Godaddy vs. Big Scoots(Hosting Review and Results)

I’ve been looking for an alternative to Godaddy for quite some time.

The impact of changing to Big Scoots was immediate and the switch was way easier than I thought.

Godaddy Verses Big Scoots: In the Beginning

When I first created a website I made all kind of mistakes.

For one thing, I tried Wix and Weebly and a few other platforms before I finally made the switch to WordPress.

I also started with a free domain which was a bad move.

When I finally bought my very own domain name, I purchased it and set up hosting through Godaddy (mostly because it was the only one I knew about).

If you’ve got a blog, there’s nothing wrong with any of those choices if it’s a hobby blog or a business website that doesn’t need to rank for search traffic.

But if you’re serious about your blogging and plan to rank for organic traffic on Google, I can’t urge you enough to make some changes.

I won’t get into all the reasons for using WordPress instead of the other platforms, but one I will cover is speed.

By speed I mean how fast your website pages load.

Those other platforms are made for user usability (i.e. to keep customers happy).

They are not created with speed or loading speed in mind.

When I switched to WordPress I picked a theme known for speed and saw an immediate boost to my speed AND organic traffic.

Plus, building a WordPress blog was easier than I thought it would be.

I knew the more content I created… the more of a headache it was going to be to switch over.

That being said, I encourage you to get on WordPress as soon as possible.

Sooner is easier, harder is more difficult.

That brings us to GoDaddy.

Why is an Alternative to Godaddy Necessary?

Here’s the main reason in a nutshell: Godaddy sucks.

If you’re thinking about getting hosting and domain registration, I strongly suggest you go with anybody other than Godaddy.

If you already have hosting and a domain with them, I suggest you quit them and go to an alternative.

If you go with Big Scoots, you’ll see it’s easier to switch over than you think and the benefits are huge.

Why Godaddy Sucks

I made a pretty strong statement when I said Godaddy sucks and I stand by that statement.

Godaddy is frustrating to say the least.

For one thing, they nickel and dime you for everything.

Want an email address to go with your domain… it’ll cost ya.
Want private registration… separate fee.
Want a secure https connection… you guessed it.
Need some help?… call us… and we’ll do our best to upsell you to another package!

Also, why should I need to call every time something needs updated?

Why shouldn’t that be automatic?

I’ll tell you why… they need to get you on the phone to sell you more… more of this… more of that… a better this… a better that.

All these little product options pieced together creates an expensive and frustrating experience, especially if you’re trying to manage multiple websites through them.

My problem was, by the time I realized Godaddy was a problem, I was in way too deep (or so I thought).

I kept asking myself, why can’t they just charge me one fee and include everything?

The reason is, they like to nickel and dime you and put more money in their pocket.

They are also master salesmen and marketers.

Always pushing to set you up on automatic billing with fear based tactics like “you’re going to lose your website”.

Also, anytime you call with an issue, they try to upsell you on their latest and greatest “deal”.

Of course, in order to get the best price you have to commit to a few years and pay 2-3 years in advance.

It seems to me, their entire business model is based on death by a thousand cuts.

This is evident by the fact that there is nowhere on your dashboard to just look at what you’re being charged for a specific service and when that fee is due.

Every single time I wanted to see that information, I had to do a google search to figure out how…. AND you can only view your charges (if you can find them) by individual products.

You can just look a list of it all.
Believe me, this is by design.

If you want to see the big picture of their charges… you’ll have to put that puzzle together all by yourself.

Why I Switched to Big Scoots

Over the years I had multiple issues with Godaddy (as I mentioned).

I had been trying to get my Google page speed insight score up for quite some time.

No matter what I did, it seemed I couldn’t compete with my competition.

I suspected it was a problem with Godaddy but switching to another provider always seemed like it would be a pain.

Then, one day after writing I kept losing everything.

I would write for 30 minutes, click “save draft” or “publish post” and I would get an error.

Even if I hit the back button, it would mess up and I’d have to start over.

I called Godaddy, they said it was an issue they just found out about and it would be fixed in 24 hours.

It worked the next day… for a few days.

Then it became a problem again.

I called again.

This process happened multiple times over a 2-3 week period.

The 3rd time I called (and every time after that), they tried to convince me it was my internet service provider or something on my end.

I knew that was not the case.

