If you’re wondering if the GoDaddy can help you easily build a beautiful and functional site, then this GoDaddy website builder review will answer your question.
If you haven’t heard of GoDaddy, where have you been hiding? (Just kidding)
GoDaddy is the largest domain name registrar in the world, and offers one of the most comprehensive set of website building tools to its customers.
They manage over 57 million domain names (a domain name is just a website address, such as www.google.com), has more than 12 million paying customers (not free users, but people who actually happily pay), and has a very strong 24/7, 365 days customer support system (we can confirm this based on our own experiences).
So why are we highlighting all these points? It’s just to set a stage for you to understand who you are dealing with here. GoDaddy is a very strong, reputable company that has been playing Super Bowl ads for many years.
So if you are considering using GoDaddy website builder to create your website, rest assured that you are relying on a well established company with a very strong reputation for support (more on this below).
Whether you can build a good website with their tools is a completely different discussion, which is why you’re reading this GoDaddy website builder review, right?
Let’s dive right into our thoughts….
PROS ABOUT GODADDY:
CONS ABOUT GODADDY:
GODADDY WEBSITE BUILDER IS IDEAL FOR….Based no our GoDaddy website builder review, if you are a small business owner, designer, musician, restaurant owner, a professional (lawyer, finance, accounting) who want to build a website that’s creative, GoDaddy should be able to help you.
As mentioned in the Top 3 Pros section above, GoDaddy website builder is easy to use, minimalistic (in a good way) and comes with great support. This enables you to quickly and efficiently gain an online presence, so you can focus on other busier parts of your life.
Technology can be a bit (or very!) painful at times, so having a strong, contactable support team to help you, and having the ability to make multiple backup versions of your website, can make your life a lot easier.
As mentioned under one of the drawbacks above, is that if you think that the majority of your visitors will be visiting you through their smartphones, then perhaps another website builder with stronger mobile interfaces will suit you better.
EASE OF USEGoDaddy website builder is a true drag & drop interface, so you can insert content on pretty much anywhere on the website (you can even overlap content if you really want to).
The platform is a WYSIWYG (which stands for What You See Is What You Get) builder, so whatever you insert into the website editor, will show up the same way once you publish your website.
The way GoDaddy lays out its builder is quite visually friendly. Their tool bar is neatly laid out on the left hand side, and you can even hide it to maximize your screen real estate for better editing. They only have one single tool bar to keep things simple and minimalistic which is nice. So you don’t have to dig around forever to find things.
As mentioned as one of the Pros above, in addition to phone, live chat and email support, GoDaddy has an extensive support library / documentation, so if you’re unsure of anything, you can always search for help in their support library (more on this below).
Overall, we found GoDaddy a lot easier to use than some other website builders in the market. They may not have as many bells and whistles, but the benefit to you is that they give you the necessary, core website building tools to get the job done without cluttering things up.
THEMES DESIGN OPTIONSGoDaddy gives you over 300 themes to pick from, designed specifically for various industry categories such as business, finance, law, education, health & beauty, music / entertainment, charity, design portfolio, family, wedding, real estate, restaurant, recreation, etc.
So the chances of you finding a design theme that suits your needs is pretty good.
As discussed above, one of the positive things about GoDaddy’s themes is that they come structured and pre-populated with content (which form part of the overall design of their themes), making it easy for you to just insert replace the content with your own.
This can save you a lot of time (versus creating your own design) and it’s especially helpful if you are unsure of your design capabilities.
One of the major drawbacks of GoDaddy website builder is that once you pick a theme, you can’t change to another theme without losing your content. So we recommend you play around with and test out a few themes to start, before finalizing things and start populating the theme with your own content.
Another issue to consider is that GoDaddy doesn’t give you access to edit the HTML or CSS codes of their themes. So if you know a bit of code or if you are working with a coder and want to make very specific design edits through codes, this option is not available to you at the moment. But, if you don’t intend to mess around with codes, then this won’t concern you at all.
