There are many different vendors available for hosting your websites. There are your local telecom companies and many, many online ones as well. Trish and I have chosen to work with GoDaddy for several of our sites. Personally, I have a few hosting accounts with GoDaddy: one for a website for my consulting company; another hosting account for a group of other product websites; and another one for several other sites I own.

One great reason Trish and I continue to use GoDaddy for our blog sites is the option to load the WordPress blogging software directly through GoDaddy. Whenever there is an upgrade to WordPress, GoDaddy will ensure that all the bugs have been ironed out of the software before making the upgrade available to their user community. Then, by a single click of the mouse, we can install the latest version of WordPress. It really is that easy!

But what are your GoDaddy Web Hosting Options?

GoDaddy Hosting plans

As you can see, at the time of writing this article, there are 3 main general hosting packages with lots of features to consider: Econony Plan, Deluxe Plan, and Unlimited Plan.

Before you decide, I would suggest you figure out what you think you really will need. Do you want to be hosted using a Linux or Windows operating system (this impacts the applications you can download onto your hosting account through GoDaddy)? Do you want one website or many? Do you need multiple email addresses for each site? What is your site’s purpose: a full service online store, or is it for sharing photos, or for blogging, or all of that plus more?

For instance, for my corporate consulting site I purchased the Economy Plan. The site is a single page with links to my email address. It’s a “presence only site” to prove my company and services truly exist. I’m the only employee of my company so I only need one e-mail address. There really isn’t much else I want to do with it and as a result I don’t need a lot of space. The email addresses available are more than enough, and I don’t want much more. The Economy Plan actually offers more than what I need but I didn’t want to add my other online requirements to the same account as I need to keep my corporate expenses separate (my accountant appreciates it).

Once you figure out what your requirements are, check out the options available in GoDaddy and compare them to other vendors. With this information you’ll be in a better position to make a decision on which hosting plan best fits your current and/or future needs.

Another feature of hosting with GoDaddy are the numerous programming languages you can build your website in. I won’t list them here for you as you can check it out directly with GoDaddy if this is something you are interested in. Besides, I have absolutely no idea how or when to use which language…too technical for me at this point in my “online” education  .

My absolute favourite feature of GoDaddy hosting, is the ability to add free add-on applications to your hosting account by a single click of your mouse. This is accomplished under your hosting “manage account” section. I’d love to provide you with instructions here, but I won’t, since quite often when Trish and I log into GoDaddy there are slight changes to the site (usually for the better). Providing you instructions here won’t do you much good if the site changes again, so you’ll just have to check it out for yourself.

Some of the types of tools/applications you can download for both the Linux and/or Windows operating systems are:

• Administration Tools such as paFileDB, SQLyog Enterprise, WISE-FTP
• Advertising Applications such as Noahs Classifieds and OpenX
• Blog Applications such as WordPress, BlogEngine.NET, dasBlog, etc.
• Content Management Applications such as anyInventory, DotNetNuke, Joomla, Mambo, Nucleus, etc.
• Content Providers such as Feedzilla, Fotolia, Mochila and Simply Hired
• eCommerce Solutions such as BidWare, osCommerce and Zen Cart
• Gallery Applications such as 4Images, Coppermine and Gallery
• Message Boards/Forums Applications such as phpBB, Simple Machines Forum, Vanilla Forum and YetAnotherForum
• Project Management Tools such as Brim, dotProject, Mantis, etc.
• Social Networking Software such as elgg
• Tools & Scripts jQuery and script.aculo.us
• Website Add-ons such as Aardvark Topsites, Advanced Guestbook, PHCDownload, WebCalendar, etc.
• Wikis Software such as MediaWiki, PmWiki, TWiki
• Other Applications such as Kampyle Feedback, OpenDB, OrangeHRM and phpFreeChat

If you are interested in getting more details about these particular add-on applications from the list above go to GoDaddy’s Hosting Plans Page and click on the “See All” link on the right side of the page near the top. See the image below to help you out…hopefully…if they haven’t changed things too much since the writing of this article.

Add-on Applications

GoDaddy also provides Hosting Plans dedicated to Grid Hosting (NEW!) and Blog & Podcasting Hosting. You also have the ability to purchase Virtual Dedicated Servers or Dedicated Servers. You can get more information on these options if you are interested by clicking on the Hosting drop down in the green bar at the top of the page.

GoDaddy Hosting Plan Menu Options

The last thing I’ll mention related to the Hosting options which GoDaddy provides are a couple of Hosting Enhancements described below:

• Traffic Facts is a service that goes beyond the free traffic statistics provided with every Hosting and Website Tonight account you purchase with GoDaddy. “Traffic Facts helps you gather, manipulate and report the make-or-break data crucial to your site’s success. Eliminate costly errors that might otherwise go undiscovered. Focus your offerings. And target new customers with a laser-like certainty.” – GoDaddy
• Dedicated IP “is for customers who may consider paying the small additional cost for Dedicated Hosting because you want to access your accounts by FTP as well as the Web when the domain name is otherwise inaccessible, such as domain name propagation periods; you want your site to be backwards-compatible with older browsers; you want to create a corporate intranet, and/or you need a faster response with high traffic loads.” – GoDaddy. (I have no idea what that quote is about but I’m sure one of you readers out there does.)

Well, that’s all I could find this time about the various Hosting options with GoDaddy. There are probably more but I’ve got bug-eyes at this point. If you do notice something I have missed, please feel free to add your comments.

Cheers.