Because GoDaddy is one of the most well-known companies in web hosting, you could expect it to provide excellent service. InMotion Hosting isn’t quite as well-known. Is it strong enough to compete with GoDaddy? During my experience evaluating hosting services, I’ve discovered that a host’s popularity is frequently more representative of the quality of its marketing than of the quality of its service.
Regrettably, GoDaddy is a perfect example. GoDaddy charges a fee for an SSL certificate, which is a necessary element of protection, but InMotion Hosting offers one for free. In addition, I found GoDaddy’s support service to be quite useless, in contrast to InMotion Hosting’s thorough and experienced support team.
With all of this in mind, I discovered InMotion Hosting to be the superior option – but that’s not the end of the storey. I compared both hosts in terms of performance, support, and other factors. Continue reading for the juicy information!
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1. Pricing and Plans
Shared, WordPress-specific, VPS, and dedicated server hosting are all available from GoDaddy and InMotion Hosting. However, both services are largely focused on low-cost shared hosting. They provide significant savings on these programmes through new customer discounts. These vanish upon renewal, therefore be aware that the prices of both hosts will skyrocket in the future.
You’d have to sign up for three years in advance with GoDaddy to get the greatest bargain. InMotion Hosting, on the other hand, provides its best costs with a biannual plan. Both providers’ entry-level packages have the same monthly pricing with these reductions — InMotion Hosting merely demands a shorter commitment.
While the prices are comparable, InMotion Hosting unquestionably provides superior value. The basic Launch package provides a free SSL certificate. An SSL certificate isn’t included with GoDaddy – you’d have to upgrade to a higher-tier plan or pay a monthly price for the Website Security add-on.
InMotion Hosting provides a money-back guarantee of 90 days. With yearly or longer commitments, GoDaddy offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, however shorter contracts are only protected for 48 hours. Overall, InMotion Hosting provides a better value for money, but be aware that some expensive add-ons may be pre-selected during the checkout process.
2. Support
Agents at GoDaddy lack critical knowledge – The Agents at InMotion Hosting are well-versed in their field.
Both suppliers give comparable types of assistance. GoDaddy and InMotion Hosting provide live chat help, phone assistance, a community forum, and a knowledge library with guides and lessons on the fundamentals. If you like, InMotion Hosting also offers ticket assistance.
However, I wouldn’t be able to get a good idea of the real help available unless I tested it myself. To that aim, I decided to put both hosts’ live chat services to the test by asking a few simple questions.
I began with GoDaddy. Let me be clear: this was not a pleasant experience. It was difficult just to keep in touch with an agency. I’d occasionally disconnect and be kicked out of the conversation. Occasionally, this would happen to the agent.
It’d be amusing if it didn’t mean I’d have to rewrite my questions again and over. Because GoDaddy does not preserve your support discussions, if you disconnect, you must re-explain your problem to another person. Which takes me to my second issue: support agents appear to be unfamiliar with GoDaddy’s offerings.
The representative began by copying and pasting comments into the chat window regarding how to enter my GoDaddy account number and PIN. But this was a pre-sales talk, so I didn’t even have an account. When I informed her this, she tried to sell me the basic WordPress plan, despite the fact that she had no idea what my needs were.
The most amusing portion came when I inquired about the differences between the shared Economy plan and the basic WordPress plan. She just stated that the features are posted on the internet under each package and that I should compare them myself. A completely meaningless engagement.
Then I tried InMotion Hosting. My early interactions with support were excellent. The person was absolutely truthful regarding the breadth of InMotion Hosting’s performance and provided prompt, thorough replies to my inquiries.
Unfortunately, as I transitioned from sales assistance to technical help, a major issue became obvious. On average, I had to wait 30-40 minutes simply to initiate a live chat support session. Worse, there was a wait between answers after I connected. I’d ask a question, and it would take a few moments to get an answer.
The agent agreed with me when I complained about the sluggish response times. They said they had to manage many conversations at once and that they are understaffed and overworked.
Overall, I experienced issues with both hosts’ assistance. However, I believe InMotion Hosting gives superior service. At the very least, you’ll get decent service, which is more than I can say about GoDaddy.
3. Features
GoDaddy charges for the basics, while InMotion Hosting provides them for free.
Unfortunately, GoDaddy’s nefarious practise of withholding essential services in order to sell them as costly add-ons does not stop with security. Unless you pay more, you also don’t receive any permanent email accounts. You do receive a free year of Microsoft 365 email, after which it will automatically renew at full price.