Overall, GoDaddy website builder offers a good range of very stylish themes, and they are particularly helpful if you need a starting point to build a beautiful website, or if you don’t want to create a design from scratch.
Customer Support
GoDaddy is very well known to provide very strong support to its customers. You can reach a support rep within minutes on the phone, live chat, and if you are not in a rush, they answer their email support tickets usually within half a day.
All their support channels are made available to you 24/7, 365 days a year, and they don’t discriminate against which plan you are using. With most other services, to get phone support you have to be subscribed to their higher (if not highest) plans.
With GoDaddy, even if you are using their most basic plan, you can get help through all their support channels. That’s pretty awesome.
GODADDY WEBSITE BUILDER MOBILE DISPLAYGoDaddy automatically converts your website into a mobile friendly interface so that your visitors can visit you on their smartphones and get a different experience than looking at the desktop version of your website.
As mentioned, we view that their mobile function as “basic” at best. While you have the option to hide certain content that is displayed on your desktop version of your website from the mobile view, that’s as far as the flexibility goes.
Don’t get us wrong. This is actually a very interesting feature that most other website builders do not offer, but we were hoping (wishing) for more granular control over the mobile interface.
So at the end of the day, if you anticipate that a meaningful percentage of your visitors will be visiting you through their smartphones, you may want to consider using a website builder that has a stronger mobile editor.
GODADDY SEO (Search Engine Optimization)GoDaddy website builder allows you to optimize all the basic SEO functions such as title and description for each web page. This is no different from other website builders in the market, so it’s right on par.
What GoDaddy also offers is a SEO service that is above and beyond their website builder plans. Their SEO plan starts at $2.69 per month which is not a significant investment at all.
Services include granting you access to their keyword and topic suggestion tool, structuring your website with their Rich Snippet and Market Generator, 1-click submission of your website to over 100 search engines, including leading ones such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, and SEO checklist and ranking reports.
While all these functions can be done manually without paying for this added service, it does take time so the question becomes whether you have enough time to manually engage in these activities.
Tools that automate these functions can save you time. Time is money, right?
HOSTING AND EXPORT OPTIONSOnce you sign up to use the GoDaddy website builder, they include all the hosting services for you, so you don’t have to pay extra for that.
This is helpful so you don’t have to worry about managing hosting services as it can be technical (and a bit scary!) This way, you can focus on other more important things while GoDaddy manages technical issues such as security upgrades, and ensuring that your website is always working properly.
One fantastic feature that we mentioned under the Top 3 Pros section above, is that you can create multiple backup points, or backup versions of your website at any time. The benefit to you is that if you made a mistake, or for whatever reason want to restore to an older version of your website, you can do this with GoDaddy.
This is a very unique feature that other website builders don’t offer to you, and can come in very handy in the most inconvenient times!
One drawback of GoDaddy is that they don’t have an export function. What this means is that if you ever want to take the website out of GoDaddy website builder if you decide to leave them, they don’t have this function yet.
The lack of an export feature is not uncommon amongst drag and drop website builders as one of the main reasons for this, is that GoDaddy has a unique website building technology that won’t function properly outside of their own environment. So once you disconnect the website from GoDaddy, some functions will no longer work and other hosts cannot adapt to those functions.
If the ability to export your site is important to you, Weebly does have a full export option, and Squarespace allows you to export your blog.
PRICING – IS IT WORTH THE INVESTMENT?GoDaddy website builder is slightly different from some other website builders in that it does not offer you a free plan, nor do they have a limited time trial program.
However, they do have a 45 days no questions asked refund period if you sign up to their annual plans, or a 48 hours refund period if you sign up to their monthly plans. In our view, this removes a lot of the risks from you, should you decide that their builder isn’t suitable for you.
GoDaddy website builder offers 3 plans:
The pricing for the plans are in line with other website builders with similar capabilities for the Personal and Business plans.
