InterServer vs. GoDaddy (2022)

Written by: Laura Bernheim

Edited by: Lillian Guevara-Castro

Updated: September 3, 2020

Laura Bernheim Hosting Expert

“We tested InterServer & GoDaddy — The winner is InterServer!”

The late ’90s were an exhilarating time. In addition to NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys dominating the charts, the World Wide Web experienced extreme growth as businesses and people rushed to get online — before they started worrying about Y2K, that is. InterServer and GoDaddy, two of the web hosting companies getting their start during the time of tech prosperity, survived the dot-com crash and continue to serve millions of customers and their websites with speedy, reliable, and well-supported services. Read on to see how the companies have distinguished themselves over the past 20-plus years.

Overall Rating

4.7/5.0 ★★★★★

Standard Web Hosting: $5.00/month »
ASP.NET Web Hosting: $5.00/month »
Managed WordPress: $8.00/month »

Visit InterServer »

Overall Rating

4.7/5.0 ★★★★★

"Economy" Plan: $2.99/month »
"Deluxe" Plan: $7.99/month »
"Ultimate" Plan: $11.99/month »

Visit GoDaddy »

Advertiser Disclosure

Overall Hosting Comparison

Best Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.7/5.0

As tech-savvy teenagers in the days of dial-up internet, Mike Lavrik and John Quaglieri started InterServer to show their former hosting providers how it should be done. Fed up with their hosting options, Mike and John created InterServer on a strong foundation of technical expertise and customer support.

Now, InterServer is a refreshing, independent hosting option built on modern infrastructure that is assembled, deployed, and supported at the datacenter housed in company headquarters in New Jersey. InterServer's robust shared plans come with the features you'd expect from higher-tier providers: unlimited storage, bandwidth, email, and SSL certificates, along with power-packed SSDs, free migrations, and $7.99 domains.

Rookie site owners might be intimidated by InterServer's long list of features, but each will help customers large and small succeed in their hosting ventures. InterServer can't match the low prices of some of the mass-market competitors out there when it comes to shared hosting, but they become exponentially more affordable as your website or application grows to VPS or dedicated plans — especially when you consider the perks of 24/7 on-site support and IT-minded Co-Founders who still manage the datacenter and respond to support tickets.

No matter which level of hosting you need, InterServer offers a price-lock guarantee. Whatever price you sign up for, that's what you'll pay as long as you have the account (unless you add or upgrade services). You'll never be surprised with a rate increase or be locked into lengthy contracts. We're struggling to come up with another hosting provider who can make that promise.

Independently owned datacenter and NO contracts
24/7 on-site support through chat, phone, and tickets
Same price guaranteed for life
Unlimited storage, sites, and email
FREE website migration, caching, and security tools
Get started on InterServer now.

Money Back Guarantee

30 days

Disk Space

Unlimited

Domain Name

$7.99 New or Transfer

Best Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.7/5.0

GoDaddy is exceptionally well-known in the hosting space, typically serving as site owners' introduction to the world of web hosting. The company makes it incredibly easy and affordable for folks to choose a domain name, sign up for hosting, and start building their online business or personal web property. While known for its domain, email, and shared hosting services, GoDaddy offers options for virtual and dedicated servers as well. Pre-built templates come with the hosting company's basic WordPress offering, or upgrade to managed WordPress services for top support or help with your online store. The company makes the migration process as seamless as possible, so you shouldn't shy away from scaling your site as your business needs grow; GoDaddy is a hosting home that will grow alongside you. The user control options are pretty popular in the hosting space: your choice between the easy-to-use cPanel or Plesk control panels, plus root (administrative) access for more tech-savvy customers. If you're particularly interested in webmail, GoDaddy offers an intuitive interface for keeping up with the unlimited email accounts you have available to you as a customer. Each email account comes with 256-bit encryption and enhanced privacy protection. Customer support has been a focus of the GoDaddy team of late. Today, the team has an award-winning collection of experts on staff, readily available to handle customer phone calls and messages 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Luxury services like WordPress Premium Support and Website Security also add support ticketing functionality. While GoDaddy is on hand to talk you through any issues, the team is also keeping an eye on your server (as well as other clients sharing your server). The hosting provider's around-the-clock security monitoring enables GoDaddy to guarantee uptime rates of 99.9% or better. This uptime rate is by no means outstanding in the industry, but for most end users, it's all that's required. The bottom line is this: GoDaddy is a go-to domain web host for millions of users worldwide for a reason. The company maintains an ever-expanding network of users by offering blazing-fast load times, award-winning security and support, and a free domain registration when you sign up for a year-long plan. It's a great hosting deal, particularly for first-timers and small business owners, at a really great price point.

