One of the most difficult things about web hosting solutions is finding the right one, the perfect one for your website. You really need to do your homework to pick the right one, and that’s the purpose of this review. We will compare two web hosting giants, iPage and GoDaddy, and we help you decide the right one.
A lot of people trust these two web hosting companies because they’ve been around for more than a decade. So, it can be quite difficult to pick the right one. In this review, we will compare the similarities, differences, advantages, and disadvantages of both web hosts. Afterward, we will conclude on the right one for you.
iPage comes with its own custom vDeck user interface, which is quite easy to use plus a drag and drop builder and a lot of extra exciting features.
On the other hand, GoDaddy has been named as the world’s biggest domain service provider that provides hosting packages for a lot of operating systems, including Linux and Windows. These two hosting services have a lot of unique characteristics, including uptime, server security, customer support, and so much more.
iPage vs GoDaddy Comparison
These two services provide all the known types of hosting solutions, which are shared, VPS, and Dedicated hosting options.
Shared Hosting
Both services offer a Shared hosting plan for their customers, which is one of the cheapest hosting plans that you can go for. If you are just starting a small business or maybe you just want to build a simple website, then you should go for a shared hosting plan of any of these two companies. You won’t be spending much, and you will have enough resources for your website.
Users will have to share the hosting server among themselves, and both companies offer unlimited storage and bandwidth on their shared hosting plans. But do not forget that these limits are based on fair usage policy.
Vps Hosting
Virtual Private Server (VPS) is considered as the second level of shared hosting plans. It’s a bit more expensive, but you will be getting your website on a virtual private server that will be created on the platform of the main server of your hosting company. This means that you will have full personal access to important resources.
With GoDaddy, you will have full access, partial access, personal access VPS packages with up to 240GB storage, unlimited bandwidth, and 8GB memory that you can use for your website. While iPage provides up to 120Gb disk space for its customers with 4TB bandwidth and 8GB memory on VPS hosting plans.
Bandwidth and Disk Space
Although both companies boast of offering unlimited bandwidth and disk space as part of their plans, you should not forget that there is a fair usage policy in place. However, you shouldn’t worry about that if you are sure that your business will not consume more than the normal limits.
Control Panel
These two companies are not the same when it comes to the control panel implementation. A control panel is one of the important features of a good web hosting service because it is the platform that you will be using for your daily website management tasks.
GoDaddy uses the popular cPanel control panel while iPage uses the less known vDeck, which is quite good too. Although your choice might come down to your preference, there are some attributes that you need to consider. cPanel has been around for a very long time, and it is still regarded as one of the best to date. A lot of builders and services prefer cPanel because it’s easy to use.
vDeck, on the other hand, is one of the newcomers used by fewer web hosting companies. Some people believe that the vDeck control panel is not really user-friendly compared to cPanel.
Reliability And Uptime
iPage boasts of having a 99.9% guarantee that your website will always run smoothly, and they offer this guarantee on all their plans. Although, they won’t tell us their crediting plan if they can meet up to the promise.
Also, GoDaddy boasts of being able to provide the same uptime level of 99.9%, but they have a clause that you need to know. They promise to offer a 5% credit of your hosting for 30 days if they fail on their claim of 99.9% uptime.
Security
With iPage, you will be getting daily malware and spam scans, and they charge a small fee per day to get your files backed up to the cloud. You can also back up your files to your computer for free. They also offer multiple redundancies, which means that every system has an identical backup, which will replace the main system if you come across any issue. There is also a 24/7 customer support team that will help you fix any problem. Other features include an extra layer of security, which is known as SiteLock that is free for all clients of iPage.
When it comes to GoDaddy, you will be provided with daily malware scans and backups for your files. You will need to pay a small fee to get your files backed up in the cloud. Considering the fact that GoDaddy is the biggest domain service, this makes it a target for hackers. But you can trust the security level of the web service to block any attack. You will also be getting an uninterrupted power supply, 24/7 customer support system, and top-level cooling systems with CCTV monitoring team that ensures that nothing goes wrong with your servers.
Plan Upgrade
With iPage, there is little information on their website regarding this; however, most of the web hosting companies will charge the difference between the plan you are currently on and the higher plan that you want to subscribe to.
Upgrading on GoDaddy is quite easy and cheap because you just need to pay the difference between your current package and the upgraded one. You can even do it by yourself if you have the technical know-how.
Cancellation Policy: How Long Is The Free Trial And Money Back Guarantee?
When you subscribe to any hosting plan on iPage, you will be offered a 30-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked. If you register a domain name, you will need to pay an extra fee of $15. They also offer an “anytime” guarantee plan, which means you can cancel your subscription even after the first 30 days, and you will still be refunded of the unused portion of your hosting package.
GoDaddy has a 45-day money-back guarantee on its yearly plan. However, if you are subscribing to their monthly plan, you will only get a guarantee of 48 hours. Both guarantee plans are only available to the hosting plans and do not cover the domain name.
Support Options
Both web hosting companies provide dedicated customer service through telephone, email, and webchat. There is also a robust and comprehensive knowledge base on the website of both companies. With both companies, you will be able to contact support at any time of the day.
iPage offers a premium support system that you can pay for. This will ensure that your questions are answered quickly. GoDaddy provides extensive “how-to” videos that you can use at any time if you come across any issue.
Any Extra Or Free Features?
If you are building a site for the first time, iPage will offer you a free domain for the first term. You will also get $100 for Google AdWords and Bing/Yahoo advertising. You will be provided with a free listing on sites like yellowpages.com. You will be provided with tons of free website templates, a free SSL certificate, a free email address, and free building tools if you are a WordPress builder.
GoDaddy offers free website migration, a free website builder, $100 credits for Google AdWords advertising, a one-click purchase of extra resources, and a free SSL certificate. All these are available under the ultimate plan. The economy plan offers a free email, and the business plan comes with a free Office 365, discount coupons, and other cool features.
Technical Assistance
If you want to launch an online store, you will need to have a good idea of the web hosting services that supports e-commerce.
iPage offers a free online store that is very easy to install. You will enjoy top-notch website design packages, professional SEO service, and a pay-per-click ad campaign service. You will also have access to an eCommerce shopping cart, support for PayPal for your customers to pay online, Zen cart, and some other important features that will really help your business.
While GoDaddy offers an online store creator that is available at different plans, you will be allowed to upload up to 5000 products with store integration with Square’s point-of-sale system. You will have access to several shipping options and support for online payment services like PayPal, Apple Pay, Stripe, and some other ones. Additional features include coupon codes and full integration with social media platforms like Facebook to advertise your products.
Which Provider is Better: Godaddy Or iPage?
What you have to do is to list out the objectives of your business and the kind of web hosting service that will work perfectly with your business idea. What is your budget? What type of website do you want? What are the marketing plans that you have for your website? Once you answer these questions, you will be able to easily decide whether you should go with GoDaddy or iPage or maybe another hosting service entirely.