If you’re asking yourself, “Should I host with GoDaddy?”, then you must watch this video.  Learn about the hidden costs of GoDaddy hosting, sub-par performance, and continual customer frustration.

Click here to see the Bluehost hosting packages.

Free?  Yes.  

Consider the cost of a site:

• Domain registration- typical cost $10-15
• Website Design- $150 and higher
• Hosting- $72 and up
• Email Accounts- Depends.
• Setup Fees- $25 and up.

It adds up quickly.  

However, by using the officially recommend WordPress hosting company,  BlueHost, you'll be saving yourself the cost of a Domain and WordPress setup fees.  Sure, you can host for free on other sites but not with your own domain.  You'll have to use a subdomain such as yourdomain.TheMainSiteDomain.com.  It'll work but you don't want that, especially if it's for your business.  So, there's no getting around the hosting fees.  Since you have to pay them anyway, why not take advantage of the free Domain and installation?

You can get around most of those initial fees in this manner:

If you use the BlueHost link here or on the left or right of this article and signup for one year of hosting, you'll get:

• Unlimited Domain Hosting
• Unlimited Email Accounts
• Unlimited Space

I'll include a free WordPress Installation.  Typically I'll charge $25 to setup an account but I'll set it for free if you use the activation links on this page.  I'll also install WordPress for you.  All you'll have to do is login to the WordPress site under your domain. 

You can then polish up the site using some free templates or get some nice templates from ElegantThemes.  You can get a very nice, custom site from them for only $39!

Here's what you need to do:

1. Signup for BlueHost using here or using the links on this page.  They'll ask you for the domain name you'd like to use.  Don't worry, you don't need to have the domain setup yet.
2. Use the contact information page to let us know when the BlueHost activation is complete.  Include your phone number in the message so that we can contact you. 
3. Once you contact us, we'll work with you to find a Domain Name for your site.  
4. We'll setup the WordPress installation for you and provide the login information.

There, you'll be ready to start updating your new site!

However, you may want to go beyond the standard WP templates and delve into a more personalized look for your website.  You can contact us in order to get started on your custom design.

First of all, isn't WordPress just a blogging software?  No.  Initially it was known for that, however WordPress has grown up and is feature-rich, stable, and secure.  In fact, Fortune 500 companies run their websites on WordPress.  There are many reasons why you should run your website on WordPress, but here are 5 good reasons:

Reason Number 1 Your Website Should Run on WordPress:

WordPress will save you money!

WordPress is a free software!  

There are thousands of free templates available for it. You won't pay a dime for the WordPress and there is no expensive design software to buy. 

Reason Number 2 to Your Website Should Run on WordPress:

WordPress is Easy and Free to Update!

If you have a static HTML or Flash site, every update will require support from the web designer.  In contrast, WordPress allows you to login to an administrator's area (called the "backend") and update the website without having to know html code.  It's easy.  The best thing about it is that if you have a WordPress website you won't have to pay a web designer every time you need to update a page. WordPress does not require knowledge of html nor website development softwares such as DreamWeaver.

Reason Number 3 Your Website Should Run on WordPress:

WordPress is versatile with thousands of plugins.

Plugins are snippets of code that add functionality to the site.  Do you need an eCommerce store?  There's a plugin for that.  Do you need add social media functionality such as Facebook "like" button, Stumble Upon, Digg, Twitter?  There's a WordPress plugin for that.  Developers have taken the time to write code to enable thousands of features on a site and they make it available to others like you.  Most plugins are free and the ones that charge are inexpensive.  Adding a plugin to the WordPress website is easy.  Login to the backend, search for plugin, click "install" and then activate it.  There's no coding involved because other great WordPress coders have made it easy for you!

Reason Number 4 Your Website Should Run on WordPress:

You Can Update it From Anywhere!

Since WordPress is not tied to a development software, you'll be able to update it from your work computer, home computer, or the hotel computer when travelling.  That's the beauty of having it accessible online.  If you need to add fresh content, it doesn't matter where you're at, as long as you have access to a computer, you can update your website. 

Reason Number 5 Your Website Should Run on WordPress:

You Can Change Your Website Appearance at the push of a button.

WordPress manages the visual appearance of your website separately from the content of your website.  It uses "themes" to determine the physical layout, coloring, and styling of the website.  It uses a database to store all the content.  The power of that architecture is that a new theme can be activated at the push of a button and the whole site takes on a new personality.  All the content remains the same but the appearance of the page is transformed.  This makes it easy to refresh a website without having to re-write the content. 

