GoDaddy Website Builder Review: Is It Right for You?

Upon booting up GoDaddy is that it asked what features I wanted for my website. I could choose between three options: “Sell with an online store”, “Book appointments online”, or the ominously named “Something else”.

This is the first step of GoDaddy’s ADI software which can build a personal template from scratch. Simply tell GoDaddy the name and industry of your new website and its AI will do the rest, generating a unique template designed for your specifications. In our testing, these templates were unique every single time, even when given the same prompts.

Other website builders, like Wix, have ADI too – but none are as forefront in the initial onboarding as GoDaddy. In comparison, GoDaddy’s ADI is slightly weaker than Wix’s. GoDaddy has fewer templates to draw from, covering a smaller range of industries and leading to generated templates that can feel generic and outdated.

Once complete, you’ll be prompted to choose a plan, but you can ignore it and continue on GoDaddy’s free plan for as long as you’d like – but be warned, features like SEO can’t be accessed unless you upgrade. 

Once in, a pop-up checklist of ready-made features you can now instantly add appears. I thought this was a really nice touch since it saved time from having to find and add these features in the editor. You’re then able to “Take a Tour” of your new website, showing you exactly where the most important tools are. This was fine, but other builders like Wix and Hostinger offer step-by-step tutorials where it actually teaches you how everything works – GoDaddy just drops you in.

Luckily, there’s not much to understand with GoDaddy’s editor. GoDaddy is a block-based website builder, so I could add new sections by clicking the “Add Section” button. Then, I make my choice from the menu and GoDaddy inserts it into the page. In our group testing, my fellow writers also enjoyed how simple GoDaddy was to use. All of us were able to have a website live in around 30 minutes of editing.

While building a website with GoDaddy is simple, it’s also quite surface-level. Don’t expect to be able to change the minute details of the sections or features you add, and unlike Squarespace or Wix, there’s no drag-and-drop, so they’re rigidly attached to the page. This keeps everything neat, but also looks rather boring.

GoDaddy is our best-rated website builder for value for money in our rankings. The reason for this is its very affordable plans. Each one exists between the $10-$20 per month range, and typically only charges extra for one particular feature, whether it be SEO, Booking, or Ecommerce. 

Compared to other builders, this is a steal. In Wix’s pricing, the cheapest plan, Light, begins at $16 per month, but it comes with so few essential features that we’d recommend the $27 per month Core plan instead, which is better value for money.

You can see the full breakdown of GoDaddy’s plans in this table:

While these prices are good, they’re introductory deals. After a year they’ll renew at a higher price. Here’s a full list of the renewal prices:

• Basic plan: $12.99 per month
• Premium plan: $22.99 per month
• Commerce plan: $26.99 per month

I was a little disappointed to see the prices go up rapidly after a year. Thankfully, if you just want to test out GoDaddy without committing to a full year just yet, then there’s its free plan.

I should mention the free plan has some limitations, such as banner ads advertising GoDaddy and no custom domain name – which is a big con for small businesses. But this free plan is great for testing your website out and playing around without having to commit any money.

Are There Additional Fees I Should Know About?

GoDaddy has a number of additional fees to consider, as well as the initial plan subscription. Some of these are avoidable by going to other providers, and some are inevitable, especially if you wish to use GoDaddy’s ecommerce capabilities.

Domains

GoDaddy is one of the biggest domain registrars on the web and offers those using its website builder a free domain for a year. Afterward, you’ll have to renew it for $12.99 per month (billed annually) if it’s a regular .com domain. More sought-after domains may have more expensive renewal fees.

Email

As well as a free domain, GoDaddy offers a free professional email from Microsoft 365 across its plans. The renewal price for this is $7.99 per month (billed annually) for the Basic plan, $9.99 for added security features, and $14.99 for the full Microsoft Office 365 plan.

Processing and Transaction fees

If you’re planning on selling with GoDaddy, you’ll need to use GoDaddy Payments which comes with the GoDaddy Commerce plan, a payment-processing service that charges both processing and translation fees on all sales.

• Transaction fee: 2.3% +$0.30 on each transaction
• Processing fee: Between 2.6% + $0.10 and 3.5% + $0.49, depending on credit card carrier

GoDaddy tends to rely on its ADI to make a custom template for you. While these templates are decent, and come with the benefit of already being specified to your answers, they can’t hide that, design-wise, GoDaddy is a bit outdated.