Industry-leading load times
Award-winning support and security
World's #1 Domain Name Registrar
Choice of cPanel or Plesk included
99.9% uptime guaranteed
Get started on GoDaddy now.

Money Back Guarantee

30 days

Disk Space

100 GB - unlimited

Domain Name

FREE (1 year)

Cheap Hosting Comparison

Cheap Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0

It's hard to argue with a shared hosting plan that includes unlimited storage, bandwidth, websites, and email — but shared hosting is a crowded industry that turns on name recognition, reputation, and bargain-basement prices. InterServer outperforms some of our higher-rated hosts, but we understand that many first-time site owners are laser-focused on finding the lowest costs.

InterServer's shared options are best for the more experienced user who will appreciate SSD caching servers and RAID-10 storage, along with included perks such as Cloudflare CDN and free SSL certificates. Free migrations and automatic weekly backups add to the list of advantages included under InterServer's premium price.

On the flip side, however, novice customers will enjoy a free website builder when designing and launching their site. Although InterServer's 400-plus installation scripts cover a number of content management systems and eCommerce tools, other hosts take a more hands-on approach to empowering these customers to start an online store.

InterServer may make up for its somewhat higher rates with a price-lock guarantee — the price when you sign up is what you can expect to pay for the life of your account. What's more, InterServer won't lock you up with lengthy contracts. Customers can get discounted rates by paying up front for services; otherwise, your hosting plan runs month-to-month. Users will appreciate knowing what bills to expect and not having to deal with annual rate hikes.

$0.01 for the first month, then $5 monthly after
NO contracts and NO sudden price increases
Unlimited storage space, data transfers, and email
Register or transfer domains for $7.99
99.9% uptime and price-lock guarantee
Get started on InterServer now.

Money Back Guarantee

30 days

Disk Space

Unlimited

Domain Name

$7.99 New or Transfer

Cheap Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0

#6 out of 10 in Cheap Hosting reviews

A major pull factor for GoDaddy's hosting services is certainly the cost. It's hard to beat web hosting for just a few dollars per month, especially when the company includes a free domain name, control panel, impressively fast load times, and unlimited websites with most plans.

The company makes it not only affordable but super easy to get started on a shared hosting plan — for first-timers, bloggers, business owners, and others.

You can choose a GoDaddy hosting plan based on your exact needs, with a range of options for disk space, email, processing power, and other resources.

If your site grows to need scalable and/or dedicated resources, the company's team makes that transition easy — but with most plans coming with unlimited storage and unmetered bandwidth, you should have plenty of room.

Virtual and dedicated servers can be provisioned in minutes, with root and cPanel access, and no re-provisioning is required for upgrades.

All GoDaddy plans are equipped with the user control of cPanel (or Plesk, if you prefer). From cPanel, you can easily install and set up popular web applications for blogging and/or ecommerce.

A big name in the budget web hosting space, GoDaddy is consistently improving the performance of its servers, website, and services to offer a great customer experience.

With cPanel control and 1-click installations for standard web apps, you can get your website up and running quickly. The company's 24/7 security monitoring and DDoS protection allow you the comfort in knowing the professionals are making sure your site is online, loading quickly, and hacker-free.

