Let’s address the elephant in the room right off the bat – GoDaddy doesn’t have the best reputation among users. However, they’ve strived to correct this by launching hosting plans and tools that target advanced users, such as GoDaddy Pro.
With GoDaddy Pro, the service wants to provide you with an experience similar to managed WordPress hosting, with a particular focus on running multiple sites. In this article, we’ll take a look at GoDaddy Pro and let you know how good it is.
Let’s dig in!
A Quick Look at GoDaddy and Its History
GoDaddy is one of the biggest and most well-known names in hosting and domain registration. It’s been around since 1997 and at current count manages around 18 million customers, which is a staggering figure for this type of service.
However, they’re not exactly popular among more expert web users. During its history, GoDaddy has accumulated somewhat of a reputation for bad performance and support, which are two of the cornerstones of a great web host. You don’t have to take our word for it either, a quick Google search for ‘GoDaddy reviews’ will give you an idea of what we’re talking about:
Despite this, GoDaddy has plenty of other positives to enable them to hold onto its lead as both a registrar and web host. They also have a history of aggressive marketing, which is one of the reasons they’re so well known. Plus, during the past few years, they’ve been making an effort to offer better services and tools to WordPress users – one of which is GoDaddy Pro.
GoDaddy’s Acquisitions in the WordPress Space
When it comes to web hosting, a lot of providers go out of their way to cater to WordPress users. That’s easy to understand since WordPress powers basically a third of the web. GoDaddy is no exception, and has launched itself in headfirst into the WordPress ecosystem.
GoDaddy is also one of the main sponsors of WordCamp events and they also employ a full-time contributor to WordPress’ core. In addition, they’ve acquired a number of WordPress-centric services throughout the last years, including:
- ManageWP: This platform enables you to manage multiple WordPress websites from a single place.
- WP Curve: A service that provided access to WordPress specialists for small maintenance and development jobs.
- Sucuri: An all-in-one security service and WordPress plugin.
It’s worth noting that these acquisitions took place from 2016 onwards. The GoDaddy Pro service itself arrived in 2015. Since then, features of these three services have made their way into GoDaddy Pro, mostly from ManageWP. In fact, GoDaddy Pro Sites fully relies on the ManageWP platform, which we’ll explain in the next section.
What is GoDaddy Pro?
What we call GoDaddy Pro is actually a collection of three different services – Pro Sites obviously, Pro Clients (which lets you directly manage client WordPress websites and sign up customers for GoDaddy’s plans and services), and Pro Rewards (an affiliate program for GoDaddy plans and services).
The Pro Sites service uses the ManageWP platform and it provides you with all the features the latter usually offers. This means you can update multiple sites, get access to reports, install and uninstall plugins and themes, log into your dashboards with a click, and more. The base Pro Sites service is free and it supports non-GoDaddy sites too through a plugin called ManageWP Worker to connect sites to its platform.
So far, so good! The real interesting aspect of GoDaddy Pro’s offerings is its Pro Clients service, though. With this service, you get access to a single dashboard you can use to keep track of and manage your client websites:
We’re moving past the features ManageWP offers now and into a whole new territory. With Pro Clients, you can log into client websites with a single click, configure hosting settings, manage domains, email, and more. However, most of those advanced settings only work for clients that use GoDaddy’s services:
Pro Clients also enables you to recommend specific products and services to clients from within the platform. For example, you can suggest a new hosting plan for an account, pay for it yourself, submit the bill to your client, or buy it on their behalf if they’ve authorized you. Of course, this only works with GoDaddy products, which is where GoDaddy Rewards comes in.
This is essentially an affiliate program that gives you discounts on GoDaddy products and earns you points towards future purchases. The discount themselves are nice (30% off everything) and the goal is, of course, to lock you into the GoDaddy ecosystem.
Now, you have a full picture of everything GoDaddy Pro offers, let’s talk about whether it’s a good option for you or not.
Should You Consider Using GoDaddy Pro?
