King Kong versus Godzilla — We put the two most popular web service providers toe-to-toe in a battle to see which would emerge victoriously. WordPress, the most popular CMS in the world, provides an easy-to-use platform for managing your content and building a website with zero coding knowledge. GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain registrar, differs from WP by providing true web hosting and a simple site builder. Even though both providers have crossover in the services offered, we’ll admit this isn’t an exact comparison of the same service offering. We all know King Kong and Godzilla don’t exist in the same universe, but we still want to know who the winner is. Read on to find out which web service provider takes all


WordPress, the #1 blogging platform and software that powers more than 26% of websites currently online, needs no introduction. The underlying software of WordPress.com, a browser-based website builder for newbie site owners to stretch their website design wings, can be downloaded and installed for free via WordPress.org. Many of the top hosting providers make the software even easier to access, however, by offering single-click installations for WordPress. WordPress hosting front-runner, InMotion Hosting will preinstall the platform for you at checkout. Once the platform is successfully set up, site owners can begin browsing the theme marketplace, previewing site content before publishing to the web. Find the perfect theme, incorporate any plugins you'd like to extend your site's functionality, and begin drafting your first post! Whether you're building a blog or an online store — hosting on a shared server or your very own VPS — you can have a new WordPress site online in less than an hour. It only has to take a few minutes, but we're no stranger to perfectionism. You'll have the support of the open-source community in your corner, as the WordPress core code is actively maintained by a team of all-star contributing developers. And just about any question you could imagine having has probably been asked and answered somewhere on the web. It's a long-standing, fast-growing family of fans, and we at HostingAdvice welcome you to team WordPress! Whether you're looking for shared, cloud-based, or dedicated server WordPress hosting, we recommend InMotion. Throughout our review of the WordPress platform, we'll use InMotion's pricing, storage allowances, uptime rates, and support standards to illustrate the ease and excellence of building a website with WordPress and a WP-friendly host

• Get started on WordPress with InMotion Hosting. GoDaddy is exceptionally well-known in the hosting space, typically serving as site owners' introduction to the world of web hosting. The company makes it incredibly easy and affordable for folks to choose a domain name, sign up for hosting, and start building their online business or personal web property. While known for its domain, email, and shared hosting services, GoDaddy offers options for virtual and dedicated servers as well. Pre-built templates come with the hosting company's basic WordPress offering, or upgrade to managed WordPress services for top support or help with your online store. The company makes the migration process as seamless as possible, so you shouldn't shy away from scaling your site as your business needsGoDaddy is a hosting home that willalongside you. The user control options are pretty popular in the hosting space: your choice between the easy-to-use cPanel or Plesk control panels, plus root (administrative) access for more tech-savvy customers. If you're particularly interested in webmail, GoDaddy offers an intuitive interface for keeping up with the unlimited email accounts you have available to you as a customer. Each email account comes with 256-bit encryption and enhanced privacy protection. Customer support has been a focus of the GoDaddy team of late. Today, the team has an award-winning collection of experts on staff, readily available to handle customer phone calls and messages 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Luxury services like WordPress Premium Support and Website Security also add support ticketing functionality. While GoDaddy is on hand to talk you through any issues, the team is also keeping an eye on your server (as well as other clients sharing your server). The hosting provider's around-the-clock security monitoring enables GoDaddy to guarantee uptime rates of 99.9% or better. This uptime rate is by no means outstanding in the industry, but for most end users, it's all that's required. The bottom line is this: GoDaddy is a go-to domain web host for millions of users worldwide for a reason. The company maintains an ever-expanding network of users by offering blazing-fast load times, award-winning security and support, and a free domain registration when you sign up for a year-long plan. It's a great hosting deal, particularly for first-timers and small business owners, at a really great price point


• Get started on GoDaddy now

WordPress hosting is incredibly cost-competitive. The software itself is free, and most shared hosts offer WordPress packages in the $2- to $5-per-month ballpark. It's easy to get started, as hosts will often offer single-click installations for WordPress, and then you can begin browsing the thousands of themes available in the Appearance section of the WordPress dashboard. Customize to your heart's desire, click "Publish," and voila! You've got yourself a self-hosted WordPress website. Whether you're looking to build an online presence for your brick-and-mortar or a blog for your interior design musings, WordPress is the ideal space in which to spread your website-building wings. The additional free resources you'll have at your fingertips include plugins (add-on software that extends the functionality of the WordPress platform), eCommerce tools, and features to optimize your website for online search. By partnering with a cheap shared hosting provider, you'll get more than shared space on a server. To remain cost-competitive, most hosts include additional freebies such as a complimentary domain name registration, unlimited storage and email, and a few hundred dollars' worth of paid search marketing credits. InMotion Hosting does all of the above, which is one of the many reasons we recommend the host as a true value offering in WordPress hosting. Get started today and enjoy free SSD storage, one-click installations for other WordPress-compatible tools, and business-class hardware at an ultra-affordable monthly rate


