Inside this Article
1. Plans and Pricing
GoDaddy Is Significantly More Expensive, and for No Good Reason
Hostinger and GoDaddy offer a range of web hosting services, including shared hosting, managed WordPress, and VPS. They are both best-known for their shared hosting plans, which come with considerable discounts for long-term contracts. That’s where the similarities end. Hostinger’s entry-level Single shared hosting plan is about six times cheaper than GoDaddy’s Economy for the initial term (and four times cheaper after renewal). Hostinger Web Hosting
Plan NameStorageBandwidthFree SSLNumber of SitesPrice
More detailsA free domain name is included with some hosting plans from Hostinger
GoDaddy Hosting Web Hosting
Plan NameStorageBandwidthFree SSLNumber of SitesPrice
More detailsA free domain name is included with some hosting plans from GoDaddy Hosting
2. Features
GoDaddy Has More Storage Space, but Hostinger Has Better Tools
Both GoDaddy and Hostinger claim that their shared hosting plans are well-suited for beginners, but when it comes to the client dashboard, Hostinger has the upper hand. GoDaddy uses the classic cPanel control panel, while Hostinger has developed a proprietary solution. cPanel isn’t bad by any means, but it’s not the most user-friendly tool. By contrast, Hostinger’s hPanel is less cluttered, better organized, and overall simpler to navigate. Both Hostinger and GoDaddy offer one-click installations for all the popular content management systems (CMS), including WordPress. However, Hostinger also gives you the free version of the Jetpack plugin preinstalled on most managed WordPress plans. This includes several security features for WordPress, automatic updates for your plugins, additional caching, and extra themes. In addition, Git is already installed on all Hostinger plans, which is not the case with GoDaddy. Git is primarily a tool for developers, but even if you’re a beginner, you can use it to track changes on your website or add collaborators to it. One drawback with Hostinger is that SSH access is not included on the Single plan, so you’ll have to upgrade to Premium if you’re a Linux dev. But as I’ve said before, even if you do go with the Premium, you’ll still be paying only half the price of GoDaddy’s cheapest plan.Feature | Hostinger | GoDaddy |
Hosting Type | Shared, WordPress, cloud, VPS | Shared, WordPress, VPS, dedicated servers |
Free Domain | Yes, on most plans | Yes, on all yearly plans |
Free SSL Certificate | Yes | Only on the Maximum plan |
Disk Space | 20GB – 300GB | 20GB – unlimited |
Bandwidth | 100GB – unmetered | Unmetered |
Automatic Backups | Yes (weekly) | For an extra fee |
Control Panel | hPanel | cPanel |
Email Accounts | 1 on Single, unlimited on all other plans | 1 Office 365 email on all plans, but it’s only free for the first year |
Free CDN | Yes | No |
Free Site Migration | Yes | No |
Money-Back Guarantee | 30 days | 30 days |
3. Performance
GoDaddy Can’t Compete with Hostinger
Even on paper, Hostinger’s infrastructure is superior to GoDaddy’s. GoDaddy is one of the few web hosts that still use HDD storage, rather than the newer (and faster) SSDs. In addition, GoDaddy uses the older Apache web server, whereas Hostinger has LiteSpeed, which is significantly faster and more stable. Both hosts let you choose from multiple data centers, but GoDaddy is pretty secretive about its locations. With Hostinger, you can host your website in the US, Brazil, the UK, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Indonesia, and Singapore. Meanwhile, GoDaddy says that it has servers in North America, Europe, and Asia, but offers no further details. Nor does GoDaddy offer any kind of integrated CDN technology. On the other hand, Hostinger lets you activate Cloudflare with a few simple clicks, so you can expect excellent performance around the world. As for website caching, GoDaddy mostly pretends that it doesn’t exist. Maybe the marketing team thinks that if they don’t mention “caching” anywhere on the website, people won’t know that it’s missing. But I know. And so should you. Hostinger includes LiteSpeed caching on all plans, even the entry-level Single, and you can easily turn it on from the dashboard to improve your website loading speeds. To be honest, I expected Hostinger to have superior performance results, but I was surprised that GoDaddy was this bad. After testing both hosts for several months, GoDaddy’s average page loading time on GTmetrix was an appalling 2.94 seconds, with a best recorded time of 2.2 seconds. You can see the full test results in our in-depth GoDaddy review.





