Pod Creative VS Go Daddy Shared Hosting: What’s the difference?

There absolutely are, and each type of hosting provides a vastly different experience. We’ve discussed the different types of hosting in the past, but to sum it up there are three types of hosting. They are: shared hosting, dedicated hosting, and virtual private server (VPS) hosting. 

Shared hosting means many different sites, thousands, all on the same server (computer).  For low traffic sites, this is often a good way to go as the cost is low.  However, your site is competing for resources with all the other sites on the server.  And, there is a chance that malicious software could travel from another site on the server to your site. While Go Daddy offers Shared, dedicated, and VPS hosting, the most common type of hosting is shared hosting. 

Dedicated hosting is just as it sounds, a single server hosting a single website.  Dedicated hosting is more expensive, but you’re getting a lot more for that money: All the resources of a single computer powering your website.

VPS hosting is more complex.  What you’re paying for is the cumulative resources of many computers networked together, acting as a single server.  One advantage to VPS is you can scale from small to large websites without the need to switch servers.  Typically VPS hosting rates are hourly rather than monthly.

Here’s the deal. SSL Certificates can be free. For everyone. Anyone can visit SSLforfree.com, follow the vast tutorial selections available, and install SSL encryption on their website in a fairly straightforward manner.

Depending on the plan you choose with GoDaddy you may receive free, unlimited SSL for your site(s) while their more budget-friendly options do not include this service. To be clear, Go Daddy does not require you to purchase SSL through them, rather offer them at a cost of $99.99/yr. In our opinion, no matter what you pay per month for hosting, SSL should be a freely offered service. Here at Pod Creative if you are on our dedicated, managed hosting plan you don’t have to worry about anything. Domain renewal, hosting renewal, SSL certificates, plugin updates, software updates, we take care of it all!

There is an extremely limited number of sites that would be good to use Go Daddy hosting for. The main one being a low-traffic blog. Other than that, we really don’t recommend Go Daddy hosting, or any provider’s shared hosting for that matter. The main cash-cow of Go Daddy’s hosting is their shared hosting due to the extremely affordable price. This means there are thousands upon thousands of sites crammed onto one computer, all vying for the same resources. This also means there are thousands upon thousands of ways for malicious software, hackers, and more to gain access to your site. Your site is at the mercy of all other sites on the host computer in terms of bandwidth and computing power. Let’s say for example Joe Blow’s site suddenly goes viral and ten thousand people visit his site in one day. That will overload the host computer, drawing bandwidth and computing power away from your site causing it to be slow, not load properly, or even completely crash.

On the other side of the coin, Pod Creative offers dedicated, managed hosting.  We have an entire server dedicated exclusively to our clients’ websites.  Meaning we have direct access to all the security settings and protocolls for all our sites, and we regularly patrol for malicious software and potential weak points. That takes care of the dedicated, but what does the managed mean?

Managed hosting means we take care of the rest of it too! Plugin updates, regular and irregular backups, SSL certificate renewals, software updates, and so much more. Basically, we make sure you’re website is running the way it should, and when it doesn’t, we fix it. The best part? You’ve already paid for it! When you pay your annual dedicated, managed hosting ($30/month) you’ve already paid for us to get your site back up and running if there is a hosting related issue. The only thing you need to worry about is adding content!