• Get started on WordPress with InMotion Hosting. #5 out of 10 in Cheap Hosting reviews A major pull factor for GoDaddy's hosting services is certainly the cost. It's hard to beat web hosting for just a few dollars per month, especially when the company includes a free domain name, control panel, impressively fast load times, and unlimited websites with most plans. The company makes it not only affordable but super easy to get started on a shared hosting plan — for first-timers, bloggers, business owners, and others. You can choose a GoDaddy hosting plan based on your exact needs, with a range of options for disk space, email, processing power, and other resources. If your site grows to need scalable and/or dedicated resources, the company's team makes that transition easy — but with most plans coming with unlimited storage and unmetered bandwidth, you should have plenty of room. Virtual and dedicated servers can be provisioned in minutes, with root and cPanel access, and no re-provisioning is required for upgrades. All GoDaddy plans are equipped with the user control of cPanel (or Plesk, if you prefer). From cPanel, you can easily install and set up popular web applications for blogging and/or ecommerce. A big name in the budget web hosting space, GoDaddy is consistently improving the performance of its servers, website, and services to offer a great customer experience. With cPanel control and 1-click installations for standard web apps, you can get your website up and running quickly. The company's 24/7 security monitoring and DDoS protection allow you the comfort in knowing the professionals are making sure your site is online, loading quickly, and hacker-free. We do wish the web hosting provider would include a free SSL certificate with each shared plan, however. All in all, the web hosting service comes with incredible power and peace of mind, at such a low price point, making GoDaddy quite a value deal

• Unlimited bandwidth and up to unlimited storage
• Get started on GoDaddy now

If you're a mid-sized to large-scale online business, or if security and compliance are of utmost concern, you may be considering a dedicated server for your hosting needs. Dedicated resources come at a premium, but leading WordPress host InMotion makes it worth your while. Should you opt for one of InMotion's dedicated hosting plans for WordPress, the team will download and install the software for you. Begin writing your site from scratch or get a jumpstart on design with a professional-looking theme. Either way, the end result will be blazing-fast page load speeds backed by an always-on uptime guarantee (99.999 InMotion Hosting dedicated servers feature SSD storage, rebootless kernel updates, full root access, and around-the-clock server monitoring. Plans include plenty of RAM, IP addresses, storage, and processing power, so your WordPress site is equipped to scale alongside your business. WordPress is a robust, comprehensive platform for designing, deploying, and maintaining an exquisite and performant online presence, and it has a loyal community of contributing developers and avid users to show for it. Follow the forums, confide in the WordPress Codex, and spend some time getting to know the nuances of this incredible interface. You won't be disappointed

• Get started on WordPress with InMotion Hosting. GoDaddy dedicated server hosting plans feature managed support options, on-demand resources, and the intuitive user control of cPanel and Plesk. The company offers plans for Linux and Windows users, with a variety of options for operating systems, RAM, processing power, disk space, and hardware choices. As a bare-metal solution, GoDaddy dedicated hosting gives customers 100% control over their server in a single-tenant environment. Unlimited bandwidth is always nice, as is the ability to choose between high-capacity HDDs and high-speed SSDs for storage. Site owners can also choose to host their server in datacenters in U.S. or Europe. With the optional fully managed services, GoDaddy support is not only available around the clock to help you troubleshoot issues with your server but the team is keeping an eye on your server status. The company offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee and premier DDoS protection, anti-hacking services, and other security add-ons. Each server comes with a free year of SSL certificate protection, and GoDaddy fully managed hosting customers benefit from the assurance that the experts will facilitate security patches and bug fixes regularly and on time. Each dedicated hosting plan comes with Panopta monitoring for your server, application, and network services. Users can easily view uptime and system-level metrics like CPU, RAM, storage, or set up alerts and notifications. With resource configurations customized to meet your needs, GoDaddy offers dedicated server hosting that you canyour business with. The GoDaddy tech support team is available 24/7, guarding your site against malware, hackers, unexpected downtime, and DDoS threats. Meanwhile, the company's support agents are handling any requests that come through the phone lines or chat portal. With on-demand resources and industry-leading page load speeds, GoDaddy is a dedicated host worthy of your consideration