We do wish the web hosting provider would include a free SSL certificate with each shared plan, however. All in all, the web hosting service comes with incredible power and peace of mind, at such a low price point, making GoDaddy quite a value deal.

Get a free domain from world's #1 registrar
Industry-leading page load times for your site
Unlimited bandwidth and up to unlimited storage
Choose between cPanel or Plesk control panels
Award-winning support on hand 24/7
Get started on GoDaddy now.

Money Back Guarantee

30 days

Disk Space

100 GB - Unlimited

Domain Name

FREE (1 year)

Dedicated Hosting Comparison

Dedicated Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0

#2 out of 10 in Dedicated Hosting reviews

You know a hosting company means business when it owns and operates its own datacenters. Because InterServer employees build and manage servers in the same building as company headquarters, dedicated hosting customers get the utmost in flexibility, support, and around-the-clock monitoring. Because Co-Founders Mike Lavrik and John Quaglieri started InterServer in 1999 out of frustration with their own personal hosting providers, Mike and John insist the company remain independent and customers are supported 24/7 through phone, chat, or tickets with InterServer's US-based team. In fact, chances are a Co-Founder will answer your ticket in fewer than 20 minutes. Servers are up and running within four hours and come with at least 1GB of RAM, 250GB of storage, 10TB of bandwidth, and five IP addresses. With the company's base Intel Dual-Core Atom configuration costing roughly $50 per month, InterServer brings surprising affordability to the high-end dedicated hosting products. At the other end of InterServer's spectrum of server setups, we were utterly blown away by the amount of storage you can configure — users can max out their servers with not one, but two, 6TB SATA hard drives. If you need SSD, you can install up to 2TB of the performant drives. Users can also configure up to 13 IP addresses and choose among several different flavors of Linux or Windows operating systems.

24/7 uptime monitoring and private datacenter
Up to 24 cores and 100TB bandwidth
12 operating systems and 3 control panels
Custom configs built and maintained in-house
Price-lock guarantee without contracts
Get started on InterServer now.

Money Back Guarantee

N/A

Disk Space

250 GB - 12 TB SSD

Domain Name

$7.99 new or transfer

Dedicated Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0

GoDaddy dedicated server hosting plans feature managed support options, on-demand resources, and the intuitive user control of cPanel and Plesk. The company offers plans for Linux and Windows users, with a variety of options for operating systems, RAM, processing power, disk space, and hardware choices. As a bare-metal solution, GoDaddy dedicated hosting gives customers 100% control over their server in a single-tenant environment. Unlimited bandwidth is always nice, as is the ability to choose between high-capacity HDDs and high-speed SSDs for storage. Site owners can also choose to host their server in datacenters in U.S. or Europe. With the optional fully managed services, GoDaddy support is not only available around the clock to help you troubleshoot issues with your server but the team is keeping an eye on your server status. The company offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee and premier DDoS protection, anti-hacking services, and other security add-ons. Each server comes with a free year of SSL certificate protection, and GoDaddy fully managed hosting customers benefit from the assurance that the experts will facilitate security patches and bug fixes regularly and on time. Each dedicated hosting plan comes with Panopta monitoring for your server, application, and network services. Users can easily view uptime and system-level metrics like CPU, RAM, storage, or set up alerts and notifications. With resource configurations customized to meet your needs, GoDaddy offers dedicated server hosting that you can grow your business with. The GoDaddy tech support team is available 24/7, guarding your site against malware, hackers, unexpected downtime, and DDoS threats. Meanwhile, the company's support agents are handling any requests that come through the phone lines or chat portal. With on-demand resources and industry-leading page load speeds, GoDaddy is a dedicated host worthy of your consideration.

Dedicated resources provisioned in minutes
Maximum performance and data protection with RAID-1 disk mirroring
Admin control via root access, cPanel, or Plesk
Choose from semi- or fully managed services
Get 45% off of your first term
Get started on GoDaddy now.

