Godaddy and Dreamhost both are the big players of their respective fields which is Web hosting. Godaddy and dreamhost both provide specialised hosting for wordpress sites and also have specialised plans just for wordpress. Godaddy and dreamhost both have been kind of pioneers in the hosting business and they still are good service providers if you ever need to choose hosting for your website.
Introduction
Godaddy and Dreamhost both are US based web hosting companies and both have been in there in the market now for almost 20 years. This kind of experience in the hosting business is enough for any customer to trust these web hosting giants with their eyes closed. Though personal choices may differ depending upon the kind of services needed by any individual but considering the broad range we can conclude that both the hosts are equally capable and good for personal use. Here we will compare the plans and services provided by both the hosts side by side so that it is easy for you to decide the best value for money host and plan according to your needs.
Plans and Features Comparison
The plans provided by both the hosts are on monthly or yearly basis and can be used to host all kinds of websites ranging from personal blogs to high traffic websites. According to your needs you can buy the suitable plan on the host you find better when compared to the other. Here we will list down all the plans provided by both the hosts and give details about what each plan provides.
Starting with godaddy, it provides its basic plan named as Starter, at a minimal price of Rs. 99/mo and allows you to host only one website with a storage limit of 30 GB with unlimited bandwidth. All the plans on godaddy have support for PHP 7.0 and 7.1. Dreamhost has its basic plan priced at 10.95$ which is billed monthly and provides the facility to host unlimited websites. Though the other plans details are not clearly described on Dreamhost’s official website rather than that it provides ability to install WordPress in an instant without any hassle. This plan also provides free email for the period the plan is bought.
Godaddy Web Hosting Plans
Dreamhost web hosting plans
Godaddy has next plan named as Economy which is priced at Rs. 199/mo and provides hosting for one website along with 100 GB of storage and unlimited bandwidth and free business email for the first year. If you buy the annual subscription of this plan then you also get a free domain. Dreamhost provides its 1 year plan at the rate of $9.95 /mo which is billed $119.40 every year. The major details except the unlimited website hosting ability are also not disclosed on the website.
The next plan that godaddy provides is what they called the best value for money plan, which is named as Deluxe. This plan costs Rs. 309/mo and provides unlimited website hosting along with unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth. It also give you free business email for the first year and if you buy the annual subscription you also get a free domain. Dreamhost provides its 3 years plan which is billed every 3 years at the rate $286.20 or $7.95/mo. This plan also provides unlimited website hosting and the rest of the details are not provided by Dreamhost.
So according the descriptions of all the plans provided by these two hosts we can clearly see that the plans provided by godaddy are way more cheaper and feature rich as when compared to Dreamhost.
Web Hosting Performance Comparision
Performance test of a web host is a great way to test its real capabilities. Having cheaper than others plans is not only enough if you are really looking for quality service. Performance test is essential to determine the true potential of the web hosts. You don’t want to buy a hosting plan and then regret later on just because your host failed to deliver what it promised to give. Here we will compare both the hosts for their performance and see which host performs better in the test.
Godaddy Server performance test –
To check how fast Godaddy servers respond to a user request from different locations of the World, we run a test on a website hosted on Godaddy’s shared hosting server, In the image below are the results of our test.
Godaddy Shared Hosting Server Performance Test Results
Dreamhost Server performance Test –
Similarly, We run one more test on a website hosted on Dreamhost shared hosting server, below are the results of our test.
Dreamhost Shared Hosting Server Performance Test Results
As from the test results we can clearly see that there is not much difference between performance of both the hosts. Both the hosts got a C+ with near to similar ping timings from all the different server locations with which they were tested. So we can conclude that both the hosts are similar when talking about their performance.
Website Speed Comparision
Website speed test helps to determine how fast the host can open up your website. This is an important part of any web hosting service since slow hosts results in longer website opening times and thus taking longer for the website to get fetched to the users device. Slower websites results in degradation of visitors since people dont want to visit websites which are slow. Due to this it is very much essential to have your website hosted on a host which can send receive data at faster speeds. Here we will compare the speeds of both the hosts –
Godaddy Speed Test –
To determine how fast a website will run when hosted on a Godaddy shared hosting server, we run a simple website speed test using the tool Pingdom. Below in the image are the results of our test.
Website Speed Performance Hosted on Godaddy Server
Dreamhost Speed Test –
Website Speed Performance Hosted on Godaddy Server
Similarly, We run one more test for a website hosted on Dreamhost server. Below in the image are the results of our test.
The results show that Dreamhost performed way better than Godaddy in this case. Where Godaddy scored a D grade with 62 points, Dreamhost scored a B grade with 86 points which is way better than Godaddy. So we can conclude that Dreamhost has proved to be slightly over the edge for Godaddy.
Time to First Byte (TTFB) Performance Comparision
Time to first Byte is the minimum time required by the host to transfer or receive the first byte of data. The minimum time it takes to receive the data the faster the host is considered to be. If the host takes anywhere more than 200ms for the transfer of first byte of data, the website can be considered as a slow website and it needs improvements. Here we will do and compare the TTFB test for both godaddy and Dreamhost.
Godaddy TTFB Test –
Dreamhost TTFB Test –
We can see from the TTFB tests that both the hosts took almost the same time to transfer the first byte of data. On the Dallas server Godaddy took .427 ms for the first byte and Dreamhost took .450 ms for the same. So we can conclude that both the hosts are equally good as far as data transfer speeds are considered.
Godaddy Vs Dreamhost : Uptime Comparision
Uptime is the period of time or the range of time over which a webhost is online and properly functioning. While choosing a webhost, uptime should be one of the top most priorities since you wouldn’t want your website to be inaccessible just because your web host failed to deliver the promised uptime or wasn’t functioning properly. Here we will compare the uptimes of both Godaddy and Dreamhost side by side so as to get a better idea of both –
Godaddy Uptime History
Dreamhost Uptime History
We can see from the results that where, godaddy had only one downtime period that too was only for 4 minutes on 21 oct 2017 in the past few months , Dreamhost had more downtimes than uptimes. The maximum time for which Dreamhost was down was for 346 minutes that roughly translates to 6 hours of downtime which can be potentially very much harmful for people with websites who have huge user base. So from the statistics we can conclude that Dreamhost failed pretty badly in the uptime test and it is strictly not recommended anymore if your prime concern is continous accessibility of your hosted website.
Godaddy Vs Dreamhost : Customer Support
Customer support is also an important aspect to look for before buying a host since it helps to decide that how quickly can you get your issues solved once you raise a request. Godaddy provides a huge variety of modes of communication with the customer support staff. You can directly call them via phone to seek support or you can get involved in an online chat with the customer care representative or you can just raise a ticket regarding your troubles and they will resolve your issue in minimum time possible. Godaddy also provides customer support and payment methods in regional languages and currency respectively.
Dreamhost also provides 24/7 customer support to its customer via telephonic conversations but the payment options are limited and you can’t pay in your regional currency which can be a drawback for some people.
Which One Should You Buy? Godaddy or Dreamhost
Taking a look at all the factors we can conclude that the plans offered by Dreamhost are costlier when compared with the plans of Godaddy. Moreover the uptime of Dreamhost is not at all impressive and the lack of good customer support can also be a downer for many. So we will recommend to blindly go with godaddy whenever you need to choose between these two hosts.
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