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Alien Web Design vs GoDaddy

Prices checked 2 September 2026. We re-check them when we update this page.

GoDaddy's website builder runs $13.95 to $24.95 a month on an annual plan in Australia, and $26.95 a month for an online store. At the entry tier it is the cheapest option on this page, and it stays cheaper across three years. That is the one row where it wins on price. Our builds are $690 plus GST ($759 including GST), once, with twelve months of hosting included.

That is the concession. It is one row, not the platform. The other two rows go differently, because "cheapest" is a row, not a platform. On the top builder tier the three-year figures are $59 apart, ours including GST and theirs as published. On the store tier the two rows are not the same product, and we say below which one is actually cheaper. And the domain GoDaddy hands you free for the first term becomes a line item after that, while ours sits inside our $99 a year, with the hosting and the SEO work. That is the shape of the offer: $759 once, then $99 a year covering hosting, your domain name and ongoing SEO updates, with the code and the domain yours the whole way through.

GoDaddy is cheaper. Here is exactly where.

Three GoDaddy products, one of ours, and what each costs in the first twelve months.

GoDaddy prices are Australian annual-plan rates from godaddy.com, checked 2 September 2026, and printed as that page publishes them. We have not confirmed whether GoDaddy's published figures include GST, so we have not converted them in either direction. Ours are the opposite: quoted at $690 plus GST, with the inclusive figure printed beside it, so $759 is the number that would appear on your invoice.

Year one is the column GoDaddy advertises, and it is the column where all three of its rows beat ours. Run the same numbers out to three years and you get three different answers: one row stays cheaper, one lands within $60, and one is not a like-for-like row. The row you would buy decides the whole question.

Pick the row you would actually buy

You are not buying a platform. You are buying a plan, on one tier, for a site you already have in mind. The three GoDaddy tiers over three years, against the same three years with us:

Because we have not confirmed GoDaddy's GST basis, we compare those three-year totals as published. The uncertainty only runs one way. If the published figures exclude GST, GoDaddy's real three-year cost is higher than the number in the table, which moves the top-tier and store rows further towards us. The entry row's verdict holds either way.

The entry builder is the row GoDaddy is known for. It is also the row with the least in it. If the site you picture is a business card that will not change, a name, a number, a service list and an address, that row is the right buy, and the five checks below will confirm it in about ten minutes.

The store row is the easy one to skip past. Price it out: at $26.95 a month you pay $969 over three years to build and run the shop yourself, on a template, with the domain billed separately once term one ends. That is more than the $957 that gets you a brochure site built by us, hosted, with your domain inside the annual fee and the code yours to take. Those are not the same product, though. A full online store from us is a separate quote at $3,490 plus GST, which is $4,037 over three years, so if you do need a cart then GoDaddy's store plan is the cheaper option and we will say so. The first question is whether you need a cart at all.

Tell us which row you are on and what the site is meant to do. If the answer is stay on GoDaddy, we will say so, and it costs you nothing to hear it. If it is not, you get a fixed written quote for the rebuild before any work starts, and the number does not move afterwards. Tell us which row you are on.

The domain: free for one term, then it is a line item

You get a domain free when you sign up, for the first term only, whether that term is one year or three. After that it renews at the standard rate, on top of the plan, as its own line on the bill.

That is not a trick, and GoDaddy publishes it. Nearly every registrar sells a first term the same way. The figure you compared against when you signed up is not the figure you keep paying. Once the term rolls over, the plan is one charge and the name is another, and the second one is easy to forget until the renewal notice lands.

Our $99 a year has the domain in it, along with the hosting and the ongoing SEO updates. One charge, once a year, and the name is part of it rather than beside it. If you ever leave, the domain goes with you, because it is yours and not ours, along with the code and the hosting.

SEO tools are software. SEO work is a person.

A tool tells you what to do. Work is somebody doing it. It is the difference between a site that scores well and a site that gets called.

Website builders ship SEO tools of some kind: a checklist and a score out of a hundred. They are useful, and they are also why a lot of small sites hold a perfect score and a quiet phone. The checklist measures whether the field is filled in. It cannot tell whether the words in it are the words your customers type, and it will not write the suburb page you are missing.

The ongoing SEO updates inside our $99 a year mean five specific things, all of them done at our end rather than yours:

• Titles and descriptions kept current as your services, your suburbs and your prices change.
• Structured data maintained, so search engines and AI answers can read what you do, where you do it, and who for.
• Internal links kept sensible as pages are added, so a new page is not stranded where nothing points at it.
• Search Console watched, so we see a page drop out or a crawl error before you feel it in the phone.
• The changes made on the live site, by the people who built it, instead of written up and handed back to you.

That is the part a three-year total cannot show you. GoDaddy's rows come with SEO tools only, because the software is the deliverable and you are the labour. On our row it sits inside the $99, because the labour is ours.

