We rank vendors based on rigorous testing and research, but also take into account your feedback and our commercial agreements with providers. This page contains affiliate links. Advertising Disclosure
GoDaddy offers ease of use, personalized guidance, and responsive customer support. However, a poorly designed user interface (UI) and tons of hidden costs keep GoDaddy from being great. Especially when other builders – such as Squarespace1 – offer better templates and more advanced apps and plugins.
GoDaddy, one of the biggest names in web hosting and domain registration, has recently released a new update to GoDaddy Websites + Marketing. Butdoes the new platform really do anything better, or are you better off with an alternative website builder?
Well, the rebrand was certainly enough to make me curious, so I decided to put the builder to the test. Frankly, I discovered some pros, but there were enough cons to consider it as a serious alternative. Especially when a builder like Squarespace offers just as many features, without the hidden costs1.
GoDaddy now offers a free plan (in the US and a few other regions), which might be enough for you, depending on your needs. But before you invest any time in building a website, you should read on to see what I found out.
4.5
Templates
GoDaddy’s templates look good, but a little generic
Versatile and Attractive Themes, but Limited Variety
The new GoDaddy Website Builder offers about a hundred variations of 22 main themes. All templates are mobile-responsive, and you can preview them on desktop and mobile as you edit.
When you get started, GoDaddy suggests a template for you. The site builder even pre-loads your template with relevant stock photos based on the industry you’ve selected. For the fake pet grooming business I used in my test, I got a slightly-absurd-but-adorable dog in sunglasses.
You can stick with the suggested template or apply a new template at any time, even after you begin editing your site. GoDaddy templates vary in terms of layouts, fonts, and colors.
You can change themes at any time, but it means some extra work
Overall, GoDaddy’s templates are better than they used to be. Personally, I’m not sure if the designs look as professional as the templates other website builders, like Wix or Squarespace, have to offer.
4.0
Features
GoDaddy offers some interesting features
Packed with Features to Build (and Grow) Your Website
GoDaddy Websites + Marketing offers some interesting features to help you get found on search engines, engage your site visitors, and make more sales. There are builders that offer a lot less, but there are plenty that offer more, too.
A Simple Editor with Hundreds of Preset Sections
The block categories help you add new content easily
There are hundreds of ready-made Sections in 25 categories. These are essentially different types of content blocks you can add to your webpages.
The real issue with GoDaddy’s templates and content sections is that you get very few options for customization and personalization. Other builders give you the ability to edit every element of your page separately; Squarespace, for example, offers 140+ actually customizable, high-quality templates.1
GoDaddy on the other hand, only lets you choose a primary and secondary font and accent colors for your entire site. There’s not a lot of customization there.
Here are a few standout features you can add to your page from the Add Section menu:
Private pages – Make certain pages visible only to members with subscriptions.
Appointment booking – Allow site visitors to schedule one-time or recurring appointments.
Calendar – Display a public calendar by linking to any calendar with an iCal URL (e.g., Google and Office 365).
WhatsApp chat button – Let site visitors send direct messages to your phone through WhatsApp.
External reviews – Display reviews from sites like Facebook, Google MyBusiness, Yelp, and Yotpo.
Editing on the Go
The mobile app is helpful for editing your site anywhere
Another new feature of GoDaddy Website Builder is the GoDaddy App.
Available for iOS and Android, the GoDaddy App lets you edit your website from any mobile device. A few fine-tuning options aren’t available on the app, but most of the website customization options and settings are.
Some Built-In Integrations, but No App Market
Instead of offering an app market like Wix, GoDaddy Website Builder has a few built-in integrations to enhance your site’s functionality:
Restaurant reservations through OpenTable
Online food orders through ChowNow
MLS/IDX real estate listings
Posts from your Instagram Business Profile
Reviews on Zillow
The plus side here is that you don’t have to worry about dealing with any third party integrations. On the other hand, you don’t get any third party integrations.
GoDaddy Website Builder comes with an impressive suite of tools to help customize your website.
GoDaddy Insight™ and Custom Action Plans
GoDaddy Insight analyzes your industry and website goals to provide specific recommendations for improving your site. Just select a few business goals, then wait for your custom action plan to be generated.
Action Plan offers some helpful, but basic recommendations
Here’s mine.
In addition to this to-do list, you’ll get a numerical Insight scoreto show how you’re doing in terms of site usability, visitor engagement, outreach, and social media presence.
I found the customized Insight suggestions to be helpful, and I think beginners would benefit from them. This tool won’t do the work for you, but it tells you where to start.
Search Engine Visibility Tool
The SEO tools can help you rank higher on search results
Another tool GoDaddy offers is Search Engine Visibility. Included with all four plans, this walk-through wizard helps optimize your site’s keywords, site title, meta descriptions, and header text.