The highest plan (Business Plus) is actually cheaper than other website builder’s highest plans. The main reason for this is probably due to the fact that other website builders provide you with e-commerce tools for their highest plans, while GoDaddy doesn’t (as discussed above).
In addition to getting website building tools, GoDaddy also gives you a free domain name which has a market value of around $12 per year.
The best value that you get, if you decide to use GoDaddy website builder, is the “instant” support you get. Considering the fact that you can have access to their support team through the phone or live chat within minutes, no matter which plan you sign up to, is worth a tremendous value to you. Their email support and support portal are also very helpful in our experiences.
So in our view, if you are serious about building a website and getting solid, consistent support, GoDaddy is a strong candidate you should consider.
GODADDY WEBSITE BUILDER REVIEW – CONCLUSION / RECOMMENDATIONBased on our GoDaddy website builder review, this easy to use, stylish and minimalistic builder can enable you to quickly build a good looking, professional website.
They have over 300 design themes for you to choose from, across a broad range of industries so it makes it easier for you to get your website up and running especially if you consider yourself without a lot of design talent.
With their 24/7/365 phone, live chat and email support, GoDaddy has one of the best reputation for providing solid support in the industry. This also helps you build a good website without a lot of keyboard bashing (from frustration that is!)
Their feature which allows you to create multiple backup versions of your website is also very helpful, just in case you ever want to revert to a previous version of your design.
A drawback of GoDaddy is that once you are committed to a design theme, you can’t switch themes for the same website (whereas other website builders do give you this ability) – so pick your template carefully before committing.
Another drawback is their lack of e-commerce tools. The GoDaddy website builder is not designed for building an online store at all. So if you are considering building an e-commerce website, take a look at a few other options here.
Although GoDaddy currently doesn’t have a free plan or a trial period, they do have afair refund policy where if you signed up for an annual plan, you can get a full refund within 45 days, or if you signed up for only a monthly plan, you have 48 hours to ask for a full refund. This effectively removes any financial risks from you.
If you want to create an award winning, industry leading website, then GoDaddy website builder isn’t the right tool for you. But if you want a relatively hassle-free, easy to use builder with a lot of design themes to pick up, and also being able to sleep better at night due to their strong support system, then GoDaddy website builder is a strong candidate for you to consider.
If you haven’t heard of GoDaddy, where have you been hiding? (Just kidding)
GoDaddy is the largest domain name registrar in the world, and offers one of the most comprehensive set of website building tools to its customers.
They manage over 57 million domain names (a domain name is just a website address, such as www.google.com), has more than 12 million paying customers (not free users, but people who actually happily pay), and has a very strong 24/7, 365 days customer support system (we can confirm this based on our own experiences).
So why are we highlighting all these points? It’s just to set a stage for you to understand who you are dealing with here. GoDaddy is a very strong, reputable company that has been playing Super Bowl ads for many years.
So if you are considering using GoDaddy website builder to create your website, rest assured that you are relying on a well established company with a very strong reputation for support (more on this below).
Whether you can build a good website with their tools is a completely different discussion, which is why you’re reading this GoDaddy website builder review, right?
Let’s dive right into our thoughts….
PROS ABOUT GODADDY:
- Easy to Use with Professional Design Themes – GoDaddy builder has a very intuitive user interface, so you won’t get overwhelmed with a lot of useless bells and whistles. All their tools are drag & drop (such as inserting images, slideshows, contact forms, etc), so you can position them any where on your website without any restrictions.GoDaddy also gives you over 300 professional looking themes, all pre-populated with content so it makes it easy for you to build out your website (this is exceptionally helpful if you don’t know where to start!) You just have to replace their pre-populated content (such as text and images) with your own and you’re ready to go. If you want to adjust the design and layout, it’s quite easy as you can just drag content around or add new pages. The user interface is smooth and easy to use.
