DigitalOcean vs GoDaddy | TrustRadius

What users are saying about

Score 8.1 out of 10

Based on 89 reviews and ratings

Score 7.3 out of 10

Based on 116 reviews and ratings

Likelihood to Recommend

Scenarios where DigitalOcean is well suited:- I would recommend DigitalOcean for any startup looking to get up and running quickly, but concerned about scalability and infrastructure costs- DigitalOcean is also a powerful tool for running microservices; it can be useful for prototyping or quickly launching pre-configured servicesScenarios where DigitalOcean is less appropriate:- DigitalOcean would be less appropriate for companies with limited devops experience in their teams (you need to be more on top of your infrastructure and may not get the automated infrastructure updates that you would from something like AWS).

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Verified User

Engineer in Engineering

Marketing and Advertising Company, 11-50 employees

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GoDaddy is a good solution for:

first-time, non-techy, local service business owner (not eCom) to manage their business all in one place (looking to build their website, send emails, manage their listings and web presence all in one place

The user dashboard for their small business suite is pretty user-friendly. Someone could probably build their site in about three hours.
A decent place to keep all business solutions in one easy place and have someone to help them troubleshoot with support.

More technically savvy business owners - any field

Buy and manage their domains all in one place
Get technical support for issues (ex: troubleshooting with CNAME and ANAME records) when redirecting traffic to new pages
Buy domains in bulk

I would not recommend GoDaddy's website builder:

For eCommerce - the tracking and capabilities are better on Shopify. There are drag and drop themes just the same as with GoDaddy.
For people who love to tweak - There are limitations on the WYSIWYG editor.
For people who are running a lot of Facebook ad campaigns / socially driven campaigns - It's harder to track conversions and give Facebook the information it needs to prove purchases (any field). We've driven traffic and proved $45k in sales from some of the campaigns that we've done. We had to do it in a roundabout way.

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CEO (Chief Executive Officer)

Simply Heaven DesignMarketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees

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Feature Rating Comparison

DigitalOcean

GoDaddy

Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime

Dynamic scaling

Elastic load balancing

Pre-configured templates

Monitoring tools

Pre-defined machine images

Operating system support

Security controls

Pros

Ease of use - You can get set up with a new server in a matter of minutes. It doesn't get any easier than that.
Support - The public forums are incredibly helpful as are the official help articles. I've never needed to contact the support team because of this. All of the information is at my fingertips.
Pricing - We're only paying $10/mo for a solution that gives our customers more confidence in us and is a selling point for us.

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VP of Technology & Human Resources

Quality Ironworks, Inc.Construction, 51-200 employees

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Customer service has great hours of availability. When things go wrong, and they will, it is nice to have the ability to get in touch with someone.
Wide variety of services. GoDaddy can be a one stop shop if you are looking for marketing and email services. They offer more than just domains and email platforms.
Once set up, very easy to use.

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Kirsten Rodriguez

Realtor

Southern Style Management, Inc.Real Estate, 11-50 employees

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Cons

Some products/services available on other Cloud providers aren't available, but they seem to be catching up as they add new products like Managed SQL DBs.
While they have FreeBSD droplets (VMs), support for *BSD OSs is limited. I.e. the new monitoring agent only works on Linux.
There are no regions available on South America.
They don't seem to offer enterprise-level products, even basic ones as Windows Server, MS SQL Server, Oracle products, etc.

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Leonel Quinteros

Director of Technology

Global Brigades, Inc.Non-Profit Organization Management, 11-50 employees

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Better pricing for renewals. When I see the difference in pricing of purchasing a new domain versus renewing it, I get turned off with such a huge difference. I think it'd be better if they lowered their renewal pricing. Or just some more promotions, I feel like I never receive promotions from them. Another or could be a rewards program for being a loyal customer for x amount of years.
They can be a bit annoying/overwhelming with the product/service add-ons once you've gotten what you needed--I understand why they do it but it almost feels like they're trying to trick you into something which makes me feel less trusting of the company.
Though I said I liked the user interface for the non savvy person, I must say that their design/branding/ui could use some improvement. It has a lot going on and it doesn't look clean. A lot of things just look like they were thrown together.

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Verified User

Executive in Marketing

Graphic Design Company, 1-10 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

DigitalOcean 9.0

Based on 2 answers

I've been very happy with it for my purposes and I plan to continue to use DigitalOcean for the foreseeable future!

