IONOS vs. Godaddy: 6 Tests Based on My Experience

But first, listen to this:

When it comes to choosing IONOS vs. Godaddy for web hosting, it is hard to decide which one excels over the other.  Let us step by step walk through the different feature comparison of these hosting companies.

IONOS is predominantly a web hosting company which was launched in 1988, with its headquarters in Montabaur, Germany.

It is one of the largest web hosting companies and has offices across 10 countries. It provides a wide range of hosting services with great performance.

GoDaddy is an American public domain registrar and web hosting company. It was first launched in 1997 and is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, US. It has approximately 17 million customers worldwide.

IONOS vs GoDaddy Comparison

Let’s dive into IONOS hosting vs. GoDaddy based on speed, features, performance, pricing, usability, and customer service…

IONOS vs GoDaddy: Who has better speed and performance?

GoDaddy Speed test gives the below results

A similar speed test on IONOS hosted website gives the below result

Clearly, from the above speed test IONOS leads over GoDaddy.

In case of performance, below is a snapshot of GoDaddy

A similar test has been done for IONOS

We will also evaluate other parameters for both of these hosting platforms.

IONOS vs GoDaddy: Who has better pricing?

Next, let us check the pricing differences between the two hosting options.

GoDaddy has 3 different hosting option:

See GoDaddy’s full plan here…

IONOS has 3 options as shown below:

See IONOS’s full plan here…

I have consolidated the basic features existing in both the hosting provider plans and skipped the others which are less relevant at this point.

A plain comparison of the two hosting prices says that for the lowest option, IONOS hosting has a cheaper solution. But renewal rates are the same for both at $7.99 per month.

IONOS vs GoDaddy: Who has better features?

A lot of features are offered by both of these hosting providers. Well, some of these are similar while some are complementary in nature.

Let us go through the feature list provided by both of these to get a clearer picture of this.

To start with, let us check on GoDaddy.

GoDaddy has multiple hosting options:

• Web Hosting or shared web hosting
• Business Hosting
• WordPress hosting
• VPS hosting
• Dedicated hosting

With the most rudimentary level web hosting you will get-

• 1 website
• 100 GB Storage
• Unmetered bandwidth
• Free domain for 12 months on the purchase
• MS Office 365 business email for 1 year
• 1 click installations of 125+ applications
• 24/7 security monitoring and DDoS protection
• 1 GB Database storage
• Site backup and restore for $1.99 per month

The high-end plan includes all the features of a basic plan with unlimited storage, unlimited websites, double processing and memory, Premium DNS, 1 year SSL certificate.

With Business web hosting, you enjoy more storage, more memory, more CPU power and unmetered traffic. The plan starts at $19.99 per month. With all this, you also get access to their website builder.

There is a separate paid feature for malware removal- which can be used in case a site is infected, website backup, website security, online marketing services for SEO and WordPress Premium Support.

Next, let us check IONOS details about features. IONOS supports-

• Web hosting or shared web hosting
• WordPress hosting
• Managed Cloud Hosting
• VPS hosting
• Dedicated server hosting

For the web hosting plans, the lowest plan includes-

• 100 GB storage
• 1 website
• 25 GB database
• 1 free domain for 12 months on the purchase
• SSL certificate
• HTTP/2
• Data Recovery
• DDoS protection
• Geo-Redundancy
• Access to the app center

The high-end plan additionally includes- unlimited storage, unlimited websites, unlimited databases, SiteLock Basic, CDN with Railgun, up to 9 GB RAM and many more features. Additionally, you can access inbuilt website builder.

Additional paid services include Search engine marketing and Premium Virus protection.

I would like to mention, there are more security features such as SSL, DDoS protection enabled with IONOS default plan.

Similarly, GoDaddy has DDoS protection enabled but data backup and restore is something which comes at an additional cost.

IONOS vs GoDaddy: Who has better customer support?

Customer support plays a crucial role in determining the success of any company. We evaluate this parameter as well for both of these hosting providers. Let us first check this for GoDaddy.

GoDaddy is excellent with its live chat option. The reply is almost instantaneous and the representatives are trained to answer some of the technical queries around hosting.

On the contrary, I would not say the same about IONOS, the live chat did not have any available agents.

But they do have support through phone and email.

Which is more easy to use?

Both GoDaddy, as well as IONOS, have an intuitive site builder. GoDaddy site builder along with its dashboard is extremely simple to use. It has an easy drag-and-drop feature which makes website building very simple.

Additionally, GoDaddy allows you to try the free trial before choosing to use it.

Godaddy’s cPanel:

The 1-click WordPress installation is fast and easy to use.

Now let us check how IONOS fares in this.

The IONOS dashboard is easy to use for experienced users but can be confusing for novice users.

Same is the case with the installation. The installation requires understanding some technical jargons before completing the installation successfully.

Who is more secure and reliable?

Security is well-embedded into both GoDaddy as well as IONOS. Both support DDoS protection for all of their plans.

Additionally, IONOS also provides free SSL and supports SiteLock, geo-redundancy, HTTP/2.

Both the hosting platforms support backup and recovery. While there is a separate paid package plan for GoDaddy, the recovery is considered as part of the plan for IONOS.

GoDaddy also supports Express Malware removal, this is again priced separately. GoDaddy also did a partnership with Sucuri for Website Security.

As far as security is concerned, both these platforms have tight controls around this.

GoDaddy and IONOS guarantee 99% uptime. They have multiple data-centers with latest technology architecture making it more robust.

Both have a variety of choice for hosting support starting from low end to high end hosting. Their support of industry standards, helps them to be more reliable and maintain the desired uptime.

IONOS vs GoDaddy: Who wins?

Finally, to conclude I would say it is a close race between GoDaddy and IONOS. In case of performance, speed, security, and reliability they almost adhere to all the required guidelines and move hand in hand.

Both have distinctive features, however, I found IONOS hosting to be better on the feature guide since most of the features are part of the plan. With GoDaddy, there are some basic feature like recovery which comes with a separate payment.

This makes GoDaddy more expensive. On the contrary, if you are specifically not interested in these additional features, then you can very well also choose GoDaddy.

In terms of pricing, both are similar for the low priced plans. Again for high priced plans, IONOS hosting proves to be a cheaper option.

GoDaddy gives users a free trial option without making any payments. While with IONOS hosting you need to choose at least the basic plan to try this out.

In perspective to ease of use, GoDaddy makes it easy for even first time users. With IONOS hosting, this is true for more experienced users.