SiteGround vs. GoDaddy 2025: Goliath vs. Slightly Bigger Goliath

SiteGround, despite being pretty expensive, is better. Yes, GoDaddy’s no-frills shared hosting is reasonably cheap. But when it comes to managed premium hosting — which is what SiteGround specializes in — there are very few who can compete.

In this SiteGround vs. GoDaddy comparison, we’ll break down the features, costs, performance, security, support, and more to help you decide which one is better for you.

SiteGround vs. GoDaddy review at a glance

• SiteGround: Best for secure ecommerce
• GoDaddy: Best for budget shared hosting and speed

	Our Pick
Star rating	5.0 AllAboutCookies writers and editors score products based on a number of objective features as well as our expert editorial assessment. Our partners do not influence how we rate products.	4.8 AllAboutCookies writers and editors score products based on a number of objective features as well as our expert editorial assessment. Our partners do not influence how we rate products.
Starting price	$2.99/mo	$5.99/mo
Money-back guarantee	Yes — 30 days for shared hosting	Yes — up to 30 days
Uptime guarantee	99.9%	99.9%
Monthly visits	10K - 400K on shared hosting	N/A
Number of websites	1 - unlimited	1-25
Storage	10 GB - 40 GB on shared hosting	25 GB - 75 GB
Free SSL certificate	On all plans	On all plans - expires after 1 year on the Web Hosting Economy plan
Free domain for a year	On all plans except cloud hosting	On all plans
Learn more	Get SiteGround Read SiteGround Review	Get GoDaddy Read GoDaddy Review

SiteGround pros and cons

SiteGround is, first and foremost, a premium service targeted at businesses and online stores. It offers dead-simple ways to build your site with a site builder, or WordPress, and scale it to meet the demands of a highly popular site or store. You can choose from shared hosting or cloud hosting, and get started in minutes.

SiteGround is an older host with a great reputation and plenty of satisfied customers, despite the price. The major downside is, of course, the price. That, and the fact that our testing of the shared hosting plans could have gone a little better.

GoDaddy pros and cons

GoDaddy has been geared, for the most part, toward casual and first-time users of web hosting and domains since its inception. That’s not a criticism: GoDaddy’s general ease of use is one of its strongest selling points, and it has great server performance. You can get managed WordPress web hosting, regular shared hosting, VPS hosting, or a site builder plan to get started.

On the downside, the upsells can turn the cheaper shared plans into something quite a bit more expensive. GoDaddy also doesn’t have a great track record for security, and its reputation for customer support is somewhere below abysmal amongst hosting enthusiasts.

Which web hosting service has the best core features?

This one ends in that ever-so-rare event: a tie. Let me explain.

Websites per account	Up to unlimited	1-25
Storage available	10 GB - 40 GB on shared hosting	25 GB - 75 GB
Bandwidth	Unmetered	Unmetered
Monthly visits	10K - 400K on shared hosting	N/A
Staging environment	Starting at GrowBig plan	Starting at Web Hosting Deluxe plan for WordPress
Migration assistance	On all plans	Separate purchase
Control panel	On all plans	On all plans
Website builder	On all plans	On site builder plans
Hosting types available	Shared / site builder / WordPress / WooCommerce / cloud	Shared hosting / managed WordPress hosting / VPS
Learn more	Get SiteGround Read SiteGround Review	Get GoDaddy Read GoDaddy Review

It’s a little hard to compare GoDaddy’s regular shared hosting to SiteGround. Yes, it’s cheaper and offers more server resources. But it’s unmanaged (i.e., you’re left to handle all the technical stuff yourself). It is somewhat flexible, though, with cPanel included.

SiteGround’s hosting, while more expensive, is designed to minimize the technical requirements, allowing you to avoid complex tasks if you don’t want to. Both the site builder and WordPress are included in all plans (as opposed to being separate, as on GoDaddy), and all plans come with the same basic features. GoDaddy’s most comparable offering, its managed WordPress hosting, is not as good a deal.

Which web host has the best performance and reliability?

In our testing, GoDaddy came out ahead, with better uptime, faster First Contentful Paint (the point at which your site starts visually loading) and Last Contentful Paint (the point at which your site is fully loaded) times.

		Our Pick
Uptime guarantee	99.9%	99.9%
Tested uptime	99.863% - over a week	99.931% - over two weeks
Average performance score	98.3	100
Average FCP	0.36 s	0.4
Average LCP	1.0 s	0.5
Learn more	Get SiteGround Read SiteGround Review	Get GoDaddy Read GoDaddy Review

Both services experienced minor interruptions during uptime testing, which isn’t ideal, and SiteGround experienced some rather severe variations in server response time, which is even less ideal. That’s really where SiteGround loses. The performance scores matter a bit less, as they’re heavily affected by how the website itself is built.

It’s worth noting that both hosts have features designed to optimize WordPress and website builder sites for fast loading, but it seems that GoDaddy’s optimizations worked just a bit better.

Which web host is the better value?

SiteGround wins here, especially when you compare it to GoDaddy’s managed WordPress hosting (its closest comparable offering).

	Our Pick
Price range	$2.99-$7.99/mo	$5.99-$12.99/mo
Best value plan	StartUp for $2.99/mo	Web Hosting Deluxe for $7.99/mo
Money-back guarantee	Yes — 30 days for shared hosting	Yes — 30 days
Free domain for a year	On all plans	On all plans
Free CDN	On all plans	On managed hosting for WordPress plans
Free SSL	Yes — 30 days for shared hosting	On all plans
Learn more	Get SiteGround Read SiteGround Review	Get GoDaddy Read GoDaddy Review

SiteGround plans

SiteGround’s pricing plans offer you pretty much all the same features, with higher tiers mostly adding on more server resources and some enterprise-friendly features. All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee, with some advanced services being upsold separately, including some of the ecommerce tools.

• StartUp: 1 website, 10 GB storage, 10K monthly visits, daily backup, managed WordPress hosting or site builder, free CDN, caching, free WP migration, WP-CLI, and SSH
• GrowBig: Unlimited websites, 20 GB storage, 100K monthly visits, adds staging, and more optimized PHP
• GoGeek: Unlimited websites, 50 GB storage, 400K monthly visits, adds Git, white labeling for agencies, free private DNS, and priority support

GoDaddy plans

GoDaddy’s shared hosting plans are nice and cheap, but offer very little in the way of extras. Many features, especially ecommerce tools, are only available separately or on the most expensive site builder or WordPress plans, which are notably not the regular shared hosting plans.

• Web Hosting Economy: 1 website, 25 GB storage, cPanel, email, free domain for 1 year, free SSL certificate for 1 year, daily backup
• Hosting for WordPress Basic: 1 website (managed hosting), 10 GB storage, cPanel, email, free domain for 1 year, free SSL certificate, automated malware scans, AI creation tool
• Web Hosting Deluxe: 10 websites, 50 GB storage, cPanel, email, free domain for 1 year, free SSL certificate
• Web Hosting Ultimate: 25 websites, 25 GB storage, cPanel, email, free domain for 1 year, free SSL certificate

Which web host has the best security features?

SiteGround wins here. I don’t like that the web host charges extra for the (manual) malware scanner (not to be confused with the automatic one behind the scenes), but GoDaddy charges extra for everything.

	Our Pick
Malware scanning	Yes – but manual scanning is a separate purchase	Yes – separate purchase, or WordPress plan
Firewall protection		Yes – separate purchase, or WordPress plan
DDoS protection		Yes – separate purchase, or WordPress plan
Backup frequency	Daily	Daily, except Hosting for WordPress Basic
Learn more	Get SiteGround Read SiteGround Review	Get GoDaddy Read GoDaddy Review

In theory, both SiteGround and GoDaddy offer comparable security features, including malware scanning, firewalls to help your site avoid getting hacked, DDoS protection to keep your site up under maliciously heavy load, and daily backups.

Only, GoDaddy decided to charge extra for ALL of that.

GoDaddy also decided to forgo the daily backups on the Hosting for WordPress Basic plan for reasons I can’t fathom. However, the bigger downside is that GoDaddy has a history of breaches and is even under investigation by the FTC for poor data security practices, which is not a good look.

Which web host has the best support and reputation?

This is another area where SiteGround wins by an order of magnitude.

	Our Pick
24/7 customer support
Support options	Live chat, phone, online guides	Live chat, phone, online guides
Trustpilot score	4.9	4.5
G2 rating	4.2	4.0
Capterra rating	4.6	4.2 - (for the GoDaddy website builder, hosting rating is not available)
Learn more	Get SiteGround Read SiteGround Review	Get GoDaddy Read GoDaddy Review

Both SiteGround and GoDaddy offer 24/7 support via phone and live chat, and both have guides to help you get started with hosting your website. Overall, our experiences with support on both platforms were satisfactory.

But our testing and other people’s experiences are a different matter. GoDaddy’s reputation on the scoring sites like TrustPilot is a bit more mixed, and on Reddit, it’s nonexistent. GoDaddy has a reputation for hidden fees, unresponsive customer support, excessive upselling, and general customer dissatisfaction. It’s quite telling that, despite SiteGround’s prices being generally higher, its reputation is significantly more positive.

Top alternatives

The best alternative for both of these platforms is probably Hostinger, especially if you’re on a budget. Hostinger offers more features and types of web hosting than either SiteGround or GoDaddy, at prices more comparable to GoDaddy’s. It has a pretty solid reputation, too.

Learn more in our Hostinger review.

If you’re specifically looking for an alternative to SiteGround’s premium service, and specifically for WordPress, then have a look at Kinsta. It’s pretty darned good at WordPress.

Learn more in our Kinsta review.

SiteGround vs. GoDaddy: Which is better?

SiteGround pulls ahead because of its overall better value, even despite its high prices. GoDaddy falls behind due to worse security, a much worse reputation, and because those prices get pretty high after all the upselling.

	Our Pick
Value
Core features
Performance and reliability
Security
Support and reputation
Learn more	Get SiteGround Read SiteGround Review	Get GoDaddy Read GoDaddy Review

SiteGround is a premium product and has a premium price to match. That is its blessing and its curse right there. If you want one of the best hands-off experiences in the hosting world for your business site, just a quick and easy website with PCI compliance, SiteGround does the job. But oh, those prices.

Meanwhile, GoDaddy’s shared hosting is cheaper, but its cheaper offerings give you very, very little indeed. GoDaddy is fine for small brochure sites, and it does offer PCI compliance on the more expensive plans, but GoDaddy is best for someone who doesn’t mind handling things without help.

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