GoDaddy vs. AWS

Every business needs a reliable and convenient web host for its website. Picking the wrong hosting provider can be disastrous both for your business and your visitors.

While many providers have similar features, making it difficult to pick the best. A keen comparison can make selection easy. For instance, if torn in between GoDaddy and AWS.

GoDaddy and AWS are both reliable companies with domain names and web hosting space on offer. Besides basic features, both come with a long list of valuable features to help customers achieve their business goals.

And since web hosting is an investment – it should be taken seriously.

Don’t have enough time to dive into the full comparison? Here’s a summary of our research:

GoDaddy

See Full REVIEW

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4.70 / 5 Overall Rating

Pricing 4.8/5

Support 4.6/5

Features 4.7/5

Performance 4.7/5

Best Overall

Visit GoDaddy

AWS

See Full REVIEW

➜

4.75 / 5 Overall Rating

Pricing 4.9/5

Support 4.7/5

Features 4.5/5

Performance 4.9/5

Best for Experienced Users

Visit AWS

Therefore, before selecting GoDaddy or AWS, consider the value each brings and pick one that’s worth your attention. This article compares these two to help you pick what best suits your website and business.

Let’s get started!

GoDaddy vs. AWS: Performance

Performance is a critical factor for the success of any online venture. Studies show that high-performing websites engage and retain their visitors better than poor-performing websites –which helps increase conversion rates.

In this GoDaddy vs AWS comparison review, we tested the two host’s performances based on two crucial metrics. Namely, uptime which is the amount of time that the server hosting your website stays up and running, and page loading speed which is how quickly a browser can fully-load your website’s functional webpages.

While most web hosts try a much as possible to stick to the universally-acceptable 99.9% server uptime. The good news is that both GoDaddy and AWS provide a healthy uptime rating compared to most of their competitors.

From our uptime monitoring tests using Pingdom tools, GoDaddy gave us an average uptime rating of 99.96 while AWS recorded an average uptime rating of 99.99% which was quite commendable. Note that we used fresh WordPress installs on each host’s servers.

From our research, GoDaddy’s poor performance was as a result of them hosting millions of websites at the same time, overloading their servers. AWS on the other hand hosts a few thousand websites a day.

We also ran page load speeds. On this front, GoDaddy’s response time averaged 508ms while the average response time recorded by AWS was 380ms which was overly impressive.

While our testing showed that they both meet the 2 seconds or fewer as expected by consumers, AWS was the better host in this category. Note that, a fraction of a second makes a huge difference in user experience. Many internet users think of fast websites as efficient, trustworthy, and worth their time.

GoDaddy vs. AWS: Pricing and Value

The overall cost of a hosting plan is a critical factor to look at when picking a reliable web host. Price varies from one provider to another, and internal pricing changes may occur sometimes.

As such, your choice of a hosting provider should have well laid out pricing terms and offer you good value for money. Let’s see what these two hosts have to offer.

As you can see, both hosts have different varying models. GoDaddy has four shared hosting plans while AWS has seven pricing levels available in both Linux and Windows server configurations.

However, one thing is common between the two. They have similar entry costs. As such, it’s hard to say which host is cheaper than the other as this depends on your business needs. However, if you are looking forward to hosting several web applications AWS gives you value for money.

On the other hand, small websites and blogs are better hosted on GoDaddy as it has more flexible plans. Something else you should note is that AWS does not offer free domains, so you better get one from providers such as Namecheap or its alternatives. However, it throws in a free CDN for the first year with most plans.  

GoDaddy vs. AWS: Customer Support

Good customer support is an important feature to consider. As such, you need to understand customer support availability, response time, and the channels you can use to reach them before subscribing.

GoDaddy provides solid customer support. An aspect that excites every prospective website owner. The provider has a live chat where customers can ask questions and get responses in real-time. They also have other channels, such as phone and email, to increase the available options.

What’s more, GoDaddy has invested in a huge knowledge base. There are video guides and textual content to help customers navigate through the platform. During our tests, the GoDaddy forum also served as an excellent information source.

AWS, on the other hand, lacks when it comes to customer support. We found out a few differences between their support feature and what we’ve already seen about GoDaddy. AWS customers can only use email to contact the provider, which could take a lot of time compared to live chat or phone.

Thankfully, there is a huge knowledge base on the AWS website. With lots of written content and video guides, it is easy to find answers to questions without a helping hand. However, like many customers, we concur that AWS needs more channels to offer support efficiently.

Here’s a quick breakdown.