4. Security
Hostinger Keeps Your Website Safe, GoDaddy Charges Extra
Hostinger not only gives you an SSL certificate on all plans, you also get automated weekly backups (daily on the Business plan), BitNinja security, and Cloudflare protection. This makes your website less vulnerable to DDoS attacks, malware, brute force attacks, and more. GoDaddy also has basic DDoS protection and a 24/7 monitoring system, but that’s about all you get for free. GoDaddy is one of the only big web hosts that still don’t give you a free SSL certificate on all plans. Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates are free by default, but instead of giving you one of those, GoDaddy makes you pay extra for its own SSL or upgrade to the Maximum plan. And let’s be clear about one thing: You absolutely need an SSL certificate to encrypt users’ information on your website. Without an SSL, both your website and your users are vulnerable, and search engines will punish you for it. With GoDaddy, if you want any kind of malware scanning and removal, you have to pay extra for SiteLock. If you want automated backups, there’s yet another fee. GoDaddy says you should be smart and buy its security add-ons. I say you should be smart and go with a different host altogether. Because if there’s one thing I really don’t like, it’s being forced to pay extra for essential things like website security.5. Support
Hostinger’s Support Is Slow, but GoDaddy’s Is Far Worse
Both Hostinger and GoDaddy offer 24/7 customer support. Hostinger has live chat and email, while GoDaddy has live chat and phone. Unfortunately, I had some issues with both hosts. On the one hand, Hostinger took about 40 minutes to respond on average. Live chat wasn’t even available at times, so I was forced to work with email instead. This might not be a big deal if your problem can wait, but if you have to fix something urgently, you may be in trouble. When support did reply, the agents were always professional and very helpful. For instance, when I wanted to optimize my website for better loading speeds, they provided a detailed answer and a useful link to additional steps I could take. The results, as you saw in the Performance section above, speak for themselves.

Forget about GoDaddy: Hostinger Is Actually Worth Your Money
As it turns out, the popular choice isn’t always the better one. In this case, at least, there isn’t one category where GoDaddy did better than Hostinger. In fact, it does far worse in every respect: It costs more, gives you fewer features, and performs very poorly. Hostinger is at the opposite end of the spectrum. You won’t find a cheaper shared hosting service that doesn’t force you to compromise on features, security, or performance. Support can be slow, but at least the agents are useful when they do get in touch. It’s really no wonder that Hostinger snatched the top spot on our list of the best web hosting services, while GoDaddy was nowhere to be found. Click here to see Hostinger’s latest deals.Hostinger
GoDaddy
Plans and Pricing
Significantly cheaper than GoDaddy, better value
Up to six times more expensive than Hostinger, less value for your money
Features
Generous storage space and bandwidth, free domain for the first year on most plans, user-friendly proprietary control panel, free email, 30-day money-back guarantee
Unlimited storage space and bandwidth on most plans, free domain for one year, traditional cPanel, free email only for the first year, no money-back guarantee
Performance
SSD storage, support for Cloudflare CDN, LiteSpeed web server and caching, seven data center locations, outstanding performance for shared hosting
HDD storage, no CDN, no caching, three data center locations, Apache web server, decent uptime but poor performance
Security
DDoS protection, firewall, BitNinja defense, automated weekly backups, free SSL
DDoS protection, automated backups for an extra fee, additional security for an extra fee, free SSL only on the Maximum shared hosting plan
Support
24/7 support via live chat; extensive knowledge base
24/7 support via live chat and phone; extensive knowledge base