- 24/7/365 Phone, Live Chat and Email Support – GoDaddy has a good reputation forproviding very strong support to its customers. When we say “strong”, we mean you can pick up your phone, call them any time and they will actually answer! Their website will show you how long it takes before you get through to them, and in our experiences the average is about 5 – 10 minutes which is really good.You can also engage in live chat, or if you’re not in a huge rush, you can submit a support ticket (email) in which they will get back to you in about 10 to 15 hours. So if you’re in a bit of a rush, phone support or live chat. As far as website builders go, GoDaddy has the best support system available to you.
- Create Backup Points & Restore Function – GoDaddy website builder allows you tocreate backup copies of your website whenever you want. So you can save multiple copies / versions of your website, just in case if you make a mistake and want to restore to a previous version of your website.This is a very powerful function that no other website builders offer, and can come in very handy to you if you accidentally saved some changes that you didn’t intend to. You can save multiple versions of your website so you’re not restricted to restoring only the most recent version. Backups are important, we’ve all felt the pain of not having that option!
CONS ABOUT GODADDY:
- Can’t Change Themes – Even though GoDaddy website builder has a lot of pre-made designer themes for you to select, one of the main downside is that once you’ve picked a theme to use, you can’t switch to another one without losing your content. So make sure you try out and choose your theme very carefully before committing to one. This is a bit annoying for sure.
- No e-Commerce Tools – This version of GoDaddy website builder doesn’t come with any e-commerce tools. GoDaddy has another website builder that’s dedicated specifically to online stores, so if you want to build an e-commerce store, that website builder will probably suit you better (or check out some other online store builders here). At the end of the day, if you just want to add a “buy now” button, you can use the “HTML Code” tool in the builder, and insert PayPal’s buy now button codes. But this gives you very limited functions. We’d suggest you check out other online store builders as highlighted above.
- Very Basic Mobile Display – Even though GoDaddy website builder does automatically convert your site into a “mobile friendly” interface for people visiting your website using smart phones, the look and feel of the mobile versions of their websites is “basic” at best, especially when compared to how good their themes look on a desktop computer. One unique function that they have is that you have the option to hide or display any content pieces from the mobile version of your website. So if you don’t want a specific slideshow to be displayed on your mobile website, you can switch it off. This is a pretty cool feature and gives you a bit more flexibility to configure your mobile website. But at the end of the day, the overall design / layout of the mobile site is “basic” at best.
GODADDY WEBSITE BUILDER IS IDEAL FOR….Based no our GoDaddy website builder review, if you are a small business owner, designer, musician, restaurant owner, a professional (lawyer, finance, accounting) who want to build a website that’s creative, GoDaddy should be able to help you.
As mentioned in the Top 3 Pros section above, GoDaddy website builder is easy to use, minimalistic (in a good way) and comes with great support. This enables you to quickly and efficiently gain an online presence, so you can focus on other busier parts of your life.
Technology can be a bit (or very!) painful at times, so having a strong, contactable support team to help you, and having the ability to make multiple backup versions of your website, can make your life a lot easier.
As mentioned under one of the drawbacks above, is that if you think that the majority of your visitors will be visiting you through their smartphones, then perhaps another website builder with stronger mobile interfaces will suit you better.
EASE OF USEGoDaddy website builder is a true drag & drop interface, so you can insert content on pretty much anywhere on the website (you can even overlap content if you really want to).
The platform is a WYSIWYG (which stands for What You See Is What You Get) builder, so whatever you insert into the website editor, will show up the same way once you publish your website.
The way GoDaddy lays out its builder is quite visually friendly. Their tool bar is neatly laid out on the left hand side, and you can even hide it to maximize your screen real estate for better editing. They only have one single tool bar to keep things simple and minimalistic which is nice. So you don’t have to dig around forever to find things.
