GoDaddy

GoCentral is the website builder by GoDaddy, a pioneer in the industry. Founded in 1997, GoDaddy is the world’s largest domain registrar. This is its primary service - it currently manages 59 million domain names and has 12 million customers. Its website builder is offered as a complementary service, geared particularly to small businesses and individuals. It’s not a perfect platform, but it certainly has many advantages, like its easy setup, excellent customer service (24/7/365) and amazing variety of affordable plans. GoDaddy offers all the tools and features you’ll need to set up a simple online website, but few of these are available for free. And unlike many other website builders that ask you to pay for a premium plan, GoDaddy asks you to pay by the feature, which can be a bit of a hassle. 

• It’s a breeze to mix and match features
• There are a number of affordable plans with unlimited storage and bandwidth
• Includes a 1 month free trial

• It’s the easiest DIY website solution
• Build a proffesional site in under an hour
• Unlimited industry-specific designs, no tech skills needed
• Get found on Google & Facebook
• Manage your site on mobile devices and tablets
• Exceptional photo-editing tools
• Renowned, thorough 24/7 customer support
• Affordable premium plans

• Not intended for tech & design savvy users who want pixel perfect control of the design
• Not the best option for medium and large businesses
• Requires users to pay for additional features
• Less control over design than competitors
• You can’t migrate your website theme without starting over

GoDaddy is one of the simplest and most user-friendly website builders - considered one of the fastest in the industry. 1) type in your business name and industry, 2) an industry-specific design is generated automatically with suggested sections, features, and professional images pre-filled. You’ll be able to choose from 14 themes rather than templates, with different layouts, fonts, colors and mobile text and image and video capabilities. Its layout is quite clean and editing is simple and intuitive, making it a good platform for beginners and those with more experience building websites. Most small business sites can be published with less than an hour of setup.

There’s also a feature allowing you to edit your site from your mobile phone. Sites not only look great in desktop devices, but also have sleek mobile and tablet versions.

However, GoDaddy may have easy-to-use features, but many of them require you to pay extra. It’s a bit like a budget airline - each additional feature incurs a charge, and it can be annoying to be asked to purchase more features throughout the editing process, rather than up front.

Although free trials are available, you can choose from a variety of paid plans:

Personal ($5.99/month): 50 themes, 1GB of storage, 150GB bandwidth

Business ($9.99/month): 300 themes, 10GB storage, 500GB bandwidth and a mobile version of your website

Business Plus ($14.99/month): includes everything listed in the Business plan, plus 50GB storage and 1TB (1,000GB) bandwidth, search-engine optimization, tools for social media management and 1 year SSL Certification (for secure eCommerce transactions)

Online Store ($29.99/month): responsive mobile design, website hosting, 24/7 customer support, and other features for businesses (like text message order notifications).

You can easily integrate email marketing with automatic campaign setup. The same can be said of tools like Google My Business and Facebook Business, and social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook. The editor has an auto-save feature that works quite well - if your internet connection is interrupted, you won’t lose anything you’ve been working on. A great feature for professional sites is the ability to create an email that’s linked to your domain name. This is a plus for business owners, especially since other website builders leave you to pull this together on your own, and it can often be pricey.

Again, GoDaddy has a truly great variety of useful tools, but you’ll need to pay to access them.

Templates

Compared to other website builders, GoDaddy’s template selection is fairly limited. There are around 300 options to choose from, so users looking for something very specialized or particular might not find it here. And after choosing a template, you’ll have to invest more time modifying and personalizing the site according to your preferences. (If your needs are not so specific, you’re more likely to find something to like among these ready-made options.) The templates are nice, modern and well-designed, but competitors offer exponentially higher numbers of templates (in the thousands). A wide template library is important because design is a crucial part of website building - design is the first thing visitors notice when entering a site, and a poorly-designed website can deter users from returning or from remaining on the page. 

Customer Service

GoDaddy customer service is one of the best in the industry. Their tech support specialists will help you resolve any issues while you’re designing your site, including an (award-winning!) instant online chat for those who’d rather not call customer service. All support options are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Their onsite Help section includes video tutorials that will walk you through different functions of the page, and there are endless instructional pages that explain how to use the platform’s tools and features. GoDaddy also offers webinars on a variety of topics geared towards helping small business owners develop more effective websites.

Community forums within the Help section are a great resource for user-based support and troubleshooting. There you can ask questions, get tips and search threads for particular issues that other users have already worked through.

Overall

GoDaddy is a great resource for users who want to create websites for small businesses or personal use, even those who have no experience in coding or design. It’s incredibly user-friendly - you can launch your website in under an hour - and simple to use. The premium plans are particularly useful for small business owners. The stellar customer support certainly makes GoDaddy stand out from the pack, and for users who don’t want to use the site builder, you can hire professional designers through GoDaddy to put together a site tailored to your needs.

Try it now!