GoDaddy vs. Shopify

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
GoDaddy
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
GoDaddy Web Hosting provides users with storage, email addresses, and unlimited bandwith.
$9.99
per month
Shopify
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Shopify is a commerce platform designed for both online stores and retail locations. Shopify offers a professional online storefront, a payment solution to accept credit cards, and the Shopify POS application to power retail sales.
$29
per month
Pricing
GoDaddyShopify
Editions & Modules
Basic
as low as $6.99
per month with an annual term
Basic
as low as $10.49
per month with an annual term
Premium
as low as $13.49
per month with an annual term
Commerce
as low as $14.99
per month with an annual term
Shopify Lite
$9
per month
Basic Shopify
$29
per month
Shopify
$79
per month
Advanced Shopify
$299
per month
Shopify Plus
2,000
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
GoDaddyShopify
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsDiscounts available for annual subscription.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
GoDaddyShopify
Considered Both Products
GoDaddy
Chose GoDaddy
For my own business website I did switch to BigCommerce because they offered features that weren't available at the time with Go Daddy, such as sales tax rates for every city/state, and products were limited to I think 10 or 20 options at the time and I needed 100+ options for …
Chose GoDaddy
I ask people and they give their vote of trust to Godaddy and I also searched online for reviews which helped me decide to select Godaddy
Shopify
Chose Shopify
I have tried (and currently use and love) BigCommerce. GoDaddy was also decent and very easy to use. Volusion, Ecwid, Weebly, Wix, SquareSpace - all were colossal wastes of time.
Chose Shopify
They have more analytics, better designs, more apps to create a more robust system to run a business on. Their system is very intuitive, and they are heavily investing in constantly making their platform better. The biggest selling point years ago was the ability to track with …
Chose Shopify
Shopify is so very affordable and cheap when considering competitors such as Webflow or Square Space. The fees associated with selling a product are the same as the PayPal processing fees and the monthly rate is just $29. It’s really a no-brainer for anyone that normally gets …
Chose Shopify
Shopify performs a great marketing influence by having ads and different kinds of branding on various social media. Also, their utilities promotion creates a great impact on the people's mind, and after executing action on the platform, in my experience I liked it how …
Chose Shopify
I looked at both Wix and Squarespace. I felt Wix was a little too complicated for me to use as I only have a fairly basic knowledge of web development. And while Squarespace was easy to use and looked better than Shopify, its pricing was a little bit on the higher side. I felt …
Chose Shopify
Shopify is much easier to use and able to grow better with our company. It has fewer glitches which affect productivity, and more features to prevent needing many different programs.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
GoDaddyShopify
Online Storefront
Comparison of Online Storefront features of Product A and Product B
GoDaddy
-
Ratings
Shopify
7.4
131 Ratings
4% below category average
Product catalog & listings00 Ratings8.6131 Ratings
Product management00 Ratings7.2129 Ratings
Bulk product upload00 Ratings7.6110 Ratings
Branding00 Ratings8.4130 Ratings
Mobile storefront00 Ratings7.4126 Ratings
Product variations00 Ratings6.3123 Ratings
Website integration00 Ratings9.2124 Ratings
Visual customization00 Ratings7.5129 Ratings
CMS00 Ratings4.4105 Ratings
Online Shopping Cart
Comparison of Online Shopping Cart features of Product A and Product B
GoDaddy
-
Ratings
Shopify
8.1
125 Ratings
7% above category average
Abandoned cart recovery00 Ratings7.6116 Ratings
Checkout user experience00 Ratings8.5123 Ratings
Online Payment System
Comparison of Online Payment System features of Product A and Product B
GoDaddy
-
Ratings
Shopify
9.0
127 Ratings
8% above category average
eCommerce security00 Ratings9.0127 Ratings
eCommerce Marketing
Comparison of eCommerce Marketing features of Product A and Product B
GoDaddy
-
Ratings
Shopify
8.0
129 Ratings
7% above category average
Promotions & discounts00 Ratings7.2124 Ratings
Personalized recommendations00 Ratings8.432 Ratings
SEO00 Ratings8.5120 Ratings
eCommerce Business Management
Comparison of eCommerce Business Management features of Product A and Product B
GoDaddy
-
Ratings
Shopify
8.0
130 Ratings
2% above category average
Multi-site management00 Ratings6.719 Ratings
Order processing00 Ratings9.1128 Ratings
Inventory management00 Ratings8.8127 Ratings
Shipping00 Ratings8.2120 Ratings
Custom functionality00 Ratings7.2120 Ratings
Best Alternatives
GoDaddyShopify
Small Businesses
WebWave
WebWave
Score 9.0 out of 10
Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
10Web
10Web
Score 8.3 out of 10
IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Bitrix24
Bitrix24
Score 8.1 out of 10
IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
GoDaddyShopify
Likelihood to Recommend
7.6
(54 ratings)
9.0
(144 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
5.0
(1 ratings)
9.2
(15 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(8 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
GoDaddyShopify
Likelihood to Recommend
GoDaddy
Good for transferring over an existing site. Truth be told, I haven't used it for building a brand new site-- I know that this is a fairly common thing but I just never needed it. For what I've used it for, it has worked well. For a small business with anyone with a little bit of technical skill, it's surprisingly good.
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Shopify
Shopify is a great platform for small to medium-sized businesses looking to set up an online store. It's easy to use, offers a wide range of features and integrations, and is perfect for businesses in the retail and food industry. However, large enterprise businesses with complex and custom needs may find Shopify less suitable.
Read full review
Pros
GoDaddy
  • Registering a domain - I've found their site to be the easiest to navigate
  • Website builder - their website builder is user friendly
  • Email hosting - easy to set up and use, wether in an email app or online email.
  • Wordpress hosting - I have multiple wordpress sites I use under one account
  • Their customer service is always very helpful and easy to contact.
Read full review
Shopify
  • It is definitely easy to set up and get going. This does not take a lot of work or effort on the user end, especially if using templates.
  • Low code platform. You can. make customizations without code.
  • The integrations are diverse and increase functionality.
Read full review
Cons
GoDaddy
  • Support agents are woefully undertrained, even in knowledge of their own products.
  • Support agents will always try to upsell you, even when you're dealing with an urgent, high-impact issue.
  • There's no guarantee of uptime, and there will often be gaps in service as part of normal procedures.
Read full review
Shopify
  • The main drawback that I am facing in Shopify for a long time is that their sales analytics system is not up to mark. As I am using Shopify to run different stores for my organization it does not get updated after-sales and does not provide the right analytics about the product strength and number of sales.
  • Secondly, Shopify has different apps which are best to run the store on max strength but they are very much costly like inventory management, generating multiple discount codes, and more robust customizable editing.
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Likelihood to Renew
GoDaddy
We can't really choose anyone else and the cost/effort of moving all of the hosted data would be extremely large, and we just have to stick to them, and hope they improve service
Read full review
Shopify
Nothing we have used in the past or have seen thus far even comes close to offering what we get with Shopify Plus, especially for the price. You cannot even come close to getting what we are getting at the price we pay. We are beyond thrilled and Shopify Plus meets and exceeds all of our needs and expectations. We love it!
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Usability
GoDaddy
Some integration could be much cleaner and smoother. Seems it used to be easier. Plus, they took away the catch all email feature.
Read full review
Shopify
I think most people are able to suer Shopify that have used a computer. There are some features that take a bit longer to learn. If you are not a creative person it may be a bit more difficult to learn the website customization, but with a help guide or tutorial it will only take a few tries to understand how to work the interface
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Support Rating
GoDaddy
I think a lot of companies can learn from GoDaddy's support team. I have found:
  • Chat or phone support is almost always available.
  • Their agents are friendly and helpful.
  • Their agents seem to care and be knowledgeable about a wide range of issues.
  • I rarely have to escalate my problem to get the support that I need.
  • If they can't help me, then they can tell me why something is happening and direct me to resources that can fix my problem.
Read full review
Shopify
In terms of support I give Shopify a 9 out of 10 because they're always very friendly and thorough, and they personally can't solve my problem for me they always point me in the proper direction with the proper information I need to move forward
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Implementation Rating
GoDaddy
No answers on this topic
Shopify
Just start now and make the switch, the sooner the better. You will love it and it is really a simple process
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
GoDaddy
We use Wix currently for our online store. It is nice and easy to use, but they don't offer the email domains as well (the last time we checked). They have pretty decent customization of the web page, but still limited. We're going to try it with GoDaddy, since we have other services from them already. It just doesn't make sense to pay two different companies for something we can do with one.
Read full review
Shopify
The old platform that I used could not help us to meet our requirements. It was not helping us properly, then I got to know about Shopify and started using it. After 1 month [of] usage of Shopify we could understand that this is the best platform [for E-commerce] to make better sales and goodwill. Shopify helped us to get a proper idea of the analytics of the website. Shopify [supports] most of the [applications] and helps us to make better results.
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Return on Investment
GoDaddy
  • GoDaddy reduces our ROI by costing me in non-billable hours. I don't charge clients for sitting on the phone with tech support to power cycle the server or fix the php.ini file, so my $/hr takes a hit.
  • Their nickel&dime strategy requires I have an additional conversation with clients about their max recurring fees. Small as they are, I need approval for upping their bill. GoDaddy is only the cheap option if you don't value security, stability, or performance.
Read full review
Shopify
  • It got the store up quickly so the client could start selling. She was previously selling products on Etsy and Facebook and wanted to consolidate everything onto one website, so the main thing Shopify solved was to reduce the store owner's time in managing all her products on multiple sites. Also, we had previously built a website on Wix with all the custom functionality and branding she needed - a truly great, high-end website - but it performed so slowly that it was unusable. So the speed at which Shopify can be set up and then works on the page is appreciable.
  • The website was manageable by the client - she could figure the system out herself after a while so she saved money on costs for hiring developers. She did have to hire developers to customize some of the plug-ins but costs are all relative; it wasn't a high investment compared to building a full e-commerce website. With the complexity and size of her product base and the functionality and branding she wanted to have in a website, and the potential of her business, she would have needed to invest well over $10,000 to get to where she really needs to be. In the end she kept the budget under $5000.00.
  • Costs kept climbing with plug-ins having to be added with everything. My client became more involved in building the website and began to try multiple plugins, and she did not have the skill base to evaluate the plugins functionalities so she chose plugins that did not do everything she needed, and then ended up paying the plugin developers to customize the plugins. So on one hand, it's pretty amazing to be able to bring up an e-commerce website as quickly as a week or so, but on the other hand if you need anything customized or deeper functionality in regards to product searching and filtering on the web page, and management on the backend, it quickly goes beyond the skills of the average person to manage, and above their expected budget as well. In the end my client really did not get anything close to the functionality for the website we had originally envisioned.
  • Shopify was the easiest way we could find to bring the client's products to a global market. We evaluated several other platforms and the functionality simple did not seem to be adequate, so Shopify seemed like the only solution that could do enough of what we needed and still stay within this client's budget. Really the problem in this project was not platform per se but that the budget wasn't large enough. Shopify managed to provide a solution for an ecommerce store with thousands of products on a tiny budget, so in the sense of pure functionality it provided the best value of all the platforms we evaluated. The solution still isn't big enough for this client's business though so, without having insights into this client's post-build sales results, my guess is that because her new website did not make her products easier to sort through, and she likely didn't have much more budget left to invest in SEO and other marketing of the website, her sales probably didn't increase substantially as a result of having built the website. So I think this project all in all did not likely have a high ROI.
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ScreenShots