1and1 Vs GoDaddy: Windows Shared Hosting Comparison

Welcome to the second round of our comparison between GoDaddy and 1and1. This time we’re going to have a deeper look into each web hosts Windows hosting plans.

Both web hosts’ Windows hosting plans are quite similar to their Linux packages in terms of capacity. Let’s see what they have to offer.

Noticed the difference with their Linux Shared Hosting packages? GoDaddy and 1and1’s Windows packages do not offer support for PHP, Perl and CGI. Since support for these programming language is free I thought they would’ve offered it but no.

Of course since these are Windows hosting plan, you get ASP and ASP.net support as well as MS SQL and MS Access database support on some packages.

So if you’re going to get a Windows shared hosting plan with GoDaddy or 1and1, you better make sure you won’t need PHP or Perl script support.

Extra Features

As far as extra features goes, 1and1 gives you the DynamicSiteCreator so you can add flash animations to your webpages. You also get the 1&1 Photo Gallery so you can post pictures on you website. To me that ain’t much valuable since there are many free tools available that do just that but maybe some people will find this feature useful.

1and1 customers also get a 25% on any purchase at Fotolia.com. I think this is really since I do buy a lot of professional pictures and illustrations there. There is also the Starter Software Suite (available with the 1&1 MS Home plan) and the Premium Software Suite (available with the 1&1 Business and Developer plans) which gives you many fully licensed and free softwares such as Ulead PhotoImpact, Ulead GIF Animator, Hello Engines! 6, Ranking Toolbox 6 and WISE FTP 5.

As for GoDaddy, they don’t offer as much free stuff as 1and1. Except for a few ASP tools like AspUpload, AspJpeg and AspCrypt (which you could probably get yourself for free anyway) there aren’t much extra features.

Both GoDaddy and 1and1 are very generous on PPC marketing vouchers with Google AdWords, Microsoft adCenter and Yahoo Search Marketing credits from $19 to $200.

Control Panel

Both web hosting companies have their own homemade control panel. Just as I’ve said in my Linux Shared Hosting Plan comparison, I found them to be sort of slow. GoDaddy’s control panel is a bit confusing and I found 1and1’s panel to be more intuitive.

Pricing

With a price range from $3.99 to $19.99 per month, we’re obviously talking about budget hosting here. For the price you do get a lot of features with both web hosts. Nothing to complain about here, the pricing is very good in my opinion.

I like the fact that both 1and1 and GoDaddy have short term contracts. This way if you’re unsure whether their hosting packages are right for you, you can easily move to another web host without losing too much money.

Conclusion

I wish that GoDaddy and 1and1 would offer PHP and Perl support since a lot of free web applications like Wordpress, vBulletin or MediaWiki needs it. Other than that, the extra softwares you get from 1and1 are cool and the vouchers are really welcomed if you’re new PPC marketing.

That said, based on pricing and features only, I’d go with 1and1 Windows hosting plans although it’s almost a tie with GoDaddy.

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