GoDaddy VPS Review 2026: How Good Are The Servers?

GoDaddy is one of the largest hosting companies in the world. Next to domains and web hosting, the provider also offers virtual servers. But do its VPS plans really deliver on their promises?

Setup, management, and performance: In our hands-on review, we show whether GoDaddy's offerings are suitable for everyday needs – and what their weaknesses are.

With GoDaddy, you sign up directly during the checkout process. You'll enter your name, email address, mailing address, and preferred payment method.

Provisioning starts automatically as soon as your payment is processed. GoDaddy doesn't require ID documents or additional verification when you purchase a VPS. Only in rare cases, such as with certain domain extensions or add-on services, may additional identity verification be necessary.

GoDaddy combines your account, products, and management tools into a single dashboard. The modern, well-organized interface looks clean and makes generous use of white space. A bit more color contrast would've made navigation easier, though. Many sections look quite similar, which makes the overall design feel monotonous.

A brief look at the product section shows that GoDaddy’s main focus is domains. The large search field on the homepage is exclusively for domain searches, and the prominent button in the top-right corner takes you straight to website creation. Server management feels more like an afterthought.

That being said, the server management itself is pleasantly simple. There are only four menu items to manage your VPS. Even if you're using a VPS for the first time, you should find your way around quickly.

Unfortunately, the dashboard's performance is rather sluggish. The product overview and account management areas sometimes have noticeable delays. In our review, some pages took up to five seconds to load. Individual elements also load slowly at times. Things are better in the actual server management section, where the interface responds faster and often without any delays.

You can change the language setting globally via the footer of the GoDaddy website. There's no dark mode, the interface is only available in a light theme.

Setting up a VPS at GoDaddy is straightforward. During the ordering process, you select your preferred operating system (Linux, or Windows for an extra fee), the contract term, and optional add-on software such as cPanel/WHM or Plesk. You have plenty of contract-term options, ranging from one month to three years.

GoDaddy limits location choices to three regions: Europe, the US, and Asia. You can't select a specific location within these regions. In our review, the server was automatically assigned to a French data center after picking Europe.

For Linux plans, you can choose between the distributions AlmaLinux, Debian, and Ubuntu. GoDaddy doesn't allow custom images, and the host doesn't provide any additional software of its own. In our review, it then took another eight minutes before the server was fully ready. You'll receive an email notification when the setup is completed.

GoDaddy claims that new VPS servers are ready within just a few minutes. In our review, the process took significantly longer. The server wasn't marked as active in the dashboard until the next day, and we never received a notification about it.

Server management at GoDaddy is well-organized but fairly basic in terms of features. On the main page, you'll see the key details of your VPS, such as IP address, region, operating system, and current CPU, RAM, and storage usage. This gives you a quick overview.

The action button in the top-right corner lets you handle basic tasks directly. You can restart the server, stop it, put it in emergency mode, or completely reinstall it. A recovery console is also built in and covers most of the essential management features.

Automatic daily backups are included in every VPS plan. This is a nice bonus, as some providers charge extra for this feature.

You get seven backup points, which GoDaddy creates once per day in the late afternoon. According to customer support, GoDaddy stores backups in "a secure cloud".

You can also create manual backups or schedule automatic backups at specific times. This feature is useful if you want regular backups outside the automated cycle.

The notification system offers plenty of options. You can enable email alerts that trigger when usage is high or storage space is running low. This is free and offers a good level of control.

Reinstalling the operating system is easy, but you're still limited to the same three Linux distributions offered at the start: AlmaLinux, Debian, and Ubuntu. Custom images still aren't allowed and there are no preconfigured apps available. GoDaddy has some catching up to do here.

The limited scalability offered can also turn out to be problematic. You can't adjust individual resources like RAM or CPU separately. The only way to upgrade is by switching to a higher plan. Downgrades aren't possible at all.

GoDaddy falls short of competitors when it comes to other features as well. There are no snapshots for extra security, no built-in firewall management, and very few options for customizing network settings.

Here's how GoDaddy's server features compare to other hosting providers:

How well does a GoDaddy VPS actually perform in everyday use? To answer this objectively, we run standardized benchmark tests that cover different performance areas. We measure five key metrics:

All values come from standardized tests (benchmarks) that we run not only on GoDaddy but on many other similarly configured VPS. These results help you compare offerings and make the right decision. The higher the score, the better.

