GoDaddy Website Builder Review: Just for Beginners 2025?

When you hear GoDaddy, you probably think of domains. The US provider has much more to offer though, including web space and a website builder for designing your digital presence.

We took a closer look at GoDaddy Website Builder to see if it's as pioneering as the provider's efforts in the hosting and domain name markets.

GoDaddy Website Builder is designed for complete beginners who value easy handling and quick results over extensive design and customization options. That's why we categorize it as a quick-start tool, similar to IONOS, Jimdo, and Weebly.

Unfortunately, performance issues and glitches made GoDaddy Website Builder very frustrating to use.

Since GoDaddy Website Builder is free and you only pay for the domain and other features later, setting up an account is quick. You don't need to provide any payment information.

Simply go to GoDaddy's website, head to the Website Builder tab, and click “Start for Free” to register.

After registering, you'll land in the GoDaddy dashboard, where you can start creating your first website. First, choose the category that best describes your website or business. GoDaddy offers several options, but you can also enter keywords in the search bar.

Next, give your website a name (you can change it later), and you'll enter the builder, where a short tutorial welcomes you. It's brief because the intuitive interface doesn't require much explanation.

GoDaddy's editor is neat, clean, and straightforward. It's divided into four areas:

GoDaddy's editor is straightforward mainly because it limits design freedom. Unlike Wix, it's not a true drag-and-drop website builder where you can place each element individually and configure countless options.

Instead, you create your website section by section. You'll add pre-made sections and be able to somewhat adjust their layout and content. Still, you can't stray too far from the presets and won't be allowed to place elements or change their positions at will.

Creative free spirits probably won't be thrilled with GoDaddy's approach: The editor helps to quickly and easily create a functional, but not really unique, website.

GoDaddy's website editor is pretty lightweight and capable of quick edits, but the platform it's built into is often sluggish. Its inconsistent performance led to plenty of frustration and interruptions in our workflow.

The main GoDaddy dashboard, where you manage your website or store, is especially slow. Switching between sections often takes a frustratingly long time, with routine activities like adding new products quickly becoming tests of patience.

Design and customization play a minor role in GoDaddy: Customization options are limited compared to more complex builders, and the selection of templates and layouts could be bigger.

GoDaddy's editor offers 22 themes to choose from. You can change the current theme at any time, but not all themes shown on the website can be selected.

This might be linked to the category you specified when initially setting up your website, but even support couldn't give us a clear answer. Choosing a theme, as well as how they are categorized could be made much more transparent.

The quality of the templates is okay. GoDaddy focuses on functional designs with clear structures and image-heavy layouts. The templates look modern and professional, but they don't differ much from each other. There aren't any particularly creative elements.

As mentioned, GoDaddy's templates don't afford much creative freedom. You'll adjust settings globally in the "Theme" tab. These are then applied across your entire website. Here, you only have three options:

Global design settings are limited to the essentials. The available options are minimally configurable; for example, there's no information on font color and size, and many aspects, like images, backgrounds, or effects, cannot be modified.

When working with sections you're completely dependent on the layouts GoDaddy provides. Without drag-and-drop and the ability to rearrange individual elements within sections, you're left with little choice but to color within the lines.

This makes you entirely reliant on the options GoDaddy provides and allows. If you're looking for content blocks that aren't covered, you're out of luck.

Among the section options in the context menu, you'll find a layout button at the top. Use this to change the basic layout of whatever section you selected. The assortment depends on the area, and typically includes five to ten layout suggestions that differ enough from one another.

Otherwise, you can only select a color accent from among the section options. This is dictated by the global design. Rounding things out, and depending on the section, you can edit content and settings, such as text alignment.

In the "Website" tab, you can add new pages and arrange existing ones. GoDaddy only supports one level of navigation. However, you can group different menu items in a dropdown menu to streamline the main menu and create a stand-in submenu.

GoDaddy offers only a few templates that are intended for entire pages. This makes the assortment of section templates even more important, since they'll determine how your website looks and feels.

Section templates are divided into categories and can be filtered using the search bar. Many key template types—like 'About Us' sections, image galleries, contact pages, product galleries, and menus—are included.

However, more choices would be better. In some cases, like portfolios, there aren't any pre-made sections. For others, you need workarounds: There's no specific template for price or service lists, so you have to adapt sections for restaurant menus accordingly.

