Need a quick rundown of GoDaddy’s strengths and weaknesses? Check out its pros and cons below:

To help you decide whether GoDaddy is ideal for your business’ needs, take a look at these pointers:

When booting up GoDaddy, I was 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 artificial design intelligence (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 offer such a straightforward onboarding experience as GoDaddy. Because of this ease of use, I do recommended GoDaddy’s ADI for anyone completely new to building websites.

While GoDaddy offers a speedy AI setup, it falls short on design – especially compared to alternatives like Squarespace’s Blueprint AI, which adds a few extra steps to the setup but provides a more developed and tailored starting template. GoDaddy has fewer templates to draw from, covering a smaller range of industries and leading to generated templates that can feel generic and outdated. Opt for a platform like Squarespace instead if you need a more sophisticated website design.

Once complete, you’ll be prompted to choose a pricing 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 I’d made it into GoDaddy’s editor, a pop-up checklist of ready-made features I could add to my website appeared. This included:

• Image Galleries – To display a carousel of high-quality imagery. You can store your website’s media in GoDaddy’s media library.
• Reviews – I could connect my business website to Facebook and pull through reviews left by customers, displaying them on the homepage.
• Contact Us – A place to leave important contact details for website visitors to access. This includes a contact form alongside somewhere to display company details like emails, phone numbers, and opening times if your business has a physical location.
• Online Appointments – If you need to accept appointments, you can add one online appointments section to your GoDaddy website where customers can book your services. However, you’ll need to be on the Premium plan to accept payments for these appointments.
• Privacy Policy – Appearing near the bottom of your homepage, this is where you can clearly explain how your website uses user data and keeps it secure.
• Subscription Forms – Where website users can sign up to your email list. Useful if your business has a regular newsletter.
• Menu/Price Lists – Ideal for businesses with products or services, you can showcase your prices on your website in a sleek list.

I thought that 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.

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 it can make your website look slightly plain. For a more visually exciting website, I recommend exploring Squarespace and Wix’s design tools instead.

In our rankings, GoDaddy offers the best value for money due to its very affordable plans. Its plans range from $9.99 to $20.99 per month when billed annually, and typically only charges extra for one particular feature, whether it be SEO, Booking, or Ecommerce.

Compared to other builders, this is a steal. For instance, Wix’s pricing starts at $17 per month (billed annually), which is significantly more expensive than GoDaddy’s cheapest plan at $9.99 per month (billed annually). GoDaddy even dropped its starting price in late 2024 from $10.99 to $9.99 per month; a refreshing change when we usually see builders increase their prices.

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:

1. Basic plan: $16.99 per month (billed annually)
2. Premium plan: $29.99 per month (billed annually)
3. Commerce plan: $34.99 per month (billed annually)

I was a little disappointed to see the prices go up rapidly after a year, though you can still test out GoDaddy without committing to a full year with 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 giving the website builder a spin without having to commit any payments straight away.

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 want 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

GoDaddy used to offer a free Microsoft 365 Email with website builder plans, but I was disappointed to find out that they removed this offer in 2024. Now, you get a 30-day free trial of a professional email with GoDaddy Airo and from there you’ll need to pay GoDaddy if you want one for your business. Thankfully, these plans are quite affordable:

• Microsoft 365 Email Essentials: $7.99 per month (billed annually). Comes with 10GB storage and the ability to use your website’s domain address in your email address
• Microsoft 365 Email Plus: $9.99 per month (billed annually). Your storage jumps up to 50GB on this plan – ideal if you need additional space
• Microsoft 365 Online Business Essentials: $14.99 per month (billed annually). This plan comes with additional web apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Microsoft Teams

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: 2.7% +$0.30 on each ecommerce transaction
• Processing fee: Varies 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. As of late 2024, GoDaddy has added a mobile-friendly preview option, which makes it easier than ever to ensure all of your site visitors have a positive experience – especially important since mobile users make up over 60% of online traffic.

On top of that, each template has 22 Theme Customizer options which gives you different layout variations. 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.

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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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 meta descriptions – You can tweak these to change how your pages appear on search engine results
• Change URL slugs – Make sure that these URLs are SEO-friendly and clearly indicate the contents of each page
• Add image alt text – You can use this feature to describe the contents of your website’s imagery. This makes your website accessible for visually impaired users
• Receive keyword support – I could access GoDaddy’s SEO Wizard from the dashboard to generate relevant keywords for my website
• Use mobile responsive themes – This will enhance your website’s technical SEO and keep your website user friendly

4. Booking

GoDaddy has restructured its pricing since 2023 and, as a result, has integrated Booking and Appointment into its plans. While you can have one-time appointments on all plans, you’ll have to upgrade to the Premium or Commerce options to have access to 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.

