Wix vs. GoDaddy (2024)

Ryan Frankel

By: Ryan Frankel

Ryan Frankel

Ryan began developing websites in the late '90s and has personally tested just about every web host and cloud platform worth trying on the market today. With a masters degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Florida, he leverages his extensive knowledge of hardware, software, and their engineering relationship to inform HostingAdvice readers of the technical implications of their hosting choices. Ryan's subject matter expertise includes, but is not limited to, WordPress, cloud infrastructure management, product UI/UX design, and popular web development languages such as JavaScript and PHP.

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Editor: Lillian Castro

Lillian Castro

Lillian brings more than 30 years of editing and journalism experience to our team. She has written and edited for major news organizations, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the New York Times, and she previously served as an adjunct instructor at the University of Florida. Today, she edits HostingAdvice content for clarity, accuracy, and reader engagement.

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Alexandra Anderson Ryan Frankel Hosting Expert
“We tested GoDaddy & Wix — The winner is GoDaddy!”

GoDaddy and Wix are both fantastic providers to introduce newbies to web hosting. Wix provides a straightforward drag-and-drop website builder with loads of add-ons to optimize your hosting experience. And GoDaddy, one of the best-known hosting entities, boasts well-rounded hosting plans for any size site. We’re impressed with the features these hosts offer for an affordable monthly price. Let’s dive into our reviews to see which is better.

Overall Rating
4.7/5.0 ★★★★★
Visit GoDaddy »
Overall Rating
4.6/5.0 ★★★★★
Visit Wix »

Disclosure: When you sign up through links on our site, we often earn referral fees from partners. For more information, see our ad disclosure and review policy.

Overall Hosting Comparison

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
25 GB - 100 GB
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)

Best Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0

As a web builder, Wix is an industry leader when it comes to ease of use, setup time, and available features. The browser-based, WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) site-building service is hands down one of the foremost brands in this industry niche, and that's not without just cause.

Getting started and familiar with the platform is a straightforward process, and the resulting websites you can build are in keeping with industry standards, as far as design and customization go.

While you're not going to get the same level of support as you would from a leading web hosting service, the feature set available and included in this free service is a pretty exhaustive list. All it takes to sign up — and said signup is free — is an email or a Facebook account.

Once you're in, you can preview thousands of templates, which are all broken up into categories and then further classified by design or industry type.

For example, choose the Online Store category with the Clothing & Accessories subcategory to start selling your custom-printed t-shirts. Your garage band can showcase your latest performances and let family and friends know of upcoming shows by utilizing the Music and Band categories.

You can browse the most popular templates and check out the newest additions. Once you've made your pick, you may feel a tad overwhelmed at the interface — but that's only because the functionality exceeds that of your typical drag-and-drop builder.

You can manipulate and edit virtually any facet of your new website, until it perfectly matches the picture in your head.

Finally, get your finished creation noticed by search engines (and the millions of web surfers that they send to websites) using the Wix SEO Wizard. Just tell the Wizard the words or phrases you want people to search for and find your site, and Wix will spit back out a full SEO report — so you know where you stand in terms of relevant visitors being sent to your site.

Wix premium plan customers can also benefit from $300-worth of search engine advertising credits, upping the chances of increased site visitors.

Anyone could find themselves wanting a website at some point in their career or personal life. Whether you're a stay-at-home mom with a creative writing habit to share or a serial entrepreneur ready to profit from your next great idea, you don't want building your own website from scratch to be a strain — on your wallet, your time, or your brain.

With Wix, you can be your own web designer, developer, and marketer. The interface is easy to use and the end designs are up to snuff with industry standards. When it comes to code-free website building, Wix is a leader and an innovator.

  • FREE signup with email or Facebook
  • Drag-and-drop designing is super easy
  • 1-year domain free with most plans
  • Up to $300-worth of ad credits
  • Access to 1,000s of templates and additional tools in the App Market
  • Get started on Wix now.
Money Back Guarantee
14-day FREE trial
Disk Space
2 GB - Unlimited
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)

Cheap Hosting Comparison

Cheap Rating

★★★★★ 4.5/5.0

#10 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.

  • Manage your domain and hosting under one roof
  • Choice of cPanel or Plesk control panels
  • Up to unlimited bandwidth and storage
  • Microsoft 365 inboxes included FREE for first year
  • Get 51% OFF by signing up today
  • Get started on GoDaddy now.
Money Back Guarantee
30 days
Disk Space
25 GB - 100 GB
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)

Cheap Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0

Wix is known as a web-leading site builder service that's one of the most affordable — because getting started is absolutely free and about as easy as processes get.

You can log in via Facebook or your Gmail account and be editing your new web property within minutes. All but the most basic of plans include a free domain name voucher for your first year of service, and with Wix comes the wealth of templates to be customized within the Wix Editor.

This interface is extremely intuitive, once you take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with it. Once you're comfortable, you'll find yourself dragging and dropping images, text, menus, sliders, and more — all without any code — and feeling like a full-fledged web designer extraordinaire.

All of the template designs are up to the latest industry standards, including parallax layouts, a mobile display editor, and responsive designs, and there are thousands of themes to browse.

If you've read our reviews and seen the multitude of features that can be had for a mere few dollars a month, you've probably realized that Wix is not the cheapest on the list. With Wix, you're paying for the user-friendliness of the no-tech-skills-needed platform, as well as the speed at which you can get your new site up and running.

You're paying for accessibility, so to speak. That doesn't mean you're not getting a lot for the price.

Premium plan holders, in particular, can benefit from $300-worth of ad vouchers, free apps for building forms and boosting your site's SEO status, and even priority support.

Bottom line: There is tremendous value in the offerings of Wix plans. Things like 24/7 expert phone support, stellar uptime rates, and mega-powerful servers are not features they tout, but that's intentional. Wix is an awesome website builder service, and if that's what you're looking for, you've come to the right place.

  • Start designing for FREE
  • FREE domain with most plans
  • Drag-and-drop templates, specific to industry
  • Exhaustive knowledgebase of articles
  • Huge app market available
  • Get started on Wix now.
Money Back Guarantee
14-day FREE trial
Disk Space
2 GB - Unlimited
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)

Dedicated Hosting Comparison

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 11% off of your first term
  • Get started on GoDaddy now.
Money Back Guarantee
30 days
Disk Space
500 GB SSD - 1 TB HDD (RAID-1)
Domain Name
New or Transfer

Dedicated Rating

N/A

Wix does not currently offer this type of hosting. We would not recommend choosing this host for this hosting category.

VPS Hosting Comparison

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 SSD - 200 GB SSD
Domain Name
New or Transfer

VPS Rating

N/A

Wix does not currently offer this type of hosting. We would not recommend choosing this host for this hosting category.

WordPress Hosting Comparison

WordPress Rating

★★★★ 4.4/5.0

#8 out of 8 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 $8.99 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
10 GB SSD - 30 GB SSD
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)

WordPress Rating

N/A

Wix does not currently offer this type of hosting. We would not recommend choosing this host for this hosting category.

Site Builder Hosting Comparison

Website Builder Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0

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
Unlimited
Domain Name
New or Transfer

Website Builder Rating

★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

#1 out of 9 in Website Builder Hosting reviews

Website building is where Wix shines. The thousands of templates, the intuitive editor, the industry-leading designs that cater to a variety of specific fields and use cases — all these facets represent a platform that excels at facilitating easy web design for the non-tech-savvy user.

Sign up with your Facebook account or email address and get started for free. I'll admit, the Wix Editor may appear daunting when you first meet it, but get to know the interface.

Once you familiarize yourself with the environment, you'll realize that what first comes across as overwhelming is actually empowering — the customization functionalities to be had are many, and they're awesome.

There's no need for coding of any kind. Just drag and drop elements of your new site and BAM: What You See Is What You Get (i.e., Wix is a WYSIWYG website builder!). You don't have to design your website from scratch with Wix, though blank templates are available.

There are thousands of templates, each one categorized by design need and further classified into industry niches, and the site's look can be molded to match your brand or personality very easily.

Layout and design options include parallax themes (where the viewer scrolls down the screen and one page rolls seamlessly into the next), custom sliders, multiple columns, mobile-specific and mobile-responsive displays, and tons of button and menu navigation tricks.

While Wix isn't our favorite host in terms of expert support or top-of-the-line hardware, it's an industry-leading platform for website building.

It's popular for many reasons: the simple startup process, the ease of use, the array of customization options, and the WYSIWYG results, as examples. Its reputation precedes it, and we can totally see where the rave reviews are coming from.

  • No coding skills needed with drag-and-drop builder
  • 100s of templates with niche-specific designs
  • Add features via the App Market and Wix Events
  • Easily create ecommerce functionality easily
  • Great way to build small sites on a budget
  • Get started on Wix now.
Money Back Guarantee
14-day FREE trial
Disk Space
2 GB - Unlimited
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)
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GoDaddy vs. Wix - Our Conclusion

Alexandra Anderson Ryan Frankel Hosting Expert
“We tested GoDaddy & Wix — The winner is GoDaddy!”

These web hosts sure know a thing or two about quality, affordable hosting. With bonus features such as a free domain, unlimited bandwidth, and thousands of website templates with select plans, it’s no surprise these hosts are so popular. With GoDaddy and Wix, budget-minded folks are sure to find a plan that suits their needs.

Overall Rating
4.7/5.0 ★★★★★
Visit GoDaddy »
Overall Rating
4.6/5.0 ★★★★★
Visit Wix »

About The Author

Ryan Frankel has been a professional in the tech industry for more than 20 years and has been developing websites for more than 25. With a master's degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Florida, he has a fundamental understanding of hardware systems and the software that runs them. Ryan now sits as the CTO of Digital Brands Inc. and manages all of the server infrastructure of their websites, as well as their development team. In addition, Ryan has a passion for guitars, good coffee, and puppies.
Alexandra Anderson