We explain our VPS benchmark methodology in detail here:

In the single-core test, GoDaddy scores only 1,071 points, landing in eighth place out of eleven. Single-core CPU performance shows how quickly a server handles simpler tasks, like web applications that aren't heavily parallelized or many smaller PHP requests.

The multi-core review results are even weaker. GoDaddy scores just 1,987 points here (for comparison: the median is 6,177). That's only good enough for ninth place.

If you run applications that use multiple cores at once, like complex calculations, video processing, or parallel server processes, GoDaddy might not be the right choice. The performance is fine for simple tasks, but it falls short for more demanding projects.

GoDaddy's RAM reaches 56,064 MiB/s in our review, landing in 7th place. The slower RAM speed is especially noticeable with data-heavy applications.

If you're caching large amounts of data or running memory-hungry processes, the RAM can quickly become a bottleneck. For simple websites or smaller applications, the performance should be enough.

GoDaddy's disk speed is also far from impressive. With 52,500 IOPS, the provider lands in seventh place again.

This means you may experience delays when reading and writing many small files, such as during database queries or when loading multiple website elements. For everyday use, the performance should be sufficient in many cases.

The network is where GoDaddy really shines. With a measured speed of 6,220 Mbit/s, it's above the median. GoDaddy takes 4th place in this category.

This strong network performance benefits you if you frequently transfer large amounts of data or run services that need solid connections to external systems.

To objectively compare pricing across different VPS providers, we use a standardized scoring system. We evaluate costs in five typical scenarios:

We only consider permanent gross prices as listed on the providers' websites. Temporary discounts, new customer promotions, or special offers are not included.

Here's how GoDaddy's costs compare to other providers:

GoDaddy's VPS packages cover a wide performance range. Options go from compact entry-level servers to much more powerful configurations with up to 32 vCPUs and 128 GB RAM. Here are the key technical specifications at a glance:

You can find an overview of GoDaddy's VPS plans below:

GoDaddy's VPS lineup covers an exceptionally wide performance range. The following overview shows typical use cases for each package.

GoDaddy doesn't use custom plan names. Instead, plans are labeled by their hardware specs, such as "2 vCPU / 4 GB RAM" or "16 vCPU / 64 GB RAM."

GoDaddy's online documentation is limited for its VPS customers. The help desk features only 15 VPS articles, and many of them are rather short and superficial. Only a few articles include images or step-by-step instructions.

GoDaddy also offers some video tutorials that run about ten minutes each. These are well-produced, but almost exclusively target domain and marketing customers. For VPS users, there are only three relevant videos. They cover beginner-friendly explanations of Plesk and cPanel, as well as basic server management.

GoDaddy offers contact options via phone, live chat, and AI chat. However, there's no traditional ticket system or support email address—at least not for customers who manage their VPS themselves.

The support chat starts with a virtual assistant. During our review, it provided helpful answers and proactively offered to connect us with a human agent when problems arose. A support representative joined the chat in less than a minute and handled our request quickly. The communication was professional throughout.

The hotline was even more impressive. During our review, there was virtually no wait time. A representative answered immediately. The customer support was friendly, knowledgeable, and focused on solving the issue.

The hotline is available on weekdays between 8 AM and 8 PM. On weekends, only the support chat (available 24/7) is an option.

Customer reviews give GoDaddy's support good marks overall. Many users praise the quick response times and the helpful, knowledgeable assistance via phone or live chat. Most issues are resolved promptly and reliably.

Some users feel the responses are too generic or rely too heavily on standardized scripts instead of addressing their specific situation.

GoDaddy's VPS offering meets basic hosting needs without major hurdles. Setup is straightforward, the interface is clean, and network performance is solid. If you're looking for a stable server for typical web projects or CMS installations, you'll find a functional solution here.

From a technical standpoint, however, GoDaddy falls behind the competition in several areas. Configuration options are limited, performance is rather weak, and there's no real choice of server location. This indicates that the company, primarily known for its domain solutions, simply doesn't focus on VPS hosting.

Prices are relatively high. For what GoDaddy offers, the provider is simply too expensive. You pay significantly more than with comparable hosting providers—and get less performance and flexibility in return.

What do users think of GoDaddy? We looked at reviews on several online platforms and compiled the most common opinions:

GoDaddy isn't the right provider for you? One of these alternatives might be a better fit: