This BlueHost vs. GoDaddy comparison might be the most important one we have ever done on the site – Two of the best right here on MyBHcoupons.com
Why is the GoDaddy vs. BlueHost Comparison so important?
BlueHost and GoDaddy are two of the largest web hosting service providers in the United States. They serve millions and millions of customers across the globe and they are both excellent services to host your domain for your business or personal site. Our head to head comparison of the two giants will show you who wins in: BlueHost vs. Godaddy.
A little on the history of the match up…
GoDaddy is the older of the two companies being founded in 1997 as Jomax Technologies and later rebranded as Go Daddy, but later changed again to GoDaddy (no space). The company was founded by a guy named Bob Parsons, who had sold his accounting software company to Intuit in the 90s. They exploded after Network Solutions wasn’t the main registrar anymore and they undercut them on price and service. I remember the days when this happened there was another company that came around named RegisterFly, but they couldn’t compete with GoDaddy. So they became the low price leader beating out Enom and other heavy hitters in the domain registration business. Today, they have over 60 million domains registered through their service…not too bad eh Bob? After they became the domain leader they started expanding to other services and did a reseller program under the name Wild West Domains. They started doing hosting and had a bit of a rocky start to it. Hosting was kind of in the same boat as far as pricing and features. There were high priced options costing around $50 per month and then a company out of California named iPowerWeb started doing discount hosting and quickly grew to over 100,000 customers.
At around the same time as iPowerWeb grew in the hosting business – GoDaddy entered and not long after BlueHost was founded. In December of 2003, Matt Heaton founded Provo, Utah based BlueHost. They became a low priced leader. GoDaddy and BlueHost continued to be the industry leaders – BlueHost in the web hosting service and GoDaddy in the domains. Mr. Heaton also started a domain registration company called FastDomain which didn’t really take off, but that was never a focus company – it was more of necessity since they offered free domain names with every hosting plan.
GoDaddy vs. BlueHost Pricing, Service, & Features
The service and features at both bluehost and godaddy are very comparable. They both offer lots of add-on tools, but we’ll look at their base level hosting plan to give you an idea. The add-ons range anywhere from SSL certificates with dedicated IP address to online store front add ons. See the Bluehost vs. Godaddy pricing below:
What’s included at BlueHost for $3.95:
- 1 Website Hosted
- 50 GB Web Space
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- 1 domain name included
- 5 email accounts
What’s included at GoDaddy for $3.99:
- 1 Website Hosted
- 100 GB Storage
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- 100 emails.
- Free domain
So as you can see – BlueHost vs. GoDaddy in the features and pricing on the base plan is a basically a wash. Offering pretty much the same service, but there are more things to consider.
BlueHost vs. GoDaddy Control Panel and Ease of Use
I’ve used both GoDaddy and BlueHost control panels. Back in the day GoDaddy used a proprietary system while BlueHost has always had cPanel. Nowadays, Godaddy uses that same control panel. They both offer one click installs, but personally I like the BlueHost simplescripts installer since it has so many different plugins and options.
*** A funny thing I’ve noticed over the last few years. BlueHost and GoDaddy used to offer a lot more for the money, but the industry is going through a weird time right now where a couple of companies control the entire shared hosting market. These companies are buying up all the smaller web hosts and raising prices considerably while taking away features at the same time. Something you should be aware of is that both BlueHost and Godaddy will offer a trial offer to signup at a specific rate, but it will renew at a much higher rate.
If you have multiple websites you are hosting and looking for fast service – both companies offer an unlimited domains plan.
Why BlueHost Wins our Matchup of BlueHost vs. GoDaddy?
We like the fact that BlueHost has a simple way to add a dedicated IP and SSL without doing much on your end. You don’t have to be a tech guy to know how to do it. We also like that they have a WordPress optimized plan that is really awesome since wordpress is the most popular CMS system on the web. WordPress also eats up server space and has longer page load times so this is nice to have a plan just for that. I also prefer my hosting to be somewhere that my domains aren’t just in case something happens to one company. This happened to me when I had 1000 domains with RegisterFly.com back in the day when they went under. I was stuck looking for a registration company back in 2003-2004 and that’s how I found out about GoDaddy.
It’s a tough call either way, but we have a special offer for our visitors to either one. Both offer a money back guarantee so try one and if you don’t like it move to the other. We appreciate you visiting us today to read our thoughts on these great companies. If you need more information on GoDaddy vs. BlueHost – read through some of the other articles on our site and the tutorials that we have – these include pictures of the bluehost control panel so you can see what you’re getting into.