As you can see, both web hosting providers have customer support. But then, GoDaddy takes it when comparing the two as it has more access channels than AWS. They also perform impressively in responsiveness as they’ve live-chat and phone available.

GoDaddy vs. AWS: Ease of Use

Among the many features you need to consider when selecting a web hosting service,  user-friendliness is one of them. How easy can you navigate through the site? Can you quickly purchase a plan? Is it customizable? Well, if the answer to these questions is yes, then you’re picking the right web host for your site.

GoDaddy is one of the easiest web hosting providers you can use. The company designed it to cater to the less tech-savvy population who want to host personal or business websites. It has a website builder that can help you create a top-notch website from scratch and with a few clicks.

Their website builder tool has an easy-to-follow sidebar. It also features extra tools that will make creating and managing an online presence comfortable. There’s also a control panel that helps users navigate through the platform easily.

With a suite of tools on the platform, GoDaddy has made its website a one-stop-shop for website owners, thus simplifying hosting.

AWS also provides customer friendly services. You do not need technical knowledge to browse through their site, purchase a plan, or create a website. For instance, Cloud migration can seem difficult with some providers, but it is smooth to do it with AWS.

To simplify things further, AWS works with users to assess their site. They help users to find the right architecture to help them create a perfect cloud environment. We had someone to help us with the technical aspects of it as we dealt with what we could.

GoDaddy vs. AWS: Security

Security is vital for any business or individual website owner. A website being what everyone interacts with first deserves proper protection. There are various security features that web hosting providers come with, and you need to examine them properly before choosing the best.

A business makes more revenue when people can trust its services. Cyberattacks damage your reputation, become costly to clean up and prevent visitors from returning. Both GoDaddy and AWS have solutions to ensure basic and advanced website security for their customers.

GoDaddy uses SiteLock as its main security feature. It is an effective and reliable tool that works automatically for malware detection and removal. The platform also provides its users with a free SSL certificate. This basic security feature primarily prevents browsers from labeling your site as insecure.

AWS also focuses on providing its customers with a secure cloud computing environment. It has the infrastructure in place to ensure the protection of user information, identity, and devices. That helps users to gain confidence and control over their businesses.

We enjoyed the freedom to automate manual security tasks on this platform. Automated security gives users the luxury to focus on scaling and other essential aspects of their businesses. Additionally, privacy and security go hand-in-hand – AWS recognizes that and provides multiple encryption layers.

GoDaddy vs. AWS: Features

We base our hosting recommendations on features. It is impossible to pick the best web hosting without comparing the features of two or more providers. GoDaddy and AWS have different features. Let’s take a more in-depth look at each.

GoDaddy Features

• Most high-tier plans allow unlimited websites
• Enough storage across all plans
• Every plan includes unmetered bandwidth
• Microsoft Office 365 email free for a year
• Every plan comes with a free domain
• Multiple databases.
• Allows users to integrate with various applications. That includes a WordPress installer.
• Some plans include a free SSL certificate. The maximum plan comes with unlimited SSL certificates.

AWS Features

• Enterprise support
• Change management
• Provisioning
• Reliable customer support
• Global availability
• Top-quality security infrastructure
• Incident management
• Monthly performance reports

GoDaddy vs. AWS: Our Pick

Both GoDaddy and AWS are good in their own ways. Picking the best can be challenging, but we have a winner for you. Here is a long list of valuable features that we considered when selecting the best provider from these two.

• Performance: Both GoDaddy and AWS perform excellently, but GoDaddy’s 508 m/s average loading speed makes it a better pick here.
• Pricing and Value: There’s customer-friendly pricing on both platforms. We loved AWS’s introductory free tier offer, but GoDaddy has plans for every budget and therefore wins it.
• Customer Support: GoDaddy provides better customer support with a solid knowledgebase, forum, live chat, email, and phone support. AWS only has a good knowledgebase and email support – not good enough.
• Ease of Use: AWS provides technical support and easy cloud migration. GoDaddy is miles ahead with cPanel for seamless navigation, a website builder, and is easy to use.
• Features: We had to pick GoDaddy for this metric. It provides more than enough storage and great performance. The features even get better as you climb up the tiers.
• SEO: Both GoDaddy and AWS provide search engine optimization. However, the GoDaddy SEO tool impressed us more – it comes with an automated wizard that helps you optimize your site.
• Security: Despite both providers heavily investing in security, GoDaddy does better than AWS. It uses SiteLock, an efficient tool in malware detection and removal. It also guarantees better privacy.
• Scalability: With a variety of plans to choose from, GoDaddy is better for scalability. You can upgrade to higher-tier plans as your business grows.