• Get 45% off of your first term
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Virtual private servers yield the utmost flexibility at a cost-effective price point. Some of the most performant and popular websites in the world are powered by VPS hosting, and the same can be said of the WordPress platform. From the New York Post and Fortune.com to Spotify and Beyonce.com, millions of websites run on WordPress. HostingAdvice is backed by a virtual server and managed via the WordPress platform. It's a match made in hosting heaven. For your VPS and cloud hosting needs, we recommend InMotion Hosting for WordPress. The company touts enterprise-grade hardware, and solid-state drives come standard, accelerating performance with up to 20x faster page loads. With your choice of datacenter locations, East or West Coast, InMotion delivers all the flexibility, performance, and security the VPS niche can offer. Once your virtual server is provisioned and WordPress is installed, you can choose to write your HTML from scratch or take a head start with one of thousands of themes. Extend your site's functionality with plugins for eCommerce, page caching, comment moderation, and other essentials for a modern web presence. Backed by an active, open-source developer community, the WordPress interface is easy to befriend, and just about any question you have about bugs or updates has probably been answered in the Codex or community forums

• Instantly provision your VPS and install WordPress with 1 click
• WordPress is trusted as the #1 site builder platform
• InMotion is trusted as the #1 WordPress VPS host
• Tons of support available via your host and online forums

• Get started on WordPress with InMotion Hosting. If you're looking toand scale your website, GoDaddy has you covered. Developers and web enthusiasts will be pleased to hear that GoDaddy offers root access, making it easy to install PHP modules, applications, stacks, and various customizations to fine-tune your virtual server for peak performance via the command line or remote desktop. Plans also include a variety of control panels, led by cPanel and Plesk, so you can easily manage your hosting service with an intuitive graphical interface. The surprisingly powerful virtual servers can have up to 32GB RAM and 400GB of SSD storage that boasts three times faster page loads. In addition to unlimited bandwidth and KVM virtualization, GoDaddy boasts global datacenters on four continents and tons of modern operating systems. Choose from platforms like CentOS, Ubuntu, and Windows Server. Meanwhile, the GoDaddy team will monitor your server 24/7 to alert and ward off traffic with malicious intent. Customers will have to patch their operating system as needed, but GoDaddy provides around-the-clock hardware monitoring with failover solutions and snapshots to minimize downtime. Panopta monitoring is also included with all semi- or fully managed VPS accounts, giving you a window into network and application services via easily configurable alerts and notifications. The GoDaddy name may not immediately bring VPS hosting to mind. Nonetheless, GoDaddy's virtual server offerings include the security, support, worry-free fully managed services, and value combination that embodies the GoDaddy reputation in the hosting space. For those who may not quite be ready to make the jump to a VPS plan, the hosting company's Business Hosting packages combine the best of both worlds: the amped-up power of a virtual private server with the ease and simplicity of shared hosting

• Designed to handle traffic with Linux or Windows
• Get started on GoDaddy now

Good news, website owners: The software that powers upward of 25% of websites is free and open for public enjoyment and customization! WordPress is ready for download at WordPress.org, and the team is actively maintaining its core code. So long as you stay current with your WP software versions and install plugins with caution, the site-building possibilities and benefits of WordPress are seemingly endless. It should come as no surprise that many of the web's most trusted hosts have zeroed in on the popularity of WordPress, offering single-click installations for the software and WordPress-specific optimizations for performance, security, and support. Once you get up and running with a WordPress host, you can choose from thousands of free and paid themes — premade website templates that expedite your site design process, allowing you to skip to the content and customization. For a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) experience, we recommend installing BoldGrid, a site builder tool that layers on top of the WordPress platform to create a drag-and-drop site builder environment. InMotion will install BoldGrid for you at checkout as well, making WordPress setup a non-issue. Incorporating additional plugins, apps, and scripts extends the robust functionality of the WordPress interface. From calendar widgets to page caching for performance, there's essentially a plugin for every WordPress need. Integrating payment processing tools, such as Shopify and PayPal, converts your traditional site into a transaction-ready virtual marketplace. Cultivate a following with commenting apps, like Disqus, and link your social media accounts. What's more, WordPress hosts often throw in free paid search advertising credits to help you kickstart your marketing efforts. WordPress remains the most popular platform for building a beautiful online presence from scratch. It's relied on by hosting novices and seasoned developers alike, and we're confident the software, matched with InMotion Hosting hardware, will deliver everything you need to establish andyour next website