When I saw my own site, GoDaddy had filled it with images and text, giving me a really solid idea of what my website should look like. However, when I tried to be a bit creative, GoDaddy’s design tools restricted me.

If you prefer the old-fashioned way and want a non-AI-built template, GoDaddy has over 200 templates to choose from. On top of that, each template has 20 Theme Customizer options which gives you different layout options. It’s a nice choice to have, and it certainly makes the creative side of building your website super fast, but this will disappoint the creatives out there who want to design the website themselves.

On top of this, GoDaddy doesn’t have a mobile-friendly preview option in the editor. This means that to see how your website looks on cell phones, you’ll have to physically open it up on one and then go back to the editor. This is a major hassle, and certainly not user-friendly – especially when mobile users make up over 60% of all internet traffic.

If I were to describe GoDaddy’s features, I would call them “Wix-Lite”. Like Wix, GoDaddy has all the features a small business owner would need to run a successful website. It has blog functionality, image galleries, embedded video and music, Google Maps integration, contact forms, promo banners, call-to-action buttons, GoDaddy Insight scores, and more.

But, unlike Wix, these features are not to the same standard of quality. They get the job done, but users looking for a real specialty in GoDaddy won’t find it. This is partly because GoDaddy has no App Market. If you need a specific tool or third-party plugin for your website, GoDaddy doesn’t have an easy fix for you, which dragged down its overall features score in our research.

But that doesn’t mean GoDaddy is useless. Far from it. I’ve put a special highlight on what features GoDaddy does best:

Social Media (Branded Content Creation)

Where GoDaddy succeeds is in getting your website’s name out there. And nowhere is better for getting your name out nowadays than social media.

GoDaddy offers integration with both Facebook and Instagram, letting you synchronize posts and content across both platforms. I was very impressed that I was able to track all the likes, comments, and analytics from both platforms, seeing what posts were doing well and which ones weren’t – all from the GoDaddy dashboard.

GoDaddy’s greatest tool however is its GoDaddy Studio app. With this mobile app, you can use AI to create branded content for social media in the form of videos or ads for Facebook and Instagram. These are a great, creative way to get the word out about your website, as 92% of internet users consume online video in some form each day.

Email Marketing

GoDaddy offers email marketing across all of its plans, letting you send promotional emails, welcome emails, and even newsletters from the GoDaddy dashboard. I saw that I was able to send up to 100 emails per month on the Basic plan, and up to 100,000 on the most expensive Commerce plan.

Once sent, you can track their analytics like any email campaign. You can automate these emails too, and if you’re on the Commerce plan, you’ll also get automated emails to confirm orders or encourage customers to return to their abandoned carts.

SEO

When using GoDaddy’s SEO for website builders, I loved how easy it was to understand. SEO can be a tricky skill to learn, and an even harder one to master – yet all new websites need to drive traffic to their pages.

Here’s what you can do with GoDaddy’s SEO tools:

• Edit meta titles and descriptions
• Change URL slugs
• Add image alt text
• Receive keyword support
• Use mobile responsive themes
• Added custom headers and URLs

Booking

GoDaddy has restructured its pricing plans since 2023 to make its Booking and Appointment tools a feature of its plans. While you can have one-time appointments on all plans, you’ll have to upgrade to the Premium and Commerce plans to have recurring bookings and appointments.

When I tested the full package, I saw GoDaddy has really pulled out all the stops to make this a key feature of the platform. From client management tools, two-way calendar syncing, group events (that integrate with social media), and even text and email notifications.

What I noticed most of all was how integrated it was with GoDaddy’s other marketing tools – from emails to social media and texting. It also adds great organizational tools, like class lists and staff members.

GoDaddy has set itself up as a solid option for online booking websites, like a yoga instructor or therapist. Its booking tool is on par with what I would expect from Wix, and nothing makes this more evident than the fact you can accept card payments – without having to pay for full ecommerce capabilities.

With the Premium plan, small business owners (who use appointments) can start earning by only paying $14.99 per month (billed annually), which is a great deal.

Domains

GoDaddy is one of the leading domain registrars on the web, with 84 million domains and counting. The price for a domain is anywhere between $5.99 – $12.99 (VAT not included) to purchase a domain for one year, but competitive top-level domains like .com and .ai can go for more.

With over 84 million domains, GoDaddy may be your best bet on securing that perfect domain name. If you need a bit of help, GoDaddy has added Chat GPT support to help you brainstorm the perfect one.

GoDaddy has really embraced the current AI website builder revolution. I’ve already mentioned a few of the AI features in this review, but here’s a quick recap of some of GoDaddy’s AI tools:

• ADI – Artificial Design Intelligence used to build a custom template
• AI Branded Content – Used in the GoDaddy Studio app to generate video content and social ads
• Domain Chat GPT – Used to help users find the perfect domain name

Recently, GoDaddy announced its new feature, GoDaddy Airo, which uses generative AI to help small businesses create an online presence even faster. This fully integrated feature will handle a lot of the work required in starting a new small business website, with GoDaddy’s research saying it will save new users $4000 and roughly 300 hours of work. Handy!

GoDaddy Airo is not available globally but is open for US users. In my personal opinion, GoDaddy reached for the stars, and GoDaddy Airo offers some of the best website builder integration I’ve seen – truly showing how useful this technology can be. Here’s what you can expect from Airo:

• Logo designs – this helps your business become recognizable online
• Create a coming soon website – when you’re not ready to fully launch your business online yet
• Set up a professional email account and suggest social media handles – GoDaddy Airo bases these on your registered domain name, helping your business appear more professional within the market
• Generate product descriptions based on your uploaded product photos – this is similar to the Shopify Magic tool launched in 2023
• Register your business for a free LLC – thanks to GoDaddy’s partnership with ZenBusiness
• Create email marketing campaigns – helps your business engage with your target audience
• Generate a social media calendar – know important holidays and the best times to post
• AI-powered SEO – optimize your site for search engines
• Generated responses to customers – using GoDaddy Airo, collect and reply to all customer interactions from across all your platforms

Full ecommerce tools are only available on GoDaddy’s Commerce plan. You’ll be able to sell unlimited products to customers, ship them out, and (hopefully) receive a lot of cash in return.

On the Commerce plan, you get:

• SSL Security to protect customer payments and transactions
• Abandoned cart recovery
• To accept payments from PayPal, Google Pay, and Apple Pay
• Promotions and discounts
• Free and paid shipping options
• Site performance tracking

Compared with Shopify or Wix, GoDaddy’s ecommerce tools are not much to shout about. If you’re a small business and just plan to sell a few homemade products, then GoDaddy will be perfectly suitable. Anything more than that and you’ll need a more complete ecommerce provider.

If you want a full, detailed breakdown of GoDaddy’s ecommerce, check out our full GoDaddy Ecommerce Review.

GoDaddy offers a fair amount in regards to help and support for customers, including:

• 24/7 phone and live chat
• Social media
• Knowledge Center
• Community forum
• Specialist support
• Courses, webinars, and podcasts

With GoDaddy being so streamlined to use, I rarely had to use these at all, but it’s reassuring to know they’re there. The one issue I found was wondering where certain features were. For example, I went to the knowledge center only to find an article for a feature GoDaddy didn’t have.

This was confusing, and GoDaddy should do a better job of separating them from the actual guides.

For this in-depth review, I took a magnifying glass to GoDaddy and brought you a comprehensive run-down of all of its most relevant features. I have Website Builder Expert’s excellent research methodology to rely on, collected by our team of researchers and writers like myself. Each year, we test each builder across a number of metrics and categories, build with and test each builder ourselves, and then collect it all to form the scores you see on this piece.

For GoDaddy, I knew that I wanted to highlight its particular strengths to new users; that being its super easy and quick builder and its impressive list of business features. In tandem together, GoDaddy makes for a great website builder for those who need a business website but have limited technical knowledge.

We recommend GoDaddy for anyone looking to build a website quickly without compromising too much on professionalism. For both entrepreneurs and small businesses, GoDaddy is an ideal choice. Its ADI editor makes building your site as easy as possible and also gives you options for customization.

GoDaddy’s website builder is great for selling online in small quantities, making it ideal for small businesses who are time-conscious and need a site live ASAP. However, if you want a personal website, or your business is in an artistic industry, it may not be your best bet.

Let’s not forget that GoDaddy has made great headway in improving its SEO and site speed capabilities, so we can only expect it to level up from here – watch this space!