If you are thinking about building a new WordPress website, then you must choose managed WordPress hosting plans. To do this, you need to look specifically at WP Engine and Go Daddy, along with their comparisons. You must choose only after understanding which option will be better for you.
Comparison is based on different parameters and to opt for a technology you must judge on performance, features, security options, and pricing.
Both of these are quite popular options today.
Moreover, as per HostAdvice, at the beginning of 2022, there were more than 5.1 billion internet users. Thus, having a properly functional, feature-rich, and quite fast WordPress Host is very important. It is time to understand both the WordPress Hosts and make an informed decision.
When we need to talk about WordPress hosting, several types of factors matter a lot. However, the most important one is which one is perfect for you. WP Engine and GoDaddy are the two highly popular hosts across the internet that can help your WordPress grow. Let’s compare some of the prominent features of both the hosts to get to the conclusion.
WP Engine and GoDaddy: An Introduction to Managed WordPress Hosting
GoDaddy is very popular around the world. Probably it is one of the first options that people see when they try to get started online. It offers almost every type of hosting. Those include VPS, shared hosting, dedicated, and most importantly WordPress hosting. Over time, GoDaddy is trying to improve its WordPress hosting offerings.
On the other hand, WP Engine is one of the longest-running names in the crowd of WordPress hosting companies. In recent years, they have powered more than 1.5 million WordPress sites worldwide. This option only offers WordPress managed hosting, so you may say that they are the experts in this field.
Now, let’s dive into their interesting and useful features below.
User Experience And Interface Comparison
WP Engine
With the dashboard of WP Engine, you will see a detailed overview of all the sites you manage. Moreover, you will get information like resources consumed, number of visits, and what PHP and WordPress versions you are using.
Moreover, you will see if your plugins, themes, and WordPress core are up to date or not. Also, you will get many different tabs and settings within the dashboard to navigate. However, some interesting options are:
● View website error logs.
● Add and manage domain names.
● Clear your website cache
● Manage your website backups
● Create new site staging and development environments
● Enable WordPress multisite.
In addition, with WP Engine, you can launch a new WordPress site in a few clicks.
GoDaddy
If you choose GoDaddy, you will get a dashboard that is pretty intuitive and beginner-friendly. With this option, you can easily launch a WordPress site and find a useful setup wizard that will help you through the steps.
You just have to answer multiple questions and the toll will start working. You will even get the help of an AI generator that will create your website content. After you log in to GoDaddy’s dashboard, you will see a list of actions that you can take. Those can be checking for plugin updates and themes, launching your site, etc.
The focus of GoDaddy’s main hosting dashboard is generally site management. Here, you can easily add photos, and content, and check if your site requires any plugin updates or even themes. Here, the tab called Backups will help you to manage your existing backups. Thus, backups will take place automatically and from this screen, you can even restore a previous site backup.
Next, just by clicking on the Settings tab, you can easily manage your hosting settings. Here, you will get information about your site and relevant server at a glance. You will see information regarding your PHP and WordPress versions, the location of the data center, and even the built-in CDN with ease. In addition, you can upgrade your plan, add domains, and even flush your server cache.
Comparison Of Key Features
Let’s see how these two are different when it comes to key features.
WP Engine: Its Pros and Cons
Pros:
● It has a very useful customer support team, as well as additional resources.
● It can deliver quite fast page speeds.
● It has free bundled premium WordPress themes.
Cons:
● Its hosting plans are costly.
● Its add-one makes the prices of hosting higher.
GoDaddy: Its Pros and Cons
Pros:
● It performs well at an affordable price.
● It has fair pricing for managed WordPress hosting.
● It is adding new features continuously to improve its hosting.
Cons:
● Its performance isn’t the best.
● Customer support chat might be better.
Comparison of Security and Reliability
Nowadays, online threats are growing continuously, so you must ensure that your site as well as your server is properly secured. So, let’s check how these two types of managed WordPress hosting can handle security.
WP Engine
It is always important to choose a robust set of security features. Only with a powerful option, you can get some vital options. Some of those are site monitoring, threat detection, automated WordPress core and theme updates, etc.
Every plan has a free SSL certificate as well as the custom firewall of WP Engine that can direct bad traffic away from your server automatically. In addition, you will get an option to upgrade your security further with the add-on option Global Edge Security. This can take your server’s security to the next level and even include features like advanced Cloudflare protection, WordPress-specific WAF, smart routing, etc.
GoDaddy
This option doesn’t have as strong security features as WP Engine. However, you will get some facilities like regular scans and removal of malware, automated website backups, a Web Application Firewall, etc.
Moreover, GoDaddy disallows a few specific WordPress plugins that may open your site to security threats. In addition, GoDaddy has Securi, and just by using this free plugin, you can enjoy more control over your site.
Speed And Performance
Now, it’s time to check out the details regarding how these two WordPress hosts function in real time.
To compare these two options, you can use the Astra theme with the same imported demo content with an image.
WP Engine
According to the average result of several tests, we may say that the WP Engine test site has a fast LCP. Its Largest Contentful Paint time is 364 Mrs.
GoDaddy
In contrast, the average LCP or Largest Contentful Paint time was 562 ms. Thus, GoDaddy will come in second to WP Engine.
Pricing and Value For Money
Now, let’s see which option will be perfect for your budget.
WP Engine
Among these two, WP Engine is the costlier option. It has five different pricing tiers. Every plan of WP Engine includes an SSL certificate, 24/7 support, a CDN, backups, and caching. Moreover, you will get access to around 10 premium themes of WordPress.
The startup plan of WP Engine will cost you $20 per month if paid annually. However, its Professional plan is; no doubt, better, as it supports some interesting options. Those include supporting higher levels of traffic, bandwidth, sites, and storage.
In addition, there are several interesting add-ons that you can buy to enhance your entire WordPress hosting task. Thus, you can use add-ons like automated plugin updates, high-level site monitoring, advanced security, etc. These may cost you from $50 to $300 per year.
GoDaddy
This one is quite cheaper than the previous option. Even the most expensive plan of GoDaddy will be cheaper than the Startup plan of WP Engine. However, you must remember that when you scroll to the pricing options, these are for a single site.
GoDaddy’s plans have similar features. However, the main difference is that the higher plans offer more storage.
Customer Support
Now, let’s see how they offer customer support to their customers.
WP Engine
● With WP Engine, you have to depend on your tier of hosting. The lowest option only offers live chat support. However, in other tiers, you will get the phone and live chat.
● The support team of WP Engine is very fast and thorough with their responses.
GoDaddy
● It offers 24×7 support through phone and live chat from Monday to Friday.
● You just have to click the option Contact Us and message GoDaddy’s support team.
Conclusion
So, after this detailed comparison, we can say that when you want a high-quality hosting option for your WordPress then WP Engine is the best option. With this, you will get to enjoy fantastic features like free SSL certificates, bundled caching and CDN, advanced developer features, and more.
However, if you have a strict budget, then GoDaddy is the right choice for you. With this, you just have to pay 48.99 per month if paid yearly.
Another interesting thing is, that no matter which option you choose, you will always get to enjoy the money-back guarantee if it’s not the right fit.
