Bluehost vs GoDaddy – Comparison 2020 Edition

Bluehost vs GoDaddy – You will agree that having a successful website involves much more than just creating a great looking website with tonnes of features. One of the major challenges is to maintain the site after getting it hosted on a reliable web hosting platform.

Different people give importance to different criteria when choosing their ideal web host for their site or blog. You will definitely look for a reliable hosting company that has a good relevant experience to make your task easier, irrespective of whether or not you have hosted a website before.

You are bound to trust your web host if it is popular and you have read good customer reviews about its services. Two such experienced website hosting service providers trusted by millions are Bluehost and GoDaddy.

We compare the hosting services offered by Bluehost and GoDaddy to help you choose the one that best meets your hosting requirements.

So here is a detailed comparative study about the various features of Bluehost and GoDaddy, along with the hosting plans and pricing plans offered by them.

Overall, Bluehost is by far the better web host choice

Bluehost is a much better web host than Godaddy and offers a much better set of tools and performance – especially if you look at their shared web hosting packages and WordPress hosting options. They also offer exceptional WordPress managed hosting should you need a higher level of performance for your WordPress website. They are rated highly in our web hosting reviews as well as being officially recommended by WordPress as a preferred WordPress web host ( along with Siteground and Dreamhost ).

Below you will find our full comparative analysis.

Historic Comparison of Bluehost Vs GoDaddy

Bluehost (founded in 1996) and GoDaddy (founded in 1997) have almost exactly the same amount of experience.

Bluehost is owned by the Endurance International Group (EIG) and focuses mainly on web hosting services. GoDaddy offers other services in addition to web hostings, such as domain registrations and SSL certificates.

GoDaddy also became the world’s largest ICANN-accredited registrar in 2014, with over 59 billion domain names under its own management. It is also an online provider for several small businesses.

GoDaddy has always been known for its aggressive advertising, for example, it’s Super Bowl ads. This has made the company very popular in the general world, while Bluehost is only famous in the web hosting world. But, that doesn’t mean that GoDaddy is a better web host than Bluehost.

Comparison of Hosting Features Between BlueHost and GoDaddy

Here we compare Bluehost’s and GoDaddy’s important hosting features one by one.

Uptime and Speed – BlueHost WINS

Bluehost does not claim any particular uptime guarantee, but offers a significantly high uptime percentage of almost 99.9%, while GoDaddy claims to offer an uptime guarantee of about 99.9%.

No one likes their sites or blogs to be down for long and the actual uptime performance does have a strong bearing on how satisfied you are with your web host. GoDaddy’s actual uptime percentage is less than Bluehost and so you ought to prefer Bluehost for their very high uptime.

The minimum server response time or page load speed is almost alike for both. However, Bluehost’s maximum server response time for any site is considerable lower than that of GoDaddy.

Also, GoDaddy’s customer reviews include plenty of complaints about outages or downtime. So, it is clear that GoDaddy-hosted websites may not be able to handle significantly high traffic with great server response time. Bluehost is a better bet in terms of this feature.

User-friendly – Bluehost Wins

Bluehost wins hands down again in this contest. From sign up to installing WordPress via the Bluehost control panel with just one-click, Bluehost is not only user-friendly but it’s ideal for new bloggers and website owners to get up and running with their online presence.

Performance – Draw

The data centers of GoDaddy and Bluehost are quite robust and their servers are pretty powerful. Bluehost runs on AMD power centers and uses CPU segregation technology that allows it to intelligently control the CPU and protect your website against viruses and spam attacks.

GoDaddy’s servers run on Intel Core i7 processors and you can choose between Windows OS or Linux OS when you sign up for their services. In terms of performance, both web hosts seem to be pretty similar.

Customer Support – BlueHost Wins

Whether you are an experienced webmaster or a newbie, you will require timely technical support from the web host team for any real-time issues which cannot wait. With Bluehost, you can completely rely on their customer support team to provide a timely response and support.

However, the GoDaddy support team has been found wanting by several customers, as they tend to keep the customers waiting for a long time before replying. In case of an emergency, Bluehost customer support will always be preferred.

Both offer numerous options to contact their customer support team, round the clock. You can make use of live chat, email, ticketing system or toll-free telephone number for phone support. Both Bluehost and Godaddy have excellent Knowledge Base sections on their websites for added support.

Control Panel – Draw

Both hosting providers offer the industry-standard cPanel as the control panel for hosting. GoDaddy also offers an additional option in the form of the Parallels Plesk Panel, as it even supports Windows hosting.

You can install several applications required for your site with a single click on both hosting platforms. Bluehost allows you to manage multiple sites easily with access to unlimited MySQL databases, while GoDaddy offers access to limited MySQL databases with its shared hosting plans.

Bluehost also offers automatic backups from its cPanel, while GoDaddy doesn’t offer the same. However, both allow you to conduct manual backups at no additional cost. In terms of user-interface, ease of use and flexibility on offer with the control panel, both web hosts are pretty similar.

Unlimited Bandwidth – Draw

Both Bluehost and GoDaddy claim that their hosting plans offer unlimited bandwidth. Sounds great doesn’t it? Well yes and no.  Unlimited doesn’t really mean that you get an endless supply of bandwidth. If your website is attracting hundreds of thousands of hits a month, then Bluehost and Godaddy will not just let you continue on their cheapest plans. They will no doubt contact you and suggest you move over to an upgraded account where there’s plenty more resources that can handle your web traffic with no issues.

The vast majority of website owners will never experience the limitations of “unlimited bandwidth” purely because they just don’t get enough traffic to their websites for it to be an issue.

Money-Back Guarantee – GoDaddy Wins

Bluehost offers a money-back guarantee period of 30 days for all their hosting plans with a pro-rated refund policy, before which you can decide to make a switch to any other web host if you are unsatisfied. Note that this money-back guarantee only applies to the money spent on the hosting plans and not any other add-ons that you may buy at the point of purchase, such as domain names or any other services that Bluehost offers you.

You can try out any of the GoDaddy hosting plans (annual only) for a period of 45 days before opting out. This considerably high money-back guarantee period offered by GoDaddy indicates their confidence in their own services.

Thus, GoDaddy is the clear winner here. However, it may not matter much in the end as even a 30-day period is long enough to judge the kind of hosting services on offer.

Hosting Plans and Pricing Comparison

Hosting Plan Features

You get a free domain name with hosting plans offered by both web hosts.

Bluehost offers only Linux hosting, while GoDaddy provides plans for Linux and Windows hosting. We will only compare the Linux hosting plans of GoDaddy with that of Bluehost, as GoDaddy is clearly the undisputed winner in terms of Windows hosting.

We provide a detailed look at the features for the different plans later.

Pricing and Subscription Type

The cheapest price for any Bluehost hosting plan is $2.95 p/m  + free domain name for the Starter shared hosting plan on a three-year subscription). The lowest price for a GoDaddy hosting plan is $3.99 per month (for the GoDaddy Economy plan with a three-year or two-year subscription).

With regard to the other hosting plans, especially the premium ones, Bluehost is more expensive than GoDaddy.

However, Bluehost also offers more comprehensive features, such as unlimited email accounts, unlimited MySQL databases, free ad and higher storage, than GoDaddy.

With Bluehost, you do not have the flexibility to subscribe to any of their shared hosting plans for a short term. You can only use the one-year, two-year or three-year subscription options with them. GoDaddy allows you to subscribe to their shared hosting plans for shorter terms, such as for three months or even one month (except for the GoDaddy Economy plan).

For other VPS hosting and dedicated hosting plans, you have similar flexibility offered by both in terms of subscriptions.

Verdict – BlueHost WINS OVERALL!

Bluehost is the most reliable and highest performing web host, even though GoDaddy offers a wide range of products other than hosting services. However, if you are looking for Windows hosting, then you can go for GoDaddy. Godaddy also has a free website builder, similar to platforms like Weebly and Wix, which is great for those who want to build out a simple site quickly and without the need for a web developer.

Also, if your website is relatively new and you do not wish to spend so much initially, you can go for GoDaddy’s shared hosting plans. However, as your traffic increases, you need better reliability and uptime. In such cases, Bluehost will be the right one for you.

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