For a long time, GoDaddy has been the most popular website hosting and website building platform in the world. You might have seen their Superbowl commercials. But competitors are catching up, and lots of people are choosing not to build their websites with GoDaddy Website Builder. Many prefer to use Squarespace, WordPress, or Wix. Let’s take a look at five of the most common reasons why people are switching from Godaddy.
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1. Low customizability
If you don’t care much about how your website looks, and just want to get something up fast, then GoDaddy may be for you. But if you want to take time refining your website to taste, you had better look elsewhere.
GoDaddy offers no custom sections on their website builder, and very few customizations. Font changes size across the entire website, so it can be difficult to make the text the size of your choosing.
2. Bad ecommerce tools
If you run an ecommerce store, definitely look elsewhere. You will have to use an external program, like Shopify, even with Godaddy. Checkout on Godaddy gets redirected to a 3rd party website, mysimplestore.com, which does not look professional at all.
3. Switching themes may make you lose content
If you use Godaddy site builder, then pick a theme, and stick with it. Otherwise, make backups, because when you change themes, your website copy could be lost or destroyed.
4. You can’t edit the HTML or CSS
If you want a bare-bones, simple website, this may not apply to you. But since there are so many reasons to use HTML and CSS in your website, including keeping track of visitor actions and adjusting colors and fonts, you would probably be better served by an open source site builder like WordPress.
5. GoDaddy has all of your data.
GoDaddy offers a hosted, proprietary product. What goes on your website gets stored in their servers. This can make it difficult to migrate if you want to change providers. So if you use GoDaddy, better be 100% certain that you will stick with it.
Alternatives to GoDaddy Website Builder
Thankfully, there are many alternatives to GoDaddy Website Builder.
Some of the most popular alternatives are all-inclusive hosting and website design services like Squarespace and Wix. These companies offer you domain name purchases, hosting on their servers, and more sophisticated website building tools than GoDaddy’s. With either of these options, you will have much more customizability, the option of injecting HTML and CSS into your website, and much stronger internal eCommerce support.
Alternatively, you can also choose to build your website from the ground up, the old-fashioned way. If you have the time, money, and resources, you can set up a server in your home or office, and either design your website yourself or get a professional like Boston WordPress Design group to help you. In this case, there are no restrictions whatsoever on your ability to design your own website. You could take advantage of a popular website builder like WordPress, or have the whole thing developed in HTML from scratch.