5. 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

In March 2024, 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 currently available in the US and is slowly expanding to other regions. 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 – GoDaddy’s Airo can generate a unique logo for your business, which can help you get recognized online.
• Create a coming soon website – Use this 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 – All thanks to GoDaddy’s partnership with ZenBusiness.
• Create email marketing campaigns – AI email templates can be automated which helps your business engage with your existing customers and target audience.
• Generate a social media calendar and publish content – GoDaddy’s social media calendar tells you about important holidays and the best times to post. Airo can then fill the calendar with suggested ready-to-post content.
• Create social media ads – GoDaddy Airo will help you build ads that can be placed on Google, Instagram or Facebook.
• AI-powered SEO – Makes it easy to optimize your site for search engines
• Generated responses to customers – Using GoDaddy Airo, you can collect and reply to all customer interactions from across all your platforms.

GoDaddy’s ecommerce tools are only available on the Commerce plan, costing $20.99 per month (billed annually). 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 which sends reminders to customers when they’ve left an item in their cart
• To accept payments from PayPal, Google Pay, and Apple Pay
• Promotions and discounts, such as digital gift cards or promotional banners
• Free and paid shipping options
• Site performance tracking from the dashboard’s built-in analytics

Additionally, you can integrate your GoDaddy website with in-person sales. Once you’ve bought a GoDaddy Poynt Card Reader, which cost $99 each, this device will allow enable you to start accepting payments from anywhere, be it your brick-in-mortar store or market stall. Just be aware that its in-person transaction fees are 2.5% + 0¢ per sale.

Compared with other platforms on the market, 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 powerful ecommerce provider like Shopify that’s better suited to businesses with a large or scaling inventory.

What happens when you get stuck? Well, GoDaddy offers a fair amount in regards to help and support for customers, including:

• 24/7 phone and live chat which is accessible from GoDaddy’s “Contact Us” page
• Social media messaging, with GoDaddy’s business chat available from the official Instagram account
• A knowledge center containing resources on account management, domains, marketing, and other essential topics
• A community forum where you can ask other GoDaddy users for help
• Additional courses, webinars, and podcasts

With GoDaddy being so streamlined to use, I rarely had to use these help and support features at all, but it’s reassuring to know that 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. 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!

• Curious to see where GoDaddy ranks overall? See our list of the best website builders.

Squarespace has four premium plans to choose between: Basic, Core, Plus, and Advanced. Pricing has increased this year, now ranging from $16 to $99 per month (billed annually).

See the table below for a quick overview of each plan:

You can save up to 28% by paying annually instead of every month, or you could save 10% on your Squarespace plan by using our exclusive code “WBE10” at checkout.

If you’re not ready to sign up for a premium plan just yet, Squarespace offers a 14-day free trial so you can get familiar with the platform and its settings before spending a cent. No card details are necessary at this stage. Unlike Wix, Squarespace doesn’t have a free plan, so the trial period is the only chance you get to explore the platform.

Squarespace the easiest website builder I’ve tested, thanks to its intuitive interface and drag-and-drop editor, but it isn’t the most cost-effective option for businesses, especially with its recent price increase. Squarespace has a lot of great features, but prices do increase quite steeply as you upgrade, and you’ll need to pay extra for select tools.

Other top platforms, including Wix and Hostinger, are much better value for money. For example, Wix offers a free plan, in addition to a range of premium plans (with high-quality website features included). And, Hostinger provides a good range of tools at a very affordable price point.

Watch our video to see if Squarespace seems like a good fit for your business:

Play

Squarespace’s Basic plan is the cheapest option available, and you can sell online with the Basic plan – this is more affordable than Wix’s first ecommerce plan which costs $29 per month.

As the entry plan into Squarespace’s website builder, you’ll unlock the majority of the platform’s features:

• Blueprint AI (Squarespace’s AI website builder)
• Free custom domain, for your first year
• Squarespace ecommerce features
• 2% transaction fee for physical products and services
• 2.9% + $0.30 credit card processing rate
• SEO tools, including an SEO checklist
• Unlimited bandwidth and storage space
• Up to 30 minutes of video storage
• 24/7 support
• Drag-and-drop editor
• 2 contributors
• Basic website metrics
• Free SSL certificates
• Squarespace’s AI tools
• Squarespace Extensions (to install third-party apps)
• Custom print-on-demand merch
• Audience management tools

Who Do I Recommend the Basic Plan For?

If you’re simply looking to showcase work and share information, the Basic plan is the right choice. All of these features create a great starting point for anyone looking to get online or build a website. And, while you can sell products with the Basic plan, you’ll get better ecommerce functionality on the Core plan or above. For this reason, I recommend the Basic plan for simple sites, digital portfolios, and creatives that don’t need all the added features on the more expensive plans.

The Core plan, which costs $23 per month (billed annually), is Squarespace’s recommended plan, according to the builder. It’s only a slightly step up in price from the Basic plan, but it delivers plenty of additional features, including:

• 0% transaction fees
• 2.9% + $0.30 credit card processing rate
• Advanced sales analytics
• Unlimited contributors
• Add promotional pop-ups and banners
• Offer unique discounts (previously only available on the most expensive plan)
• Branded Google email address
• Google Shopping integration
• Five hours of video storage
• Advanced shipping tools, including shipping labels

Who Do I Recommend the Core Plan For?

