I have kept a GoDaddy shared hosting account since about 2009, and it’s served me very well. I’ve since moved my big personal and client sites to WPEngine, which is by far superior to any other WordPress hosting platform. But I’ve kept the GoDaddy shared hosting account active, as it’s an inexpensive server for testing and for friends who need a quick blog hosted. I’m still a GoDaddy customer; most domains I manage are registered with them. But their basic shared hosting offering wasn’t getting the job done anymore.
Don’t get me wrong, GoDaddy does do some things right. Their prices are decent and their customer service support is solid. Navigating their site is a breeze. But they have failed to keep up with the competition in the tech. For one, I have always had server connection issues from time to time. Coda and Dreamweaver always have trouble connecting to GoDaddy sites. More importantly, they don’t allow the use of LETSEncrypt SSL or other free SSL certificates. Instead they offer an “upgrade” to their SSL.
For a while I was able to get away with keeping a few sites in the http world, then Google dropped the hammer, and it’s conform or lose. Sites will have a better ranking with an SSL certificate. This completely devalues GoDaddy’s shared hosting because of the price needed for a GoDaddy “Premium SSL”. Sorry Danica, it was time to look elsewhere.
I already have a WPEngine account, and as superior as it is, it’s much too expensive for some test sites. I was looking to stay in the $10-$15 per month range. I finally decided on DreamHost shared hosting. It had the stuff I needed, including compatibility with LETSEncrypt SSLs, at an affordable price. Time to move my sites.
The first few sites transferred didn’t go smoothly. Immediately, the setup of the control panel was very unfamiliar and took some getting used to. Also DreamHost doesn’t use ‘localhost’ as the MySQL server, instead you make your own. It took me some time to figure this out, but to be fair, they do have a big notice with these specific instructions after you create a site. Sometimes I just click through things without reading.
Once I got past that though, the process became more comfortable and noticeably more efficient than GoDaddy. Connecting and uploading to the server was quick and painless. One click CloudFlare DNS integration and SSL was possible, this is incredibly useful! After everything was transferred over, a quick nameserver change was all it took to go live with the site.
Once the learning curve flattened out, I realized that DreamHost’s shared hosting is a much better value than GoDaddy’s. SSL Certificates are becoming standard, and the lack of included offerings will hurt GoDaddy. DreamHost offered more features for about the same price. Anyone looking into shared hosting should strongly consider DreamHost as a provider.