GoDaddy is certainly a big name amongst internet companies. Their main business is selling domain names and providing hosting services and now they have recently launched their second attempt at a website builder platform, GoDaddy version 7. The first edition didn’t exactly get the best reviews, however, at a glance, the rebrand looks good and this made us want to find out more.
GoDaddy is a beginner-friendly website builder that offers mobile-optimized designs, 24/7 support, website hosting, and ecommerce templates. They also offer a 30-day free trial so you can test the platform before spending any money.
We’re going to take a detailed look at the GoDaddy platform and it’s features to find out if it can compare to competition from platforms like Wix and Squarespace. Read on to find out more.
If you don’t feel like reading the full review right now, no worries. You can save some time by skipping ahead to the bottom line to find out if GoDaddy is the right platform for you.
GoDaddy is for anyone looking to create an online presence, which could be for a personal portfolio site or a site for your business. Users can choose from a list of ready-made templates and have a professionally designed website with advanced features go live without ever having to look at a piece of code or understand what HTML, CSS, or Javascript is.
The templates cover everything from personal one-pager portfolios right through to full operational ecommerce stores.
Head over to the GoDaddy template page to have a look at the award-winning designs or we’ve listed a few of the popular ones below:
GoDaddy scores highly for beginner friendliness because of its easy-to-use editor and well-designed templates that allow even non-technical website builders to create a sleek, professional-looking website, much faster and more importantly, cheaper than other more advanced platforms.
The GoDaddy editor is certainly easy to use but it can’t be called a drag and drop editor. The editor works by selecting and adding in a large variety of content blocks which you can then move around by hitting the ‘move section arrows’ which are located on every content block.
Within the blocks, the elements are fixed and cannot be moved to a different hierarchy but you can edit text by simply clicking on the desired text box and then editing like you would on a word document.
You will get from the home page to editing your site within minutes with the GoDaddy onboarding process. Simply select the type of site you want to build, for example, a blog, online store, etc. and then type in the name of your business or website, and then within 30 seconds, GoDaddy will load you a template that you can start editing.
The GoDaddy editor is perfectly suited for beginners who want to create their own website without having to gain knowledge of website design and coding. You can change between 20+ customizable themes with different layouts, fonts, and colors which are all mobile responsive, so they will look good on whatever device your audience is viewing your website from.
Although there is no drag and drop functionality, it really isn’t that much of a big deal for the beginner builder. Actually it simplifies things further, making it easier to stick to the professional design skills that have gone into each element of the platform. Having tested lots of different platforms we can safely say that the GoDaddy editor is one of the easiest to use and takes no time at all to figure out how it works. However, if you’re a more experienced web developer or someone who likes to customize everything, you will get frustrated with the lack of freedom.
There is a pretty basic but effective image editor that was a pleasure to use (which is not something you can say about some of the image editors on other platforms). Once you have selected an image, the image editor will appear in the right sidebar. From there you can zoom in and out, rotate, change image, delete, add a black & white filter and add in alt text and a caption. Again, if you’re looking for more advanced image editing capabilities you will probably get bored with the editor quickly, however, it works great for standard editing needs. Although a cropping tool would have been nice.
There are 30+ content block categories each with multiple options. These include basic categories like text content, calendar, video, audio, menu/price list, and social buttons as well as more advanced features like reservations, reviews, promo banners, drop-down menus, HTML blocks, online ordering and many more.
Finally, there are over 50 different font pairings for you to choose from, and if you don’t find one you like them you can make your own within the advanced font settings.
There’s a reason why 19 million business owners and professionals use GoDaddy and that’s because of the amazing features and tools available on the platform to help you and your business thrive online.
For example, with every GoDaddy site, you get access to GoDaddy InSight™ which they call ‘your silent business partner’. You’ll get data-driven recommendations made into an InSight action plan that gives you continuous suggestions on what to do next to improve your online presence. It also gives you something called an InSight score which enables you to compare your online marketing activity with businesses and websites like yours.
There is also a fully integrated email marketing system where you can collect email addresses from one of the newsletter forms and begin to build an email database. Once you have a list then you can create customized email campaigns from the GoDaddy platform to increase traffic and sales.
There’s so much more to the platform and if you want to find out some more why not head over to the features page and find out what else is on offer.