As mentioned as one of the Pros above, in addition to phone, live chat and email support, GoDaddy has an extensive support library / documentation, so if you’re unsure of anything, you can always search for help in their support library (more on this below).
Overall, we found GoDaddy a lot easier to use than some other website builders in the market. They may not have as many bells and whistles, but the benefit to you is that they give you the necessary, core website building tools to get the job done without cluttering things up.
THEMES DESIGN OPTIONSGoDaddy gives you over 300 themes to pick from, designed specifically for various industry categories such as business, finance, law, education, health & beauty, music / entertainment, charity, design portfolio, family, wedding, real estate, restaurant, recreation, etc.
So the chances of you finding a design theme that suits your needs is pretty good.
As discussed above, one of the positive things about GoDaddy’s themes is that they come structured and pre-populated with content (which form part of the overall design of their themes), making it easy for you to just insert replace the content with your own.
This can save you a lot of time (versus creating your own design) and it’s especially helpful if you are unsure of your design capabilities.
One of the major drawbacks of GoDaddy website builder is that once you pick a theme, you can’t change to another theme without losing your content. So we recommend you play around with and test out a few themes to start, before finalizing things and start populating the theme with your own content.
Another issue to consider is that GoDaddy doesn’t give you access to edit the HTML or CSS codes of their themes. So if you know a bit of code or if you are working with a coder and want to make very specific design edits through codes, this option is not available to you at the moment. But, if you don’t intend to mess around with codes, then this won’t concern you at all.
Overall, GoDaddy website builder offers a good range of very stylish themes, and they are particularly helpful if you need a starting point to build a beautiful website, or if you don’t want to create a design from scratch.
Customer Support
GoDaddy is very well known to provide very strong support to its customers. You can reach a support rep within minutes on the phone, live chat, and if you are not in a rush, they answer their email support tickets usually within half a day.
All their support channels are made available to you 24/7, 365 days a year, and they don’t discriminate against which plan you are using. With most other services, to get phone support you have to be subscribed to their higher (if not highest) plans.
With GoDaddy, even if you are using their most basic plan, you can get help through all their support channels. That’s pretty awesome.
GODADDY WEBSITE BUILDER MOBILE DISPLAYGoDaddy automatically converts your website into a mobile friendly interface so that your visitors can visit you on their smartphones and get a different experience than looking at the desktop version of your website.
As mentioned, we view that their mobile function as “basic” at best. While you have the option to hide certain content that is displayed on your desktop version of your website from the mobile view, that’s as far as the flexibility goes.
Don’t get us wrong. This is actually a very interesting feature that most other website builders do not offer, but we were hoping (wishing) for more granular control over the mobile interface.
So at the end of the day, if you anticipate that a meaningful percentage of your visitors will be visiting you through their smartphones, you may want to consider using a website builder that has a stronger mobile editor.
GODADDY SEO (Search Engine Optimization)GoDaddy website builder allows you to optimize all the basic SEO functions such as title and description for each web page. This is no different from other website builders in the market, so it’s right on par.
What GoDaddy also offers is a SEO service that is above and beyond their website builder plans. Their SEO plan starts at $2.69 per month which is not a significant investment at all.
Services include granting you access to their keyword and topic suggestion tool, structuring your website with their Rich Snippet and Market Generator, 1-click submission of your website to over 100 search engines, including leading ones such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, and SEO checklist and ranking reports.
While all these functions can be done manually without paying for this added service, it does take time so the question becomes whether you have enough time to manually engage in these activities.
Tools that automate these functions can save you time. Time is money, right?
HOSTING AND EXPORT OPTIONSOnce you sign up to use the GoDaddy website builder, they include all the hosting services for you, so you don’t have to pay extra for that.
This is helpful so you don’t have to worry about managing hosting services as it can be technical (and a bit scary!) This way, you can focus on other more important things while GoDaddy manages technical issues such as security upgrades, and ensuring that your website is always working properly.