If you are interested in getting started with a WordPress site contact us here  or read about an exciting offer for a free Domain and WordPress setup here. 

This article will reveal the hidden costs of hosting with GoDaddy.  The charges add up and what at first seems like a cheap hosting package ends up costing more that other competitors.   Let's break down the cost for hosting a  website with the following two criteria:

1. 5 emails that can be synchronized with between a phone, desktop, laptop, etc.
2. A domain with the option to add a second website in the future.

Click to Enlarge Image

Email in the GoDaddy Economy Plan

GoDaddy advertises their economy plan at  $4.99/month with 100 emails.  Click the image on the right to see the details.  Notice the "2" on the right side of the "100 Email Accounts" bullet.  The disclaimer is below:

²Email account storage is limited to the following: Economy Plan 100 Email Accounts with 100 MB of storage, Deluxe plan: 500 Email Addresses with 500 MB of storage, Ultimate Plan with 1,000 Email addresses with 1 GB of storage.

That means that the $4.99 package only allots 100MB of storage.  So, if a client or a friend has a 10MB zip file to send you, there can only be 10 such emails sitting in the inbox before the capacity is filled.  If this is distributed among 5 users, or 5 email names, then each user only gets a measly 20MB of storage.  It's time to upgrade!  Time to pay more!  Godaddy hosting just costed more.  Let's see how much:

Click to Enlarge Image

Well, 5 emails will only cost $2.49 more.  Sound goods.  However, notice the little word "POP3" at the bottom of the Deluxe plan.  If you want to access your email from your phone, work computer, or home laptop, then you'll need IMAP mail.

POP3 does not synchronize the status of emails across different access points.  Let's say 10 emails arrive in the inbox during the day.  They can be read using POP3.  That's fine.  But when accessing them from another computer the status will not be updated and the 10 emails will be labeled as "unread".  What if you responded to the email?  If you responded at work the responded status will not be shown at home.  That's why IMAP email is important.

IMAP will not only download emails, but it'll also synchronize the status.  The moment an email is read from the phone, it'll update the status on the home and work computers as well.   That means that the price for IMAP mail just went up. t's time to pay more!  Godaddy hosting just costed  an additional $2.99.  So far the cost is $7.98

Multiple Websites in the GoDaddy Economy Plan

Now it's time to look at the website costs.  A single domain is included in the Economy plan.  If you'd like to add a second domain, guess what… yes, that will be an additional charge!  How much more?  Let's see:

Click to Enlarge Image

Hovering over the question mark after the "Multiple Websites" the text says "Multiple Websites may be hosted within a single Hosting account, sharing the same diskspace and bandwidth quotas."  Notice that only the Deluxe and Ultimate packages offer multiple websites.  Yes, Economy does offer "Multiple Domains".  But that only means that  DomainA.com and DomainB.com can point to the same website that's hosted on GoDaddy.  The limitation is that if a second website is needed …. you already know where this is going… Godaddy hosting's fee just increased by  $3.   The total is now $10.98 a month!  This is outrageous! 

Let's not forget that your website also requires a domain registration. GoDaddy offers domain registration for $1.99   That doesn't sound so expensive until you consider that other hosting companies include that for free with their hosting packages.  Doesn't GoDaddy's pricing start to sound more and more like the airline industry?  

My main motivation is to have you know this upfront.  Unfortunately, many of our clients have already selected GoDaddy previous to requesting our services and it's uncomfortable to have to communicate to them that they need to upgrade both their hosting and email accounts to fulfill the simple two criteria established in the beginning of this article.

Now, contrast that to BlueHost which offers unlimited emails (IMAP and POP3), unlimited Domains/Websites, and a free domain registration for $5.95/month!

Take a look at their prices and decide for yourself.

Click to view their offers.

This does not take into consideration the GoDaddy performance.  If your website is a WordPress or Joomla website, then you might be interested in reading Why You Shouldn't Host with GoDaddy or Recommended WordPress Hosting.

Performance is very important when choosing a wordpress host.  The official recommended WordPress host is BlueHost.

Click the banner on the right side of this page to view the special WordPress hosting deals or continue reading for more information. 