Money Back Guarantee

30 days

Disk Space

400 GB SSD - 8 TB HDD

Domain Name

FREE (1 year)

VPS Hosting Comparison

VPS Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0

#4 out of 10 in VPS Hosting reviews

InterServer's on-site datacenter and hands-on involvement with configuring and provisioning virtual private servers give customers a level of flexibility not seen with many other hosting providers. InterServer rations VPS and cloud resources through slices. Users can select just one CPU core or more than a dozen, with disk space ranging from sane to the absurd amounts of high-powered SSDs. In addition to that speedy standard feature, we love that virtual servers are provisioned instantly and come with the latest versions of PHP, MySQL, Perl, Python, and Ruby pre-installed. Users can take further control through full root access and InterServer's web-based control panel. InterServer brings incredibly affordable options to the VPS and cloud space, with plans starting at $10 or less per month and a free migration service from shared hosting accounts. We're not wild about the rest of InterServer's managed VPS services but understand that many customers at this level are plenty capable of handling their virtual servers. The company will support issues related to the operating system or control panel if the account has at least four slices (four cores, 8GB memory, 120GB of storage). InterServer isn't being unreasonable by any stretch, but other hosts make management a simpler, smoother process. InterServer guarantees hardware, network, and infrastructure uptime of 99.9%, which has become pretty standard for the web hosting industry. We expected to see the in-house expertise bump that guaranteed rate a little higher, but we trust InterServer will overdeliver on their SLA promise.

$0.01 for the first month using code HOSTINGADV
Then $6 monthly with no contracts, no changes
Latest of PHP, MySQL, Perl, Python, and Ruby
7 operating system options for Linux or Windows
Full root access and choice of datacenter
Get started on InterServer now.

Money Back Guarantee

N/A

Disk Space

30 GB SSD - 480 GB SSD

Domain Name

New or Transfer

VPS Rating

★★★★★ 4.2/5.0

If you're looking to grow and scale your website, GoDaddy has you covered. Developers and web enthusiasts will be pleased to hear that GoDaddy offers root access, making it easy to install PHP modules, applications, stacks, and various customizations to fine-tune your virtual server for peak performance via the command line or remote desktop. Plans also include a variety of control panels, led by cPanel and Plesk, so you can easily manage your hosting service with an intuitive graphical interface. The surprisingly powerful virtual servers can have up to 32GB RAM and 400GB of SSD storage that boasts three times faster page loads. In addition to unlimited bandwidth and KVM virtualization, GoDaddy boasts global datacenters on four continents and tons of modern operating systems. Choose from platforms like CentOS, Ubuntu, and Windows Server. Meanwhile, the GoDaddy team will monitor your server 24/7 to alert and ward off traffic with malicious intent. Customers will have to patch their operating system as needed, but GoDaddy provides around-the-clock hardware monitoring with failover solutions and snapshots to minimize downtime. Panopta monitoring is also included with all semi- or fully managed VPS accounts, giving you a window into network and application services via easily configurable alerts and notifications. The GoDaddy name may not immediately bring VPS hosting to mind. Nonetheless, GoDaddy's virtual server offerings include the security, support, worry-free fully managed services, and value combination that embodies the GoDaddy reputation in the hosting space. For those who may not quite be ready to make the jump to a VPS plan, the hosting company's Business Hosting packages combine the best of both worlds: the amped-up power of a virtual private server with the ease and simplicity of shared hosting.

Designed to handle traffic with Linux or Windows
Admin access via root access, cPanel, and Plesk
High-speed SSDs and 99.9% uptime guarantee
Unlimited bandwidth and lots of processing power
Fully or semi-managed servers with optional control panel
Get started on GoDaddy now.

Money Back Guarantee

30 days

Disk Space

40 GB - 400 GB SSD

Domain Name

FREE (1 year)

WordPress Hosting Comparison

WordPress Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0

With managed WordPress hosting plans being all the rage lately, we occasionally get peeved at hosting providers that capitalize on the frenzy without optimizing its platform for the specific strengths and weaknesses of the world's most popular content management system. That being said, InterServer's standard shared and VPS infrastructure provides more than enough resources to run your WordPress site at peak performance.

Perhaps most importantly, InterServer promises to clean up customers' compromised websites and get them back online if you get hacked — especially important for WordPress users, as the platform's popularity unfortunately makes it a prime target for attacks. Even the most experienced WordPress users can fall victim to an exploit, and InterServer's support team is available 24/7 to fix any issue when it arises.

The company's proprietary InterShield security suite, however, does an impressive job at keeping attackers at bay. The company's in-house malware database drives a firewall powered by machine learning and collecting data from InterServer's thousands of servers.

When it comes to speed, InterServer has you covered with five levels of content caching solutions, covering SSL certificates, packets, software, hardware, and RAID configurations. A partnership with Cloudflare garners users extra protections and global content delivery. Enjoy single-click installs for the WordPress software, easy-to-use cPanel control panel, and solid-state drives (SSDs) to get your site performance extra oomph.

To the value-minded shoppers in the crowd, note that all InterServer customers are assured a price-lock guarantee and will never be asked to sign a control. That's a longer-term value in the shared hosting market that's tough to beat.

FREE website migration and privately owned datacenter
The price you pay now is guaranteed for the life of your account
24/7 support teams will fix and restore hacked websites
Plans optimized for speed with SSD storage and caching
NO long-term contract required
Get started on InterServer now.

Money Back Guarantee

30 days

Disk Space

Unlimited

Domain Name

$7.99 New or Transfer

WordPress Rating

★★★★★ 4.4/5.0

#9 out of 9 in WordPress Hosting reviews

As champions of low-cost, high-impact hosting, GoDaddy understandably offers a slew of services geared for all levels of WordPress users.

Starting with the company's basic shared hosting services, which start at $2.99 per month, each GoDaddy customer who signs up for an annual plan receive a free domain name and the power to control their site via the cPanel or Plesk control panels.

From either of these interfaces, you can quickly install and set up the WordPress environment in one click at no additional cost. GoDaddy's improved cPanel is configured with CageFS to protect your content and uses CloudLinux to keep your site's resources truly balanced.

While you're busy adding content, photos, or products to your WordPress site, GoDaddy ensures that your web pages are loading quickly.

More serious WordPress users may prefer to step up to the web host's suite of optimized WordPress hosting plans, which feature an automatically installed SSL certificate, backups, and daily malware scans.

Users can create and launch unlimited websites with most of these packages, and you can choose to automatically upgrade your plan as you need extra resources.

Even higher up, GoDaddy Pro Managed WordPress Hosting starts site owners with a delightful onboarding experience and one-click migration tool to make it easier than ever to get started.

Once you configure your free CDN and built-in caching, you can take advantage of daily backups, automatic core updates, pre-built sites, and a staging environment to ensure your WordPress website is picture perfect.

1-click WordPress installs via cPanel or Plesk
FREE domain from the world's #1 registrar
Experience 24/7 expert support
Award-winning security monitoring
FREE year of Office 365 business email services
Get started on GoDaddy now.

Money Back Guarantee

30 days

Disk Space

100 GB - Unlimited

Domain Name

FREE (1 year)

Site Builder Hosting Comparison

Website Builder Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0

Although InterServer's unrivaled tech expertise and flexible VPS plans foster a brand reputation that serves experienced developers, the company's focus on affordability and customer satisfaction at the shared hosting level show that InterServer is highly tuned to serving everyone's needs. A partnership with the drag-and-drop SitePad website builder is proof that InterServer doesn't require users to code their sites into creation.

Website design is simplified and consolidated into a matter of minutes with the what-you-see-is-what-you-get features found within SitePad. InterServer customers can install the website builder through cPanel or DirectAdmin integrations, and the builder comes with more than 300 professional themes, organized into categories such as business, travel, photography, real estate, health, and others. Site owners will be sure to find a template that works for their specific niche, and each design is already prepped and ready for mobile devices.

We especially appreciate that SitePad and InterServer enable customers to establish multiple sites on one account, given the unlimited hosting resources and site builder flexibility. To further distinguish your online brands, SitePad provides more than 40 widgets to further customize themes with photo galleries, text boxes, buttons, videos, and other interactive elements.

Coupled with unlimited SSD storage and hundreds of cloud-bases applications (think WordPress, MediaWiki, phpBB, and others), InterServer is poised to provide all the tools site owners need to be successful. Add in the company's incredible first-month rate and guaranteed long-term pricing, and we're confident you'll find a hosting partner capable of ushering you through growth.

$0.01 for the first month, then $5 monthly after
FREE SitePad builder comes with 300+ themes
Drag-and-drop interface with 1-click pubishing
40+ widgets for galleries, videos, maps, and more
Unlimited storage, transfer, websites, and email
Get started on InterServer now.

Money Back Guarantee

30 days

Disk Space

Unlimited

Domain Name

$7.99 New or Transfer

Website Builder Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0

#4 out of 10 in Website Builder Hosting reviews

GoDaddy uses a custom website builder and easy access to dozens of content management systems to offer a user-friendly site-building solution to customers.

Most of GoDaddy's hosting plans include these options at no additional cost. Plus, if you sign up for an annual hosting plan, this world-leading domain name registrar will include a GoDaddy domain for free.

The company's Websites + Marketing plans combine the GoDaddy website builder with built-in marketing tools to seamlessly integrate your website, social media, and online reviews to attract the most visitors.

Even better, you can get started for free! To unlock the full publishing power, though, plans start around $10 per month.

You can save money by signing up for a shared hosting account, which will point you toward easy-to-use content management systems like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. You'll still get a lot of options for customizations and one-click installations but not quite the same drag-and-drop simplicity you'll find on most site builders.

Regardless of which you choose, the GoDaddy team is working around the clock to ensure your site will remain online and performing speedily while you worry about making your website beautiful and professional-looking.

The company's award-winning security team keeps an eye out for downtime, hackers, and other security threats.

The end result is their uptime guarantee of 99.9%, which does the job for most users.

The bottom line is that you can get started with multiple GoDaddy's website builder options for a dollar or less per month and choose from hundreds of theme options to start designing the site of your dreams.

Get started for FREE, no credit-card required
Easy-to-use interface with tons of customization
GoDaddy InSight™ provides tailored action plans
99.9% uptime with an award-winning support team
Built-in marketing tools and expertise
Get started on GoDaddy now.

Money Back Guarantee

30 days

Disk Space

100 GB - Unlimited

Domain Name

FREE (1 year)

InterServer vs. GoDaddy - Our Conclusion

Laura Bernheim Hosting Expert

“We tested InterServer & GoDaddy — The winner is InterServer!”

As two of the elder statesmen of web hosting, InterServer and GoDaddy are well-regarded options that tend to resonate with different audiences. GoDaddy is seemingly everyone’s first web host and domain registrar, but many customers often graduate to more specialized offerings like those InterServer offers. Don’t discount either provider by thinking they’re ready to be put out to pasture — both InterServer and GoDaddy continue to stay ahead of web hosting trends and technology to offer modern, affordable services.

Overall Rating

4.7/5.0 ★★★★★

Visit InterServer »

Overall Rating

4.7/5.0 ★★★★★

Visit GoDaddy »

About The Author

Laura has spent more than 12 years crafting engaging and award-winning articles that share the passion behind organizations' products, people, and innovations. As a long-time HostingAdvice contributing expert, she combines a reputation for producing quality content with rich technical expertise to show experienced developers how to capitalize on emerging technologies and find better ways to work with established platforms. A professional journalist, Laura has contributed to The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, the Sun Sentinel, and the world's top hosting providers.