I recommend the Core plan for small businesses since you’ll get access to all of Squarespace’s features for just $23 per month, and you won’t be charged transaction fees with any online orders. The more expensive plans, Plus and Advanced, only reduce processing fees, so you probably won’t need to upgrade beyond this point.

The Plus plan costs just $39 per month (billed annually), providing additional support for growing businesses. With the Plus plan, you’ll unlock everything from the Basic and Core plan, as well as:

• 50 hours of video storage
• 0% transaction fees
• 2.7% + $0.30 credit card processing rate

Who Do I Recommend the Plus Plan For?

The Plus plan is great if you run a growing small business, but you won’t really get any new features for your money, besides reduced processing fees. Most online stores will be content with Squarespace’s Core plan, since this provides everything you need. But, the Plus plan’s cheaper card processing rate will help you save money as your sales continue to increase. That said, if you’re happy to pay nearly $40 for your subscription, I’d recommend one of our top-rated ecommerce builders, like Shopify or Wix, to support your business instead.

Like the Plus plan, the only added benefit of Squarespace’s most expensive plan is reduced payment processing fees. Pricing on the Advanced plan starts from $99 per month, having recently increased from $52 per month.

You’ll have access to all of the features on the Basic, Core, and Plus plan, as well as a few extras:

• Unlimited video storage
• 0% transaction fees
• 2.5% + $0.30 credit card processing rate

Who Do I Recommend the Advanced Plan For?

The Advanced plan is ideal if your online store is growing rapidly or looking to expand in the future – but there’s nowhere up from here. It helps you take your store to the next level thanks to the reduced card processing fees, but other website builders, like Shopify, offer greater scalability to help your business succeed in the long run. With Squarespace, you pretty much hit a ceiling after the Core plan, since this is when you unlock all of Squarespace’s advanced features.

With Squarespace, you’ll get a free custom domain name for one year (if you choose an annual plan), but it’ll cost around $20 per year once it’s time to renew. In comparison, you’ll need to pay for a custom domain name immediately with a builder like Shopify, which can cost an extra $15 per year.

Besides the custom domain name, there are no other hidden fees with Squarespace, just optional extras. There are plenty of add-ons available with Squarespace that you can integrate into your website builder, such as:

• Acuity Scheduling – use this if you’re looking to offer bookable services to customers (pricing starts from $16 per month, billed annually)
• Squarespace Email Campaigns – use this to engage with your target audience and customize emails, newsletters, and more (pricing starts from $7 per month, billed annually)
• Squarespace Members Area – use this to help monetize your content and build a community online (pricing starts from $9 per month, billed annually)
• Digital Products Add On – use this to sell digital products like courses, lower transaction fees, and increase your site’s video storage capacity (pricing starts from $9 per month, billed annually)

Setting up a website or establishing an online business can quickly make a dent in the budget, but there are ways to keep the costs low with Squarespace:

• Select an annual plan instead of paying monthly – save up to 28% if you pay for the year
• Choose the right plan for your needs – the Core plan ($23 per month) is my top choice for online stores
• Limit your extra features – make sure you’re only paying for what your website or business needs

I also recommend checking out our guide to Squarespace’s promo codes for all the latest deals and offers. And, remember, you can get 10% off your Squarespace plan with our exclusive code “WBE10”.

How do we determine if Squarespace is good value for money or not? Our in-house research team has clocked over 300 hours of data collection and testing to help us bring you accurate and up-to-date recommendations.

Our research process reviews six core research categories, covering user experience, website features, and more.

However, when we’re writing about how much a builder costs, we focus solely on our pricing category. This looks at:

✅ Whether a website builder offers a free trial or plan
✅ The quality of features for the price you pay
✅ The average costs of plans
✅ How much you have to pay for standard features, such as SEO and unlimited storage

Squarespace remains one of the best website builders we’ve tested, offering four premium plans and a 14-day free trial. It’s the easiest website builder to use, offering beginners and designers an intuitive editor, stylish templates, and great booking tools. To recap, pricing ranges from $16 to $99 per month (billed annually).

Ultimately, the plan you pick will depend on your business needs. All plans let you sell online, so it’ll come down to things like advanced tools, video storage, contributors, and transaction fees.

My thoughts on Squarespace's plans...

With its recent pricing changes, Squarespace now offers a very affordable entry point for businesses looking to sell online. But, for a slight jump up from the Basic plan, I recommend picking the Core plan above all other options. The Core plan gives you access to impressive sales tools, including ecommerce analytics and discounts, for a cheaper price than Wix or Shopify! And it removes transaction fees entirely. 

However, I’d call it quits after the Core plan. Squarespace’s Plus and Advanced plan don’t give you much bang for your buck (besides reduced card rates), so I’d recommend looking at alternative platforms if your business is growing rapidly. That said, most small businesses will have everything they need with Squarespace’s Core plan.

Emma Ryan Lead Writer