GoDaddy website builder review 2024: A great website builder for small businesses

In the vast landscape of web services, GoDaddy stands out as a timeless titan. Renowned primarily for its domain registration and hosting solutions, it might come as a surprise that GoDaddy also boasts one of the best website builders available today.

This all-in-one service covers not just website building, but also marketing and monetization features, seamlessly integrated with domain registration services. It's a one-stop solution for those looking to win in the digital realm without much trouble.

In this GoDaddy website builder review, we take a close look at its features, flexibility, and what it offers. Whether you're starting your first site-building adventure or giving your online presence a makeover, we've got insights for you. Our review is based on research and hands-on testing. Stay with us as we explore GoDaddy's tools, pricing, and support, helping you maneuver the world of website building.

GoDaddy website builder: Features and Tools

GoDaddy packs a punch with features tailored for small business success, including blogs, image galleries, video and music embedding, Google Maps integration, contact forms, promo banners, and call-to-action buttons. While looking at GoDaddy’s dashboard, you'll see blog tools for simple content planning.

AI is also integrated across the platform, with a full website builder (Airo) and other dedicated tools such as AI-powered content generation that helps users create unique custom copy for their websites.

However, lacking an app market will limit access to specialized tools or plugins. As we delve into GoDaddy's features, we'll look at their functionality, flexibility, and user-friendliness, while supplying insider tips to craft your perfect website.

AI website builder (Airo)

We recently got our hands on GoDaddy Airo, the company's new AI website builder and business toolkit, and we were impressed by its comprehensive approach to website building and management - it is certainly one of the best AI website builders on the market. This innovative tool simplifies the entire website creation process by harnessing AI to tailor a fully functional website based on your business particulars. From logo designs to social media handles, and email marketing campaign templates to product descriptions, Airo effortlessly takes care of everything.

One of the highlights of GoDaddy Airo is its ability to boost your brand identity with eye-catching logo designs. From sleek and modern to classic, Airo offers a variety of options to suit your website’s style. Plus, Airo lets you create either a simple coming-soon page or a full-fledged website with suggested layouts, AI-written text, and stock images. This allows you to build anticipation for your business with a stylish coming soon page, giving your audience a sneak peek at what's to come.

With Airo's professional email setup, establishing a professional image is a cinch as it enables you to create a custom email address that reflects your brand identity. Additionally, Airo provides personalized suggestions for social media handles based on your domain name, ensuring consistency across all your online platforms.

By analyzing uploaded product photos, Airo creates descriptions that highlight the unique features and benefits of your products or services. Furthermore, businesses can leverage GoDaddy's partnership with ZenBusiness to register for a free LLC, offering peace of mind and legal assurance.

Airo simplifies engaging with your audience through its email marketing campaigns. With customizable GoDaddy website templates and personalized messaging, you can easily connect with customers and drive conversions. You can stay organized with a social media calendar that highlights important holidays and optimal posting times, ensuring prime visibility for your content.

With Airo's AI-powered SEO capabilities, improving your website's search engine ranking and reaching a wider audience is easy. Finally, this AI-powered tool can streamline customer interactions by generating responses across all platforms, ensuring timely support for your audience.

Drag-and-drop editor

With AI integration and customizable themes, you can kickstart your online project with ease and expand on them as needed. Whether you're a seasoned pro or dipping your toes into website building for the first time, GoDaddy's drag-and-drop editor has all the tools you need to create a captivating online presence.

Our journey with GoDaddy’s editor has been nothing short of seamless. It offers intuitive, user-friendly customization options that empower you to bring your website vision to life. From setting up private pages to enabling appointment booking and integrating WhatsApp chat buttons and external reviews, GoDaddy's editor offers enough features to elevate your site's functionality and enhance user engagement.

We've found that navigating GoDaddy's drag-and-drop editor is a breeze. The central dashboard makes managing your site a cinch and the controls for adding and editing page sections are intuitive. While we do wish for an “undo” function, the overall editing experience is smooth and efficient, catering to users of all experience levels.

With GoDaddy, you can add up to 20 sections per page and tweak elements in the header and footer areas. However, keep in mind that you won’t be able to add more headers or footers. While GoDaddy may have fewer templates compared to other builders, it still offers a solid selection of ready-made sections across various categories. However, we did notice that customization options are somewhat limited, which might be a drawback for some users looking for more personalization.

