Managed WordPress Hosting at GoDaddy

Can GoDaddy compete with the big boys of managed WordPress hosting? Maybe they don’t have to.

We deal with hosting (and WordPress) on a daily basis. Everyday there’s something about an update, a backup, a hack, downtime, uptime, a missing backup, a virus, a broken site. Oh, did you remember to back up? How’s BackupBuddy working for you on your shared hosting? Is it conking out? Is $29/month worth it for your brand-new site? Is $4 not getting you the features you want? What’s a regular website owner to do?

• You want more than shared hosting.
• $29/month seems like a lot of money.
• You really just want some peace of mind.

I recently wrote about fast WordPress hosting at GoDaddy. I know, weird. I’ve been a cPanel and small-business hosting guy for years. Like most, I use GoDaddy when the client insists. But recently, they’ve been turning things around. I even put a few of my own sites onto my GoDaddy hosting … and they’re doing surprisingly well.

So now they come out with managed hosting for WordPress? Let’s take a quick look at what they’re offering. Just for kicks.

Basically, for $6, $18 or $63 you get 1, 5 or 25 sites hosted. All plans include these features:

• Free domain with annual plan – Restrictions apply
• 1,000s 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

Based on my clients and their needs, the most important items here are:

• One-click migration tool
• Nightly backups
• Redundant firewalls, malware scanning and DDoS protection
• Automatic WordPress core updates

If the migration is something like a secondary staging server where you can test themes and plugins and whatnot, that’d be great. Nightly backups are critical … but only if you can restore them with one click. Possible? Hope so. Malware scanning is worth the price of admission when you compare it to what I have to tell client who get hacked (sign up with Sucuri, please … sorry). Automatic WordPress core updates are important, too, especially for those who don’t remember to do that sort of thing. Of course, those are the same folks who don’t remember to do backups either (i.e. most everyone).

Gee, so for $6 per month, you get what you get with something like WP Engine? Is that a stretch? What’s going to be the difference? My guess is speed. But we’ll have to wait and see. I haven’t signed up for this, but you can bet I’ll let my clients at least know about it to compare the options. Looking forward to seeing how this pans out.

But if you just line up the pure dollars, it seems like a no brainer:

• $4 – shared hosting
• $6 – managed hosting at GoDaddy
• $29 – managed hosting at WP Engine

Don’t know if this 50% link will work, but feel free to give it a try:

Can GoDaddy compete in the managed WordPress hosting space? We’ll see.