Summing up, the section templates cover the basics but are far from as extensive and diverse as those GoDaddy's competitors offer:

As explained, you can't drag and drop individual elements onto your website: If you need a specific element—like a text box or a video—you have to find a section that includes it.

For our comparison, we only considered elements that actually have a corresponding section template. Even then, the options are often limited—the audio player, for example, only supports SoundCloud integrations.

You can manually upload images and videos or import them from social media. There's also a small stock photo library. However, it isn't extensive, and the quality of its contents could be better.

GoDaddy also includes images from professional stock photo providers – specifically Unsplash and Pixabay. Finding them might take a while: They're located in GoDaddy Studio, where you edit your images, not in the regular media menu.

The image editing options are solid: You can crop photos, add elements and text fields, apply filters, and adjust image properties like colors, opacity, and shadows.

There isn't a developer mode for customizing your GoDaddy website with HTML or CSS code. You can only add custom code using the HTML section.

GoDaddy Website Builder is best suited for simple, low-maintenance small business and freelancer websites. However, the platform does offer some blogging, ecommerce, marketing, and SEO tools and advanced features.

You can add a blog to your site as a section. Posts aren't written directly in the website builder's editor, but in the main GoDaddy dashboard, under "Marketing."

The blog editor isn't flexible: You can add images, videos, and dividers, but you aren't able to otherwise format your posts. There also isn't an HTML editor.

You can either publish blog posts immediately or schedule them for later. It's also possible to create categories to organize your blog articles.

Overall, the blog features are very basic. There aren't any team management settings or comment features.

How blog posts are displayed on your website is strictly regulated: You can only choose from three different blog section layouts.

GoDaddy's SEO options aren't great. If you go to Settings > Search Engine Optimization, you can specify page titles (here called "Headline") and meta descriptions, but it isn't possible to manually edit URLs. Instead, these are generated automatically from the page title. Blog posts are even less configurable.

In the dashboard, go to Marketing > SEO, and you'll find some search engine metrics (from Google) and a tool to help you add keywords to your text and page titles.

However, everything remains very basic: GoDaddy tries to automate SEO for absolute beginners, and as always, significantly limits how much users can do.

Unfortunately, there's no easy way to create multilingual websites. Since only one level of site navigation is offered, you can't repurpose the top level as a language menu.

If you need multilingual websites, other website builders like Wix or Strikingly might serve you better.

You add an online store to your website as a section template. Then, you can add products directly in the editor, however, most store management, like that for blogs, happens in the main GoDaddy dashboard.

Product management is intuitive. You can offer physical or digital products and specify all important details, such as a product's name, price, SKU, or tax category in the product menu. You can also categorize the different items.

Below the product description, you'll find a few more tabs. Click on “Inventory and Options” to create different product variants, like sizes or colors.

This is well set up: Just add a new option and choices, and the different combinations are automatically created with unique item numbers. You can then individually adjust each variant's image and price/sale price.

You can also offer services by heading to Appointments > Services in the GoDaddy dashboard.

It's possible to schedule appointments (e.g., online consultations), one-time events (e.g., webinars), or regular events (e.g., weekly classes). You can integrate these services into your website with the “Scheduling” section. However, ticket sales or a video platform for webinars aren't included.

You can also sell subscriptions or memberships using the ecommerce platform's built-in tools, rounding out GoDaddy's assortment of store activities.

Shipping, payments, tax settings, and orders are all managed in the GoDaddy dashboard.

GoDaddy supports Stripe and PayPal, covering the main payment options. You can also accept offline payments. The payment options are solid, even if there aren't as many gateways offered as on other ecommerce platforms.

For shipping, you can specify regions and methods, and link the delivery fee to the order's volume (but not its weight). Unfortunately, direct integrations with specific delivery services and automated order processing aren't available.

Tax rules must be manually added, however, VAT rates for regions are preset.

Discounts can only be offered as coupons, which you can create by going to Marketing > Coupons. There are three coupon categories: fixed sum, percentage, and free shipping. Coupons can have expiration dates or only be valid for certain categories and products.

There are no discount rules beyond coupons, making it impossible to create limited-time-only promotions. You can set sale prices for any item, which will be displayed on that product's page. Its regular price will appear crossed out next to the current sale price.

