GoDaddy vs. JustHost
With a wide range of hosting packages to choose from, both GoDaddy and JustHost have each managed to carve out a distinctive brand and identity in the web hosting realm. While both are great choices for beginners, GoDaddy has more to offer their customers both in terms of features and reliability.
You’ve finally decided to create your first website or to switch to a new web host. You scour through the internet for the best hosting providers and you finally decide to go with either GoDaddy or JustHost.
But why go with either of these two hosting options? Well, both companies seem to be popular and fairly competent in the hosting world. GoDaddy, for instance, is a household name when it comes to domains and email hosting.
JustHost, on the other hand, has managed to carve a niche for itself throughout the years. Aside from offering competitively priced hosting plans, its hosting plans come with a plethora of features. For instance, every new plan comes with a free domain, a free SSL, unmetered bandwidth, and a site builder.
Don’t have enough time to dive into the full comparison? Here’s a summary of our research:
While both GoDaddy and JustHost come close in terms of features, they both have their unique selling points that appeal to their target market. This article compares the two hosting providers on various metrics. Namely: performance, pricing, customer support, ease of use, security, and features.
But before we dive into the niceties, let’s first have a brief overview of these two rival companies.
GoDaddy vs. JustHost Overview
Launched in 1997 by Bob Parsons, GoDaddy is one of the biggest and most popular domain registrars in the world alongside companies like Namecheap, Domain.com, and others.
Aside from domain registration, the company is well known for its shared and email hosting services. It also has VPS and dedicated server options to cater to every type of website.
The company manages over 80 million domains and has a customer base of more than 20 million. It’s however not-known how many websites are hosted by the company.
About JustHost Web Hosting Company
JustHost, on the other hand, was established in 2008 in Orem, Utah. The company is one of the many web hosts owned by EIG (Endurance International Group) alongside other brands like Bluehost and iPage.
Just like GoDaddy, JustHost offers a variety of hosting solutions ranging from Shared, Dedicated, VPS, and Reseller hosting. Their packages are competitively priced and come with a ton of features that allow users to create any type of website.
GoDaddy vs. JustHost Performance Comparison
Whenever we talk about performance with regards to hosting the first thing that comes to mind is page loading speeds and uptime. Page loading speed in this case is the duration of time the content on your webpage takes to load. Research shows that over 40% of internet users have very little tolerance for slower loading websites and will abandon your site if it takes three or more seconds to load content.
From our Pingdom tests, GoDaddy gave us exceptional page loading speeds of as low as 508ms (0.508s). This means that GoDaddy almost tops the list when we compare it to many industry giants such as Bluehost and Hostgator. Their loading speeds are impressive and keep improving regardless of the plan. But then, the higher the plan, the better the website speed.
JustHost also doesn’t disappoint so much. Although their 731ms (0.731s) loading speed is poor than GoDaddy’s, they have shown an upward trend in speed improvement.
As aforementioned, the second performance metric is uptime. By definition, website uptime is the period your website is accessible to users over a certain period.
In terms of uptime, GoDaddy does extremely well. From our uptime tests that ran for three months, GoDaddy gave us an average uptime rating of 100% while JustHost gave us an average uptime rating of 99.88% which was very disappointing.
GoDaddy vs. JustHost Pricing Comparison
Given that web hosting is a recurring cost, pricing is undoubtedly one of the most obvious factors that’s likely going to influence your choice of a hosting provider. You should therefore try as much as possible to go with a plan that fits with your budget and still showers you with all the features you need for your site.
GoDaddy and JustHost have different packages that are priced differently based on features. GoDaddy offers four shared hosting plans. Namely: Economy, Deluxe, Ultimate, and the Maximum plan. JustHost on the other hand offers three shared hosting plans. Namely: Basic, Plus, and Choice Plus plans.
But how much do these plans cost and what do they offer? Here’s a quick breakdown.
GoDaddy plans and pricing
- Economy Plan ($4.33/mo): The plan includes a free domain for annual subscriptions, free business email (office 365), unmetered bandwidth, 100 GB storage, free 1-click WordPress install, and hosting for 1 website only.
- Deluxe Plan (7.99/mo): It adds unlimited storage and websites to the Economy plan.
- Ultimate Plan (12.99/mo): Has all features that come with the Deluxe Plan and also adds a few perks such as a free SSL certificate for the first year, more processing power, and unlimited databases.
- Maximum Plan (19.99/mo): Includes all features that come with the Ultimate Plan. This Plan’sadvantage is that you can get more CPU power and free-unlimited SSL certificates for all your websites.
JustHost plans and pricing
- Basic Plan ($3.95/mo): The plan includes features such as unmetered bandwidth, 50 GB storage, free SSL certificate, 1 website, 5 email accounts, 5 parked domains, and 25 subdomains.
- Plus Plan ($6.95/mo): The plan includes features such as unmetered bandwidth and storage, a free SSL certificate, free domain for life, unlimited websites and email accounts, Spam Experts, and $200 worth of marketing offers.
- Choice Plus plan ($6.95/mo): The plan offers the same features as the Plus plan. However, it adds a few perks such as domain privacy & protection, CodeGuard basic, and extras worth $80 per year.
As you can see, JustHost triumphs over GoDaddy not only in pricing but also in features – and especially when it comes to the allocation of server resources.
For instance, the Plus Plan – which is the equivalent of GoDaddy’s Deluxe Plan offers more features including a free SSL certificate and SpamExperts. To get this features with GoDaddy’s Deluxe Plan you need to pay extra.
Also, JustHost offers a lot of extras. The Plus Plan, for example, offers you $200 worth of marketing offers and extras worth over $24 per year.
GoDaddy vs. JustHost Customer Support Comparison
Good customer support makes a difference for every business. It is relaxing to know that you can contact someone if you have a problem or question. As a website owner, you need to ensure that a web hosting provider has 24/7 customer support.
There’re various aspects to consider when rating a company’s customer support. First on this list is response and resolution time. Next, you should look into the available methods of contact. Are they accessible? Lastly, it would help if you looked into social media presence, staff proficiency, and guarantees.
The volume of complaints from users reviewing GoDaddy’s support is alarming. Granted, most of the complainants have had bad experiences while seeking help. But then, it is better to get the first-hand experience rather than depend on online complaints.
Quick test calls and messages showed something different. There was someone at the other end looking to provide the necessary help. That showed that GoDaddy’s customer support isn’t what people say or is improving lately. They’ve also provided sufficient information on their site to guide users.
JustHost provides you with 24/7 global customer support. Their staff is on standby 24/7 to help customers by phone, email, or live chat. You get to choose the best method of communication for you, depending on accessibility and urgency.
However, JustHost also has mixed reviews on the internet. Some customers seem satisfied, and some not. That made it necessary for us to test their support. The results were fair as someone responded within 3 minutes. But most of the complainants said it took up to 24 hours to get help.
In general, both providers have good customer support, making choosing the best on this metric a baffling chore.
GoDaddy vs. JustHost Ease of Use Comparison
Choosing the right web host goes further into user-friendliness. The more comfortable a hosting service is to use, the better it is. This factor comes to play usually for self-managed hosting plans. It can get defaulted to change anything on your website if the host’s site is difficult to navigate.
Hosts need to provide easy to use website building tools to their customers. Usually, the website builder tools should make it easier for anyone who’s never written a code of code before doing it. So, how do GoDaddy and JustHost compare on ease of use?
GoDaddy is a beginner-friendly web hosting provider. They have a simple and intuitive dashboard that makes it easy to navigate their site. You can access lots of built-in sales and marketing tools. All the tools work effectively in email marketing, social media content creation, and blog or online store managing.
It also comes with fantastic website builder tools for you. The best thing is that you do not need any technical knowledge to use their website builder features. They keep updating what they offer, and password-protected member pages are some of the latest developments.
JustHost is relatively easy for any website owner to use. It utilizes the user-friendly cPanel tool that allows you to manage your account. You can do everything from managing your domain to collecting website statistics and configuration of email accounts.
Any beginner can create and host a website on JustHost without help. The host provides user-friendly tools that help you build every aspect of your website. It only takes a few clicks to develop one and launch it to go live. Follow the simple website creation steps on the site.