Email Marketing
Every plan includes a number of email marketing messages per month. The cheapest plan includes 100 emails per month, while the most expensive one lets you send up to 25,000. If you have an existing subscriber list, you can add them manually or import a CSV file.
Other Business Tools
Depending on the plan you choose, you’ll also get access to a few other useful tools and add-ons:
A free business email for one year (through Microsoft Office 365)
Social-media platform listings – sync your site to Facebook, Instagram, or Yelp and create posts straight from your GoDaddy dashboard
Free ad credits for Microsoft, Google, and Yelp
Google Analytics and Google AdSense (in the US only)
E-commerce: Selling Products on Your Site
Building an online store with GoDaddy Website Builder is incredibly easy, though you’ll have to choose the most expensive plan to do it. (The monthly cost is comparable to e-commerce plans on other popular site builders like Wix and Weebly, though.)
E-commerce isn’t as advanced as with Squarespace, but it’s good-enough
Keep in mind that the e-commerce features aren’t available everywhere quite yet. Right now, they’re pretty much in just the English and Spanish-speaking markets (including most of Europe).
A few stand-out features GoDaddy offers for your online shop include:
External sales – List your products on marketplaces like Amazon.com, Etsy, and eBay.
SMS notifications – Get text alerts for each sale you make.
Abandoned cart emails – Send automated emails encouraging customers to complete their orders.
Product reviews – Enable Yotpo to collect and display reviews on product pages.
If you already have products associated with a Square account, you can also import them directly with a CSV file. The current limit for products is 10,000.
GoDaddy has some of the lowest industry transaction rates thanks to its partnership with PayPal. Plus, it doesn’t take sales commissions. You will only be charged the standard transaction fee from your payment processor.
I didn’t have to wait long to get my site up-and-running
3.5
Ease of use
Beginner-Friendly, from Website Building to SEO
GoDaddy Website Builder is one of the easiest-to-use builders I’ve personally tested. Even as a beginner, there are plenty of features that you can figure out yourself with little to no trouble. That said: the interface is still somewhat counterintuitive. While the features aren’t hard to use, they’re often hard to find.
Simple Point-and-Click Editor
Just click on the element you want to edit, and get to work
To edit your site, just click into any element to customize it, and all additional changes (color, alignment, and so on) will be shown in the right-hand editing bar.
Each page is divided into sections for easier customization. You can make large-scale changes to entire sections by clicking the Layout button. For instance, in the About Us section above, you can choose from six preset layouts.
Automatic Backups to Save Your Changes
The “Site History” tab can save you from a lot of mistakes
Building a new website always involves some trial and error, and even experienced web designers make mistakes. That’s why I like GoDaddy’s automatic backup and Site History tab.
You can restore previous versions of your website by clicking Settings and then Site History. You can manually back up your site and even rename your back-up files to easily remember which version is which.
Trust me, this safety net will make your entire website building process much less stressful.
Streamlined Account Management Through Your Dashboard
The dashboard is great for keeping your site up-to-date
Managing your website is just as easy as building it. All of your account information is shown on your dashboard where you can make edits to your website and manage everything else, including sales.
It doesn’t take much to update your domain
You can also buy a domain through the dashboard. If you want to connect an existing domain, just click “I already own a domain” and follow the step-by-step instructions.
Customer support wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t my favorite either
3.5
Support
24/7 Phone and Chat Support, Plus an In-Depth Help Center
You can contact GoDaddy’s customer support through phone or live chat, and there’s also a Help Center on the website. I’m a bit disappointed there’s no email option, but you can’t win ‘em all, I guess.
I tried all of the channels to test the quality of the support. My interactions were all in English, but GoDaddy offers country-specific phone numbers for more than 50 locations around the world.
The Phone Support Was Awesome
I called GoDaddy customer support a couple of times, and I found the support agents to be polite, clear, and helpful. They felt more like actual support professionals rather than salespeople, which is always what you hope for…but not always what you get.
I don’t usually enjoy talking on the phone, but this wasn’t bad at all
Wait times vary drastically, as the first call took nearly 20 minutes of waiting, while the second took only two. If you start from the live chat box, GoDaddy gives you a fairly accurate estimate of current wait times.
Despite my lifelong dislike of talking on the phone, my experience was surprisingly pleasant. And, trust me, I asked a ton of questions on these calls.
The answers I received were clear and non-salesy. The second agent, Michael, was particularly upfront about when GoDaddy wouldn’t be the right solution for my e-commerce shop. His example: “If you’ve got over a thousand products and hundreds of shoppers a day, you’ll want a less restrictive environment. Most people at that point move to WordPress.”
Live Chat Was Not as Great
There’s a lot that could be improved in the live-chat
Unfortunately, my rave review for the phone support doesn’t extend to live chat. My biggest issue was that GoDaddy claims to offer 24/7 live chat…but nine times out of 10, the live chat was “offline.”
