Using GoDaddy Website Builder: What No One Tells You

GoDaddy promises a “website in 5 minutes with no coding” – and it sounds perfect for beginners and small businesses. But behind this simplicity lies a major catch: the less control you have, the fewer opportunities you get to grow your website, improve your SEO, or customize your design.

What is GoDaddy Website Builder?

GoDaddy Website Builder is a simple online tool that lets you create a website without any coding skills. It offers ready-made templates, basic editing features, and built-in hosting, making it easy to get a site online quickly.

However, compared to platforms like WordPress, Wix, or Shopify, it has limited design flexibility, weaker SEO tools, and very restricted customization options.

Major GoDaddy User Pain Points

Limited Design and Functionality

GoDaddy promotes its website builder as “simple and easy to use,” but that simplicity quickly becomes its biggest limitation. You’re given a pre-made template you can adjust only slightly – and that’s where your creative freedom ends.

The number of templates is limited, and most of them look very similar. Changing the layout, fonts, block sizes, spacing, or adapting the design to your brand is nearly impossible. Even basic tasks like adjusting margins or adding custom code require workarounds – and often aren’t available at all.

You can’t add unique design elements, advanced animations, or interactive components. The system is locked down, with no access to HTML or CSS. As a result, GoDaddy websites tend to look generic and lack individuality.

Compared to WordPress, where you can control everything from page structure to the smallest visual detail, GoDaddy feels more like working inside a rigid template that decides most things for you, rather than a flexible platform you can truly build on.

SEO – almost a dead zone

GoDaddy offers almost no real tools for proper SEOYou can’t manage essential technical files like robots.txt, sitemap.xml, or schema.org – the system generates them automatically, and you have no way to edit or fix them.

The situation with meta tags is even worse. Yes, you can manually add a Title and Description, but only on a few static pages (Home, About, Contact). For products, categories, collections, or any dynamic pages, you cannot set meta tags manually at all – GoDaddy automatically pulls them from on-page text, which often results in nonsensical, truncated, or duplicate titles.

Custom canonical tags, OG tags, meta robots, and advanced structured data are completely unavailable. Because of this, the site’s visibility suffers significantly – it indexes far worse than websites built on WordPress, Shopify, or Wix.

Users constantly report problems such as:

• pages not being indexed at all,

• pages being indexed with errors,

• duplicate URLs appearing for no reason.

Google Search Console is often filled with issues: missing metadata, duplicate content, incorrect titles — and none of this can be fixed, because the platform is completely closed off from code access and SEO settings.

What about Page Speed on GoDaddy Website Builder?

Page speed is one of the weakest areas of the GoDaddy Website Builder. The platform uses a closed architecture, which means you can’t optimize the code, compress scripts, remove unused styles, or adjust any server-level settings.

GoDaddy loads a large number of built-in files and tracking scripts by default, and this often results in poor Google PageSpeed Insights scores, especially on mobile devices.

You can optimize images and text, but the core performance issues cannot be fixed, because the site’s structure and code are completely inaccessible.

No control over code or hosting

GoDaddy fully restricts access to the website’s internal code and server configuration. You can’t install your own plugins, add external integrations, or even embed basic tools like Google Tag Manager without complicated workarounds.

All files and the database are hidden from the user, and any attempt to customize functionality runs into platform limitations. As a result, you are fully dependent on GoDaddy: if your website becomes slow or freezes, all you can do is contact support — and, as many users note, most responses are generic templates rather than real help.

In reality, you don’t truly own your website on GoDaddy — you’re simply renting it, with very limited control over how it works.

High Pricing and Hidden Limitations

GoDaddy presents itself as an “easy and affordable solution,” but the reality quickly disappoints. Even basic features like SSL, analytics, and SEO settings are locked behind paid plans.

You can check the pricing on GoDaddy’s official page:
Website Builder Pricing – GoDaddy.com

After the trial period, the cost jumps noticeably:

• Basic starts at $10.99/month

• Premium starts at $15.99/month

• Commerce starts at $21.99/month

For eCommerce, GoDaddy applies transaction fees for payments processed through GoDaddy Payments (available in the US and Canada): typically 2.3%–2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. And the frustrating part? You get far less functionality than with a WordPress + WooCommerce, where the same features can be added for free using plugins and low-cost hosting – with no platform restrictions and much more flexibility.

No Ability to Move or Export Your Site (No Migration Options)

Another major pain point is ownership. You don’t actually control your website. When your subscription ends, your access to the site is completely cut off — along with your content.

GoDaddy does not allow you to export your text, images, or design. You cannot move your site to another host or website builder. The only option is to rebuild everything from scratch.

In practice, your project stays on the platform forever — it belongs to GoDaddy, not you. This might be fine for a temporary site, but it becomes a serious risk for any business that wants to grow, scale, and fully control its data.

Real User Reviews of GoDaddy Website Builder

When you look at real user feedback, the picture becomes much clearer than GoDaddy’s high overall rating on Trustpilot (which mostly reflects their domain and hosting services). In Reddit discussions, small business owners and web developers openly point out that GoDaddy Website Builder is extremely limiting and makes it difficult to build or manage a proper website.

Users frequently complain about:

• lack of real SEO control;

• no access to code;

• very limited customization options;

• the feeling that “your site doesn’t really belong to you — it belongs to GoDaddy.”

Another common issue is meta tags and technical SEO. Many discussions focus on the fact that GoDaddy automatically overwrites metadat, and there is no way to fix or override it, which causes indexing problems and poor visibility in search engines.

Typical Complaints from Real Users

Across these discussions, the same frustrations appear again and again:

«It’s fine for a simple landing page, but terrible for SEO.»