Product reviews are supported through a Yotpo integration (free), which you can activate in your shop's dashboard.

GoDaddy is suitable for an extensive range of different stores, regardless if they sell physical or digital products, services, or memberships.

When displaying your products and shop content, you're strictly bound to the layouts provided by GoDaddys. Still, the service is fairly strong when it comes to ecommerce.

The GoDaddy dashboard is also home to a few extra features that can help you promote your website:

Unfortunately, there isn't an app marketplace. This means that there's no easy way to add features that aren't among GoDaddy's built-in tools.

Here's an overview of GoDaddy's advanced features in comparison:

GoDaddy has a comprehensive help center, with a dedicated section for its website builder. It has plenty of articles, many of which include tutorial videos that introduce the builder's features. Of course, there's also a search bar to make finding what you need easier.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to answer all of our questions using the Help Center. GoDaddy could explain some basic features better, like the (non-)availability of multilingual websites, especially since some articles seem a bit outdated.

You can contact GoDaddy's support staff by phone or live chat from Monday to Friday, 8 AM to 6 PM. Unfortunately, there's no email support.

On the phone, we spoke with a friendly representative in less than a minute. She patiently tried to answer our questions but couldn't help with everything.

Our experience with the support chat was nerve-wracking: Three different representatives gave us three different answers to the same question and always tried to push us to upgrade. We had to repeat simple questions multiple times and were none the wiser after 40 minutes of conversation.

GoDaddy's Website Builder is available in four plans apart from the free version, which ties you to a GoDaddy domain: Basic, Standard, Premium, and Ecommerce. Each comes with an SSL certificate, a domain, and GoDaddy Insight analytics.

The two cheaper plans limit how many business pages you can create on social networks, as well as posts and replies on social media channels. Email marketing sends are also limited to 100 or 25,000 in the two higher plans.

Ecommerce features are only included in the Ecommerce plan.

For subscription length, you can choose between a monthly or yearly plan, with the latter offering a discounted monthly fee.

You can find GoDaddy's current price list here:

When choosing a website builder, it's important to see how GoDaddy compares to its competitors. A direct comparison is tough since each provider's plans offer different things. To level the playing field, we compare the monthly costs for two scenarios:

Price Comparison 1: Basic website, ad-free, custom domain

Among the most affordable plans that include a domain and no ads, GoDaddy's Basic plan is priced in the middle range. Some builders will set you back a bit less, but most providers in our review cost more—some even more than double:

Price Comparison 2: Online store, ad-free, custom domain

Among the online store plans, GoDaddy is neither the cheapest nor the most expensive. In our comparison, it falls right in the middle:

You can try GoDaddy's premium features for free for seven days. However, during this trial period, you won't be able to access all of its features – for example, you can't create new pages.

For GoDaddy's monthly plans, you can request a refund within 48 hours of booking a subscription. Annual plan subscribers have 30 days.

If you want to keep it simple and don't have a knack for design, GoDaddy offers a user-friendly website builder that will keep you from making any design errors.

Just use its sections to quickly build a functional website and fill it with your own content. It also includes extensive ecommerce features and many handy marketing tools.

Unfortunately, you can't really break out of GoDaddy's templates. Unlike drag-and-drop editors, you don't get much creative freedom.

Also, the platform's features are somewhat limited: You can't create multilingual websites, its SEO settings are outdated, and there could be more design and section templates. We also faced performance issues because the GoDaddy dashboard was often frustratingly slow.

So, GoDaddy's Website Builder is mainly suitable for simple projects and users who don't want to be too involved in their website's layout and design, but still need a professional and functional site. Even if that's you, there are better solutions out there.

We created a demo page with GoDaddy Website Builder, which you can view here: GoDaddy Demo Page

For all builders in our comparison, we create a demo page with the same content:

A homepage with Hero, About Me, Services, Testimonial, Pricing, and FAQ sections, a portfolio page, a blog, and a contact page.

With GoDaddy, we had to improvise a bit with the portfolio because there's no pre-made section for them. The price list is based on the editor's restaurant menu, and for testimonials, there's only one section type without different layouts.

What have other customers experienced with GoDaddy and its Website Builder? We've gathered reviews from various platforms and summarized the key points for you.

Is GoDaddy not the right choice for your website? Maybe one of these alternatives will work better:

Find the best alternatives to GoDaddy here: