1and1 Vs GoDaddy: The Conclusion

After spending a few weeks comparing 1and1 and GoDaddy, I got to know better both web hosts weakness and strengths. I’ve got myself an account with both web hosts and put up a website on their servers.

Let’s do a little recap and see which web hosts is the best choice.

GoDaddy Vs 1and1 - Products & Services

Both web hosts offers the same range of traditional products and services which includes domain registration, website hosting, virtual private servers and dedicated servers. 1and1 offers some more specialized hosting products such as Sharepoint Hosting, eCommerce Hosting and Microsoft Exchange Servers.

As far as products and services goes, GoDaddy and 1and1 are mostly equal so it’s a tie here.

GoDaddy Vs 1and1 - Shared Hosting Features & Pricing

I like the fact that both web hosts are not oversellers here.

1and1’s shared hosting plans are available from only $3.99 to $19.99 per month and can be paid on a 3 months contract. GoDaddy’s plans are available from $4.04 per month to $14.12 per month (12 months plan).

Both web hosts will give you approximately the same features as far as capacity and feature support (PHP, CGI, Perl, ASP.net, MySQL, etc.) goes. The major difference here resides in the fact that 1&1 will give way more PPC marketing vouchers and credits as well as many free softwares.

You might want to read:

• Linux Shared Hosting & Features Comparison
• Windows Shared Hosting Features & Comparison

If you think that 1and1’s free softwares and vouchers will be useful to you than you’ll get more features for your money. On the other hand, GoDaddy’s Deluxe Plan is a real deal at only $14.86 (monthly plan).

GoDaddy Vs 1and1 - Virtual Private Servers

The only suitable VPS plans here are GoDaddy’s Premium Plan and 1and1’s VPS III. Other plans do not provide enough RAM with only 128MB or 256MB. GoDaddy offers memory upgrades starting $14.83 so this is becoming sort of expensive for what you get.

GoDaddy’s VPS plans are available from $26.71 to $100.40 per month (12 months plan). 1and1 VPS plans are available from $29.99 to $59.99 (monthly plan) which is much more reasonable. I mean $100 for a VPS is sort of expensive, I’d rather get a dedicated server for this price.

Virtual Private Servers are available on both Linux and Windows operating systems. Unfortunately both web hosting companies only offer their custom control panel which I think is a mistake when it comes to managing a web server.

Based on pricing and features, 1and1 has the best VPS deal at only $59.99 per month.

GoDaddy Vs 1and1 - Dedicated Servers

GoDaddy’s Deluxe Plan is the best bet here with a Pentium 4, 3.0GHz processor, 2GB of RAM and 2×120GB hard drives. The Plesk control panel is great addition although a licence for 100 domains instead of only 30 would be nice. The Deluxe Plan is available at $145 per month.

Following closely, 1and1’s Business I plan is also a good with its Single Core AMD Athlon 64 3500+, 1GB RAM and 2×160GB hard drives at only $99 a month. You also get the Plesk control panel with every 1and1 dedicated servers.

Other dedicated servers plans are way out there with prices too high for what you get in my opinion.

GoDaddy Vs 1and1 - Customer Support

I’ve saw GoDaddy going out of their way to make sure their customers are satisfied. They’ve gone as far as calling me back to get feedback on their products and finding out how they can improve their services.

1and1 on the other hand has built a rather bad reputation based on poor customer service. The fact that they have their call center in the Philippines (even though they own it) tells a lot. Their support staff have been trained on 1st level issues.

GoDaddy Vs 1and1 - The Conclusion

1and1’s advantages on GoDaddy are the additional features and free stuff they include with most of their hosting plans. While this may be tempting, I think that customer support is very important and unfortunately, this is 1and1’s weakness.

For these reasons, I choose GoDaddy over 1and1.

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