There's several good companies out there that will let you get started with only $12, or slightly less for the first year if you're doing shared or virtual hosting and have a promo with them or a trial. The competition and saturation is so much that many people often have the opportunity to get just the basic services for $5 or $10 now, with or without the domain name provided.
But there's a few things I would like to say about Godaddy.
Godaddy is the most horrid and dishonorable hosting company I have ever had the displeasure to deal with. I am putting it very lightly and kindly when I say this. If this were not a public forum, I would be in a tirade of swear words telling you what I really think of them today.
They destroyed one of my businesses because they didn't understand the technology I was using and deleted the content I had of private works that took months to upload and configure. When I threatened to sue them in a court of law for this by destroying my property, they recanted after discovering I was local to them where their offices are and was ready to have my lawyer serve them papers immediately to start a court case against them for damages.
They recanted, but only after I spoke with corporate. When I explained to them what was done and what was misunderstood by the people they have managing things, they claimed they were "very, very sorry" and that "it should have never happened since it was not in violation of their Terms and was clearly misunderstood by the employees handling the servers and the data entrusted to them". They offered me a year free of service and a few months worth of my money back on the hosting, but I declined the service and just went with my money back.
I ended up switching to Namecheap which was and continues to be a much better solution. I don't have any of the issues or ridiculous misunderstandings from employees that were abound with Godaddy any longer, the quality of service is better, and the domain transfer was free. There are several good hosts out there, but this one has worked out better for me and since that day, I have helped about 457 people switch from Godaddy to other companies such as HostGator, 1and1, Dreamhost, and other competitors if not Namecheap so that they don't have to risk or go through what I did with them.
If you are only putting up a blog site that is always politically correct and only sells flowers or shows cat pictures, then Godaddy will let you do that without causing a hassle. I can't promise that they'll leave you alone if you do anything else, especially if their "friends" consider you to be competition to what they have, and they call in a "favor" to delete your work, your web site, or create problems for you that are downright illegal and should never be there to begin with.
For 5 years (from 2000-2005) I ran my own web hosting company and on-site datacenter in the United States, so I find Godaddy to be the most despicable internet company I have ever had to deal with. The games that they play and the dirty tricks that they pull might get past the majority of their customers, but they are not going to get past the people who have run their own hosting and know what they are doing to people. They had absolutely no desire or interest to fix what they did to my other business until I threatened to sue them over it, and they knew I would win just with what I was willing to let them know I had to present in the case aa court case against them for this.
I've dealt with thousands of companies over the past 15 years with some good and some bad. You roll with the changes and do what you do, and most are understanding of that and business in general. Godaddy is in a league of its own though...at the bottom of the barrel. If someone asked me to describe Godaddy in just two words, I would say: Never again.