Here are advantages to using BlueHost:

• Fast Performance
• One-Click WordPress Installation
• Unlimited Emails
• Multiple Domains
• Very Inexpensive Price
• Fantastic Customer Support

It’s better to pay once for a good WordPress host than to lose money on a cheap host and have to pay to transfer your site because of the slow server response.  

Not only is BlueHost officially recommend by WordPress as a good host but experience has been that it really is the best host for WordPress. 

Check out the BlueHost packages and decide for yourself!

    Recently I needed to add a bit of .php code to a client's home page but didn't want to have to change his index.html to index.php.  So, I figured it'd be easy to just add a .htaccess file and that'd be it.  One problem, the site is hosted on GoDaddy.  Aha- that's probably why you're reading this.   After attempting to figure it out on my own, using Google searches and site:Godaddy.com,  I found several suggestions but none worked.  So I called up customer support and after an hour of attempting several .htaccess commands, we had no success.   So, they sent me an About.com link and told me to read up some more on .php.  That was irritating!  

    I decided to give their customer support another chance.  So, with a freshly charged phone, I gave them a call.  They provided this code:

Options +ExecCGI

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .htm .html

AddHandler x-httpd-php5 .php .htm .html

It worked.  

So, create an empty file, add the above code to it, and save it as .htaccess  

Upload it to the root directly and try out your code.  That's it. That's how easy it should have been the first time around! 😛

Hope this saves someone lots of time.

Steve

1) How many domains/emails do I get for the basic GoDaddy hosting account?

GoDaddy quotes from $2.99-$4.99 for their economy package.  Seems cheap, right? Wrong.  What they don’t tell you is that IMAP email is not included in the basic GoDaddy hosting package.  That requires another charge.  What if you want to setup a second domain?  You need to upgrade the hosting.  They’ll nickle and dime you and you’ll be paying more than you originally thought.

Click Here to Get the Latest BlueHost Hosting Deal!

2) How well does GoDaddy perform with WordPress or Joomla installation?

Not well.  GoDaddy does OK when it comes to static websites but performs poorly when database queries are required.  Empirically we’ve found that setting up the same WP/Joomla site on GoDaddy and another host such as BlueHost, GoDaddy seems like molasses when loading WP/Joomla sites.

3) Confusing GoDaddy Administrative Interface

The GoDaddy administrative interface is a nightmare!  For new users it’s undecipherable and even experienced web designers recognize how messy it is.  I’ve even heard that other web designers charge an extra $50 if they have to work with the GoDaddy hosting.

Aside from being complicated, it’s sloooowwwwwwww.  Setting up and email, a domain, or a database can take from 15minutes to 3 hours to be activated.  GoDaddy is just too large and it sacrifices speed.

Click Here to Get the Latest BlueHost Hosting Deal!

So who do we recommend for hosting websites?

We recommend Bluehost!

1) Bluehost is officially the top-recommended hosting company by WordPress.  Here’s what they say: 

“WordPress Auto-Install — new WordPress updates are made available within 24 hours. Unlimited disk storage, Unlimited monthly data transfer, host unlimited domains on 1 account, 1 free domain name for as long as you host with BlueHost, 2500 POP / WebMail addresses, 50 MySQL databases, free control panel, free Fantastico, free SimpleScripts, 24/7 network monitoring, 99% uptime guarantee, mirrored storage backups, no hidden fees.”

2) Bluehost provides a free domain when you signup and unlimited websites/domains with the basic account.

That’s wonderful.  If you have one site and decide to add a second, it won’t cost you one cent more.  There is however a file limit of 200,000 files. It’ll take about 15 Joomla websites to accumulate that many files.

3) WordPress and Joomla respond well on BlueHost.

Comparing it with GoDaddy, you’ll see a noticeable difference.  Plus, you get 50 mySQL databases, so you could theoretically have 50 WordPress sites on one hosting account.

4) The BlueHost administrative interface is very easy to use.

 It only takes one click to setup WordPress!

You’ll be able to setup your own email accounts without requiring a software engineering degree.  It’s simple.  That’s what we like.

To check out the BlueHost hosting package click here or on the banner on the left of the page.

If you would like to compare your GoDaddy hosting with our BlueHost hosting, we’d be glad to temporarily put your site on our server and then compare.  For WordPress and Joomla, it’s night an day.

Click Here to Get the Latest BlueHost Hosting Deal!