GoDaddy vs. Shopify

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
GoDaddy
Score 8.8 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
8.6
137 Ratings
10% above category average
Product catalog & listings00 Ratings9.5137 Ratings
Product management00 Ratings8.6135 Ratings
Bulk product upload00 Ratings8.7116 Ratings
Branding00 Ratings8.8135 Ratings
Mobile storefront00 Ratings8.7131 Ratings
Product variations00 Ratings8.8128 Ratings
Website integration00 Ratings8.6128 Ratings
Visual customization00 Ratings8.0134 Ratings
CMS00 Ratings7.8110 Ratings
Online Shopping Cart
Comparison of Online Shopping Cart features of Product A and Product B
GoDaddy
-
Ratings
Shopify
7.8
130 Ratings
1% above category average
Abandoned cart recovery00 Ratings7.8121 Ratings
Checkout user experience00 Ratings7.9128 Ratings
Online Payment System
Comparison of Online Payment System features of Product A and Product B
GoDaddy
-
Ratings
Shopify
9.6
132 Ratings
13% above category average
eCommerce security00 Ratings9.6132 Ratings
eCommerce Marketing
Comparison of eCommerce Marketing features of Product A and Product B
GoDaddy
-
Ratings
Shopify
8.4
134 Ratings
10% above category average
Promotions & discounts00 Ratings9.1129 Ratings
Personalized recommendations00 Ratings8.432 Ratings
SEO00 Ratings7.7125 Ratings
eCommerce Business Management
Comparison of eCommerce Business Management features of Product A and Product B
GoDaddy
-
Ratings
Shopify
8.1
135 Ratings
2% above category average
Multi-site management00 Ratings6.719 Ratings
Order processing00 Ratings9.8133 Ratings
Inventory management00 Ratings7.8132 Ratings
Shipping00 Ratings7.8125 Ratings
Custom functionality00 Ratings8.5125 Ratings
Best Alternatives
GoDaddyShopify
Small Businesses
Ecwid by Lightspeed
Ecwid by Lightspeed
Score 10.0 out of 10
Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
10Web
10Web
Score 8.7 out of 10
Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Adobe Experience Manager
Adobe Experience Manager
Score 7.9 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
8.8
(57 ratings)
8.6
(150 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(2 ratings)
9.2
(15 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(3 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(9 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Professional Services
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 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.
Read full review
Shopify
Shopify has low barriers to entry so it's a great store for new businesses and small to medium size businesses who have a limited product amount and are interested in building a site from scratch that is centered around the buying experience. However, if you're a larger to enterprise company and want to incorporate an e-commerce element to your site, then they are still a possible solution but be prepared to hire a firm to help you implement and connect to your site in a seamless way because without a developer, it's near impossible.
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
  • Managing products and Sales using a very user friendly platform.
  • Apps that make marketing really easy and effective.
  • Directly linking platforms like Instagram and Titkok and managing content that is posted on the sites.
  • Fast customer service.
  • Customer Analytics, allows me to see what type of products should I sell more.
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.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
GoDaddy
GoDaddy is the number one player in town. They have the most competitive and best pricing on everything from domain name registration to hosting packages that are very affordable. But of course due to inflation and everything going up in price today GoDaddy has raised their rates but nothing ever comes back down.
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!
Read full review
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
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
GoDaddy
They are also available. They never have any outages or anything that I've yet to experience.
Read full review
Shopify
No answers on this topic
Performance
GoDaddy
Like I said before they are the BEST! nothing slows them down.
Read full review
Shopify
No answers on this topic
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
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Scalability
GoDaddy
Their customer service is easily reachable. Someone is always available to help you at any given time 24 hours a day. They are simply the best in the whole wide world. They have the best engineers and support team. Whatever I need they are there to help and assist along the way every time.
Read full review
Shopify
No answers on this topic
Professional Services
GoDaddy
Super Professional. The best.
Read full review
Shopify
No answers on this topic
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