Best GoDaddy Web Hosting Alternatives Who Prioritize Security and Reliability

You may have seen in the news that behemoth web hosting company, GoDaddy, has come under heavy scrutiny for poor security practices and misleading customers. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) states, “…since 2018, GoDaddy has failed to implement reasonable and appropriate security measures to protect and monitor its website-hosting environments for security threats, and misled customers about the extent of its data security protections on its website hosting services.”

GoDaddy has had multiple large data breaches over the past several years that should warrant serious concern:

• February 2023 – Unknown attackers stole source code and installed malware on compromised GoDaddy servers via a security breach.
• November 2021 – A security breach affected 1.2 million Managed WordPress customers where the attackers were able to hack into GoDaddy’s hosting environment and obtained email addresses, WordPress Admin passwords, sFTP access, database credentials, and SSL private keys.
• March 2020 – 28,000 customers were affected by a security incident where the attackers were able to access account credentials and access GoDaddy customers’ servers.

With approximately five million web hosting customers worldwide, GoDaddy is one of the largest web hosting companies. However, based on my web design company’s direct experience as web designers with numerous clients who originally used GoDaddy for web hosting and domain management services, it is certainly not one of the best web hosting providers in my opinion.

Thankfully, it does appear that the FTC will be requiring GoDaddy to improve their security protocols and processes via a proposed settlement order. However, it may not be advantageous for your business to wait until those changes are finalized and subsequently implemented.

In my nearly two decades of experience as a web designer, I’ve accrued firsthand experience with dozens of web hosting companies, both good and bad. If you are a GoDaddy customer looking for GoDaddy alternatives, check out two of my favorite providers below.

WP Engine – Secure Web Hosting for WordPress Websites

If you specifically have a WordPress website, WP Engine is absolutely one of the best and most robust web hosting platforms purely dedicated to WordPress. WP Engine’s hosting packages are typically more expensive than alternatives, but they include far more features oriented towards security, backups, automating plugin updates, uptime monitoring, testing environments, and more. Additionally, they have a responsive customer support team available 24/7.

Check out WP Engine’s web hosting packages.

KnownHost – Customizable Web Hosting with Top Tier Customer Support

KnownHost is one of our all-time favorite web hosts regardless of what platform you have (e.g. WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc.). They have numerous packages to choose from based on your skill level and performance needs. We typically recommend their NVMe VPS offerings for websites requiring high performance. Ensure you select “Managed” NVMe VPS packages and you might consider their optional “Proactive Monitoring” service.

Alternatively, KnownHost also has Managed Hosting for WordPress web hosting packages available as well, but they are typically lower cost shared web hosting solutions for small business sites.

Learn about KnownHost’s web hosting options.

Focus on High Quality Web Hosting

We understand that it is extremely tempting to seek out the lowest cost web hosting provider. However, when you buy low-cost web hosting you often end up paying for it eventually in the form of security issues or poor performance and server downtime that negatively impacts conversions.

If you have questions about our experience with either of the above vendors, feel free to reach out to us directly. While we do not offer web hosting migration services for non-clients, we can point you in the right direction. Additionally, both of the aforementioned company’s have migration assistance included.

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