosting, at least!)
Whether you choose the economy, the unlimited or the deluxe GoDaddy web hosting plan, you'll receive 24/7 support, 24/7 FTP access, daily backups, the benefits of best-of-breed infrastructure, free email addresses, databases, dozens of free add-on applications and more. Just pick your poison!
GoDaddy offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Unlike many web hosting companies on the market today, GoDaddy actually owns, operates, maintains and supports their own world-class data centres. The routers, firewalls and servers running your site are all best-of-breed and monitored round the clock.
GoDaddy's self-serve help centre is strong enough, with a searchable knowledgebase, user guides and email support (they promise a 7-hour maximum response time). GoDaddy also has 24/7 telephone support (though not toll free), plus an elaborate and searchable help centre, dozens of topic-specific PDF User Guides and category-specific email support.
Unix/Linux Hosting Plans
Economy Plan: 10 GB disk space, 300 GB bandwidth @ $5.40/month
Deluxe Plan: 150 GB disk space, 1500 GB bandwidth @ $7.55/month
Unlimited Plan: Unlimited disk space, Unlimited bandwidth @ $7.55/month
It'll be tough to beat GoDaddy's web hosting package prices, it's true. Their extensive language support and collection of easy-to-access free applications are also tough to surpass.
Every GoDaddy shared hosting plan includes free email accounts (at least 100 of them), MySQL Databases (at least 10), forums, photo galleries, blogging and other tools. If you want unlimited disk space, have a look at their “unlimited plan,” which costs just pennies more than the basic economy plan.
Customers should note that GoDaddy web hosting packages do not include everything their competitors do, and you would be wise to watch for extra costs and add ons (for example, domains are not free upon sign up, but they cost $2.01 a piece with your purchase). With that one caveat, GoDaddy is a good go-to web host for almost every starter site out there.
Go Daddy's proprietary control panel is fairly standard and simple enough to use. Customers generally appreciate its easy functionality, though those looking for extra bells and whistles may need to do a little design work of their own. Shared hosting customers will also come face to face with GoDaddy's own advertisements within its control panel – helpful, perhaps, if you want to expand your GoDaddy service... but a bit of a turn-off for some.