GoDaddy vs Wix: Comprehensive comparison guide for 2024

Final verdict

In comparing GoDaddy and Wix, it’s evident that both platforms have their unique strengths, but Wix emerges as the more versatile and feature-rich option.

• 
  GoDaddy (Overall Grade: 7.5/10)
  
  is praised for its user-friendly interface, comprehensive services including domain registration and hosting, and solid customer support. It’s a great choice for users looking for an all-in-one solution for building and managing their online presence, especially for those prioritizing ease of use and customer service.
• 
  Wix (Overall Grade: 8.5/10)
  
  stands out with its superior design capabilities, extensive app market, and innovative AI features. It offers a more flexible and creative platform for users who want to build a unique and functional website without the need for extensive technical knowledge. Wix’s stronger performance in ecommerce, website speed optimization, and security makes it a better fit for users seeking a comprehensive and robust website builder.

Best for ecommerce

Verdict

: Wix edges out GoDaddy with a higher ecommerce score and a more comprehensive set of features for online stores.

• 
  GoDaddy
  
  : Offers a straightforward approach to ecommerce with user-friendly tools for payment processing, shipping options, and basic SEO. It’s a good choice for those who prefer simplicity and are just starting out.
• 
  Wix
  
  : With a higher score for ecommerce, Wix provides a more robust platform for online stores. It excels in offering a wide range of payment gateways, advanced inventory tools, and detailed analytics, making it suitable for businesses aiming for growth.

Best for informational & business websites

Verdict

: Wix edges out GoDaddy for informational and business websites, offering superior design flexibility, ease of use, and a wider range of plugins and integrations.

• 
  GoDaddy
  
  : GoDaddy scores a respectable 7.9, making it a solid choice for users looking for an all-in-one platform with a user-friendly website builder, domain registration, and hosting services. It’s particularly appealing for those who value integrated marketing tools and straightforward website management.
• 
  Wix
  
  : With a score of 8.3, Wix stands out for its extensive template library and intuitive design capabilities, making it ideal for creating visually appealing and customized informational websites. Its comprehensive app market further enhances its functionality, catering to a broad spectrum of business needs.

Detailed comparison

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Winner: Wix.

If you’re looking for a platform that offers more creative control and a wide array of design features, Wix is the preferred choice.

GoDaddy provides an extensive collection of over 1500 website templates catering to diverse industries and design preferences. These templates cover business, ecommerce, creative, personal, and non-profit sectors, offering various styles such as modern, classic, bold, minimalist, and content-focused. With customization options, mobile responsiveness, and a combination of free and premium templates, GoDaddy aims to meet the needs of users seeking versatile and visually appealing website designs.

GoDaddy Themes

Compared to GoDaddy, Wix stands out with its wide range of highly customizable templates suitable for various website types, not just ecommerce. It offers creative freedom in design, appealing to a diverse user base. While Wix doesn’t have a premium template marketplace like GoDaddy, it has 3-rd party theme shops that allow you to get more sophisticated design choices.

Wix Themes

🏆 Winner: Wix

. With a score of 9.0, Wix is the clear winner in terms of ease of use. Its intuitive drag-and-drop interface and Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) tool make it exceptionally user-friendly. GoDaddy, scoring 8.2, also offers a user-friendly platform with a range of services, but falls slightly short compared to Wix.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner: GoDaddy

. Both platforms offer a range of learning resources, but GoDaddy’s resources are more tailored to different services, making it easier for users to find specific information they need.

Wix, with a score of 8.0, slightly outperforms GoDaddy, which has a score of 7.2, in the ecommerce sector. Wix’s ecommerce capabilities allow users to design their store, add products, set up payment options, and handle orders, making it a comprehensive platform for individuals and businesses. On the other hand, GoDaddy’s ecommerce features provide a user-friendly experience for setting up and managing online stores, with integrated payment processing, flexible shipping options, and comprehensive tools for product and order management.

GoDaddy ecommerce features:

• Payment processing
• Shipping options
• SEO tools
• Email marketing features
• Social media integrations
• Detailed reports

Wix ecommerce features:

• Intuitive store builder
• Wix Payments and various gateways
• Basic inventory tools
• Multi-channel sales options
• Abandoned cart recovery
• Basic analytics and SEO tools

Ecommerce themes & templates

GoDaddy offers around 70-80 ecommerce themes that cover diverse industries and styles. These themes are generally mobile-friendly with basic customization options. However, they may lack the niche variety and cutting-edge designs found on dedicated ecommerce platforms. Extensive design changes might necessitate coding knowledge within the builder’s framework. In contrast, Wix provides around 120 free templates for ecommerce. However, these templates are not fully responsive and may need manual adjustments for mobile display. Wix allows for flexible website design but has limited options for in-depth customization using HTML or CSS.