GoDaddy vs. JustHost Security Comparison
All webmasters understand how important it is to keep their information safe and away from the prying eyes of hackers. While there is only so much they can do to keep their websites safe such as ensuring their plugins and themes are up to date, the overall responsibility of this rests almost entirely on the shoulders of the hosting service provider.
In the security aspect, both GoDaddy and JustHost offer multiple security features to ensure that your website is always protected. However, GoDaddy doesn’t impress in this category since most of the security features are only available in higher-tier plans.
For instance, GoDaddy doesn’t offer a free SSL certificate with its Economy and Deluxe plans. This means that you have to pay extra to install this important feature or upgrade to the Ultimate Plan. Furthermore, backups and web security have to be paid for separately.
JustHost, on the other hand, does pretty well when it comes to security. For example, JustHost offers its users with free SSL certificates, SSD (solid-state drive), SSH (secure shell), and other advanced security options.
JustHost also uses SiteLock to provide you with email and security notifications if the server detects a threat. The SiteLock feature also offers daily safety scans for vulnerabilities and other security checks.
So, as far as security goes, JustHost wins simply because most of the security features are offered for free.
GoDaddy vs. JustHost Features Comparison
It is essential to familiarize yourself with web hosting features before signing up for any. It is in the features that you find the right hosting for your site’s needs and one that gives you value for your money. The basic web hosting features include disk space, email access, and FTP access.
Here, we take a more in-depth look at GoDaddy and JustHost features.
GoDaddy Features List
Here are the features GoDaddy offers to its customers
- A free domain for annual registration in the basic plan
- A free yearly subscription to the Microsoft Office 365 business email
- Unlimited bandwidth and storage
- Unlimited websites and subdomains on high-tier packages
- Fast processing speeds
- Easy to use website builder tools
- Customizable themes
- Mobile-responsive design
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
JustHost Features List
Here’s a list of the features JustHost offers its customers.
- A free domain name for annual registration
- Fast server speeds compared to most providers.
- Unlimited disk space, bandwidth, and domain hosting
- cPanel for once click WordPress installations
- Unlimited email accounts and MYSQL Databases
- Free website builder tools
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- 30 days money-back guarantee
- Unlimited and secure email support
Those are some of the noteworthy features of GoDaddy and JustHost. It is essential to compare them with all these features in mind, as we have done in this article. That will help you pick the right host for your website’s needs and ensure that your website data is safe and easy to access or edit.
GoDaddy vs. JustHost: Our Pick
As you can see, both GoDaddy and JustHost have a lot to offer to their customers. They’ve impressive features that make website building and hosting easier. In this review, however, GoDaddy wins and this quick recap will tell you why.
- Performance: GoDaddy has exceptional loading speeds of 508ms and an uptime rating of 100%. Just host also does fairly well but doesn’t match the competition.
- Plans and pricing: JustHost wins easily when it comes to giving you value for money. Their plans are feature-rich and affordable than GoDaddy’s and come with lots of freebies – something that GoDaddy doesn’t offer often.
- Customer support: Both hosts have questionable customer support. But we’d expect GoDaddy to have better service but online customer reviews say otherwise.
- Ease-of-use: GoDaddy offers slightly better features that make it easy-to-use, set up, and administer compared to JustHost.
- Security: Both offer great security features. However, you’ll have to purchase some of these features as add-ons. JustHost, however, throws in free SSL certificates, secure shell (SSH), and SSD.
- Features: Both GoDaddy and JustHost provide users with excellent features. While GoDaddy has better features, most are available at a cost above the normal pricing. JustHost, on the other hand, does well particularly when it comes to the allocation of server resources.
But that’s not to say JustHost isn’t any better as it has fantastic features that you need. It is an excellent alternative to GoDaddy, should you not like our pick. You can also explore many other alternative web hosting providers in the market.
While both hosts are appealing to their users, they have their downsides. So, if you’re planning to host your website and you are not on a budget, we’d recommend consider GoDaddy. For the simple fact that they excel in performance, ease of use, and their customer support is fairly good – but not so good. These three metrics are critical when choosing a hosting provider.