When I called customer support, I asked why live chat never seems to work. Michael’s response was that it was just my browser. I did some snooping online and easily found that many GoDaddy users have had the same problem…so I’m a little skeptical about his response. Turns out that chat is currently only available to English speaking US customers, which didn’t help me in Mexico.
Once I finally got a hold of someone on chat (Anshika D., to be exact), I found her answers friendly and professional. Compared to the phone call, though, they seemed much more copy-and-paste and sales-oriented.
I didn’t feel “talked to” as much as I felt “talked at”
For instance, when I inquired about “social media listing platforms,” which is promoted as a feature on all GoDaddy Website Builder plans, the initial response I received was an attempt to upsell me on GoDaddy’s separate social media management service, which comes at an additional cost.
I did eventually manage to get a clear answer, but it took a few minutes and it wasn’t the most seamless experience.
Help-Yourself Options
The help section is great for those that prefer self-teaching
GoDaddy has an informative Help Center with FAQs, a blog, and the GoDaddy Community forum. When searching the Help Center, choose the dedicated section for Websites + Marketing.
I found myself relying on this material very often
GoDaddy also has a How-To section unlike any other website builder I’ve seen. On this page, you can watch video tutorials grouped into comprehensive, stand-alone courses.
3.0
Pricing
Reasonable Pricing and a Free Plan
In addition to its new free plan (which is available in the US and a couple of other regions), GoDaddy offers four paid subscription plans: three for personal or general business websites and one for e-commerce shops.
Plans are available on a monthly or yearly basis, and you can save significantly with an annual subscription. You can pay with all major credit cards, PayPal, wire transfer, and other regional payment processors.
To sign up for a paid plan right away, you still need to choose “start for free.” This allows you to test the editor and determine if it suits your needs. By sticking with the free plan, your site will be assigned a GoDaddy subdomain. Upgrading to a paid plan is necessary to connect your own domain.
If you’re in one of the regions where the free plan is available, you can keep your site free forever, or upgrade to a paid plan whenever you want. Otherwise, you get a fairly standard 14-day free trial, and once this is over, you have to upgrade to a paid plan to keep your website.
Cancellations & Refunds
You have the option to request a refund within 30 days of purchasing an annual plan or within 48 hours of purchasing a monthly plan. However, be aware of one hidden cost: if you bought an annual plan with a free domain, the list price of the domain name will be deducted from your refund.
There’s no button to click to cancel your account – instead, you’ll have to contact customer support to process the request for you.
GoDaddy Website Builder isn’t my top choice in terms of website templates or creative freedom. If you want more control over the look of your site, you’ll be better off with an alternative website builder, like Wix1 or Squarespace.1 The UI can be frustrating at times, with hard-to-find features, and some confusing design choices.It’s not all bad. The editor is simple enough to use, even total beginners can create a professional-looking website in very little time. GoDaddy also offers personalized assistance. From the step-by-step SEO wizard to the Insight action plans and 24/7 multilingual support.Still, if you need advanced plugins, specific design customizations, or powerful e-commerce features, there are better options on the market.
FAQ
Is the GoDaddy Website Builder any good?
While it may not have a large selection of templates and apps, GoDaddy Website Builder is super easy to use, and it offers lots of guidance for SEO, social media, and marketing. For example, you get the Search Engine Visibility tool with all plans: it helps optimize your site’s keywords, titles, meta descriptions, and more. The GoDaddy Insight tool also analyzes your website’s goals and generates custom action plans to help improve your site.
How much does the GoDaddy Website Builder cost?
GoDaddy has a free plan, but it comes with GoDaddy branding on your site and it doesn’t allow you to connect a custom domain. There are also four paid plans available: Basic, Standard, Premium, and Ecommerce. The prices start at $9.99 per month, and heavy discounts are available if you pay yearly.
If you’re looking for a better deal, you can also use our awesome coupons to reduce your annual subscription costs even more.
Can I use GoDaddy to build a free website?
You can use GoDaddy to build a free website, but if you opt for the free plan, your site will display GoDaddy branding at the top, and you won’t be able to connect a custom domain. You can also only connect one social media platform to your site and you don’t get access to advanced features, such as the Search Engine Visibility tool.
Is Wix better than GoDaddy?
Although GoDaddy is cheaper than Wix, and both have solid e-commerce features, Wix is a better option overall. With Wix, you get more templates, customization options, and apps to extend your site’s functionality.
If you want more options, take a look at our list of the best website builders for 2024.
