GoDaddy Vs 1&1: Virtual Private Server Comparison

In our third round between 1&1 and GoDaddy, we’ll be comparing each web hosts Linux Virtual Dedicated Server plans.

Virtual dedicated servers (or also known as VPS standing for Virtual Private Server) offer many of the capabilities and features of dedicated servers, including admin (root) access and dedicated IP addresses, but at a much lower price. However, as a virtual dedicated server is, indeed, virtually dedicated, the customer in fact shares the server space with a small number of other customers.

GoDaddy and 1and1 Linux VPS Plans Comparison

Performance

Looking at these VPS plans, I would be concerned about running a VPS on 256mb of memory only, let alone 128mb. Of course this is the minimum amount of memory guaranteed but there are still potential chances that your virtual server gets such a small amount of memory from time to time. And what happens then? Well you’ve got some services crashing, your server isn’t responding in a timely manner, etc.

If I wanted to get myself a good VPS, I’d go with at least 512mb of RAM. Looking at GoDaddy’s plans, unless you go with the Premium Plan, you’d need to get an extra 256mb of memory in there. GoDaddy offers that extra RAM for $14.83 a month.

As for 1&1, they do not offer memory upgrade, at least not during signup. Maybe if you contact them once your VPS is setup you could get extra RAM but I’m not sure.

Operating System

Both web hosts offer CentOS 5 with every VPS plans and GoDaddy offers you to install Red Hat Fedora Core 7. Since CentOS is based on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system, it basically offers the same performance and stability as Fedora Core 7. At this point, choose the operating system you prefer, it doesn’t really matter. I prefer CentOS 5.

Control Panel

GoDaddy’s Economy and Deluxe plans provide you with their Simple Control Panel which looks like a stripped-down version of cPanel. This control panel is a lot more intuitive than the custom one offered with their shared hosting plans. I think that they should offer cPanel / WHM with every VPS plans just as they do with the Premium Plan. cPanel is a very mature control panel that offers you way more possibilities.

1and1 on the other hand gives you Plesk 8.3, a great control panel almost as popular as cPanel as far as Linux hosting goes.

Features

If your website’s ranking in SERP (Search Engine Result Positioning) is important, than you know that it’s crucial to have a unique IP address for each website you have. GoDaddy’s VPS plans include 3 IP addresses while 1and1 only offers 1 IP. If you’re going to get a VPS with 1and1, consider adding more unique IP’s as you add websites to your server.

As for extra features, GoDaddy gives you some PPC marketing credits for Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter as well as a free SSL certificate (for secure transactions).

1and1 does not give PPC marketing vouchers as they do with their shared hosting plans. Instead you get the Premium Software Suite which includes Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0, Adobe GoLive CS2, Ulead GIF Animator, Hello Engines! 6, Ranking Toolbox 6.0 and WISE FTP 5.0. Although I haven’t tried all these softwares, I can tell you that Adobe GoLive is a really great HTML editor and Adobe Photoshop Elements comes in handy when you need to enhance or edit your photos. The Hello Engines! and Ranking Toolbox softwares are also great additions to help you optimize your website for search engines and getting better ranking on SERP’s.

Pricing

On GoDaddy’s part, their Economy Plan lacks memory and upgrading this plan to 512mb RAM will cost you almost the same price per month as the Deluxe Plan. While GoDaddy’s Premium Plan VPS offers enough performance and capabilities, it is way too expensive in my opinion. For $100.40 per month, I’d rather get a dedicated server with a lot more resources.

As for 1and1, their pricing structure is much more reasonable. Their VPS III packages offers about the same resources as GoDaddy’s Premium for only $59.00 per month.

So as far as Linux VPS Hosting goes, I’d choose 1and1 over GoDaddy based on price and features.

1and1 and GoDaddy Windows VPS Plans Comparison

Performance

Ok we get a litte more here on the Windows VPS plans than on the Linux ones. Still 512MB is not a lot of RAM to run Windows, I mean how much RAM do you have in your computer right now? Anyway it probably does the job for a low to medium traffic website but I’d look into a memory upgrade to 1GB if I were to get a Windows VPS.

GoDaddy offers the most memory, from 512MB to 768MB on their Premium Plan. 1and1 offers only 128MB, 256MB and 512MB on their Windows VPS packages so an upgrade is almost inevitable here.

Operating System

GoDaddy’s VPS servers come installed with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition which is a very robust operating system even though it’s already over 5 years old. Windows Server and IIS are easy to manage.

1and1’s virtual dedicated servers come installed with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition 64 bit. There’s not much difference between the Enterprise Edition and the Standard Edition of Windows Server 2003 for the average web hosting needs and both will deliver about the same performance.

Control Panel

It’s Plesk 8.3 all the way here, both web hosts are providing the same control panel. Plesk is a very, very good control panel made by Parallels. The control panel offers four access levels: administrator, reseller, website owner and mail user.

Probably the best control panel for Windows hosting. Nice and easy to use.

Features

Again, as with the Linux plans, more IP addresses would be appreciated on 1and1’s VPS plans. All the other extra features are the same for both Windows and Linux VPS plans. Please see above for details.

Pricing

It’s kind of weird that GoDaddy’s Linux Premium Plan is more expensive than the Windows Premium Plan. One would think that the Linux plan should be cheaper but I guess the extra 20GB of storage is more expensive than a Microsoft Windows Server licence.

In the end, 1and1 is offering more features and resources for the price. For $59.00 per month you get more disk space than with GoDaddy but you get less RAM. You could use the savings to buy a memory upgrade and that would be a good deal.

External Links

• GoDaddy Website
• 1and1 Website

Bookmark It