Should you choose GoDaddy Managed WordPress hosting?
I worked for GoDaddy in the hosting department from 2015-2018. It was during this time they were updating their once "industry-leading" Managed WordPress to their new version.
I'm not a fan of the term "Managed WordPress" used by the hosting industry. The term "Manged" generally gives you a staging site, "WordPress optimized" hosting and automatic core WordPress updates. The hosting does NOT update your theme or plugins, that is up to your or an additional service to purchase! Most hosting plans include backup and SSL but you could get all these features with the original cPanel hosting! AND watch out for the upgrades if you want someone to help with theme and plugin updates!
We offer Total Care Fully Managed WordPress Hosting at Cyber Innovation. Our prices include all the addons others try to sell you. Hosting, SSL, WordPress core, theme and plugin updates. Multipoint backups, scalable cloud hosting and more! For over 20 years we've been hosting client websites and we take care of everything so our clients can focus on what they do best!
IF you insist on GoDaddy Managed WordPress hosting
At this time, in their product evolution I would only recommend their PRO options:
The Pro plans are on faster, more "dedicated resource" servers with an SSL certificate per website for life. On the standard plans, you'll need to purchase an SSL certificate after the first year.
Don't pick your hosting plan on the introductory site and think you'll change or upgrade next year. They are different hosting plans behind the scenes and you'll need to manually move your website!
Recently we moved a number of client WordPress websites to GoDaddy Managed WordPress PRO hosting and we were very impressed with the performance, ease of use and migration tools.
See more details about GoDaddy Managed WordPress here
GoDaddy Managed WordPress Overview
GoDaddy Managed WordPress Pro is a faster hosting platform compared to standard cPanel and shared Linux hosting. The servers are dedicated to WordPress hosting, run faster SSD hard drives and there is a front end caching system to help your website load quicker. GoDaddy Managed WordPress is easier to manage than cPanel, includes daily backups of your files/database and includes a migration tool to move your existing WordPress website to GoDaddy Managed WordPress hosting. Prices are very affordable starting at less than $5 a month!
GoDaddy Managed WordPress Pro Migration
IF you have a current WordPress site that's running slow, you can migrate your site to GoDaddy Managed WordPress hosting, review and check everything is ok before you make the switch. The migration tool takes the complexity out of moving a WordPress site manually.
Simply follow the wizard and fill in your website address/URL, WordPress admin username, password then your FTP username/password for your existing host and click Start! Your website will be migrated to a temporary domain so you can review and confirm the site migration was successful. Next, you can move or point your domain A record to the new Managed WordPress Hosting or if your domain is hosted with GoDaddy, the domain will update the A record automatically!
More about Managed WordPress here
Managed WordPress Staging
IF you choose the Deluxe, Ultimate or Developer Managed WordPress, you'll have a "One-click staging site" option that allows you to create a live copy of your website in a staging area to test a new theme or maybe new plugins, etc.. Test your site in the staging area and when you are ready you can merge your site into the production site.
One-click staging is a perfect way to work with a developer to build a new site and merge the updates when you are ready.
Save money with GoDaddy Managed WordPress hosting
As of this writing, you can get Deluxe GoDaddy Managed WordPress for less than $4.50 a month/US but as we said above to avoid it! Purchase the PRO hosting for better performance and integrated SSL for each site! You can purchase 5-50 sites for less than one of the other sites 2nd-year renewal price. The first year is cheap and you'll be encouraged to purchase a multi-year plan. It's better to purchase the Pro plans with integrated SSL!
No, you cannot host multiple sites on one hosting account but that's not a big deal as these prices are so low AND one of the biggest mistakes people make is hosting multiple WordPress sites in one hosting plan.
Ok before you disagree it's ok to "test" new sites and host more than one on a hosting plan but seriously this won't work long term!
If your website is for business, invest in your website and don't convince yourself to "start cheap and upgrade when you are making money." That mindset will hold you back from making money!
No need to manage cPanel
With Managed WordPress, you don't have to log in to a cPanel and figure out how to install WordPress or navigate a bunch of icons and settings. cPanel hosting is easy for long-time web developers but for new WordPress users, this eliminates confusion and the cPanel experience.
Faster and more secure Managed WordPress Hosting
Another bonus of Managed WordPress at GoDaddy is the servers are dedicated to WordPress for increased speeds and more monitoring of server files, malware, and hack attempts. GoDaddy uses a caching engine called Varnish to speed up the site speeds and the servers use SSD drives.
Daily Files & Database backups
Files and database backups are run daily for quick restores if you run into any problems.
Staging Environment
In certain plans, you also have a Staging Environment so you can make an exact duplicate of your website offline to test theme/plugin or content updates. Now you can make changes without affecting the live website. When you are ready you can merge staging into production!
Other thoughts:
Don't get me wrong GoDaddy is not fully managing your WordPress plugin and theme updates. You are still responsible for managing the theme and plugin updates but they are monitoring for "non WordPress activity" on the network.
Failed Managed WordPress Migrations
Nothing works 100% every time and some migrations will fail. If you have a large WordPress site with numerous data and image files it's likely your migration will time out.
How to manually migrate your WordPress website to GoDaddy Managed WordPress
If you cannot make the migration work simply follow these steps:
- Connect to your existing WordPress website hosting provider via FTP and download the wp-content folder to your local computer
- Install the WordPress plugin WP-DB-Backup to export a copy of your MySQL file OR go to PHPMyAdmin in your control panel dashboard and export your database to a .sql file
At this point, you have your website files (wp-content) and your posts/pages/etc (DB backup) now you need to upload them to your destination GoDaddy Managed WordPress site.
- Log in to your GoDaddy account and click Manage on your GoDaddy Managed WordPress and then create a new WordPress installation. You want to have a standard basic installation you can overwrite.
- Next login to your GoDaddy Managed WordPress using SFTP (you can find your login under "settings" then SSH>SFTP) and upload your wp-content folder and overwrite the existing files.
- Also, transfer a copy of your database.sql file to the /HTML directory on the webserver OR under in your GoDaddy settings you'll see instructions on launching PHPmyadmin and there you can import your database file.
Now you can review your newly imported WordPress site and if you used a temporary domain you can now change to your permanent domain.
NOTE: Once you get your files uploaded and/or imported you may want to call GoDaddy support and have them review what you've imported to make sure everything is correct.
More about Managed WordPress here
We will be posting more guides and updates for GoDaddy Managed WordPress in the future. In the meantime post your comments or questions below if we left something out.
We offer Total Care Fully Managed WordPress Hosting at Cyber Innovation. Our prices include all the addons others try to sell you. Hosting, SSL, WordPress core, theme and plugin updates. Multipoint backups, scalable cloud hosting and more! For over 20 years we've been hosting client websites and we take care of everything so our clients can focus on what they do best!