One standout feature we've enjoyed is the GoDaddy app, available for both iOS and Android. Having a mobile app means you can edit your site on the go, adding flexibility and convenience to the customization process.

More recently, GoDaddy added editor shortcuts for quick access. These shortcuts help Editors quickly and easily add features such as online stores and access essential marketing tools, streamlining the website building process.

Templates

With GoDaddy's site builder, we discovered a collection of over 100 mobile-responsive design templates, tailored to various industries such as restaurants, online stores, portfolios, and more. Each template within GoDaddy's repertoire was meticulously crafted to ensure flawless adaptation across all devices - be it desktops, tablets, or smartphones. We appreciated the ability to preview our designs across different platforms during the editing process, ensuring our site looks stunning regardless of the screen size.

While all GoDaddy website templates may lean towards a more standardized appearance, we found enough customization options within the visual editor. With intuitive controls for adjusting colors, fonts, and images, we were able to inject some uniqueness into our site. Although the customization options can't rival those offered by other platforms (like Webflow, IONOS, and Wix), GoDaddy's builder remains a reliable ally for creating clean, functional websites with a specific purpose in mind.

Recent updates have increased customization options, the platform now allows you to change font colors across all headings and text, helping make your website more personalized and brand aligned.

Ecommerce

GoDaddy’s ecommerce plan (unsurprisingly called “Ecommerce”), provides a comprehensive suite of ecommerce tools tailored to meet the needs of businesses looking to sell products online. With it, you can showcase and sell up to 5,000 products (a combination of physical and digital goods) to your customers, manage shipping logistics, and securely process payments – all in one convenient platform.

One of the core security features included in the ecommerce plan is SSL security, which safeguards customer payments and transactions, providing peace of mind for both you and your customers.

Additionally, GoDaddy offers abandoned cart recovery functionality, helping you recapture potentially lost sales by re-engaging customers who have abandoned their shopping carts before completing their purchases. To help limit friction in the buying process, GoDaddy also provides a 1-page checkout format. This makes things a lot more efficient for online shoppers and helps reduce abandoned carts.

Accepting payments is made simple with GoDaddy's ecommerce plan, as it supports popular payment methods such as PayPal, Google Pay, and Apple Pay. Moreover, you have the flexibility to offer promotions and discounts to incentivize purchases, as well as choose from a range of free and paid shipping options.

Businesses looking to track their site's performance and gain insights into customer behavior will benefit from GoDaddy’s robust site performance tracking tools. These analytics allow you to monitor core metrics and make smarter decisions to boost your online business.

While GoDaddy's ecommerce tools may not boast the extensive features found in platforms like Shopify or Wix, they are well-suited for small to mid-sized stores looking to sell a modest range of products. However, if you're aiming high with your online store, you might find one of the other best ecommerce platforms better suited to your ambitions.

Integrations

While many site builders boast extensive app stores with thousands of choices, GoDaddy takes a different approach, for better or worse. Instead of offering a wide variety of third-party apps, this site builder focuses on seamless connections with social media platforms, providing small business owners with an easy way to broaden their online presence.

With GoDaddy, you can easily link your site to popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and beyond. These integrations allow you to synchronize posts and content across both platforms. Plus, you can track likes, comments, and analytics directly from the central dashboard, gaining helpful pointers into post-performance. Commerce customers can also benefit from AI-powered social post automation, making it quick and easy to promote products.

Beyond social media, GoDaddy offers a small selection of superb built-in integrations that can enhance your site's functionality. From restaurant reservations through OpenTable to online food orders via ChowNow, these integrations cater to specific business needs without the hassle of dealing with third-party providers. Additionally, GoDaddy provides a streamlined dashboard for managing integrations with major online marketplaces like Amazon, Myntra, and Flipkart, making it easier to establish your brand on multiple platforms.

When it comes to accepting payments online, GoDaddy offers a choice between GoDaddy Payments, PayPal, Square, and Stripe.

All in all, while GoDaddy's built-in features are super convenient, the absence of an app market left us feeling limited in our ability to fully customize our site.

Insights and analytics

Understanding how well your website is performing and gaining insights into your online presence is crucial for your business journey — it's a bit like having a compass. Fortunately, GoDaddy offers integration with tools like Google Analytics, which provides detailed insights into your website traffic and user behavior. Additionally, you can leverage Meta Pixel and Facebook Meta tags integration to optimize your site for Facebook advertising and tracking.