Part of the GoDaddy Pro services come with strings attached. Pro Sites itself is free and it relies on ManageWP, so it’s a great option regardless of whether you’re a GoDaddy client or not – as long as you have multiple sites to run.
Pro Clients, on the other hand, is only a good option under two circumstances:
- A significant number of your clients are already ‘locked’ into the GoDaddy ecosystem.
- You don’t mind recommending GoDaddy products to your customers.
GoDaddy actually offers pretty decent performance across the board on its WordPress plans. However, customer support still has a long way to go. What’s more, a lot of their plans are more expensive than other ‘basic WordPress hosting’ competitors, with less features.
Overall, GoDaddy remains mostly geared towards users who want to set up small websites without needing advanced hosting features. If you need more firepower or functionality, plenty of other hosts can beat GoDaddy’s offerings at similar or lower prices.
GoDaddy Pro itself is a show of the web host’s commitment to offering more and better tools for WordPress users. Even if it’s not your cup of tea, we’re curious to see where GoDaddy goes next!
Conclusion
With GoDaddy Pro, you can manage multiple GoDaddy websites using a single dashboard. This makes it excellent for developers, designers, and almost anyone needing to stay on top of multiple websites.
GoDaddy has come a long way. Its Pro Clients and Pro Rewards services make it a decent option if you’re looking to host multiple simple websites. Even so, there may be other hosts that can offer more bang for your buck than GoDaddy. As such, you may want to weight up whether the specific positives are right for you before opening your wallet.
Do you have any questions about GoDaddy Pro? Let’s talk about them in the comments section below!
Image article thumbnail by Ilyafs / shutterstock.com
Great overall review of all the features that come with Pro! After reading your tips here I think I will give them a try to manage my website security and WordPress client sites.
Cheers
Chris
I am wanting to use godaddy hosting, but I hesitate whether should I use godaddy or hawk hosting. After reading this article I decide to buy Ultimate package. Thank you for this review.
The founder of GoDaddy hunts & kills endangered species for fun. I have zero desire to support him or his corrupt business. I’m disappointed to see you promote them
I charge extra for clients that use GoDaddy… They cheated me out of $100 and then proceeded to pass the buck. Never once taking care of that issue… AFTER I had been a dedicated and loyal customer for years, buying ALL of my domains names (and encouraging clients to buy) from them.
Now I use Google Domains… and WebHostPython. I’m a happy freaking camper…
For many years, I used GoDaddy for domain name registration and HostGator for webhosting for my clients.
I have abandoned both of them because of spamming and price and performance and most of all because they “upgraded” their websites to make it impossible to do my normal business there without wading through tons of screens screaming at me to purchase products and services I neither wanted nor needed.
I now use domains.google.com to register all my clients’ domains – $12 a year INCLUDING whois masking. I also use a2Hosting for hosting my clients’ sites, because their prices are very competitive, they are 100% SSD, I can host all the small sites (brochure sites) on one reseller account, and most of all because they have absolutely outstanding customer support.
I do not often need support, but over the last four years or so, on the five or six times I have urgently needed help, they have been right there for me, even in the wee hours of darkness.
ET PAY ATTENTION!! – There is a huge world of us developers out here who build and maintain websites for small and medium sized businesses – those customers/clients who would rather spend their time running their business than learning about the internet and websites. WE NEED A CUSTOM ROLE for our clients that will automatically allow them to log in to their site and make text or image changes WITHOUT being able to mess up the design. E.g., in the Divi Builder, they would be able to type and save, but not move modules, rows, or sections or change colors or fonts or margins or anything else.
Hey David, this already exists. It’s called the Divi Role Editor and you can find it under Divi > Role Editor.
Also, in WordPress itself, create the client account as an “Editor” and they don’t have access to themes, plugins, etc. Then using the Divi Roll Editor as Nathan B. Weller advised, further streamline what Editors can do; this should help you out tons! 🙂
Reading the comments here, it’s hardly surprising to me that the service you get from Godaddy is abysmal, with a CEO like Bob Parsons – look him up, not a nice guy and not a nice company.
I used them once for registering a domain, big mistake. I got bombarded with spam emails for months after I cancelled my services.
I won’t touch them again.
Elegant Themes can certainly find something better to post than this pseudo advertising.
Bob Parsons hasn’t been the CEO of GoDaddy since 2011.
I consider myself a GoDaddy Pro “Power User.” Last I checked with their customer support, I’ve been a customer (probably for their domain names) since 2005. Thus, I’ve probably been with them since they adopted cPanel.
Speaking only of my own experience, GoDaddy has only gotten better and better over the years. When they introduced the GoDaddy Pro program, it was a game-changer for me. Yes, it’s easier to use their ManageWP/GoDaddy Pro platform if the client is also a GoDaddy customer, but I’ve also been able to administer my WordPress websites on other hosting platforms from my GoDaddy Pro panel. The plugin itself works on any WordPress website, hosted on any server. This saves me time having to remember multiple logins and passwords at other hosts.
I will admit that the WordPress hosting GoDaddy has leaves a lot to be desired, so I don’t recommend it to my clients. Their “Regular” hosting is what I prefer. It’s a lot more flexible and easier to manage and troubleshoot, and I can upgrade the PHP version, unlike the WordPress-specific hosting.
I do host some of my websites at other hosts, but for me, I’ve always gone back to GoDaddy for their versatility and (from my own experience) excellent customer support.
Thanks for your insight, Tanisia. 🙂
I would give GD 3 out of 5.
I’ve used them since 2009. In my opinion, service has gotten better and uptime has been like 99.9% on my sites, but I’ve had to pay for it.
And that’s probably the main difference: when you buy in on the lower tiers, you’ll get hit-or-miss service, but at the higher tiers, they’ll look after you.
That said, they are expensive. For example, there’s no free SSL option like with several competitors. And a lot of other functions, get pricey very quickly, so you have to watch yours and your clients spend. I found about $500 unnecessary spend last year that I should have paid attention to.
Lastly, they don’t make changing orders easy to find, but when I talked to support, they showed me where I could make changes.
So I’ll keep some sites on GD, but I do, and will continue to use other hosts, too. Never put all your eggs in on basket.
Really, really, disappointed to see you guys join in on the disillusioned GoDaddy kumbaya.
I’ve transitioned all of my clients from GoDaddy, using them only for a few domains to avoid a transfer fee, but even then I don’t use their nameservers. Google Cloud Platform takes the gold in being able to provide so many vital cloud services in a seamless ecosystem with unmatched performance. Pricing is also really cheap, with most people being able to host low-mid traffic sites for free.
To give you an idea of the comparison, the same pages load in half the time (4-6 seconds -> 2-3 seconds) on GCP after a migration. Costs went from $15/m -> ≤ $5.50/m. This isn’t even really turning up the heat. With a little optimization, load times consistently perform in the 0.7 – 2 second range.
I just came to read the comments..
Godaddy is a good WordPress Hosting Service — they’ve come a long way.
They offer good WordPress starter deals.
I have never had a problem with Godaddy Support. They have always been polite.
Their support works on “Tier levels” – a “Triage System”. If the Ground Level Support feels your problem, will benefit from tech support on the 5th floor – they’ll send you there.
It does take time as they need to get a gander on whats going on first.
Of course, it helps if you keep notes and can explain your problem succinctly.
Every once in a while you get someone who makes you feel like you’ve eaten a lemon.
But that has been my experience with most major WordPress Hosting Providers. And some have been far worse than Godaddy. I can tell you a few horror stories.
This Star Rating is so misleading – many put there by “Affiliates”. Search for any WordPress Hosting Company and you’ll see a range from 1 to 4 stars.
My main problem with Godaddy is their “Security Test” button. Do you really want your clients (on their own, at the instigation of a competitor, or an affiliate) pushing the RED BUTTON unannounced? Causing you to fight off chickens smashing against your windshield, and costing you hundreds of dollars of your time?
