SiteGround vs GoDaddy: Which One is the Winner?

GoDaddy is the #1 web hosting in terms of commercial hosting market share. SiteGround isn’t small either ⁠— sure its 2 million customers are one-tenth of GoDaddy’s, but that’s huge nonetheless.

For both parties to retain customers or attract customers in such quantity, both must provide the essential features. Not only that, extra features ⁠— the freebies ⁠—  can also influence the customer’s buying decision.

How do SiteGround and GoDaddy compare in that regard? Let’s find out.

SiteGround

One of the USPs of SiteGround is the quantity and quality of the features it offers. In our experience that includes dealing with dozens of commercial web hosts, Siteground’s features have been the best. Even on their most basic shared plan, you get features such as:

• High-performance SSD storage

• Top-of-the-line security

• WordPress-optimization. Siteground is one of the only three web hosts WordPress officially recommends.

• Free automatic backups

• Free site migration

• Free SSL certificate

• Free CDN

• Free professional emails

• Free website builder

• Support for all popular CMS including WordPress, Joomla, Magento, and more

• Unmetered traffic

• 30-day money-back guarantee

• 99.9% uptime guarantee

All value-added features combined make SiteGround an incredible option if you are looking for the most features. We would consider it an ideal features list if they had included a free domain. Anyway, it’s still a tough competition to beat for GoDaddy.

GoDaddy

As far as GoDaddy’s features go, it covers the primary features very well. However, the value-added features are less, especially for the cost of hosting, in our opinion. The base shared Linux hosting plan includes the following features: 

• More than needed storage ⁠— the base plan apparently has 100 GB disk space!

• Free domain name. However, the offer is not applicable to top TLDs like .com or .net. 

• Free Office 365 email ⁠— this is for the first year only, sadly. You’ll have to pay for the renewal.

• A website builder

• Good security

• Unlimited bandwidth

• 99.9% service uptime guarantee

• 30-day money-back guarantee

You see, that’s the thing ⁠— the freebies included are limited or “nerfed” (if you understand video game analogy). Otherwise, these are a common set of features by GoDaddy.

Verdict

SiteGround’s features are better without a doubt. Not only does it have extra features such as free SSL & free site migration, but at the same time, the features GoDaddy includes are limited in nature.

Winner: SiteGround

It’s extremely crucial for a good web hosting provider to give easy to use GUI-based controls. Especially when we are talking about giants like GoDaddy, the user can be anyone ranging from a pet shop owner looking to establish an e-store to the greatest tech-enthusiast of all time.

Our definition of user-friendliness includes everything from the signing up process to accessing emails & databases from the control panel.

SiteGround

Signing up with SiteGround is easy. Just select a plan, add the asked details, and pay.

To manage your account, you need to log in. On the dashboard, you’ll find all the options needed for managing the account, including the apps you want to install to the plans/add-ons you want to renew.

Similarly, to manage the website/hosting, you need to go to the admin panel. This will open SiteGround’s proprietary control panel. We’d rank it among the top control panels in the whole of the hosting industry. It’s so much more intuitive, categorized, and well thought out than the widely-used (& a panel SIteground used in the past), cPanel.

Not only is the control panel more user-friendly, but it also has all the functionalities, including managing domains, websites, files, databases, security, and more.

Overall, using SiteGround is a top-notch experience.

GoDaddy

Signing up with GoDaddy is straightforward. And so is its dashboard. Both just like SiteGround, in terms of experience as well as details needed & functionalities offered. 

As for the control panel, GoDaddy uses traditional cPanel. Some people actually prefer cPanel because…

1. They are used to it. Most hosting providers have been providing cPanel for a long time.

2. All the functionalities are there. Managing email, files & folders, domains, databases, security tools, one-click installs...you name it.

Overall, the UI and UX GoDaddy has built is pretty good.

Verdict

With either option, it’s easy to use & manage everything (one needs to). Our pick would be SiteGround because of its awesome control panel. However, given the fact that some professionals prefer cPanel to any other control panel, we’d say it’s pretty much a tie.

Winner: Both