«You don’t own your site — GoDaddy does.»

«They overwrite my meta tags every time. No fix.»

Many small business owners say that after a few months on GoDaddy, they eventually migrated their sites to WordPress or Shopify just to regain control over their design, SEO, and overall website structure.

Even on platforms like Sitejabber and AlternativeTo, GoDaddy Website Builder receives an average rating of around 1.7 stars. Users consistently mention that the site is almost impossible to customize, and that every small feature requires an extra payment.

1. Reviews on Sitejabber
2. Reviews on AlternativeTo

GoDaddy vs WordPress vs Shopify vs Wix – A Brief Comparison

To understand why GoDaddy so often disappoints website owners, it’s enough to compare it with other popular platforms. At first glance, they all seem similar: a visual editor, ready-made templates, and built-in hosting. But once you look deeper, the differences are clear.

• GoDaddy offers a quick start – and that’s where it ends. Flexibility is almost nonexistent.

• WordPress lets you build anything, from a simple blog to a full eCommerce store, with complete control over SEO, code, and customization.

• Shopify is built specifically for eCommerce, offering powerful checkout tools, payment integrations, inventory management, and advanced analytics.

• Wix is a middle ground – easier than WordPress but far more flexible than GoDaddy, making it a better choice for visually driven brands.

In the end, GoDaddy falls behind on every key metric – customization, SEO, scalability, and overall value for money. Its biggest strength is simplicity, but that simplicity becomes a major weakness the moment your business needs to grow.

GoDaddy vs WordPress vs Shopify vs Wix

WordPress vs GoDaddy

WordPress remains the #1 platform for a reason – it’s the only system that truly gives you full control over your website. You can manage everything: the design, page structure, code, database, and file access. No hidden limits, no “you can’t change this.”

With WordPress, you can use any design, theme, or plugin – from powerful SEO tools (RankMath, Yoast, Schema) to modern AI plugins, automation tools, multilingual features, and full eCommerce solutions like WooCommerce. Integrations with CRMs, analytics, Google Tag Manager, advertising platforms, and social networks take just minutes to set up.

But most importantly, WordPress grows with your business. You can start with a simple website and gradually turn it into a blog, a portal, an online store, or a full corporate platform. There are no limits on functionality, scalability, or design.

In the end, WordPress offers what GoDaddy never can: freedom, scalability, and true ownership of your website.

Wix vs GoDaddy – Which One Is Actually Better?

Simply put, Wix gives you much more freedom. GoDaddy works fine when you need a very basic website “put together in a few minutes.” But the moment you want something more attractive, flexible, or slightly more advanced, the limitations start to show.

Why Wix wins:

• a larger selection of templates and far more styling options;

• proper SEO tools instead of the bare minimum;

• a real drag-and-drop editor with no restrictions on blocks;

• animations, effects, flexible layouts — everything is built in.

GoDaddy is a “starter option.” Wix is for those who want a more polished, customizable website without jumping all the way to WordPress.

Shopify vs GoDaddy – If You Need a Real Online Store

Shopify was built specifically for eCommerce, while GoDaddy is essentially a simple website builder with an added “store” feature. The difference becomes obvious as soon as you try to manage products or scale sales.

Why Shopify wins:

• advanced product and order management tools;

• reliable checkout, payments, shipping, and tax handling;

• thousands of apps and integrations;

• fast store performance and strong SEO;

• true scalability as your business grows.

If you’re planning a full-featured eCommerce store, Shopify is the clear choice. GoDaddy works only as a temporary solution or a simple product showcase.

Conclusion: GoDaddy Website Builder Is a “Beginner’s Trap”

GoDaddy feels convenient at first, but the platform quickly becomes restrictive. You don’t fully own your site, you can’t migrate it, and you can’t expand it the way a growing business needs. SEO is weak, design options are limited, and integrations are almost nonexistent.

GoDaddy is suitable only for very simple one-page websites or basic landing pages. If you need a website you can scale, customize, and actually grow – choose WordPress, Shopify, or Wix/Webflow. They give you the freedom, flexibility, and full control that GoDaddy simply doesn’t offer.

If you want a fast, professional, and fully customizable WordPress website, reach out to dits.md — we’ll build a high-quality site tailored to your goals.

FAQ

Is GoDaddy Website Builder free?
No. It’s not a free website builder. You only get a short trial period — after that, you must switch to a paid plan.

Does GoDaddy have a website builder?
Yes. GoDaddy offers its own site builder called GoDaddy Website Builder.

Is GoDaddy a good website builder?
It’s fine for simple, basic websites. For business sites, SEO, or customization – no. It’s very limited.

Does GoDaddy Website Builder include hosting?
Yes, hosting is included in all paid plans.

How do you edit a GoDaddy website without the website builder?
You can’t. The code is closed, so you can only edit the site through their builder.

Can you add video to GoDaddy Website Builder?
Yes, but only via YouTube or Vimeo embeds. Uploading custom video files is limited.

Does GoDaddy Website Builder use WordPress?
No. It’s a completely separate platform – not based on WordPress and not compatible with it.

Do you have to pay for GoDaddy Website Builder?
Yes. GoDaddy Website Builder requires a paid plan for full functionality, including domain connection, SEO features, eCommerce tools, analytics, SSL, and all builder features. The trial is the only free part.

How do you move a GoDaddy Website Builder site to WordPress?
Only manually. There is no export option – you must rebuild the design and copy the content from scratch.

Is GoDaddy Website Builder good for SEO?
No. SEO capabilities are very limited: no control over meta tags, no schema, no code access, and minimal SEO on product and category pages.