Five things to check on your GoDaddy site before you decide

None of this needs us. Five checks, about ten minutes, on the site you already have. Run them before you spend a dollar anywhere, including here.

1. Find out whose name the domain is registered in. Open the registration and read the registrant. If it is not your business, fix that before anything else on this list, because the rest is worthless if the name belongs to someone who once did you a favour.
2. Open your site on a phone, on mobile data, with the wifi off. Count the seconds before you can read it. Your customers run this same test and never tell you the result.
3. Send yourself a message through your own contact form. Then check the inbox, and the junk folder. A form that breaks without telling you is worse than no form, because you never find out what you missed.
4. Look for a page about each suburb and each service you want work from. Each one needs a page of its own with words on it; a name in a footer list does not count. If those words are not on your site, a search engine has nothing to match a customer against.
5. Put the address into PageSpeed Insights and read the mobile score rather than the desktop one. It is free, it is Google's own, and it takes a minute.

If all five pass and the site is a business card, stay where you are. You are paying the least of anyone on this page and the site is doing the job you bought it for. If two of them fail and the website is meant to bring in work, you have your answer, and it was never a question about GoDaddy.

Moving is less of an ordeal than it sounds. Perfection Roofing came to us off a compromised server: rebuilt and cut over to new hosting in a day. You can see that site and the others on the sites we have built, live.

Where GoDaddy wins

Three things, said plainly, and none of them is a consolation prize.

• Price at the entry tier. Nothing on this page comes near $13.95 a month, and three years does not close that gap.
• One bill. Domain, hosting, email and site in a single account.
• Speed to stand up. You can be live in an afternoon. No build matches that, because a build involves people, and people have a diary.

If those three are what your business needs from a website, you have already bought the right product.

What SEO work looks like when a person does it

The section above draws a line between SEO tools and SEO work. Here is the work, on a site you can open. A Mosman chiropractor was invisible in local search. After the rebuild it ranks first for its main local term and Google's own AI answer for "who is the best chiro in mosman" names it first, citing its own pages. No builder checklist produces that. Someone has to structure the site, write the schema and earn the citation.

The same work on a trade: a Sydney coolroom builder now ranks first for a search that costs $14 a click, and the rebuilt site issued $299,521 in quotes in four days. Both are on our work page with everything else, live.

GoDaddy questions

Is GoDaddy cheaper than a professionally built website?

At the entry tier, yes, and we say so: $13.95 a month on an annual plan is $502 over three years against our $957, and no GST question changes that. At the top builder tier the three-year figures are $898 and $957, within $60 either way. At the store tier the rows are not like for like. GoDaddy's $969 buys a store you build yourself; our $957 is a brochure site. If you need a cart, GoDaddy's store plan is cheaper over three years than our store build at $3,490 plus GST. Pick the row you would actually buy before you decide.

Is the GoDaddy free domain really free?

It is free for the first term only, whether that term is one year or three. After that it renews at the standard rate. Budget for it rather than being surprised by it.

What is the difference between SEO tools and SEO work?

A tool tells you what to do. Work is somebody doing it. Website builders ship SEO tools: a checklist and a score. Those measure whether the field is filled in, not whether the words in it are the words your customers type. Our $99 a year is the work: titles and descriptions kept current, structured data maintained, internal links kept sensible as pages are added, Search Console watched, and the changes made rather than recommended. Hosting and your domain name sit inside the same $99.

Can you rebuild a GoDaddy site?

Yes. We rebuild it properly, map every existing URL and put 301 redirects in place so the rankings you already have survive the move.

Should I move off GoDaddy?

Run the five checks on this page first. If the site is a business card, the checks pass and price is what decides it, stay on GoDaddy. That is a real answer, and it is the one we would give you on the phone. If the site is meant to bring in work and two of the checks fail, get a fixed written quote and put it against three years of what you are paying now.

Compare the others

• Alien Web Design vs Wix: the month the lines cross, and what leaves Wix with you.
• Alien Web Design vs Squarespace: why year one is a wash and year three is not.
• Alien Web Design vs Shopify: when you need a store, and when you are paying for one you don't.
• Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy and Shopify: all four in one table.

If price decides it, use GoDaddy. If the phone has to ring, call us.

Both of those are real answers, and the numbers above support either one. If price is what decides it, buy the entry builder, spend the difference where it earns, and get on with the week.

If the website is something the phone depends on, the build that replaces a GoDaddy builder site is one page at $690 plus GST or five at $1,490 plus GST, with the larger builds and the store above those (full package detail). Every tier includes twelve months of hosting, SSL and monitoring. After that it is $99 a year including GST with your domain name inside it, and the code, the domain and the hosting are yours at the end of it. You get the quote fixed and in writing before any work starts.

Get the fixed quote or call 02 9161 8000. Sydney based, 18+ years.

Or run the five checks and stay. Both are fine answers.