We conduct our own SEO audit on every website builder we review because we understand how important SEO is to the long term success of a website. What the team at Website Builder Ninja found when looking at SEO features for GoDaddy was disappointing but, it wasn’t all bad.
The Google page speed test measures how quickly a website will load and is important because Google considers page speed as a direct ranking factor. We found that GoDaddy web pages had an average page speed. It scored higher than the likes of Wix and Squarespace but was a long way from competing with faster platforms like Bookmark.com and Webnode.
Some of the basic requirements were met, for example, GoDaddy optimizes images to reduce the weight and scale for faster loading times. You can edit titles and descriptions and you can edit image alt tags. The platform also automatically creates a sitemap which helps Google to index your pages.
You can create H1 and H2 headings within a blog post, however, this function is not supported on other pages. This is disappointing because HTML headings are a basic SEO function that should be standard on every builder.
GoDaddy is lacking a few important SEO features, for example, there are no canonical tags across the site which are used to protect your content from someone stealing it and ranking better with it than you.
Overall we found that the GoDaddy platform performed below average in terms of SEO which will make it hard for GoDaddy sites to rank well on the search engine ranking pages (SERPs), limiting the potential of organic search traffic coming into your site.
Setting up an online store is simple with GoDaddy, you can choose from a variety of store designs to sell your products and you can choose to sell directly from the website or link up with third-party selling sites like Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Walmart, and Facebook. A great feature is that if you choose to sell across multiple platforms you can sync your inventory across all locations so it’s easy to keep track of orders and stock levels.
You can easily list your business on Google business listings and manage and respond to comments from within the GoDaddy platform. You can also promote and sell products on your Facebook business page by automatically sharing new content and products from your site.
If you’re a service provider like a personal trainer, yoga instructor, or dog walker then GoDaddy have you covered with their 24/7 integrated bookings and appointment system. You simply need to add in the appointment & services content blocks that are right for you, just like you would add a text box or image to your site, easy!
You can set up calendars with recurring classes and events, and keep track of everything with the built-in client management tools that let you retain contact information, appointment history, and payment history.
When it comes to collecting payment for your appointments you can charge deposits, cancellation fees, or collect full payments upfront, whatever suits you best.
Finally, you can also set up logins for your staff members so that they can manage your schedule and availability.
GoDaddy has leveraged the services of third-party providers to give you multiple payment options. This hands-off approach also means that you won’t be charged any transaction fees from GoDaddy, just whatever the payment provider you choose charges.
You can process payments for your online store with Square, Stripe (which includes apple pay), and PayPal. If you prefer to stay away from the online payment giants you can create offline payment methods such as pay on arrival or with checks.
GoDaddy offers a 30-day free trial where you can create a website and test out all of the features before committing any money.
To get the most out of your personal or business site and to start building a real online presence you will want to unlock some of the premium features and will, therefore, have to sign up for a paid subscription.
GoDaddy offers you four different plans which include Basic, Standard, Premium, and Ecommerce. The entry-level plan, Basic, starts off at $15 when billed monthly which will give you an SSL certificate, a custom domain, a mobile editor app, 24/7 support, free business email for 1 year, and a few more features. Unfortunately, if you want SEO support you need to sign up for one of the more expensive plans.
If you want any ecommerce features then you will have to sign up for the ecommerce plan which is the most expensive.
GoDaddy has an impressive support system that includes a Help center, a how-to page, a community forum, and a blog, as well as 24/7 phone and live chat support… I don’t think it can get much better than that.
The phone support offers help in over 50 languages with the US support available 24/7 so if you’re pulling an all-nighter and get stuck with a technical issue there will be someone to call and help you get back on track.
We tested out the 24/7 chat function with a couple of questions and were told that we had a maximum wait time of 14 minutes before getting a response. It actually took over 2 hours to get a response so it’s a bit of a stretch to call that a ‘live response.’
GoDaddy is never going to be the top choice for people looking for creative freedom, powerful e-commerce features, and market-leading template designs. However, if you’re a complete beginner, the easy-to-use point-and-click editor makes it really simple to create a website full of advanced features. Having the mobile editor app is a great feature that allows GoDaddy users to edit their websites on-the-go which is perfect for emergency edits and responding to user comments and queries from any location. If you think after reading this review you’d like to spend some more time exploring the GoDaddy builder head over to the home page now and start your free trial.
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