Go daddy is somewhat of a pain. However, I steer small business owners towards using them.
They are more user friendly than some more advanced platforms and their support team is relatively easy to get a hold of.
Nothing good to say about Godaddy here.
They are starting to overcharge on their domain name renewals too. Almost $20 per year.
I am gradually moving my domains to cloud flare .
I would not recommend godaddy at all . They suck you in with a low price but will rip you off when you renew any service.
Buyer Beware.
Can you still use ManageWP without dealing with GoDaddy’s hosting?
the worst, how do you use time in this
Not the best service, in my opinion! Just as there’s a difference between healthy food and junk food, the same analogy could describe hosting related services. I personally know several people, who left them to obtain better services. In many cases paying cheap costs, often can result in lower quality assets; you get what you pay for.
I have no idea if this is true, but I wonder if this post is just intended to sell and plug their service? For me at least, this post just “beams” sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns, instead of an attempt (or at least the attempt ) of a balanced “pro and con” review post. Not any service (anywhere) is the perfection of pink fluffy clouds and giggling puppies.
I’ll bet they are worth a lot of money! How about posts / reviews discussing great services that are growing? Those that need their bite at the apple. Try giving the smaller fish a chance to grow, compete, and improve.
I’ve been a GoDaddy reseller since 2006. Their hosting has fallen behind the times. I still use them for domains and email, but my hosting goes through InMotionHosting. It’s MUCH faster.
Being a former Pro user and even dedicated business plan user I can tell you from experience the service is crap. Server dropped and all my client sites were down for over 3 days. The restore they put back was from over 6 months old and I lost 3 clients over it. I moved to flywheel and pay a premium but it’s worth every shiny penny. Please don’t peddle this crap.
You forgot to mention their reseller platform 😉
Can you still use ManageWP without dealing with GoDaddy’s hosting?
Yes you can.
Yes I use ManageWP and no Go Daddy products at all. Go to ManageWP.com. a lot of stuff is free and that that isn’t is very reasonable.
I have used MWP for two years and cannot recommend them enough.
I was worked when GD bought them but they still have their own support team and are very helpful and friendly.
Yes, you can still sign up with ManageWP directly. I was gutted when they sold out but stayed as it’s such a useful service. I couldn’t bring myself to recommend GoDaddy to clients though so us it with other hosting. Still works well for managing multiple sites but wish somebody else had bought it..!
Since GoDaddy was bought out years ago they have steadily gone downhill. To me and this is just my opinion, they are only interested in your money. Their customer support has gotten worse, their products and services are to expensive and ads seem to be, at best, a way to sucker you in and then have you pay more. I’ve loved GoDaddy years ago and wish they never sold out. I’ve emailed their main company and sent several emails for suggestions, improvement and never heard a thing back. I’m trying to find a company that seems to care about their customers because it seems obvious that GoDaddy doesn’t. I cannot recommend them for anything.
I love GoDaddy. I have been using them since the day they started. I am a GoDaddy Pro User as well. I have used most of their services and resold most of their services over that period of time. Why do I stay – I need 24/7/365 access to phone support and they are great on the phone. Additionally, once a month I get a call from my small business advisor at GoDaddy to go over my account, ask questions or upgrade if there are new services I need. Most months I just listen to their ideas.
GoDaddy has been accused of a lot of things and has not had a great reputation. I think more people complain and rate negative than actual happy customers. I am not a rater, so my great ratings don’t show up – but we are out there – supporting GoDaddy by commenting on positive blogs like this one.
Thanks for giving a clear picture of a great company and a great service.
P.S. Want even better service – try humanizing the person on the other end of the phone. These great people who help love to talk about the weather, their outside businesses, pets, etc. It is a great warmup to: HELP my website is crashing.
It’s all downside from my experience with GD hosting products. I’m a Pro user, consumer for ever. I don’t use the platform for domains. Poor marketing, product and service, specifically with WP products.