GoDaddy Debuts New Commercial and New Link

GoDaddy has recently unveiled a couple of new additions to their lineup. Most people have probably seen Danica Patrick promoting GoDaddy in their ads. Well, now fellow racing star Tony Stewart is appearing with Danica in a new commercial for the company. According to USA Today, the new spot has Danica and Tony trying to out-prank each other as Patrick tries to tell viewers about GoDaddy’s new website builder offer.

But of even more interest to me is the recent inclusion of a link on GoDaddy’s website to Media Temple’s Premium WordPress Hosting. When GoDaddy acquired Media Temple late last year, the story was that Media Temple would continue to operate separately from GoDaddy. At that time, MT was branded as being a more tech oriented option as opposed to GoDaddy’s more average user appeal. However, the inclusion of a link to Media Temple site now is very interesting—especially given that GoDaddy recently launched its own managed WordPress hosting plans.

Media Temple has been a WordPress hosting specialist for years. And they certainly have enough robust features for advanced websites. However, GoDaddy offers three different levels of WP hosting (Starter, Business, and Pro), and their Pro level plan looks to be on the same level as Media Temple’s. So, will the two WordPress hosts continue to operate separately? Will GoDaddy keep their starter plan and replace their pro level plan with the one form Media Template? Or will GoDaddy combine both WordPress hosting plans into something new?

Time will tell. But if you’re concerned, there are always other options for WordPress hosting such as WP Engine and iPage’s WP Essential.

UPDATE: At this point, the biggest differences between Media Temple’s WordPress hosting and GoDaddy’s Pro Plan are that with MT you get staging and cloning plus bundled themes. On the other hand, GoDaddy lets you have more sites hosted. However, according to Felix Gorodishter, Manager of Software Development for WordPress Initiatives at GoDaddy, staging will soon also be available from GoDaddy. And, more features will be coming from both companies.