So what do you do when you have a site that targets an international audience and needs to go fast everywhere? You Go-Daddy!
I have multiple sites that I manage and most of them target specific regions. In this case I simply us a local host provider (i.e. in New Zealand) to make sure that I am getting the best speeds possible.
However, in the case of international sites, I have to use a host that is not only trusted but also provides the global reach that I need to get the speeds consistent globally.
I have tried CrazyDomains and GoDaddy over the past few years and both seem to cater for my needs. Where GoDaddy trumps CrazyDomains is in service, consistency and uptime.
Offer for our readers: 25% off WordPress Hosting from GoDaddy!
I have received reasonable service from Crazy and not here to bash them, however; after a number of issues where my sites can be down for up to 5 hours at a time with no ETA or explanation, or random domains popping up in my backend as if I purchased them; I have had enough.
GoDaddy has been the only host that has provided consistent performance, great customer service, fixed any issues in a timely manner and given me the uptime they promised; I have to say, GoDaddy is the winner.
Managed WordPress Hosting.
So a few weeks ago I decided I am moving back to GoDaddy. I called up their customer service team to discuss what would be the best package for me. I spoke to a lovely gentleman who seemed to enjoy the chat and pointed me to their brand new Managed WordPress Hosting package.
I firmly believe that this is just a gimmick (managed hosting), but they seemed to do things differently.
Main Features as stated on their website:
- Free domain with annual plan – Restrictions apply
- 1000s of themes and plugins
- One-click migration tool
- sFTP access to WordPress files
- Nightly backups
- Redundant firewalls, malware scanning and DDoS protection
- Automatic WordPress core updates
- Temporary website address
- Multi-language dashboard: English, Spanish or Portuguese
- And the friendliest support team that are genuinely available 24 hours.
I purchased a plan to suit and clicked on the setup button and was provided with two options, install WordPress or migrate your old site.
I selected the migration option and provided my FTP login details and let it do its thing. I realised that this was an automatic migration and within minutes received an email stating that one of my plugins were banned due to security reasons and issues in the past.
The plugin was a cache plugin but this did not phase me due to the fact that GoDaddy do server side caching automatically. For some this may seem a little controlled but for most this ‘control or lack of control’ suits just fine.
Within 30min I received an email again that the site was fully migrated and was given a temporary address to view it. The migrated site was exactly the same, and then pointed my domain to the new name servers. All done!
Logging back into my site I noticed a few new plugins. GoDaddy installed a migration plugin and some sort of educational plugin (how to use WordPress). I did not need these after the move so uninstalled them but did manage to have a quick look around the education plugin- awesome if you are new to WordPress.
My site is now running heaps faster, has been totally stable (I had frequent downtime at Crazy) and super happy with the service I received.
Here’s the proof that it is faster (not just by a bit but by a long shot)! The below screenshot is from my crawl stats in Webmaster Tools from Google. On the top graph we see more Kilobytes downloaded and the bottom shows the decline in load times.
To top it off, I cut my hosting costs down by half!
I know there will be some out there that have nothing good to say about GoDaddy, but let me tell you this. GoDaddy is one of the largest host providers out there.
You can be sure of a few things:
- Their support team always answer and are super helpful.
- Pricing is perfect i.e. find something cheaper that performs as well and gives you the support.
- Speed is fast. I have also tried other hosts such as SiteGround and GoDaddy was faster by over 30%.
- Managed hosting gives you a lot of features and generous allowances
I have never been duped by them, given the cold shoulder, and never had weird things happen to my blog. I recommend GoDaddy for this exact reason. Nobody is perfect but GoDaddy ticks all the boxes for me.
