GoDaddy Microsoft 365 Business Premium Review

If you are available in the market for a internet hosting service, GoDaddy is nearly actually in your buying checklist. And although its varied tiers embody e mail internet hosting choices, the corporate additionally provides its personal rebranded model of Microsoft 365 Business Premium. While it provides function parity and most of the identical benefits as Microsoft’s hosted email providing, GoDaddy’s service has just a few distinctions that set it aside. The firm has performed some in depth work on constructing its personal administration portal, and it is also added extra tiers centered on e mail moderately than productiveness.

If you are a GoDaddy buyer, this platform is a no brainer. But in the event you’re ranging from scratch in your seek for a full-fledged e mail and productiveness suite, GoDaddy might not tempt you from our two Editors’ Choice award winners, Google Workspace Business Standard and the unique Microsoft 365 Business Premium.

GoDaddy Microsoft 365 Pricing and Plans

GoDaddy offers three tiers of Microsoft 365 Business Premium providers. At the low finish, there’s Online Essentials, which incorporates the Online Office apps and e mail internet hosting. That’ll run you $7.99 per consumer per thirty days and consists of 1TB of on-line storage. The subsequent tier is the Business Premium stage, which prices $8.99 per consumer per thirty days and steps as much as 50GB of mailbox storage, 1TB of OneDrive storage, and domestically put in variations of Office in addition to Microsoft enterprise apps like Microsoft Teams and SharePoint. This stage consists of HIPAA-compliant e mail. Finally, the Premium Security tier ($16.99 per consumer per thirty days) protects your e mail with end-to-end encryption and provides searchable archiving.

If you are not up for all of the bells and whistles of the Microsoft 365 Business Premium platform, GoDaddy nonetheless has e mail internet hosting choices for you so long as you are a internet hosting buyer. These aren’t solely inexpensive, however they’re additionally properly featured even when in comparison with devoted low-cost hosted e mail choices reminiscent of Fastmail and even Zoho Mail.

The host’s Email Essentials plan goes for $1.99 per consumer per thirty days when billed yearly and consists of 10GB of e mail storage and calendaring. The Email Plus plan ($3.99 per consumer per thirty days on an annual foundation) ups e mail storage to 50GB. Both have assist for a number of domains in addition to antivirus and spam filtering. If you want greater than what these two tiers provide, you will get ran into one of many Microsoft 365 tiers. Unfortunately, none of those providers have a free trial accessible for analysis, which is an oversight that GoDaddy actually wants to handle.

Getting Started

Getting began with GoDaddy’s e mail choices presumes you have already got a GoDaddy account with a hosted area. For many, this would be the largest barrier to entry if you’re utilizing a unique registrar. However, including the service to an already configured area could be a plus—GoDaddy handles this setup on the again finish, which takes away a significant irritation of organising Microsoft 365.

Adding an account is straightforward: You choose the tier you wish to add, and a wizard walks you thru selecting an account title and password. In the top, assuming you selected Microsoft 365 Business Premium, you will get a QR code which you can scan along with your smartphone to obtain apps. While this can be a little gimmicky, it does add a stage of polish that you do not get with Microsoft 365 out of the field. 

The GoDaddy Microsoft 365 Business Management Portal

It’s a little bit of a mouthful, however when you get just a few accounts arrange, you will wish to poke round GoDaddy’s personal Microsoft 365 Business Management portal. Here, you possibly can configure multi-factor authentication and point out whether or not or not you will assist third-party shoppers. This consists of shoppers that run on POP, IMAP, and SMTP. An attention-grabbing addition to this display screen is a “Tips on Protecting Your Account” article that does a reasonably respectable job of outlining finest practices for e mail safety. Honestly, it was refreshing to see, and this type of schooling must be made accessible extra typically.

On the opposite hand, one factor I believed was missing was the power to rapidly set a whitelist or blocklist for e mail. It’s doable, however it’s a must to go into the Advanced Settings menu. While this function tends to be buried in Microsoft’s personal providing as effectively, GoDaddy missed a primary alternative to make it simpler to search out. Likewise, if you wish to get to the quarantine and different such options, you will additionally need to discover the superior part.

Distribution teams and aliases are simply configured from the admin part. Both of those menus require only some entries to finish and are an enchancment on what Microsoft provides by default. That stated, you possibly can rapidly exhaust GoDaddy’s instruments at which level you will have to dig into Microsoft’s underlying sources (situated beneath Advanced Admin Centers). It’s a good stability between energy and ease of use, however it could be good to see GoDaddy construct this out even additional. This primarily applies to of us needing to entry settings for Exchange, Teams, OneDrive, or SharePoint; the final specifically appears well-hidden until you are actively on the lookout for it.

In phrases of functions, you’ve entry to all the pieces accessible in Microsoft 365. For e mail, you should utilize the net, desktop, or cellular Outlook shoppers, with Microsoft Teams readily available for collaboration functions. For Business Premium customers, SharePoint can also be included. Installs of the Microsoft Office productiveness suite are allowed for as much as 5 gadgets per consumer. All in all, it is roughly the identical providing.

GoDaddy Hosted Email Security

Happily, GoDaddy offers the identical stage of safety that Microsoft provides its personal 365 Business prospects. Two-factor authentication is available throughout the platform, and there are a number of privateness choices. While no service is bulletproof, Microsoft places up an incredible combat to guard your knowledge and frequent patches scale back the danger of operating into points.

Microsoft has knowledge facilities distributed throughout the U.S. and Northern Europe, all of which have undergone SOC auditing and achieved SOC 1 Type2, SOC 2, and SOC 3 reviews. As talked about, GoDaddy (like Microsoft) is able to complying with HIPAA requirements if an acceptable HIPAA Business Associate Agreement is in place.

A Great Option for Existing GoDaddy Customers

GoDaddy represents a value-add for the configuration-squeamish, and its important value discount from Microsoft’s providing is certainly engaging. That stated, your alternative of 365 Business suppliers will probably depend upon whether or not you are already a GoDaddy consumer. There is not a lot purpose for people already utilizing Microsoft 365 to leap ship to GoDaddy’s model, and whereas the latter’s ease of setup is engaging, Microsoft has noticeably improved its personal setup course of for the reason that begin of the pandemic.

Advanced customers would possibly discover that GoDaddy obscures the underpinnings a bit an excessive amount of, making entry to particular configuration objects a bit cumbersome. But in the event you’re now utilizing the corporate’s internet hosting and wish e mail and Microsoft Office, don’t cross Go, however go on to GoDaddy.