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Devops Engineer

Tommy BahamaComputer Software, 1-10 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Usability

DigitalOcean 8.5

Based on 6 answers

While DigitalOcean is a top notch host in our opinion, it could be more user friendly. There have been great strides taken in the last year with user friendliness, and while if you are experienced with web hosting, the services they offer will be easy to use, if you are not then it will require some research on your part.

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Brandon Mullins

CEO

Moon Books PublishingEntertainment, 1-10 employees

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GoDaddy 10.0

Based on 2 answers

Some integration could be much cleaner and smoother. Seems it used to be easier. Plus, they took away the catch all email feature.

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Verified User

C-Level Executive in Information Technology

Real Estate Company, 1-10 employees

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Reliability and Availability

DigitalOcean 10.0

Based on 1 answer

Have not found a single second of down time myself. Superior availability.

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Front-end developer

Velocity PartnersInformation Technology and Services, 11-50 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Performance

DigitalOcean 9.0

Based on 1 answer

Very quick response and high performance, you have to fine tune configurations on your machines though.

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Front-end developer

Velocity PartnersInformation Technology and Services, 11-50 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Support Rating

DigitalOcean 8.6

Based on 10 answers

They have always been fast, and the process has been straight-forward. I haven't had to use it enough to be frustrated with it, to be honest, and when I have an issue they fix it. As with all support, I wish it felt more human, but they are doing aces.

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Co-Founder / Full Stack Dev

Madness LabsComputer Software, 1-10 employees

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GoDaddy 8.9

Based on 8 answers

Every time I have raised a query, they have been very prompt and have taken up the matter to resolve and successfully lead to a conclusion. They haven't just waited for an email. They also call you and guide you step by step so there is no confusion.

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Verified User

Partner in Marketing

Health, Wellness and Fitness Company, 1-10 employees

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Alternatives Considered

Amazon has a very complex UI and many products to offer. They haven't polished up their UI and it has a much greater learning curve compared to DigitalOcean. However, Amazon Web Services (AWS) does have more comprehensive cloud computing services, which forces some companies to migrate their backend and other services to AWS as they scale up.

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Co-Founder/CEO

aspace, Inc.Computer Software, 1-10 employees

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I never selected GoDaddy, but when a client doesn't want to upgrade, I won't force the issue. If a client wants a fresh build and are severely budget-constrained,Weebly is my recommendation. Having the money for a quality WordPress build but no stomach for monthly expenses leads to DigitalOcean, which we normally use for experimental builds since they spin up so quickly and easily. If a client wants professional hosting with automatic backups, guaranteed stability, and proven performance, WP Engine is our recommendation. We will never recommend GoDaddy.

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WordPress Developer

Splash MktgDesign, 1-10 employees

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Scalability

DigitalOcean 10.0

Based on 1 answer

Great scalability, you can start with small plans and move up to premium features at a very good price.

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Front-end developer

Velocity PartnersInformation Technology and Services, 11-50 employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Return on Investment

With DigitalOcean, I've been able to move all my sites to https using my own implementations of SSL with LetsEncrypt.
Since moving my sites to DigitalOcean, my hosting plan costs less than 40% of what I paid for similar hosting from Site5.

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Jeanine Schoessler

Web Developer

satinflame designHigher Education, 1-10 employees

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Once site was built, very little maintenance involved daily.
Easy and quick to edit so time investment is low.
Financial App did help me quite a bit. Just not as robust as other offerings but price reflects that.
Pro has allowed me to quickly update clients' sites.

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June Burchfield - LION

Talent Director

KMA Talent, LLCStaffing and Recruiting, 1-10 employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

DigitalOcean Editions & Modules

Edition

1GB-16GB	$5.00¹
8GB-160GB	$60.00¹

Starting Price Per Month

Additional Pricing Details

—

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

Yes

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

GoDaddy Editions & Modules

Edition

Free	Free
Basic	9.99²
Standard	14.99²
Premium	19.99²
Ecommerce	24.99²

Per User Per Month (billed annually)

Additional Pricing Details

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Rating Summary

DigitalOcean

GoDaddy

DigitalOcean

GoDaddy

DigitalOcean

GoDaddy

DigitalOcean

GoDaddy

DigitalOcean

GoDaddy

DigitalOcean

GoDaddy

DigitalOcean

GoDaddy

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