Contributor, Benzinga
May 26, 2021

Websites are the new norm for any business today, but creating a website for your online business alone is not enough. The major challenge that follows after creating a website is choosing a hosting provider for the website. 

While the number of web hosting providers has wildly expanded over recent years, two names stand out from the rest - Bluehost and GoDaddy. Both of these providers contribute to your website's robustness, speed, security, and flexibility while guaranteeing an average uptime of 99.9%. However, even with all the similarities, these two hosting providers are unique in their own regards.

What Is Bluehost?

Bluehost is a preeminent web hosting solutions provider that powers more than 2 million websites around the world. It provides reliable, affordable and fast hosting plans tailor-made for the needs of online businesses.

Bluehost's 24x7 customer support, highly competitive 99.98% uptime and affordable beginner plans make it a trustworthy hosting provider. 

Notable features:

  • Seamless WordPress integration
  • Value for money
  • Easy-to-use Dashboard
  • Fully-customizable websites
  • 24/7 customer support

What Is GoDaddy?

GoDaddy has been a popular choice for years in the field of web hosting solutions. In nearly 20 years, as a pioneer of the web hosting industry, GoDaddy has helped close to 20 million customers get online. More than just a hosting platform, it is also a vendor that offers multiple solutions for almost every website requirement. 

Notable features:

  • Unlimited storage plan
  • Automatically back up your data
  • One-click install of over 150 free apps
  • Guaranteed reliability with 99.97% uptime
  • Free Microsoft 365 Email

Feature Comparison

Making a choice between leaders of web hosting providers like Bluehost and GoDaddy can be a tough call. Both of them are neck-to-neck with one another in terms of features offered by them. Take the time to compare them based on the following features.

Better Webspace

Webspace is an important category when comparing web hosts. It is a yardstick for comparing the hosting providers based on the amount of space allocated for your website by them. Both GoDaddy and Bluehost offer generous web space on their plans.

GoDaddy shines by offering a staggering 100 GB storage capacity in the Economy plan for a price of $2.99 per month. That easily beats Bluehost's 50GB storage in the Basic plan, which costs $3.95 per month.

GoDaddy leads this race with its larger web space and unlimited bandwidth usage.

Best: GoDaddy

Better UI/UX

Both Bluehost and GoDaddy offer a sleek user interface having hundreds of themes, flexible design and simplicity at its core.

Bluehost, however, triumphs hands down with regards to UI/UX. It comes with a beginner-friendly, easy-to-use and intuitive interface. The upside of Bluehost is its self-explanatory cPanel. From signing up to installing WordPress, Bluehost provides an easy-to-use package. Moreover, it provides you instant access to hundreds of free and premium themes suitable for your style.

But GoDaddy is not behind in this race either. GoDaddy offers a range of templates you can install and customize straight away. Furthermore, it also has an in-house drag and drop website builder which keeps the website setup process structured and convenient. 

Best: Bluehost

Better price for value

While choosing a hosting plan, one must consider its initial and renewal price. Most of the hosts offer a low introductory price and then increase the price later during the renewal phase.

Bluehost offers four shared hosting pricing plans: 

  • Basic for $5.95 per month 
  • Plus for $7.95 per month 
  • Choice Plus for $8.95 per month 
  • Pro for $19.95 per month 

Bluehost provides better value for money with continuous customer support, free SSL certification and competitive renewal prices.

GoDaddy also provides four hosting plans: 

  • Economy for $2.99 per month
  • Deluxe for $5.49 per month 
  • Ultimate for $6.99 per month 
  • Maximum for $13.99 per month 

It offers a more generous storage plan and a 1-click installation of over 150 free applications.

With all the addons and goodies that it provides with its plans, Bluehost wins this race.

Best: Bluehost

Better data backup

Both hosting providers offer an uninterrupted 24x7 year-round power supply, backup generators and automatic security updates. Both of these two hosting providers ensure your website's total security and integrity with their state-of-the-art infrastructure. 

GoDaddy automatically backs up your data daily. It stores these backups on the cloud and lets you restore the backup with a single click. However, GoDaddy attracts a nominal monthly fee of $2.99 per month for this feature. But for the cost, you also get automatic WordPress security updates and malware scan and removal on top of the backups.

Conversely, Bluehost provides free automated backup for some of its plans and has a pretty hands-off backup policy. Although Bluehost uses SiteLock for daily malware scans and identification of security protocols breach, it doesn't take any responsibility for corrupted or lost data. 

GoDaddy stands out as a better alternative if data backup is your utmost priority.

Best: GoDaddy

Platform with Good Support

When things go wrong with your hosting plan, customer support becomes critical to resolving the problem quickly. Both Bluehost and GoDaddy tick most of the boxes, offering 24/7/365 customer support.

Bluehost offers unparalleled round-the-clock customer support via email, phone, live chat, support tickets and community forums. Its extensive knowledge base will be at your service when you face trouble of any kind. Through its self-help materials like how-to guides and instructions, you can even resolve some of the issues yourself.

GoDaddy has excellent 24/7 phone support, but it is limited to certain countries. Additionally, it doesn't have a ticket-based support system. GoDaddy, nevertheless, has a comprehensive knowledge base and provides support via WhatsApp and live chat.

Best: Bluehost

Weigh the Choices And Make Your Decision

Bluehost and GoDaddy have been around as popular and reliable choices for over a decade. Both boast of many overlapping features such as excellent customer service, intuitive UI/UX, speedy performance, reasonable price and resilient design.

The question to Bluehost over GoDaddy or GoDaddy over Bluehost depends on your business needs. If you are looking at great value for money, beginner-friendly design and seamless integrations with WordPress, Bluehost edges over GoDaddy.

If you are seeking an all-in-one solution provider, GoDaddy probably has the upper hand. Though you'll have to pay slightly more than Bluehost, you could get the features that are worth the money.

If you are still unsure, try to experiment with both web hosting providers before choosing one over the other, as both of them offer 30-day money-back guarantees.