GoDaddy's analytics tool, InSight, became our go-to companion on this journey. This intelligent tool, powered by AI, not only tracks your website's performance but also offers personalized advice to help you navigate the ever-changing online landscape. The search engine visibility tool will guide you through optimizing your site's keywords and meta descriptions to climb up the search engine rankings ladder.

Depending on the plan you opt for, you can also gain access to goodies like free business email, social media platform listings, and even free ad credits for platforms like Google and Yelp.

GoDaddy website builder pricing

Let's begin by taking a quick overview of the pricing before we delve into the specifics of each plan:

Now, let’s take a closer look at GoDaddy's site builder packages:

Basic

Starting with GoDaddy's “Basic plan” is the perfect launchpad for your online journey. This plan covers essentials like a custom domain, built-in SEO, email, and intuitive design features. With the added security of SSL encryption and the convenience of a unified inbox and website chat, managing your online presence becomes seamless.

Premium

When it's time to upgrade your business, opting for the “Premium” plan could exceed your expectations. You will get everything from the basic package, but will also unlock extras including the ability to book recurring appointments, take online payments, additional email marketing tools, and 25,000 email marketing sends per month. You'll have all the tools you need to grow your brand and engage with your audience on a larger scale.

Commerce

If you’re into online selling, GoDaddy's “Commerce” plan is the way to go. Building on the features of the “Premium” plan, this package provides everything you need to manage your inventory and sell products online. From product listings to flexible payment and shipping options, this plan equips you with the tools to run a successful online store.

With all plans, you can choose from billing cycles ranging from 1 month to 60 months. Plus, you can explore the site builder for free for one month, with no credit card required.

Help and support

Help and support are cornerstones of GoDaddy's service, with the company known for its comprehensive customer support. No matter the time of day, you can access support through multiple channels, including phone, email, and live chat. This round-the-clock availability ensures that issues or concerns can be promptly addressed, providing peace of mind.

Alongside direct support, GoDaddy's site offers a range of self-help resources, allowing users to solve problems on their own. These include a robust knowledge base filled with articles, tutorials, and FAQs, offering detailed guidance on common concerns.

For those seeking more personalized assistance, GoDaddy offers specialist support and access to courses, webinars, and podcasts, further enhancing the support experience. However, despite its comprehensive support system, GoDaddy would benefit from a clearer organization of its resources. We've struggled to locate specific features and information within GoDaddy's knowledge center, pointing to areas where user experience could be a bit better.

GoDaddy website builder: What’s not included? What could be better?

While GoDaddy website builder offers a solid range of customization features, more advanced users might find these options limited compared to other platforms like Wix or Weebly. Increased flexibility in design elements and layout customization could enhance the builder's appeal to a more demanding audience. Additionally, although AI-powered tools expedite website creation, the resulting sites may lack creativity and personalization.

Moreover, ecommerce functionality is restricted to the top-tier plan, which could be a significant drawback for budget-conscious users aiming to sell products online. Furthermore, unlike some competitors, GoDaddy lacks an app market for additional integrations, meaning users miss out on opportunities to enhance their websites with third-party tools and extensions.

In terms of alternatives, Wix distinguishes itself with superior features and flexibility. It offers a wide array of customization options and boasts an extensive app market, making it an excellent choice for aspiring online business owners seeking advanced functionality.

Read our full Wix review to find out more about what the platform has to offer.

On the other hand, Weebly stands out as one of the best free website builders, offering exceptional value for money. Its free tier includes essential features such as an SSL certificate and SEO tools, which makes it an enticing option for budget-conscious users. However, for those specifically looking for something like a GoDaddy free website builder, Weebly's free plan might not have as many features that work together smoothly.

You can check out our Weebly review to discover more.

GoDaddy website builder review: Summary

To sum it up, GoDaddy website builder is a user-friendly platform with AI-powered tools, making it one of the best small business website builders and an ideal option for rapid website creation. However, its limitations in customization and lack of an app market may deter more advanced users.

So, if you're seeking a simple and affordable solution, GoDaddy is worth considering, especially with its one-month free trial. However, if you have more complex needs, alternatives like Wix and Weebly offer superior features and flexibility. In either case, weigh the pros and cons carefully before deciding whether GoDaddy is the right choice for building your online presence.