Product page customization

GoDaddy’s ecommerce platform offers users basic customization options like editing content, adding images, and adjusting layouts. For advanced customization, coding knowledge is required, enabling features such as custom CSS, third-party app integrations, and the creation of unique product page templates. Additional features include managing product variations, organizing information with tabs, and implementing discount codes and promotions directly on the page. On the other hand, Wix permits the inclusion of six options per item with a total of 1000 unique variations for products. Wix stands out for its ease of customization, allowing users to add features like ribbons, size charts, wishlists, and more.

Payment processing

GoDaddy Payments provides a versatile solution for online, in-person, and phone payments with a tiered pricing structure. Generally, online transactions have the lowest fees (2.3% + 30¢), while in-person and manually entered transactions have slightly higher rates (2.3% + 0¢). However, it may lack advanced Point of Sale (POS) features. Wix provides versatile payment options, generally around 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction, without additional commission fees. This makes Wix an attractive option for businesses using diverse payment processors. Wix Payments allows Wix users to manage transactions directly on their site, also supporting various payment methods and currencies.

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Winner: Wix

. Wix, with a score of 8.5, offers multiple editors catering to different user needs. Its standard editor is renowned for its drag-and-drop simplicity, allowing for extensive customization without needing to code. Additionally, Wix provides the ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) editor, which creates a personalized website based on user responses to a few questions, and the Corvid by Wix editor, which allows for advanced web development with JavaScript and Wix APIs.

GoDaddy’s editor, scoring 6.7, is a user-friendly drag-and-drop tool enabling website creation without coding. It offers pre-designed templates, a mobile-friendly interface, basic SEO tools, and ecommerce integration, making it accessible for beginners, with affordable pricing plans and an all-in-one solution. However, it has some design limitations, basic features compared to dedicated platforms, a learning curve for extensive use, and potentially limited third-party app integrations.

Mobile editor/app

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Winner: Wix

. Both GoDaddy and Wix offer mobile capabilities for managing your website, but they cater to different needs and skill levels. GoDaddy does not offer a dedicated mobile app for editing websites built with their Website Builder. Users can log into their GoDaddy account and access the website builder through a mobile web browser, but the experience might be slightly more constrained on a smaller screen.

Wix, on the other hand, offers a user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface in its mobile app, excelling in general website editing. The app is particularly beginner-friendly, making it easy for users with no prior website building experience.

In summary, Wix receives a higher rating due to its versatility in general website editing and a more beginner-friendly interface, while GoDaddy’s mobile capabilities are more limited and may be better suited for users who don’t mind editing their website through a mobile web browser.

Overall Result

:

Tie

. Both GoDaddy and Wix score 8.1, each with their unique advantages in product testing. GoDaddy allows users to sign up for any paid plan, explore all the features, and offers a full refund within 30 days if the user is not satisfied. Wix, on the other hand, provides a free plan with basic features for an unlimited duration and occasionally offers opportunities to test premium features through promotions or limited-time trials.

Wix offers better value for money compared to GoDaddy, with a higher price score and more affordable plans.

Both platforms offer a range of plans with different features and prices, and both offer discounts for annual subscriptions. Both platforms also offer enterprise plans for larger organizations with advanced requirements.

Winner: Wix

. Wix edges out GoDaddy with a higher uptime of 99.95% and a more diverse multi-cloud infrastructure. GoDaddy offers a range of hosting types, including shared and dedicated hosting, and boasts a 99.9% uptime guarantee. However, Wix’s automatic backups and more extensive global data center network give it the edge in this category.

🏆 Winner: Wix

Both Wix and GoDaddy prioritize website performance and page speed, but Wix has a slight edge in website speed optimization.

Wix has significantly focused on enhancing website performance and page speed, integrating tools like the Site Speed dashboard with Google PageSpeed Insights to provide a holistic view of website performance metrics. Emphasizing media optimization, code simplification, content distribution networks, lazy load techniques, and mobile-first designs, Wix’s infrastructure includes globally distributed CDNs, improving content delivery. Wix saw a 25% increase in sites with good CWV scores over a year. Real-world performance analysis of 909 Wix websites showed a wide range of page speed scores from 34/100 to 98/100, averaging 81.9/100, with the Largest Contentful Paint an important metric for website loading, ranged from 0.8 seconds to 3.5 seconds, with an average of 1.6 seconds.

GoDaddy, like Wix, places a strong emphasis on website performance and page speed. GoDaddy’s approach to enhancing site speed includes infrastructure upgrades, improved server infrastructure and data centers, effective caching mechanisms, image optimization tools, and automatic minification of code files. This approach leverages GoDaddy’s fast servers and CDN network to boost load speed. Analysis of GoDaddy sites showed a range of speed scores from 50 to 95, Google PSI scores from 50 to 95, and load times varying from 0.5 seconds to 4 seconds. Continuous maintenance and optimization are essential for keeping GoDaddy sites fast.

🏆 Winner: Wix.

