GoDaddy Website Builder Review | The Squarespace Killer?

How did I get here?

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I hate GoDaddy with a passion. Due to their absurdly high prices, pushy upsell tactics, and overall grimy business practices. With that being said, it dawned on me that I’ve never actually tried the GoDaddy website builder. How can you hate on a company when you haven’t tried everything they have to offer? Before I knew it, I was signing up for a free trial.

The GoDaddy Website Builder shocked me.

I signed up for the free trial, and…. wow! I was pleasantly surprised by how simple and powerful the GoDaddy website builder is. The setup wizard helps you pick a theme and get the basics configured. Once you have access to the editor, you can get to work.

The slick editor reminded me of Squarespace. It’s simpler to use than Wix, and it has the same wide variety of sections and elements that Squarespace offers.

GoDaddy also offers an impressive mobile app that lets you edit all aspects of your site on-the-go. The app allows you to build an entire website from your phone, making this an enticing option if you got rid of your laptop and jumped on the mobile-only bandwagon.

The surprises didn’t stop there – GoDaddy also offers an SEO wizard that helps you optimize your site for Google in a breeze. It breaks things down and walks you through powerful optimization practices that I use for all of my websites. It was refreshing to see GoDaddy put great thought and effort into a service like this.

The blog features of the site builder are the weakest link. You’re limited to basic formatting like bold, italics, and underline, and you can’t change the font size. It’s a rather bland blogging experience, but I wouldn’t recommend using a drag-and-drop website builder like GoDaddy or Squarespace if your site is primarily a blog. WordPress.com or WordPress.org are better suited for this. Squarespace and Wix also handle blog posts inferior to WordPress, so perhaps it’s just the nature of the beast.

Up to this point, it seemed like GoDaddy did a complete 180. Could it be that GoDaddy is now offering great services at reasonable prices?

Almost, but it’s still a GoDaddy product.

Unfortunately, this is where my honeymoon ends. When checking the pricing page, you’ll learn that the cheapest plan is $15/month or $120/year. Seems reasonable! But there had to be a catch.. the powerful SEO features that should be included with any website builder are – you guessed it – an upsell.

If you want to access these essential SEO features, you now must pay $20/month or $180/year – more than Squarespace, which is my recommended website builder and is already at the “high end” of pricing for website builders.

Squarespace can charge $16/month for their services because they offer the best drag-and-drop website builder for most users. Is GoDaddy’s website builder worth the extra $4 monthly cost? Absolutely not. GoDaddy needs to best website builder known to man if they are going to charge like they are, and Squarespace, Wix, or WordPress are better options. Why, you ask?

My GoDaddy Website Was Crazy Slow.

When I sent my test GoDaddy site to my friend, he commented that it took forever to load on his phone. I visited the site on my phone, and I also experienced crazy load times. I don’t know if this is because I had the trial and not a paid plan, but the site felt sluggish.

GoDaddy Struggled With Support.

I’ve actually known GoDaddy to have decent support from past experiences, but this time was awful. When asking basic questions to a live chat agent, they gave rather unprofessional replies such as “Umm no, it cant be done like this.” That’s an exact quote from a support rep claiming I would never be able to login and use the GoDaddy app because I created my account with Facebook, and the GoDaddy app has no “Sign in with Facebook” option.

After a frustrating experience with their call back feature, I finally called GoDaddy myself. I spoke to a rep who was kind and helpful, but she did quickly correct me and tell me I was wrong when I said that I didn’t think I had a username and password since I signed in with Facebook.

The rep did help me sign in to the GoDaddy app, but I didn’t get the warm and fuzzies from any representative at GoDaddy. They seemed nice and bubbly until you showed no interest in falling for their upsell attempts and just asking for help.

So, Do I Recommend The GoDaddy Site Builder?

Nope. It’s too expensive, I can’t stand behind upselling essential features like SEO management, it’s slug speed, and the support doesn’t cut it. I’ll admit, this was the most positive experience I’ve had with a GoDaddy product. It’s still a GoDaddy service with all of the GoDaddy quirks, but I can see GoDaddy trying. The amount of resources and effort it takes to create a website builder of this quality is high, and I wish that GoDaddy would swallow their pride, squash their greed, and focus on creating amazing products at amazing prices for amazing people.

So what should you use to build your website? I’m still recommending either Squarespace, Wix, or WordPress depending on your needs. Be sure to check out the other content on my channel to discover which one is right for you!