• Get started on WordPress with InMotion Hosting. #8 out of 8 in WordPress Hosting reviews As champions of low-cost, high-impact hosting, GoDaddy understandably offers a slew of services geared for all levels of WordPress users. Starting with the company's basic shared hosting services, which start at $2.99 per month, each GoDaddy customer who signs up for an annual plan receive a free domain name and the power to control their site via the cPanel or Plesk control panels. From either of these interfaces, you can quickly install and set up the WordPress environment in one click at no additional cost. GoDaddy's improved cPanel is configured with CageFS to protect your content and uses CloudLinux to keep your site's resources truly balanced. While you're busy adding content, photos, or products to your WordPress site, GoDaddy ensures that your web pages are loading quickly. More serious WordPress users may prefer to step up to the web host's suite of optimized WordPress hosting plans, which feature an automatically installed SSL certificate, backups, and daily malware scans. Users can create and launch unlimited websites with most of these packages, and you can choose to automatically upgrade your plan as you need extra resources. Even higher up, GoDaddy Pro Managed WordPress Hosting starts site owners with a delightful onboarding experience and one-click migration tool to make it easier than ever to get started. Once you configure your free CDN and built-in caching, you can take advantage of daily backups, automatic core updates, pre-built sites, and a staging environment to ensure your WordPress website is picture perfect

• Get started on GoDaddy now

While WordPress is technically blogging software, it's been called a website builder, a content management system, and even an eCommerce platform — basically, a website-building multitool. Because it's open-sourced, the core code can be adapted to meet virtually any website need, and the wealth of plugins and WP-friendly apps built by third-party developers makes this platform a go-to for website owners around the world. For added site-building functionality, we recommend downloading and installing BoldGrid, which functions on top of the WP interface to act as a drag-and-drop content management system. This is especially useful for first-time site owners or nervous hosting newbies. Basically, BoldGrid takes away the one dig against WordPress, its semi-steep learning curve, by transforming the backend environment into a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) website editor. Best of all, both WordPress and BoldGrid are 100% free, and the InMotion Hosting team will set up the platforms for you at checkout. Once WordPress is installed and configured, you can begin designing one of two ways: Upload your own HTML files and style sheets and continue customizing in the backend, or choose from a library of thousands of premade website themes. Paired with the abundance of plugins for extensibility, the WordPress interface brings utmost flexibility from a site construction and customization point of view

• Developed and supported by the InMotion Hosting team
• Responsive themes so your WP site looks good on any device

• Get started on BoldGrid for WordPress now. #4 out of 10 in Website Builder Hosting reviews GoDaddy uses a custom website builder and easy access to dozens of content management systems to offer a user-friendly site-building solution to customers. Most of GoDaddy's hosting plans include these options at no additional cost. Plus, if you sign up for an annual hosting plan, this world-leading domain name registrar will include a GoDaddy domain for free. The company's Websites + Marketing plans combine the GoDaddy website builder with built-in marketing tools to seamlessly integrate your website, social media, and online reviews to attract the most visitors. Even better, you can get started for free! To unlock the full publishing power, though, plans start around $10 per month. You can save money by signing up for a shared hosting account, which will point you toward easy-to-use content management systems like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. You'll still get a lot of options for customizations and one-click installations but not quite the same drag-and-drop simplicity you'll find on most site builders. Regardless of which you choose, the GoDaddy team is working around the clock to ensure your site will remain online and performing speedily while you worry about making your website beautiful and professional-looking. The company's award-winning security team keeps an eye out for downtime, hackers, and other security threats. The end result is their uptime guarantee of 99.9%, which does the job for most users. The bottom line is that you can get started with multiple GoDaddy's website builder options for a dollar or less per month and choose from hundreds of theme options to start designing the site of your dreams

• Get started for FREE, no credit-card required
• Get started on GoDaddy now.