Once you purchase a Web Hosting plan, GoDaddy stores your site on one of our servers and assigns it a unique DNS. The DNS serves as the address that allows people around the world to find and view your website. This unique address is required in order for people to view your site. By purchasing a website hosting package, you're basically buying space on one of our servers. It’s similar to the space on a computer’s hard drive, but the server allows your website’s files to be accessed from anywhere.

We offer both Windows and Linux hosting. Which one you need depends on what you want to do with your site, like whether you want to create a shopping cart, blog or podcast with a specific web application.

You can build your website in several different ways – from hand-coding with HTML to using a Website Builder program. If you require a lot of functionality and versatility from your website, you’ll benefit from programs and applications that can help you build your site. Our Web Hosting plans give you access to free, server-side applications that can be used to develop and customize your website, including popular Content Management System (CMS) applications like WordPress and Joomla!.

If you’ve built your website in a HTML editor, like Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression Studio, you have to upload your website files via FTP (File Transfer Protocol). They have a built-in FTP File Manager that you can access in our Hosting Control Center. However, if the files are larger than 20 MB, it is recommended using the tool FileZilla, which works with Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems, or another third-party FTP client.

Moving your website to GoDaddy is a simple process. If you have access to your existing website files, you can upload them through our Hosting Control Center or via an FTP client. If you don’t have a current copy of your website, you should be able to request one from your current website hosting provider.

Setup is a simple four-step process that takes only a few minutes.