Wix scores 8.2, offering over 500 apps in its App Market, covering a wide range of functionalities. These apps come with various pricing options, including free, paid, freemium, and one-time payment models. Wix’s plugins and integrations extend its functionality across various domains, including advanced ecommerce tools, SEO optimization, social media integration, email marketing, website analytics, appointment scheduling, customer support, enhanced media galleries, blogging features, custom forms and surveys, diverse payment processing options, website localization, improved security measures, and the addition of custom widgets. Wix’s top integrations include Google Analytics, Mailchimp, social media platforms, Wix Stores, Wix Bookings, Wix SEO Wiz, Wix Blog, Wix Forms, PayPal, Wix Chat, Wix Events, Zapier, Wix Video, Wix Music, and Google Ads.

GoDaddy, with a score of 7.3, offers a more focused set of built-in features with the option to extend functionalities through limited plugins, including appointment scheduling, live chat, social media integrations, marketing tools, analytics, and ecommerce enhancements. On GoDaddy Managed WordPress Hosting, users have access to the extensive WordPress plugin repository, with most plugins being free and managed directly within the WordPress dashboard. Similarly, GoDaddy’s Unmanaged WordPress Hosting provides access to the same plugin repository but requires more manual control over installation and updates, necessitating technical knowledge. GoDaddy provides versatile integrations, spanning marketing with Google Analytics and Mailchimp, ecommerce support via WooCommerce and Shopify, and business productivity tools like Salesforce and HubSpot. The platform also ensures secure payments with PayPal and Stripe, online scheduling through Calendly and Acuity Scheduling, and enhanced website protection using plugins such as Wordfence and Akismet.

GoDaddy Applications

Wix Applications

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Overall Winner: Wix

. Wix stands out for its advanced marketing tools, especially in analytics and ad campaign management. GoDaddy is strong in email marketing and blogging, ideal for content-driven strategies.

🏆 Winner: GoDaddy

. GoDaddy edges out Wix in this category with a customer support score of 8.5 compared to Wix’s 8.2. GoDaddy offers 24/7 phone support in multiple languages, around-the-clock live chat, and email assistance with responses within 24 hours. Users can also utilize the 24/7 Community Forum and connect through social media channels like Twitter or Facebook.

Wix, on the other hand, offers phone support (specifically, a callback service limited to business hours), live chat (available 24/7 in English + other languages), and forums. The community is huge, so users won’t feel alone with their problems. However, the lack of 24/7 phone support puts it at a slight disadvantage compared to GoDaddy.

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Winner: Wix

. Wix’s security score of 8.5 outperforms GoDaddy’s 6.8, indicating a more robust security infrastructure. Wix prioritizes website and data security through secure servers, encryption, and compliance with privacy regulations. It also offers strict access controls, regular security audits, and additional features like two-factor authentication.

GoDaddy, while offering encryption and adhering to security standards, provides limited options for private data storage protection. It does, however, deliver robust website security with plans offering features like SSL certificates, malware scanning, and web application firewalls. Despite these features, users should consider alternative solutions for comprehensive data security beyond the primary focus on web hosting.

🏆 Winner: Wix

. Wix’s AI capabilities, particularly through its Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI)
system, are highly user-friendly and innovative. It excels in offering personalized website design suggestions, content
optimization, and streamlined site setup processes. Wix’s AI also assists in providing SEO recommendations and
layout adjustments based on user behavior.

GoDaddy, with a score of 7.5, utilizes AI mainly to enhance the ecommerce experience and content generation. Its AI features focus on customer service and interaction, and generating product descriptions and social media ads. However, GoDaddy does not have an AI website builder, which puts it at a disadvantage compared to Wix.

🏆 Winner: Wix

. Managing your online team with GoDaddy and Wix involves different approaches to website editing access.

• The number of users who can edit a GoDaddy website varies based on the hosting plan and website building tool. For Website Builder (GoCentral and Websites + Marketing), the free plan permits one user, while Deluxe and Ultimate plans allow up to five users with full editing permissions. In WordPress Hosting, there’s default support for unlimited users, each with customizable permission levels controlled through the WordPress dashboard.
• Wix allows unlimited editors regardless of the plan, but caution is needed with 50+ editors to avoid potential backend performance issues.

Both platforms support simultaneous editing. GoDaddy uses avatar icons to indicate co-workers, while Wix displays a warning for concurrent editing, preventing accidental overwrites.

GoDaddy User Roles and Access Levels:

Wix User Roles and Access Levels:

Additional Features

User Feedback

GoDaddy users generally appreciate its affordability, reliability, and user-friendly interface, especially when it comes to domain registration and hosting services. However, some users have expressed concerns about occasional interface changes, perceived slowness in website hosting, and dissatisfaction with pricing increases.

On the other hand, Wix is well-regarded for its ability to cater to a diverse set of website requirements beyond just ecommerce. This inclusive strategy attracts a broad user audience but might not align as closely with individuals prioritizing advanced ecommerce features, which could explain its slightly higher rating compared to GoDaddy.

FAQ