One fantastic feature that we mentioned under the Top 3 Pros section above, is that you can create multiple backup points, or backup versions of your website at any time. The benefit to you is that if you made a mistake, or for whatever reason want to restore to an older version of your website, you can do this with GoDaddy.
This is a very unique feature that other website builders don’t offer to you, and can come in very handy in the most inconvenient times!
One drawback of GoDaddy is that they don’t have an export function. What this means is that if you ever want to take the website out of GoDaddy website builder if you decide to leave them, they don’t have this function yet.
The lack of an export feature is not uncommon amongst drag and drop website builders as one of the main reasons for this, is that GoDaddy has a unique website building technology that won’t function properly outside of their own environment. So once you disconnect the website from GoDaddy, some functions will no longer work and other hosts cannot adapt to those functions.
If the ability to export your site is important to you, Weebly does have a full export option, and Squarespace allows you to export your blog.
PRICING – IS IT WORTH THE INVESTMENT?GoDaddy website builder is slightly different from some other website builders in that it does not offer you a free plan, nor do they have a limited time trial program.
However, they do have a 45 days no questions asked refund period if you sign up to their annual plans, or a 48 hours refund period if you sign up to their monthly plans. In our view, this removes a lot of the risks from you, should you decide that their builder isn’t suitable for you.
GoDaddy website builder offers 3 plans:
- Personal – $5.99 per month (currently on sale for $1.00 / month)
- Business – $9.99 per month (currently on sale for $5.99 / month)
- Business Plus – $14.99 per month (currently on sale for $10.99 / month)
The pricing for the plans are in line with other website builders with similar capabilities for the Personal and Business plans.
The highest plan (Business Plus) is actually cheaper than other website builder’s highest plans. The main reason for this is probably due to the fact that other website builders provide you with e-commerce tools for their highest plans, while GoDaddy doesn’t (as discussed above).
In addition to getting website building tools, GoDaddy also gives you a free domain name which has a market value of around $12 per year.
The best value that you get, if you decide to use GoDaddy website builder, is the “instant” support you get. Considering the fact that you can have access to their support team through the phone or live chat within minutes, no matter which plan you sign up to, is worth a tremendous value to you. Their email support and support portal are also very helpful in our experiences.
So in our view, if you are serious about building a website and getting solid, consistent support, GoDaddy is a strong candidate you should consider.
GODADDY WEBSITE BUILDER REVIEW – CONCLUSION / RECOMMENDATIONBased on our GoDaddy website builder review, this easy to use, stylish and minimalistic builder can enable you to quickly build a good looking, professional website.
They have over 300 design themes for you to choose from, across a broad range of industries so it makes it easier for you to get your website up and running especially if you consider yourself without a lot of design talent.
With their 24/7/365 phone, live chat and email support, GoDaddy has one of the best reputation for providing solid support in the industry. This also helps you build a good website without a lot of keyboard bashing (from frustration that is!)
Their feature which allows you to create multiple backup versions of your website is also very helpful, just in case you ever want to revert to a previous version of your design.
A drawback of GoDaddy is that once you are committed to a design theme, you can’t switch themes for the same website (whereas other website builders do give you this ability) – so pick your template carefully before committing.
Another drawback is their lack of e-commerce tools. The GoDaddy website builder is not designed for building an online store at all. So if you are considering building an e-commerce website, take a look at a few other options here.
Although GoDaddy currently doesn’t have a free plan or a trial period, they do have afair refund policy where if you signed up for an annual plan, you can get a full refund within 45 days, or if you signed up for only a monthly plan, you have 48 hours to ask for a full refund. This effectively removes any financial risks from you.
If you want to create an award winning, industry leading website, then GoDaddy website builder isn’t the right tool for you. But if you want a relatively hassle-free, easy to use builder with a lot of design themes to pick up, and also being able to sleep better at night due to their strong support system, then GoDaddy website builder is a strong candidate for you to consider.