In instance, InMotion Hosting’s basic shared hosting package includes 10 email addresses. It also provides a free website migration service, whereas GoDaddy charges an additional fee for this. You’ll have to do it manually if you want to move your site for free with GoDaddy.
On all plans, GoDaddy provides greater storage capacity than InMotion Hosting. GoDaddy’s low-cost Economy plan has twice as much storage as InMotion Hosting’s comparable Launch package. With GoDaddy, upgrading to the Deluxe plan grants you unlimited storage – InMotion Hosting does not provide this in any of its plans.
InMotion Hosting includes $150 in advertising credits with each plan, which might help your site’s discoverability. Nothing of the type is available from GoDaddy. Overall, InMotion Hosting may provide less storage space, but it outperforms GoDaddy in every other way.
4. Performance
GoDaddy’s WordPress plans outperform InMotion Hosting.
I then compared speed and dependability. Surprisingly, GoDaddy keeps mum about the locations of its data facilities. All I could discover was that it has data centres in the United States, Europe, and Asia. The actual figure is unknown. Nonetheless, this is stronger coverage than InMotion Hosting, which only has two data centres on either coast of the United States.
GoDaddy’s shared hosting offerings make no mention of performance enhancement. The amount of CPU and RAM accessible to your site is determined by the plan you choose, so you may upgrade for faster performance. But that’s all there is to it. Instead, for improved speed, I’d prefer the WordPress plans, which are somewhat more expensive but include an optimised WordPress installation and access to a free CDN.
To cache website content for speedier delivery to your visitors, all of InMotion Hosting’s shared plans employ UltraStack, a proprietary technology with an NGINX proxy. It also incorporates extensive compression improvements, which result in speedier loading times for first-time users. There is no CDN support, however it is available by upgrading to a WordPress subscription.
It’s also worth considering that GoDaddy guarantees 99.9 percent uptime. If you have less than this amount of uptime in any given month, you may be entitled for reimbursement in the form of service credits. Except on Pro plans, where a “Pro Support SLA” guarantees 99.99 percent uptime, InMotion Hosting does not appear to give any broad legal uptime guarantee.
GoDaddy’s shared hosting options had unacceptably poor loading times in our performance testing. However, its WordPress plans were far quicker. To get the full results, see our GoDaddy review.
InMotion Hosting performed admirably in our performance testing. It outperformed GoDaddy’s shared hosting plans in terms of loading speed, but it was surpassed by GoDaddy’s WordPress plans. For more information, see our InMotion Hosting review.
Overall, InMotion Hosting outperforms the competition in terms of budget plans.
5. Security
GoDaddy does not provide free SSL on basic plans but InMotion Hosting does on all plans.
As previously stated, GoDaddy’s basic Economy and Deluxe shared hosting plans do not provide a free SSL certificate — only the far more costly Maximum and Ultimate plans do.
If you want an SSL certificate at a reasonable price from GoDaddy, you must purchase the Website Security add-on, which has an ongoing charge. This includes an SSL certificate as well as other fundamental security features like a firewall and virus protection.
However, without the add-on, GoDaddy does not leave you fully defenceless. Every plan includes 24/7 server monitoring by GoDaddy’s security staff, who will try to halt any harmful behaviour. You also receive free DDoS protection.
InMotion Hosting, like almost every other provider, includes an SSL certificate with every package. It also includes free hack and virus protection, so your site will be examined for any weaknesses on a regular basis. To top it all off, there’s some rudimentary DDoS defence.
Overall, both of these providers provide a comparable level of protection, but InMotion Hosting provides more for free, allowing them to win this round.
My favorite is InMotion Hosting.
While GoDaddy offers a higher performance potential, InMotion Hosting is the superior overall supplier. Many of the essentials are extra-cost with GoDaddy. Simply transferring your site over may wind up costing you more. InMotion Hosting comes with everything you need to get started quickly and easily.
GoDaddy’s loading speed is occasionally faster, but its performance is uneven. For fantastic performance on a budget, I’d recommend Hostinger, which outperforms both InMotion Hosting and GoDaddy. It is also far less costly than either.
Before you make your final choice, I recommend that you review our list of the finest web hosting providers. You may be able to discover a better option to these two hosts based on your specific requirements.