Andrea is an experienced content writer, copywriter, and editor with special interests in graphic design, sustainable development, travel, and literature. Originally from Texas, she has lived around the world and makes frequent trips to explore new places and visit family in Japan.
onclick="trackClickout('event', 'clickout', 'Visit User Reviews', 'godaddy-website-builder', this, true, ReturnPopup );"
View 1 reply
View %d replies
Good product overall, but very uneven and frustrating at times
In general, I was able to build an attractive website using GoDaddy's Websites and Marketing platform. That said, there are things about it that are extremely frustrating.
First and foremost, the tool's text editor is horrible. There is no ability to set text left, right or center justified, and many of the templates automatically center text. While there's an option for bullets, they look unprofessional because they dangle out so far into the content fields.
Case in point, the text field box for Terms and Conditions -- often 1,000s of words long, appears about 2 inches high and becomes impossible to navigate because of the length and complexity of the documents. Of course, no one reads those documents but if you care about your site looking professional even for the legalese, you're out of luck with GoDaddy.
The Caption, Description/Alt Text fields for images vary by template -- and likely when and who developed them. There's no rhyme or reason to when a caption is visible -- and worse, some of the field with character limits lack character counters -- and when you exceed 100 characters jump to the 100th character regardless of where you're editing and begins deleting backwards from 100. It's maddening -- and just sloppy design and QA.
GoDaddy doesn't provide style sheets for the various templates to guide you on aspect ratios for images. You can make it work, but only after experimentation. Again, this really only matters if you care about design and professionalism.
The "technical support teams" really are salespeople gussied up to provide support. Their real training appears to be upselling, not truly helping users with technical issues.
I've been GoDaddy customer for many years and am finishing my second site with them -- now on the Website and Marketing platform after years with an old WordPress site that was much more than my new business needs. I like the company, but when you use the tool for hours every day, you realize how good it could be if someone in GoDaddy's design, programming and QA teams actually tried to use the tools they develop.
GoDaddy's website builder is very useful - it's simple to navigate and you don't need any prior website building knowledge to use it. There's a decent template selection and a number of features to add to your site. The only downside I see is that it isn't the best option if you want to build a site to sell stuff. If that's the case, it is better to look elsewhere. But if you are looking to create a blog or informative website, it is a great option.
We have been GoDaddy clients for more than six years, and yet one sunny day our website went down. After four days of repeated calls to GoDaddy and hearing a bunch of rubbish in response, we are trying to get our files back - and they are telling me that there is no way.
On the way to sue them...
STAY AWAY!
This review incorrectly states GoDaddy has page level password protection, but as of July 2014 that is incorrect. Website Builder v.6 had this feature, but it was lost when they "upgraded" to v.7. This was a necessary feature for me building a website for a high school athlete to share with college coaches. Their tech support tried to help, but the problem is the poor software. Now I have to use Word Press, SquareSpace or Weebly. No wonder GoDaddy had hosting on sale for $1/month. :(
V7 is by far are the worst website builder I have ever experienced. I want to puke whenever I'd have to go in and use it. if they force and migration from v6 to v7, I'm moving to another company. I may go with square space, or 1 and 1. I think that we should all get together and sign a petition to let us keep v6.
I designed websites with ver. 6 which was limited but at least worked. With ver. 7 features have been removed and designing a usable site has become impossible. Avoid GoDaddy at all costs.
For fcuks sake!
I have started using website builder two days ago and i cant go past editing my first page. Today i have wasted 6 hours due to website builder not saving the changes.
What happened:
First time i saved changes and clicked exit. It warned me that saves have not been made. Ok, i cancelled and tried saving again with no luck. Also, website builder indicated that no recent changes have been made so nothing to save. I finally exited because i knew website builder is not responding once again. When i logged back in a few minutes later, i was shocked - all of my work disappeared.
After an hour of gathering my patience back, i rebuilt everything i lost and added a bit more content. This time i thought i am prepared for such sneaky things and created a backup and made sure changes were saved. I exited on purpose to see if it had worked. Guess what - NO! Ok, i thought, i have a backup so nothing to worry. I proudly restored the site and was shocked what i have seen. NO CHANGES WERE SAVED in backup and i again found myself at an empty website. Thats when my patience went out. You now are reading this review as i have just left the website builder to spread the word how horrible it is so others can be saved from this misery.
Prior to using godaddy i thought that these reports of godaddy being turned into one hellhole was exaggerated, but man i was wrong. Reports of their horrible service coming from all place are true.
Conclusion. AVOID GODDADY AT ALL COSTS!!! (unless you want to suffer).
PS.
How ironic, i was in a launch of one company which had their website hosted at godaddy a few days back and guess what. Their website crashed completely on the launch....What else do you need for proof?
Oh! When you Google something like best website builders, dont trust the reviews which say good things about godaddy - they are earning nice commissions from suckers like us.
Family sharingMulti User SharingExpert SupportBackupSmart syncPersonal SolutionBusiness SolutionTeams optionsOffline foldersFile history and recoveryRead more reviews