We’re on a huge plan because my son streams his video games, my wife works online all day, and my other two children are constantly streaming Hulu or Netflix.

Plus, when I checked my download speed everything was good.

The Best and Fastest Domain Hosting Provider

I’m a podcast junkie.

One of the people I follow is Brandon Gaille of the Blog Millionaire.

He recommends Big Scoots and said it accelerated his Google rankings very quickly.

After doing plenty of research on other hosting providers, I decided Big Scoots was a great option to try.

I was still hesitant, mainly because I was worried about the headache of switching over.

I’d never switched providers, I didn’t want my website to go down, I didn’t want anything to break…. I had some anxiety.

But not being able to save my stuff after writing had forced my hand.

It was the last proverbial straw.

So reluctantly, I contacted them to start the process.

How Complicated was the Switch?

Believe it or not, this was so simple I was kicking myself for not contacting them earlier (affiliate link).

Once I contacted them to start the process, they got some information from me and within 24 hours my entire website was switched over.

I couldn’t believe it was that simple.
They took care of everything.

They even customized some of my plugins to help get me more speed, which was something I really wanted.

With a few tweaks, I was scoring a Google page speed insight score of 90+ on both mobile and desktop for almost all my blog posts (and I tediously tweaked every single one).

The ones not at a 90 for mobile speed were very close to 90.

In addition, my organic traffic shot through the roof the first 90 days.

I went from 120-150 unique organic visitors per day to 400+ per day and it’s still climbing!

Some of my individual pages had monthly traffic that doubled and a few even tripled.

BigScoots Pricing

When I switched to BigScoots, I went with the cheapest package, which is what they recommended for me.

If you’ve been with Godaddy, Big Scoots packages may make you a little apprehensive.

The cheapest one is about $35 per month as of this writing.

Keep in mind though, their price includes everything, including the switch from Godaddy to them.

Plus, they manage it all and take pride in getting it running efficiently and fast when they switch it over.

Also, the backups are automatic, the updates are automatic, and you’re not sharing server space with other bloggers and website owners, which helps your pages load faster and brings in the Google love.

When I start running through all the money I’ve spent on Godaddy over the years, it seems that Big Scoots is a little more expensive… but not by much.

It’s actually hard to figure exactly what I spend per month on Godaddy because they want it to be that way.

With Big Scoots, you’re not paying extra for every little thing you need for any basic website.

It’s all included (as it should be).

There’s also no question about when you’re getting billed, how much you’re being billed, or if your price (or this or that) will go up next year, etc.

There’s something to be said of having the best quality of anything… even if you have to pay a little extra for it.

Web hosting is no different.

If you can afford it, I highly recommend switching over to Big Scoots.

If you’re not ranking as high as you want for organic traffic, then you really can’t afford NOT to switch over.

Loading Speed

I already mentioned this, but I wanted to give some more detailed info.

I’m a data junkie sometimes.

I like to see if what I’m doing is actually working or if I just think it’s working… or if it’s not working at all.

Before switching to Big Scoots I put a bunch of my site data into a spreadsheet.

I took a screen capture of some of that data for individual posts and plastered it below so you can see how switching to Big Scoots affected my website stats.

You can see the mobile speed before the Big Scoots switch and the new mobile speed.

Mobile speed is probably the most important factor that affected my positve rankings because Google is starting to give preference to sites that are mobile friendly and mobile fast.

The only other switch I made during that time was to optimize some of my images and videos better.

As you can see, similar page speed increases happened with desktop speeds, but it’s not as dramatic since desktops tend to load faster anyway.

I also looked up some of my data for monthly traffic for individual pages. The ones I looked up before I got bored have had dramatic increases in organic traffic.

99% of my traffic is organic so I didn’t break it down any further than that.

But if you have 100 pages that get 50 visits a month and they all double, that’s an extra 5,000 visits per month (100 x 50 = 5,000).

The little things add up, especially in the world of SEO.

Big Scoots Review Conclusion

I hope this helps you understand my experience with Big Scoots vs. GoDaddy and also helps you make the best decision for you and your website.

As I mentioned earlier, if you do decide to go with Big Scoots because of anything I said, I appreciate you going through my affiliate link as a way to support this site.

It costs the same and there’s no additional charge, I just get a small kickback.

Have a fantastic day and if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me and I’ll do my best to answer them: