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There was a time when I had almost 40 domains with GoDaddy. I started using them ten years ago, back when GoDaddy was a new website with dungeon low prices.
Now I don’t own a single domain with GoDaddy.
Here are seven reasons why you should move away from GoDaddy:
#1 GoDaddy Has Terrible Support
I had one client who had constant trouble with her email because GoDaddy support constantly gave her wrong advice. She would have a small problem with her email and would call GoDaddy. By the end of the call her email would be totally broken.
Finally, she hired me to conference in with the GoDaddy representative and interrupt each time the GoDaddy rep would give her bad information. I had to interrupt a lot.
Update: GoDaddy has made some improvements in the last few years in the support arena. They offer better support than they used to. I don’t think this reason alone is reason to move away from them. But it is not the only reason to avoid GoDaddy.
#2 GoDaddy is Overpriced
GoDaddy lures customers in with prices that look low.
GoDaddy makes it look like .com domains cost $1.99 per year when in reality domains cost $10 for the first year and $15 for every year after that.
Price Comparison:
- GoDaddy ($24.94/year)
- $14.99/year for Domain Renewal
- $2.95/year for Email Forwarding
- $7.00/year for WhoIs Protection
- Namecheap.com ($13.57/year)
- $10.69/year Domain Renewal
- $0.00/year Email Forwarding
- $2.88/year for WhoIs Protection
GoDaddy also charges you extra for things Namecheap throws in for free, like landing page customization. Now these prices go on sale from time to time so your millage may vary. The key is to focus on the renewal price. Sale prices typically only apply to the first year.
#3 GoDaddy is Hard to Use
I cringe any time I hear a novice say they bought a domain on GoDaddy.
GoDaddy spends so much time trying to up-sell customers that it is hard to buy what you came to buy. If you don’t know what you are doing, you may find yourself paying for all sorts of things you don’t need. These added services can make your domain harder to use.
You have to be fairly savvy to use GoDaddy and not get ripped off.
Tweetables
- 6+ reasons why authors should avoid GoDaddy. – Click to tweet.
- Thinking about GoDaddy? Read this first. – Click to tweet.
- I cringe any time I hear someone say they used GoDaddy. – Click to tweet.
- Is GoDaddy giving bad advice? – Click to tweet.
- Ever wonder why we don’t recommend GoDaddy? Here’s why. – Click to tweet.
#4 GoDaddy Hosting is Slow
iThemes, a major WordPress theme development company, blasted GoDaddy for overselling hosting space. GoDaddy puts thousands of websites on a single server. All those websites compete for server processing time and bandwidth. This causes the sites to run slow, especially if any of them are popular. The GoDaddy speed issues are exacerbated by the fact that Google now penalizes slow sites on its search results.
Not only is the hosting slow but making server changes is slow as well.
If you change the wrong thing you may not know anything is broken for thirty minutes and it may take another thirty minutes to “unchange” whatever it is you broke.
#5 GoDaddy Gives Too Little Control
Not only is GoDaddy slow but their server back end is difficult to use and limited. Instead of giving users an industry standard admin interface (like cPanel or Plesk), they give users a proprietary admin interface that is more interested in selling you more GoDaddy products than in giving you the tools you need.
This makes it harder (i.e. more expensive) to do simple things on GoDaddy.
#6 GoDaddy Uses Smut to Sell
Some people are more concerned about the moral degradation of our country than others. Many people feel the country is moving in the wrong direction. Let me just say that GoDaddy is no force for good in our culture. GoDaddy notoriously has the most offensive Super Bowl ads every year. Each year they submit ads that are deemed too inappropriate even for TV.
They then feature these “too hot for TV” ads on their homepage.
Even the ads that do get approved objectify woman’s bodies and degrade women into objects of lust for the purpose of making money. This is inappropriate, uncalled for, and not something conscientious people should support with their money. If we allow companies to manipulate our sexual desires to make a profit, how can we say we are any better than animals?
Authors can do better than GoDaddy.
#7 GoDaddy Backed SOPA & PIPA
GoDaddy backed one of the most destructive laws ever to threaten the internet. It was only after 50,000 GoDaddy users left in protest that they changed course.
While I applaud GoDaddy for finally coming out against SOPA, the fact is that we can’t trust them to protect the internet. It also shows us that if enough people transfer away from GoDaddy due to the offensive ads, that they might change course on that as well.
The Good News
You are not stuck with GoDaddy.
We help authors move away from GoDaddy all the time. Namecheap even offers a discount to GoDaddy users who transfer their domains away. Just use the coupon code Switch2NC and you will get a year added to your domain for a discount.
There are also a lot of better hosting providers. We recommend that you host with us
But to host on our server, we need to build your author website.
If that is not an option we also recommend:
- ZippyKid (Best speed)
- Host Gator (Best value)
We recommend you register your domain with a 3rd party company and not your web host. Your website is safer when you don’t have all your eggs in one basket and the companies who are the best at domains (like Namecheap) are often not the same companies who are best at hosting (ZippyKid and Host Gator).
I just started a site yesterday and I knew it was to be slow. It is. Veeeery slow. I already found that there are near 2900 sites hosted in the same server. Crazy.
I don't care right now because it is going to take a few months until the site gets some traffic but I'll run away soon. I wanted to go with Media Temple but they don't accept PayPal for monthly payments, you have to pay a full year in advance and that's something I'm not going to do until I have some first hand experience. Extrange. So I decided to use the hosting plan I had with GoDaddy and that had little use. No worth the money for a real site.
And yes, as a GoDaddy customer for the past couple of years, I have to agree with all your points. Well, except for #6, I just don't know what was that about.
Regards.
I agreed with the post, and am always appalled at GoDaddy's frat-boy approach to advertising.
Previously I also used godaddy. Their server sometimes is very slow and down. Then, I decide to stop contract with them. Finally I found other hosting provider from Microsoft site, hostforlife.eu. I decide to try them. I have been with them for 1 year and the server still fast. I would recommend this provider. 🙂
If a company needs sex to make their product sell, it's probably because it's a bad product.
Likely true in any case (ex. beers like Guinness and Heiniken don’t need frat boys and bikini-clad women running around like Budweiser), and proven with GoDaddy.
I cringe everytime I get a new client who purchased GD hosting.
Been working on a site for about a week, and I’ve had outages every single day!
Or just simply that that’s how they want to market.
All marketing uses gimmicks. An adorable talking baby. A cgi animated talking gecko……..advertisements directed to kids so the kids whine and cry about waht they want(hey toys to them is like sex to us)
So it has nothing to do with their product……and you know what it works cause people know about godaddy.
I agree godaddy isn’t very good from my experience but them using women to advertise you hypocrites claiming you don’t support that stuff I’m willing to bet you’ve bought other products that have used sex to sell it so quit making fools of yourself and claiming your so much better than anyone else
Godaddy domains…..best service at affordable cost
My recent post ImgResizer Pro 16
I have moved most of my sites from godaddy, but still have a couple left. Two of them are on servers with 4500 other sites!!! That is a joke and an insult. Both run wordpress, so both are dog slow. Needless to say I will be cuttting all ties with godaddy very soon.
My recent post Re- Book Car Hire
I know. Now, I need to find someone to help me move my sites to a new hosting account. I actually haven't encountered any problems..yet. I've heard horror stories though.
I am now waiting for a transfer of my domain to Go Daddy. I picked it because it has one click interface for WordPress but I am starting to wonder if I could move it before anything gets started. This whole hosting is a pain. It should be easier. I didn’t understand it 10 years ago and it is still as confusing. I could never figure why I needed one place for hosting and one place for a URL. Today you can get the URL and the hosting at the same place but I just want to use my WordPress blog.
Lindsay, you just need a good hosting company and they will move all of the files over for you. I would never mess with them myself. Bluehost does an ok job, but they too are a bit crowded. If you get decent traffic, you should look into dedicated hosting. I use BigScoot services–they guys are amazing and their service is out of this world. They are, however, are much more expensive than Go Daddy and the likes.
Godaddy slow as hell
I like the hot ads tho, sexy woman make my day!
if you think godaddy is slow why not sign op with one of their parternship companies 🙂 you can easily be a reseller of godaddy prodct yourself. Half the hosting sites listed as godaddys competition are their affiliated reseller lmao. Personally i have experienced an array of various hosting services, and pretty much you get what you pay for regardless of provider. AND godaddy is cheapest by far with best product in my opinion. Some hosting providers do offer short lived sales on dedicated servers though but they do not beat prices at gd in the long run.
AFter all i have to conclude that all hosting providers suck, because in the big picture they are all slow as hell including the dedicated servers that are overpriced or impractical at thousands of dollars for quality server that could handle 10+k requests. So, the best option is to get fiberoptic business line and run own server with preferred distro/config and full control
I’m not ready to make a change at the moment. I pay the big bucks to GoDaddy for dedicated server & have spent more aggrivating hours with the at least 50% of support that are quite clueless & yes… of course..want to up-sell me at every turn.
I’m totally intrigued with your fiberotpic business line. At a later point I would like to explore this option… so I would like your contact info.
Thank you for giving options! I have felt like a hostage with GoDaddy!
Bonnie
Please think about this. Have you ever set up a server? Do you know how, do you know how much Microsoft will charge you (per year) for a server license? Do you know how to set up a Linux server? (no yearly fee) Do you know how much an optical line will cost? (not cheap) Are you near an optical trunk line? They are usually in large metropolitan areas. Think about this and check out these things before you take any steps in that direction. Also think about how much income your web site generates. If it is not enough to run a corporation, don’t do this.
We appreciate hearing from an employee of GoDaddy, especially one who doesn’t opt to use their name, but you can find better prices than GoDaddy, and yes, they are the highest priced hosting & domain provider on the web. They get all of their customers due to their numerous advertising on all the media sites they can cover. But I have dealt with customer service and you can’t get through for a few hours, as I have had to do a number of times. GoDaddy is, by far, the worst with customer service. I do my business with a frofessional company who helps you within 1 hour of contact, but I have never had to personally wait longer than 30 minutes, and they are the same people who are coders, unlike GoDaddy’s customer service who are trainined to sale & not service your package!
If you ever let your domain lapse, GD will helpfully auction it off…guess who gets to keep the proceeds!
I wish I read this before I decided GoDaddy was cheaper than Bluehost, which is one that I have used before. I just assumed that they used Cpanel, which GoDaddy does not. I paid yesterday, and I am trying to cancel my service today. Then, I will go this Host Gator.
I would never buy hosting from them, although I've heard that they are making an effort to do better in customer service these days. I think there are plenty of better options though. I personally use Dreamhost and I have been very happy with them. Prices are reasonable for hosting and multiple domain name registration, and I have gotten very quick responses on technical questions.
The only thing I might venture to get from godaddy is a SSL certificate because I think they have pretty good authority and you can snag one for pretty cheap especially if you use a promo code from one of the coupon sites out there. Renewal is considerably more expensive though :-/
Who did you go with when you switched from GD? Thanks
I use namecheap for domains. Hostgator Virtual server for hosting. Never had a problem in 10 years.
namecheap is an enom registrar.
I visited your website and it looks very good!
How hard is it to switch hosting etc from GoDaddy to someone else? I can’t afford to pay someone two switch me over but I’m not sure if I can do it myself and I don’t want to mess my site up. I also really hate how they send me emails several times per week to let me know my hosting expires this month. Um, no it doesn’t. It auto renews every single month, that is what I PAY for. There is no way to stop getting those emails. Frustrating. I’ve been with them for years and it’s all I know.
Blessings,
Mel
Please feel free to stop by: Trailing After God
Hi Mel.
I changed to Hostgator a couple of years back and have never had an issue. On their website you will find very detailed information on how to transfer your domain to them. I think it took me a couple of emails to get some details from my previous hosting company and then I sat back and Hostgator did the rest.
I’m afraid I fell into the same trap. I can afford to switch though I shouldn’t have to but I think I’m locked in for 2 months before the name can be transferred to another host…is that correct?
Mark, that is correct. Generally you have to wait 60 days before you can transfer the domain.
Yes that is true. And also in violation of ICANN Policy (http://www.icann.org/).
Thanks for the post. I didn’t know! Enjoyed your workshop yesterday in Fredericksburg. We did not touch on this topic then. Blessings!
I appreciated your comment reason #6. For me, that is a very important issue.
Godaddy is the best i have around 20,000 domain with go daddy and 20,000 are hosted by go daddy my people have no problem with go daddy i do a ping ever day and all are around 20ms
ever one loves my work and go daddy works with me as i asked them their told me their look after me so i have 20,000 people paying me and go daddy only makes around 10% so i’m making money like no tomorrow for me 🙂
Yeah, sure ya do. Work for GD by chance?
I doubt anyone loves the work of someone who does not grasp basic punctuation skills.
Been with godaddy 3 years and never had a problem with their customer service. They have always been very helpful and have never geared me into buying more services. Check out my website Jay. Do I work for go daddy? You must have worked for them and got fired or something cuz you are way too bitter over this.
Can go daddy do everything? no But for basic web building this is a great start and has easy to learn tools. Don’t be fooled by some of these arrogant pro website builders.
And If my basic punctuation is not correct, I am not in English class so get over it.
I’d have to agree with the other person. I think people should at least try to use proper grammar and punctuation, whether in an English class or not.
No, you’re not in English class. The purpose of English class, though, is to help you learn to communicate effectively after you get out of class and through the rest of your life.
You’ve communicated effectively, yes, but I’m sure it’s not what you intended to communicate.
Basic punctuation being ‘correct’ was less of an issue than basic punctuation ‘existing’, in your original post.
You may be making money, but you’re losing respect with every post like that. If that trade-off is worth it to you, salute yourself. No one else will.
Their dedicated servers are EXCELLENT for the price, have had 2 dedicated servers with them over the last 2 years, I don’t think they have gone down once.
found your site while waiting for my site to UPLoad to godaddy. And I have a 29MPS fiber line upward, so it ain’t me. Unless you are feeling really really cheap and can’t bear to have two bills, one for domain and one for hosting, find someone else.
gah, still uploading.
I have to say I disagree with your article. Althoguh some of these are at depths deeper than my knowledge, I can tell you that I have had GREAT success with GoDaddy. Of the times that I’ve had to contact support, I’ve only had one issue where the support was wrong, and that was actually because of an issue with Microsoft that had gotten their info wrong first (exchange merging). Their customer service I find to be top notch. I get someone in the U.S. They always review my account when I call. Not to sell me more, but to make sure I’m where I need to be. More often than not I’m saving money. Every company has issues, but I’m not sure your info above is at all correct.
As someone with ‘deeper knowledge’, trust me, the info is corrct.
My guess is your site doesn’t require database connectivity and/or you’ve simply been lucky or haven’t noticed your site failing to load at random times.
Tip Top however has several walls and foundations scattered along the creek and along the side hills.
In essence, you need to create a “containment area” for the job.
These medications are safe and effective, and often relieve the problem within a few
days.
I don’t have a problem with their prices or using pretty girls to sell their products. And I don’t find their services hard to use, although it would be nice to have a bit more control.
However, I had a huge problem with their hosting being extraordinarily slow and their support was unable to correct the problem or even recognize that there was an issue on their end. I ran into performance problems that were so severe (page load times of 21 to 300+ seconds) that my site was unusable. And this was on their 4GH Ultimate Windows ASP.NET 4.0 platform that supposedly was going to be “lightning fast”.
I fought with them for three weeks to get them to realize there were performance problems and to get the problems corrected but without any success. At one point the support person tried to argue with me about the number of times I had called that day for support (she said it was 7 I told her it was just 3) inferring that I needed to finally understand that this was MY problem and to stop wasting their time.
Based on a friend’s recommendation I copied my ASP.NET code – without ANY changes – to a free Microsoft Windows Azure site and the performance was amazing on Azure. Keep in mind that there were NO CHANGES to this ASP.NET code and so it continued to use the SQL Server database that was hosted on GoDaddy.com’s servers.
I changed the DNS A record to point to the new Azure site and will soon begin the process of moving EVERYTHING I have on GoDaddy.com to a company that is competent at hosting sites and of providing technical support.
And so although I think the hosting prices are pretty cheap, the cost was actually really high since my company got a couple black eyes because of poor performance at a critical time.
Where you planning to move i also like to move my hosting . Please let me know.
I’ve had a great experience with GoDaddy for about 10 years. I’d never leave them. They are the reason I have money in my checking and savings account, pay my bills, and generally make people think I’m awesome because I run all kinds of websites and they don’t know how I make so much magic on the internet. GoDaddy hosts it all.
Spoken like another GD employee in disguise!
Hi, I’ve been trying to setup an site for a year and I’m having problems. Do you mind helping me get my site started or telling me what to do. I’m doing an home-based business of a boutique.
Thanks
“I had one client who had constant trouble with her email…”
I would be a little more thorough in your research before saying GoDaddy support is terrible. You had 1 gal who couldn’t figure out her email? If you had some larger evidence I would tally this up to just bad writing, as its not very convincing or informative.
“I cringe any time I hear a novice say they bought a domain on GoDaddy”
Again, really? Insult your readers? You cringe because someone signed up with the largest hosting company in the world? GoDaddy’s all-in-one service is for novices and its pretty easy to use.
The rest of the items on your blog are kind of rubbish as well. Especially #6. You must avoid A LOT of products and services if using appealing advertising is a problem for you.
I have had a great experience with GoDaddy with 2 company domains, emails and a quick and simple website I needed for a short time to get started a long time ago.
The reason I decided to comment is because I don’t think GoDaddy is a problem for people. What is a problem is that anytime someone wants to research a company, service, or product on the web, all we get is thousands of blogs returned by Google that give low-effort unsubstantiated opinions by bloggers.
To sum things up: Anyone who reads this: GoDaddy is perfectly fine and their support is awesome! Yes its a little more expensive on some things, but not much. However, I would invite someone to try and switch over to Microsoft Exchange through Microsoft and then through GoDaddy. Godaddy does everything for you so you don’t have to stress out. You DO get some benefit for a few extra bucks. They always answer the phone, they always follow up and they are NOT pushy on sales. Being savvy in not being up-sold has nothing to do with whether or not one is a tech “novice” or whether it makes them evil. They’re a business. In fact, they never up-sold me. They would tell me I don’t need something when I wanted it and they were right and saved me money.
So, there you go. Here is a positive review that should cancel out your one lady friend’s email troubles.
#7. That alone was enough for me to move away from GoDaddy.
I switched from Godaddy to Namecheap ion 2004 and it wasn’t for any of these reason. One of my domain names that I have an affiliate program on was flagged for spam. Was not me spamming but an actually affiliate.
GoDaddy ‘suspended’ my domain for spamming and wanted something like $200 to unlock it! I transferred it immediately out and never looked back.
I have one client with a WordPress business website hosted on GoDaddy shared hosting. Domaintools.com reports 7,506 websites on this server (IP 184.168.233.1) – absolutely ridiculous
He and I are now discussing options to move the site to a decent host; the shortlist includes Host Gator and GNAX.
His site for the past month or so has been nearly unusable.
Any WP admin pages time out more often than they load. Even the CACHED front-end pages often time out for public (logged-out) visitors.
Google page speed was never good, but now it’s around 7 seconds on average (my own business Drupal site on GN.. averages 1.2 seconds, with some cached pages in 0,12 seconds, and a static HTML subdomain site averages under 0.12s with some pages in 0.02s – also shared VPS with about 175 other sites. Note: I have 2 WP, 1 Drupal and 1 HTML sites on my domain)
RE – control panel interface – Fully agree it’s clumsy, and aimed more at promoting GD’s own products than ease of use (CPanel rocks!)
The error logging system sucks too – 7 days only – What’s wrong with having a perpetual logging system? And then the logs are hard to access – most of the time clicking the link to the log files redirects to an article “how to use the error logging system”.
(No – I’m not a GN.. or associate Affiliate or re-seller, nor do I get any form of commission for hosting sites there – I just happen to be pleased with the performance)
As my sites grow Godaddy becomes impossible to use anymore. Have used the deluxe account for a couple years. Now anytime someone shares a post, the sites go down for at least 5 to 10 minutes. Anyone happy with godaddy is either not making money with traffic or using virtual servers in my opinion.
Am calling around these past few days to make a change.
Their renewal rate went up again? Last time I checked, it was $13 something after taxes. What the hell? I really need to switch to Namecheap.
I would expect quite a lot from your website service at the prices quoted. [OMG–WTF!] For that money, I could set up my own branded publishing company.
Godaddy hasn’t always been perfect, but it beats the heck out of some cheaper services–like 1and1.com for example or acsite.net. At least godaddy has customer support that speaks American.
As for being slow, yes, I’ve seen that. I wonder how long it will be before hostgator and other places have the same problems?
godaddy wouldn’t work for me, I’m Canadian I don’t speak American
Everything you say about Go Daddy is true. They are terrible. While some of the comments on this post are nearly 3 years old, everything is still true today. When you have a problem, Go Daddy support tries to convince you the problem is because of something you did or your code when often the problem, especially when it comes to slow page loading, is due to an overloaded server. A few things:
1) You can get WhoIsGuard privacy protection at Namecheap for $0.99 per year when you use a coupon code that has been good for over 2 years now. People can search for it.
2) Namecheap is an excellent registrar and does not bombard you with spam emails or upsells when you make a purchase.
3) Go Daddy’s control panel is difficult to use. cPanel is much easier and many web hosts offer it.
Go Daddy is simply the worst.
Agreed. I’ve have Register.com blame me for their hosting inefficienies too and I would also avoid them at all costs.
Funny how eventually the site at Register started magically working better after I encouraged my client to threaten leaving them. Apparantly I didn’t need to ‘optimize’ my code afterall!
Although I can’t agree with you on your every point, but a dissatisfaction came to my mind that Godaddy is not allowing me to renew .com.au domain. There is no auto-renew option even, nor I am able to renew the domain. In this case, Godaddy sucks.
Godaddy has become even slower, and I’m not talking about WordPress sites either, just straight HTML. Some of your other points are accurate, particularly Godaddy’s tasteless ad campaigns & aggravating up-sell tactics built into their system.
But to update the overall situation: WordPress (& other CMS) sites have come under heavy attack of late, and Hostgator bore a major brunt of the the brute force attempts to get into & take control of CMS’.
Notwithstanding, your suggestion to host with you is a joke! Your prices are obscene & it appears you only resell Mediatemple server space. You can malign Godaddy support, but your charging $55 > $25 per support ticket as incentive to pay you $70 per month for hosting (vs. $6 & free support) makes this post a pretty shameless self-promotion in its own right.
i have the same problem with you, before i always buy new domain name from gaddy, and the next time i buy hosting too…becouse i want get fast propagation
BUT what i Get!!!
Very slow hosting!!!!!!
i must installed manually ioncube loader
i must install manually zend optimizer
phpthumb not working
auto installer application like wordpress very slow , you need 24 hour to finish your wordpress installation ( you can isntall manually more faster but its hurts me)
maximum excecution time limited by hosting, so if you import big content not working…
generally web hsoting using, cpanel but godaddy using custom panel,,,very not familiar with us and hard to use.
Create addon domain ..SLOW
create mysql SLOW
PRice Too Much Expensive..than other webhsoting
FOR ALL , I SAID GODADDY VERY SLOWW HOSTING NOT RECOMENDDED FOR YOU, SPECIALLY FOR NEWBEE
I never use GD hosting but I bought a lot of their domains . They offer a good service as I think. For anyone who complained about it (DOMAIN). I don’t know if you ever read the definition of Domain Name System and how it works.
The propagation when you change your DNS will never be a problem unless you don’t know how to configure, it’s clear as daylight . Their resolve the ip so quick and you never ever recognize the difference between GD and the others.
Talking about hosting, I suggest Hostgator, they’re the best with affordable price to me .
Wow, your post is full of misinformation:
#2 Re:prices – email forwarding is free. It’s only a paid service if you use over 100 free forwarding addresses/domain. Renewals for .com are $14.99 yes but have some common sense and find a coupon to save 25% which then send out in nearly every email.
#3 Hard to use? Come on, that’s like saying don’t get windows because it’s hard to use. Sorry everything isn’t 1 big simple button for you to click on. There’s a million things you can do on the website, so you’re going to have to use your brain to navigate.
#4 / #5 You complain that the hosting is slow and you don’t get cpanel but the plans you are talking about cost a mere 10 to 30 CENTS PER DAY. You expect cpanel/plesk and super fast hosting paying 10 CENTS PER DAY? Get real. How much do you pay for your cell phone? $2-3/day, right? What kind of service do you think would would get paying $3/month for cell phone service? Stop complaining and upgrade to a dedicated server to get speed and cpanel/plesk. You get what you pay for, and to expect phenomenal speed for $3/mo is laughable. I mean how naive can you get?
#7 Half true. They supported the original version of sopa, and when it changed the pulled their support. They never supported pipa.
I have to disagree with 2 and 3.
#2 Prices can be very shady with Godaddy – for instance you are put on auto renewal by default. Also, controls can be “activated” (of course for a price that they don’t seem to put too much emphasis on.) Although they can be avoided by some reading, just the fact that you have to be aware when administrating your website isn’t desirable.
#3 Let’s be honest: The interface is a mess. It takes logging into 3 forms and clicking multiple buttons to access my MySQL databases. I’d like to further your analogy of Windows and put it up to Apple’s OS. Both computers can do the same task, but Apple’s OS in my (and many others’ opinions) is easier to navigate.
It’s about the design of the controls. There might be 20 related buttons, but the fact that those buttons are grouped nicely instead of scattered on 12 different pages is something to think about.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
With GD, I don’t see an easy way to access my phpadmin like standard cpanel hosts. Why can’t I just go to mydomain.com/phpmyadmin. I’m sick of logging into GD, then launching the site I need, then clicking the MySQL button, then launch phpmyadmin…
Try Bookmarking the final pagez
I’m definitely moving my site from GoDaddy, I get time-outs on pages, editing anything takes ages via the wp dashboard and to say the site is slow is world-class understatement.
On the GD site, once you have logged in to your account, its just one big mess, whoever thought this set up was a good idea is obviously not a logical thinker. I personally think its awful, its clunky at best, wordy in as much as, there are excessive steps to get anywhere in the account, there are excessive pages i.e. why can’t GD have one page sectioned for all the important account info.
example: I login, click accounts and go to the account summary page, what would you expect to see? well I wouldn’t expect to see “Messages” at the top prompting me to refer a friend, to find a very vague summary I have to scroll to the “Bottom” of the page and the summary tells me I have webhosting and email, er no I don’t I have webhosting and no emails, so, in order to find the issue I have to click on emails and then I find out its not an email but a forwarding service.
OK what about the webhosting summary? In order to get a summary of the summary of the webhosting I now have to click again, this gives me a bit more info but to get a summary of the summary of the summary of the webhosting I have to “Launch” now I no longer get a summary I get what looks like a heavily customised cPanel but with a lot less features, this page is called “Hosting Details”
I spot a possible tool to help me in my quest for acceptable hosting speeds, unfortunately this tool only works if you have a certain hosting plan and the domain hosted at GD. it’s called “Website Accelerator” Next up is “Traffic logs” hold up why am I going to a help page, ah I see this is only for Windows hosted sites, if your Linux hosted you have to FTP to see the log… ooh “Website Performance” now we’ll get somewhere… Huh! website accelerator? Hmmm so website performance is the same as website accelerator… OK. I could go on but I seriously can’t be bothered.
See how messy all this is, this is GD’s problem, they obviously over-think information then create unnecessary pages with little or no useful info, at best its frustrating making managing your account a lengthy process.
and by the way The server this is hosted on has 2,335 friends to play with. I also have a friend on GD and his server has…. wait for it… 7,697 other sites O.M.G seriously
GD=Fail
I use godaddy for my domains and host them with taveran.com – which is a great web hosting company. When choosing a hosting provider go in for the smaller professionally run companies rather than the big boys
According to GoDaddy tech support, they have semi-permanently blocked the some IP address of mobile devices provided by a large cell phone company, Cricket: So, you can’t set up company email for a company hosted by GoDaddy, if your client or any of their employees uses that wireless carrier.
That’s a deal breaker!
One thing for sure is that godaddy is hard to us they should sell their service to developers only, I only has two domains left which I’m planning to transfer soon because I’ve given up trying to understand their system.
SO you have a problem when women are “objectified”, but I am sure you couldnt care less about all of the ads that objectify men by making them seem like morons who cant do anything right without the help of their superior wives.
you male feminist/chivalrous types make me sick.
Actually, we have a problem with those types of ads too. When any domain registrar starts making those types of ads, we’ll talk about it.
Have a nice day.
Hey,
I used GoDaddy for a while but got frustrated with all the up-sells and constant e-mails. When I started in IM, I was foolish and didn’t know what I needed and then they hit you with ‘Site Seal’, ‘E-mail Management’, ‘WhoIs’…
When you are a beginner, you think you need it all and end up spending way more than you needed to!
Cheers for the article, Namecheap all the way.
I was with GoDaddy back then but their interface was way to difficult use the fact the it’s also to pricey both the Domain Names and Hosting Plans so I’ve transferred all my Domains and Hostings from other provider. Right now I’m with SeasonsHost their Domain Names are way much cheaper plus their Hosting are far more cheaper than GoDaddy and so far so good.
I am a customer with Godaddy since 2008 when I decided to create my own website. At that time I wasn’t aware about other competitors. I wasn’t even aware of the word SEO. I wanted just to have my own website with my own domain. Years after years I get better in knowing Godaddy: Useless technical support with template emails. They don’t even read the email. Just copy and paste. I have to say I am in Europe and their are in Usa so means more response delay with the browser. even if we talk in milliseconds they are precious as gold.
Last drop is the premium dns server. Wow I thought buying this service at least I could get something better than a regular dns. Wow you can use vanity name server to be seen as a professional one. Pure crap. Dns is slower than the free one. I asked technical support and they replied that the issue now seems solved. What the stupid reply it is? They didn’t duplicate the issue. This is the last drop. I think more and more people are leaving Godaddy.
I have been a client of Godaddy for ages.
In recent months I had been getting fed-up with their slow servers. If I rang up they would speed up, but that is hardly good.
I had even got as far as moving websites to other providers and setting up a new selling portal.
In the last few weeks GoDaddy changed their servers. WOW! They are really fast now.
As for price – it is worth seeking out GoDaddy resellers, as they are sometimes cheaper.
Support can be excellent, although the wait for an answer can be tedious.
The sales process is very confusing – I often do it for my clients.
GoDaddy seem to be moving away from their ‘traditional’ mode of advertising!!! So, some improvements 🙂
Just transferred a non-important domain registered with Godaddy over to Namecheap — will see how it goes.
While I have been disgusted by Godaddy upselling and general sleazy marketing tactics, I’ve never had any problem with them as far as pointing domains to my name servers.
What’s prompting me to ditch Godaddy is the pricing. $17.99 for .org and $14.99 for .com and friends — bye, bye.
I was appalled by their commercials. too. Unfortunately for me, it seemed like the best service from what I researched. Needless to say I’ll still be looking. I haven’t had speed issues, but the GUI for the website is horrendous and counter-intuitive. Regardless of any other reason, I’d choose to pay even more for a site that doesn’t objectify women in the way that Godaddy does. It’s disgusting.
I use to host my site with godaddy and I can tell you their phone support is terrible. My wordpress site got hacked and when I asked for help, I was transferred to call center in India where support agent English was terrible and he had no solution for my problems and he kept telling me to re-create my web site. I transferred my accounts to cphosting and they fixed my web site for free.
I moved from GoDaddy many years ago for many reasons. My main objection goes much deeper than just their skanky promotional strategy. I read AUPs (Acceptable Use Policy) because I don’t want to knowingly support a web services company that profits directly from the online pornography industry. GoDaddy is arguably one of the largest sellers of .XXX domains, and they unashamedly admit to hosting pornography sites. That may not bother others, but I won’t put my websites on “dirty servers,” and I won’t give my money to a company with no moral boundaries when it comes to porn.
Apart from the dirty server issues, I have found much better and more reasonably priced alternatives that have strong AUPs and clean servers. BlueHost.com is a full-featured hosting service, and they now offer dedicated servers. They strongly enforce their strict AUP. NameSilo.com is a new and full-featured domain registrar that will not sell .XXX domains. They blow GD out of the water on features and pricing. For nearly any upsell item GD offers, I’ve found better alternatives. Don’t go with GoDaddy.
I’m torn on how to take the post. I agree with you that godaddy is hard to use at times. I had a site made that I just needed hosted but switchign the hosting plus the domain took a lot more research than was expected. Now as to the over priced part. I have renewed my sites for the last 5 years and it has always been the price i signed up with. I’m no expert so i’m not sure if tis just the plan i choose or what but the effects on pricing you show I have not seen.
That being said it is probably because i always select the multiple year options so when i renew at 7.99 a year its going to be 14.99 total but thats for 2 years. And to be honest i’d feel more secure with their security options than a lot of other “securities” that other domain registry sites use. I’ve done my research on that part and some of the other ones are terrible.
As to the speed I have never had a problem with goDaddy. Im not uploading music or videos they are just text based pages with links and ads etc.. but I have had optimization programs run on my sites and they result with no speed problems.
All in all i’d say you just had a bad experience. I’ve used go daddy for years now and have never had a price or product problem. And with their name becoming better known it is only getting easier to use. And as to your “smut” problem…. really? look at almost any product…..
Well I have a love and hate relationship with godaddy but ur comment
@GoDaddy is Hard to Use
shows me what a retard you are..
But I hate google on sopa and pipa.
Well, a web developer for over a decade, I must be a retard too because I’ve never seen such a bloated, confusing host control panel anywhere else.
I digress though – those with nothing but insults to offer in a debate likely don’t have any constructive arguments in the first place. Sorry, it’s you who looks like the retard.
Nice post, however I think I have to disagree on almost all of them. I definitely think their prices are reasonable, if not the best of all registrars. I can’t comment too much on their customer service because I rarely have to use it. But I use GoDaddy a lot. The one area that they can definitely improve is on their hosting.
Some people never fail to amaze me. I guarantee most of you idiots that are blaming your host for your problems (godaddy or otherwise) are using the wrong products etc… Most companies that provide web hosting make it very clear that you are sharing resources with other users. If you cannot afford to have your site go down even temporarily, buy and manage your own darn server.
And another thing, It wouldn’t suprise me if you people having issues with wordpress on “shared hosting” have enormous databases… Go back to school whiners, figure that stuff out and stop blaming other people.
I’m reading the comments an I’m mildly amused by some of them regarding godaddy and the “smutty” tactics they supposedly use to sell their products. So what they sell .xxx domains. AND?? They’re a business. Their bottom line is to sell domains as well as other web-related products. Quit whining and move your domains and hosting elsewhere if you aren’t happy with their service but to just take the word of someone who obviously had something to gain by putting down the competition seems just a bit ridiculous to me.
yes you are right man
i also think so
Go Daddy is not good enough
I am convinced of not wanting Go Daddy anymore. It takes like a million years to transact with them on my favored auction domain. It’s so sad that such big name company displays bad customer support aside from the ideas of hard-selling their services. Numbers with dollars sign keeps on popping out from every corner of their website. It’s such a bad user experience for me.
I read your post when it showed up in my SERPS because I recognized your name from my affiliation with ACFW. I have over 85 domains with godaddy, but only the registrations. I have found most other companies charge the $15 to renew – but all of my main site hosting is with hostgator (with feeder sites pointed to weebly, tumblr, etc.) I love hostgator hosting, they are responsive and reliable – uptime is phenomenal. And although I hate godaddy’s smut advertising , they have the cleanest interface for managing my domain names that I have found.
I don’t plan to let them host anything- and they sell me nothing else – but for keeping my domains under control, it’s a snap. The hostgator domain management is a real pain, I have a dozen sites registered there and have several different logins – though i have asked them to combine to one account, they say they can’t because they use several registration platforms – it depends where mine registered from the onset. (enom, registry rocket…)
every hosting platform/provider has something inherently crummy, I suppose. For me, it’s not worth the cost and aggravation of moving them somewhere else when a $15 renewal is pretty much the standard. So i will get my 99 cent to 3.99 first year domain registration, point them to another host, and move on. Upsells are just the nature of the beast. I am an affiliate marketer, so I am not at all bothered by clicking off the upsells.
Same as Michael. I use Hostgator for hosting and GoDaddy for domain registration. Works for me.
I would have agreed with just about everything this post said a year or two ago, but things have changed.
First I am not a GoDaddy employee. I am an entrepreneur in the field of online education and was forced to become a webmaster of my own network due to the costs of hiring others. I have been working as such since 1999. I now design sites using PHP and MySQL databases and do quite well with SEO and SE rankings.
About a year ago I began moving my sites away from GoDaddy to a variety of different hosts, but the biggest ones were moved to HostGator. I don’t normally comment on boards such as this, but as my experience has been challenging, thought I would share with others in the same position.
There was a time when GoDaddy’s sites were slow and the console was difficult to use, but things seem to be different now.
Long story short – I am now moving my sites back to GoDaddy from HostGator because HostGator sites were extremely slow and for me, their support, severely lacking.
Today, I moved a dynamic site back to GoDaddy and after reading this post (which came up when I was searching for something else) decided to do a speed test. To clarify, I am using the hosting packages (with both companies) which allow many domains to be hosted under one domain as add ons – I think they call it their Virtual hosting package. Before the DNS resolved I was able to call up both sites and test their speed using an independent service. GoDaddy was significantly faster and received much higher scores on the Speed and Performance test.
Finally, HostGator advertises that they are an expert and provide excellent customer service for PHP/MySQL users – yet consistently I have had to put my databases on another server and call them into the HostGator sites. And, even though a certain piece of code worked on one virtual site, it would not work on another. I tried many times to contact them as I believe it is a setup error on their side, they insisted it was a programming error.
In the end, I was able to move the exact same site to GoDaddy without making any changes and it works perfectly. It’s fast and presents all the data immediately, instead of piecemeal. On HostGator, the site would come up a section at a time.
I do still have issue with the way GoDaddy uses email, but I am willing to admit that because it is different than what I am used to it might be operator error and ignorance on my part.
I have not yet moved all of my sites back to GoDaddy and honestly am dreading two of the sites as they are large and complicated, but that is the plan. Still willing to listen to those that brag HostGator is the best (because I am lazy and don’t want to do the work again. lol!), but if I had to stake my web reputation on a hosting company today…it would be GoDaddy.
Coach,
When I wrote this, HostGator was amazing and independent. Since then, they have been bought out by EIG and the quality has plummeted. We are also moving sites away from HostGator. I no longer recommend HostGator and I will update this post soon to reflect that.
Agree with all your points!
I don’t recommend GoDaddy as registrar or for hosting and if people are using them I usually suggest they move away from using them. Most good hosting companies will tell you they get a lot of “GoDaddy Refugees” transferring to them.
You’re talking about two very different services here. If GoDaddy hosting is horrible, then fine…don’t recommend it, but why group that with registering domains? I personally like to keep services like registration, DNS, hosting and email separate. This way each service only has to focus on what they are good at.
I use GoDaddy for domain registration and DNS, Google Apps for email and BlueHost for hosting. I couldn’t be happier.
Asking questions are in fact fastidious thing if you are not understanding anything
fully, however this piece of writing offers pleasant understanding yet.
Godaddy also charges $10 a year per domain if you want private registration (your address and phone number not displayed in whois).
I don’t know how much the other registrars charged, but $10 per year per domain adds up.
Forget private registration anywhere. The cheapest option (for about 10+ domains) is to open a PO box at your local Post Office. Then use that as your address for all contact fields.
it is hell, plz plz plz dont go with godaddy. u will repent as i m.
thnx
I guess HostGator is the same.. it’s too slow
I have to say I might be an exception here OR maybe given my experience in this field, I can see past all of the gripes here, but I actually like GoDaddy a lot. It all started after the RegisterFly incident when GoDaddy pledged to buyout all the remaining domain registrations and move customers over to them.
I should have prefaced this comment with the fact that I only use GoDaddy for two things: 1. domain registration and management and 2. DNS management
With that said, reasons 4, 5 and most of number 1 do not apply to me. The rest of number one doesn’t really apply to me either because I have never once had to deal with customer support…ever. This is likely due to the fact that IF you know what you’re doing, you can’t really screw up domain and DNS management. I don’t profess to be an expert, but I have been hosting websites since 1998 so I do have the skills to maintain a proper DNS configuration.
Anyway, reason #2 is perhaps the only one I can agree on…sometimes. I say sometimes because whenever I go to renew a domain or service, I try to group as many as I’d like to afford into one order and then do a Google search for GoDaddy coupons that will reduce my cost down to just about the first-year prices. Does this make them cheaper than other registrars? Maybe not always, but at least it makes them competitive. If it were not for the everlasting sources of coupon codes year after year, I probably would have jumped ship awhile ago. You just have to find them. Fatwallet and RetailMeNot are a couple of good sources.
Reason #3 is a somewhat true statement, but it’s subjective to each user. While I find GoDaddy to be very overbearing in the upsell arena, I’ve been used to it for over 10 years so I know how to quickly get through to the end. Plus, you can setup custom buying profiles that will eliminate the extra addons so you can fly through the checkout process. I hardly think that this reason alone should be a reason not to use GoDaddy. If you don’t know what you need and don’t need in terms of getting domains/hosting, then you probably aren’t the right person to be buying these items in the first place. I understand that everyone starts out somewhere, but you really should read and pay attention to what’s on the table before clicking the checkout button. To their credit, sometimes GoDaddy upsells are useful for people new to websites because they might find things they really do need, but didn’t know it yet.
Finally, reason #6 has no bearing on my purchasing habits whatsoever. I don’t agree that GoDaddy NEEDS to use sex to sell and if you look back on their history, most of it was used in conjunction with other “shock” value ads in an effort to stand out. The marketing worked and today, there’s less and less of it coming from GoDaddy. Regardless of how you feel about the ads, what matters is do they get the job done for you? If any one of reasons 1 through 5 were enough for you to stop using their services, that’s all you need. Reason 6 has nothing to do with their business at hand.
this is the number ONE:Has Terrible Support
And they dont do anything,i dont know why they have customer support..
Don’t do domain name searches with GoDaddy. Twice I have searched for a domain name with GoDaddy then the following day when I go to register it, it has been taken but is available for sale.
Coincidence. I think not.
I’m having so many issues with them, I think I might steer clear of spending any $, resurrect my old Blogger, and dress it up …
The author sounds a little jealous, or had a really bad experience with Godaddy. I’ve been using them to register websites for about ten years now. I’ve also got 3 websites hosted through them. I have a delux package so I get unlimited hosting on unlimited websites for $8 a month. I fail to see how that’s expensive. As for support, they’re there 24 hours a day (probably because they have to maintain web servers and such) and I’ve always been able to get my problems resolved. PLUS, their tech support is here in America, which means no accents to deal with. As I use Dreamweaver for web design, I can’t really speak to how their web builder works, but I assume it works fine. As for their backing SOPA and PIPA, yeah, that’s shitty, but at least they changed course. Imagine if they were like the current batch of idiot republicans trying to take the country off the fiscal cliff.
With the sex stuff: who cares? How can you be against PIPA and also against people selling porn? Do you have the right to free speech or not? Sex is under free speech. And I’d rather see that stuff hosted on reliable servers. Selling sex makes money. Godadday is a business. Businesses try to make as much money as possible. How many of you swore off all Kraft products because they own Marlboro? None of you I bet even though cigarettes kill.
This “review” sounds like a fake slam on Godaddy, skewed and probably from someone with sour grapes who had a bad experience, mostly likely trying to blame someone for their own mistakes and lack of a little technical knowledge. I moved from horrible nightmarish web hosting, bad experience twice, then so very glad to have found Godaddy. Every single time, I mean EVERY SINGLE TIME I have contacted support over the past 5+ years they have answered and helped fix my issues. Most turned out to be things I needed to do on my sites coding … and they helped me learn how. Not once have they answered an email with scripted crap. On the phone they have always gotten to the bottom of anything and helped me. I have had 2 sites hosted, signed up others and worked on WordPress, Drupal and HTML5 sites. All with no problems and superb help desk support. Their interface is not difficult to use at all. Their rates are some of the lowest and services are outstanding. FYI, they also offer CDN. So clearly this “authors” top 3 complaints against Godaddy are bodus. I can’t stand skewed reporting disguising as information to help people. I have been so impressed by their support. Oct 2013. Daniel
I read this with interest. While I have experienced the difficulty with navigating to what I need through the constant upsells I haven’t seen the issue with the customer service – the few questions I have had were handled well. The sex sells aspect doesn’t bother me and I am too new to this whole business to be missing out on cpanel. Time will tell, although a question always has to be raised when giving a negative report of a competitor and then promoting your product.
This post just doesn’t sit right with me, even though I understand this is all your opinion. Of course, it’s tainted by the fact that you offer competing services.
I have had as many as 160 domains hosted with a single provider. I have used BlueHost extensively, Hostgator, Marcaria, 101Domain, WPEngine, VPSLink, 1&1 and of course GoDaddy. Over the years I had major problems with BlueHost. Sites were painfully slow despite the fact that they were not being throttled. However, I stayed with BlueHost because their service was always excellent.
Sites did not run well on Hostgator. 101Domain has serious technical problems and their service is virtually worthless. WPEngine is too strict, too expensive and too complicated for most users, and I think the same thing about VPSLink.
I have always bought domains names here and there from GoDaddy over the years, so I had quite a few domains with them before I started using them to actually host some sites. One of the reasons I did not use GoDaddy as a host was because I was accustomed to cpanel and didn’t care for the interface and options in the backend of GoDaddy.
But no other host worked for me, so I moved a couple of sites over. It went well. It was easy and the sites were up 99% of the time and ran pretty quickly. I moved some more sites over and ran into some issues trying to figure things out in the backend. I called GoDaddy night and day and always got the resolve I needed.
At times I have had plugins (I only use WordPress) that caused scripting errors that added extra code to my htaccess file and have had my entire site disappear 500 style. Even though this is not GoDaddy’s problem, they have helped to pinpoint and fix the issue; once even creating a new htaccess file for me to buy some time to investigate.
Now that I know the backend of their system better, I like it. It allows more technically-advanced people much more control over their site and server settings. A GD representative told me last week that GoDaddy is in the process of rolling out cpanel, and that some customers already have it. I’m not sure how I feel about that – I like the backend of GoDaddy, and having used cpanel for a least a couple of hundred sites over the course of 7 years, I think I actually prefer it.
I’ve found that different people have different experiences with different hosts. Hosting is wonky like that and sometimes there’s just no explanation for it. Some of you say that when a client comes to you with a domain or site hosted on GoDaddy, that you cringe. I find myself doing the same thing when they have a host other than GoDaddy.
I’ve spent 7 years in internet marketing and never gave in to the hype of working with an entity so commercially unrepentant as GoDaddy. But eventually, things just naturally evolved to the point where for me and my clients, GoDaddy became the best choice.
I make websites for clients like a local chiropractor in MN and I have noticed that Godaddy sucks so bad that they will switch back nameservers a few hours after you switch them against your will and without notifying you. They also make money from parked pages and also they often steal domain names from customers and resell them. Their control panel is very difficult to use and it is designed to keep you with them, it won’t even let you compress your whole public html folder so you can download the backup and move away from them. They put a small zip or tar file size limit because they know you can just download your whole backup and leave them. You have to use SSH just to get your whole sites backup, something that is complicated and is actually a black commmand prompt terminal.
Thank you for this!
This was also my experience and I tell this to people all the time. My experience with GoDaddy was a nightmare and I moved my 80+ sites to NameCheap as fast as I could after a particularly obnoxious and postal-making experience.
NameCheap gives fabulous, quick support and all my sites are now hosted with them.
Your advice about keeping the domain name registration and hosting separate is also right on the mark.
I use Hostgator for my web hosting and have had a fairly good experience with them. Some times there are glitches, but not often and their support is pretty good. Not to mention – the price is great and their cPanel is easy to work with. I’ve been with NameCheap and Hostgator since 2006 and have never had a reason to switch.
forget godaddy go with DTS-NET.COM they really value customers plus they offer more feaures for less money and they have been in business a long time
http://www.dts-net.com/whmcs/link.php?id=106
I moved my successful running website to GoDaddy and had a hard time to make my website run in the new environment, since basic stuff like sending email is blocked. I managed to bring the website up and it was running fine for few months. Then GoDaddy moved it to a new environment, without telling me what has changed, just blaming that my code was the problem, when the site did not run anymore. I spent months and ten thousands of USD just to figure out what they did. In the end I gave up.
Their support is practically none existent. The support guys have no idea of ASP.NET, but they don’t let you contact any technical guy. They always blame you, the customer, for the problems they cause. Their documentation is pathetic, support mostly providing links to Microsoft and StackOverflow. Hosting with GoDaddy was one of my most frustrating experiences in my life.
I want to by my own server.Can you tell me which type of server i need for one million user at a time.
I moved to a different host years ago. Horrible company, horrible owner, I remember they charged me a $100 inconvenience fee once lol. Should of known from a company where the owner shoots elephants for fun. Pftttt
Well that didnt go to plan . Just wanted ideas on how to set up website as about to publish my first book and was suggested to do so. Well make sure you all get Through the eyes of thousands as told through the eyes of one. You will then understand what a bad service is.
All I can say is Wow! I was researching the super reseller plan because I was impressed with all the extra services besides domains and hosting you can offer… After reading all of this I’m not so sure I want to bail in now… There is a 30 mbg though, has anyone ever had problems getting a refund from GD?
I have a delux hosting plan from Lucky Register/WildWestDomains. They purchase their server space from GoDaddy. I work with GoDaddy on a daily basis, run sites on there servers directly and through my own hosting which is essentially on there servers. I have done so for years, host and manage fifteen sites and dozens of email addresses. I have at least seven WordPress installs, including as subdomains. I pay fifteen dollars a month for hosting, my clients pay fifty a year for hosting, domain and email. Go Daddy and LuckyRegister have the best customer service of any company I have ever worked with including instant refunds when I have over purchased services.
Sometimes the user attitude has more to do with the problem than the service provider. I have 3 authors and 2 bands among my client list and they are only too happy with the service I provide and there are no technical problems.
There advertising campaigns are no more trashy than a Dallas Cowboys football game, and regardless of their political stance, you can guarantee the good folks down in Phoenix are American and they are not pretending to be in Delaware, Wyoming or Nevada while actually shipping your payments to Greece or Uzbekistan. Buy a Mac to make up for the dollars that went to the wrong political cause.
I am not even sure how this blog was intended to be helpful at all, it sounded a lot like whining from someone who might have needed to hire a professional to deal with their web design needs. Its better to do one thing well than many badly.
This article is true on all points. I still have some domain names with GoDaddy, but have never hosted a site with them. I always wonder how many that have no idea what they are doing bite on all the various upsell items.
There are so many better places with better servers and customer support.
I have had hundreds of domains with godaddy for years and we were mostly happy. Now the company has changed hands (because the big cheese shot and killed and elephant) and got worldwide bad publicity. we had a dedicated rep since the beginning. he has quit the new company. prices are way way up for our renewals. they no longer give us the service or good pricing to earn our business and apparantly they don’t care. they are too busy chasing new business. we will be transferring our domains out of there. a nightmare and we are leaving with a bad taste in our mouths but has to be done. when will companies ever learn?
I’m a web developer with 15 years of experience and I would have to say that Go Daddy is pretty much garbage now (2013). It used to be OK. They figured out a way to sell something that is absolutely free (e.g., email) and now that they have their own watered down version of cpanel, it’s a joke. Then they try to upsell you with crap you don’t need like office 365 to read word docs. You can use google docs for that…
And so I called their customer service yesterday and after a 10 minute wait of lame elevator music, they said “Oh sorry, it’s been a busy day” …
Me: Do you have alias system?… if my email was bob@example.com and I wanted to reply as sales@example.com – is that possible?
Go Daddy: No, we don’t offer that service.
Me: So Why is my client paying $5.99 a month when you get that for free with gmail.
Go Daddy: …
Me: Hello?
Go Daddy: We offer Office 365 now if you want to purchase that it’s a wonderful program
Me: WTF!? (hangs up)
GoDaddy is the worst. A domain I had with them for 6 years they won’t allow me to change anything that I need to transfer it off their overpriced services. Domain expires in 53 days and they are forcing a 60 day transfer lock.
When I try to do the update, their system says “Invalid Organization” error. So I changed that to be able to change the e-mail contact. No go. 60 days lock.
And they refuse to help fix this issue. Thanks for hijacking my domain, GoDaddy.
go daddy is bad hosting company…. don’t have live support system… I face a problem contact to godday and I need to submit a ticket and I am get response 24 hours … that is very bad,,, do not help any technical support… just killing time…
This is so not true. Ia have a website with ~200.000 unique visitors per day and the shared hosting (ultimate) is so great. I`m amazed on how godaddy shared hostig can be that good.
This article is true on all points. I still have some domain names with GoDaddy, but have never hosted a site with them. I always wonder how many that have no idea what they are doing bite on all the various upsell items.
Wow great post here, thanx.
This is my opinion.
Godaddy is too expensive, ok there’s many coupon for the new domain, but renewal price is too expensive than namecheap, so they’re don’t share the details of their price, I have been checked and I can’t find any page for renewal price, whois guard, etc.
This is the different, namecheap share their price list in details, so you know how much you must spend for renewal, whois guard, etc. Namecheap have a great support, if I’ve a question, they’ll answering my email in a hour, with detailed answer, really useful for me. 24/7 support? oh man that’s awesome.
For me, I always looking the online company from support team, because if the support have a great attitude, fast reply, useful and detailed answer, I believe that company have a great sistem, structure, and great human resources. Because all support teams must attend a training. So, bad company will give a bad training too to their employee.
I only using namecheap, they have the best price that I can found, but have the best support, and the price is very transparent.
I can’t find someone better than namecheap, namecheap is number one 🙂
I agree with all points except the advertising one, while I think they’re in bad taste this
“Even the ads that do get approved objectify woman’s bodies and degrade women into objects of lust for the purpose of making money.”
just sounds to me as the moral police after a target. That said, godaddy IS crap.
Completely agree!!
Excellent blog! Do you have any tips for aspiring writers?
I’m planning to start my own site soon but I’m a little lost on
everything. Would you propose starting with a free platform like WordPress or go for a paid option?
There are so many options out there that I’m totally confused
.. Any recommendations? Bless you!
Get some cheap hosting somewhere else, don’t mix your registrar with hosting!!!
Do research and then choose for both, but don’t complain afterwards.
I use godaddy exclusively for my registrar, because they used to be excellent, especially compared to netsol.
Now godaddy is just like ALL the other POS registrars and sell your soul/email/info to anyone with a nickel since you don’t buy their extra crap. All registrars go there eventually. They have to.
You just have to plan accordingly. Transferring a domain is a pain in the ass, but transferring your domain AND hosting is a HUGE pain in the ass. Don’t host with any registrar, period.
Wow, I have never, ever, paid more than 12.99 for domain name renewal and most of them have only been 9.99. Not sure where you get your numbers from. As to technical support, I have never needed technical support for email, but when I have needed tech support they have been spot on accurate, and very quick, and of course their tech support is always free. I have been a GoDaddy customer for many years. I have tried others. Web.com was fun, especially at really high tech support prices and 39.95/month domain name prices. Others wanted $20 to $140 so they could buy the name fom GoDaddy and provide it to me. By the way, most others are GoDaddy resellers.
I meant to say, GoDaddy charges me $9.99 to $12.99 a year.
Why millions of websites are still hosted with GoDaddy is beyond me, but enough is enough.
I find Godaddy a bit difficult to use and the ftp uploading functions are complicated. Furthermore I find my site to be slow to load. Does this has all to do with hosting or maybe my website is to heavy on images? (real estate website)
I have been building 168 websites over the past year. The majority of these are with crazy domains and 40+ with GoDaddy. I think i am in a good position to comment on both providers. So, from my experience over the last year i can tell you Godaddy kicks Crazy Domains ass by a mile. I have never ever had any down time with GoDaddy and the support staff have been fantastic. On the other hand Crazy Domains is hopeless. I am writing this now as all the sites i have with them are down. This is a regular occurrence almost daily. The new message you get when the sites are down is “scheduled maintenance” and guses what…their 1300 help line does not even work now. Makes me wonder how they stay in business.
So far, i would give GoDaddy 100/100 it has been that good.
I have been a web administrator and graphic artists for the last 20+ years and I do not know any “experienced” web administrators that use Godaddy, or have used GoDaddy in the last 15 years. In fact that is a number one selling point in getting new clients over to our hosting, as our hosting is cheaper, faster, and closer to home (plus everything else mentioned in the article)
So anyone that is on GoDaddy doesn’t actually have a clue what they are doing. Unfortunately appealing to the lowest common denominator has made GoDaddy rich, while providing sub par services to people at above average costs.
If you are on GoDaddy, you are getting royally ripped off. Wise up, and educate yourself. Stop supporting the biggest assholes on the internet, and they will eventually go bankrupt.
You have to love IT people. They know everything. Haven’t used a service in 15 years but know all about it. I have 168 websites that rate in the top 3 organically all over Google. That is what counts. POSITION. Never one issue so far with Godaddy. The sites have a 98% Google speed. Combined with WordPress it has been running perfectly. But as you say i dont have a clue and am one of the lower common denominators ^^.
For all you know people who know everything:- If your site never breaks and ranks in the Top 3 then that is all that matters. If you are not in the top 3 then you have no understanding of how the system works. Its that simple.
I hosted my website on godaddy server, but their support service is too bad. and site open very late in browser.
Here is my site: http://aravsoft.com
You should update this article as GoDaddy now offers cPanel as the default control panel for all shared hosting. Also, GoDaddy is ten times cheaper than your hosting… Kind of hypocritical if you ask me.
Really? I’ve never tried Go Daddy, but since their popular, they should have at least made their service good.
Yes Godaddy just scam on the market they doing domain registrar market down. Their support is very cheap, they not responding.
for “it professionals” as stated above, if you own more than 5 websites, it would be cheaper to go to virtual hosting (gd/bluehost/hostgator). I don’t understand what you expect; for your momma’s website to be hosted alone on a server?
ridiculous. the author doesn’t like gd because of the sexy ads…uhhhh. so I take it you do not watch any professional sports either.
Godaddy is very slow you cannot manage your site. Be carefull!
GoDaddy has moved away from the slutty advertising. I went there this morning to finally start working on a website I have had planned for years now and opened it to discover a very professional site that doesn’t resemble the GoDaddy of last year. No bikini clad “babes” or racy sexual innuendo. Just a clean, professional looking front page. I was impressed. Heck, even this year’s Super Bowl commercial was clean and had no “uncensored” version on their website. It was humorous with all the body builders hitting the spray tanning store, but not at all sexual in any way.
I agree with this post. I want to add one more company BigRock.in, which provide numerous benefits in hosting and domain registration. Its also an award winning, ICANN-accredited domain name registrar .
I can’t agree with this post. This ain’t your father’s GoDaddy! I had to quickly move a shared hosting site and GoDaddy was what my customer chose. I did not use GoDaddy for DNS as I already was using EasyDNS. I don’t think today’s GoDaddy is the same as it once was. The MediaTemple acquisition has changed GoDaddy’s technology for the better. The customer was able to purchase the web hosting and I was able to generate a Linux virtual machine and had it up and running in five minutes once DNS was pointed to the new IP. They use a very nice cPanel management interface, I was able to generate a different user account than what was used with the purchase. That’s nice, as a webmaster, the customer pays for the account but I manage the server. The security appears to be very well implemented. SFTP with key management and whitelisted IP. So what if there’s ads and SPAM, that all goes to my customer. I go directly to gateway.godaddy.com to access the servers and it’s clean and lean. The site has been up for months and it’s very fast. Not bad for $7/mo hosting. The features are overkill for the client who is running an old school static site. It looks as if I should be able to code some very nice interactive features in future.
GoDaddy is fast, it works fine, it uses cPanel, and it’s easy to use. Their support is a little slow, but other than that it works fine!
Knock on wood! I haven’t had any problems with GoDaddy! Remember to use the power to negotiate. Website domains are a business! They want to keep you coming back. I suggest you call them and say, ‘look, before I renew, I would like to pay only this much a month or a year, what can you do for me or else I’m going to take my business someplace else.’ It’s that simple.
I do agree with the advertising and money making schemes to an extent, but just ignore them. Besides, they’re not the only ones who do that. Many companies try to sell you more products, including non-website folks.
just found out my site was on godaddy servers somewhere in bloody India. no wonder I have only about 70% of succesful connections to mysql databases. and the whole site is terribly slow. + no support by email, so am I going to call them from Europe and wait for 30 minutes for someone to answer? so I’ve just started domain transfer procedure.
now at Godaddy, I domain name management and feel this is not the wrong choice. Godaddy is # 1
Superb blog! Do you have any suggestions for aspiring writers?
I’m planning to start my own site soon but I’m a little lost on everything.
Would you suggest starting with a free platform like WordPress or
go for a paid option? There are so many choices out there that I’m totally
confused .. Any tips? Thank you!
I think this is one of the most important information for me.
And i am glad reading your article. But want to remark on few general things, The
site style is wonderful, the articles is really nice :
D. Good job, cheers
I like to give praise but with Go Daddy removing email and chat support and ONLY having phone support what can one say — except B A D!
And then to have to wait for 20 minutes sometimes on an international call is unbelievable !
Go DADDY — yes GO daddy ! Other domain registras will benefit now from you silly decisions to cut customer support. I will never register a domain with them again seeing when I really needed help (not needed for 2 years ) I struggled to get support 🙁 BAD
Why bother with NameCheap when you Can use NameSilo for less than $10 per domain and they INCLUDE free privacy registration. I’ve been using them since 2010 no problems. Simple easy to use interface and no upsells. Plus unlike NameCheap (Who is just an Enom Reseller), NameSilo is their own registrar. Also they offer a published Telephone Number if you must call. NameCheap has ZERO published telephone numbers and their support can be really slow at times waiting for emails. I used them years ago and NameSilo is much better and much cheaper. Just my 2 Cents. Google will be entering the Domain Registration Business soon, as of this writing they are in Beta. July 2014
I can vouch for #4 (GoDaddy being slow). I recently benchmarked 10 hosts for speed, and guess what? GoDaddy was in last place: http://www.hostbenchmarker.com/godaddy-stats-page-speed-test
All you needed to give was reason #6. I have never appreciated their marketing strategy and find it totally unnecessary and offensive. I wouldn’t want to spend a penny to support their trash. In total agreement with you. Thanks for identifying the elephant in the room.
Been w/GD almost 6 years, hosting and domains. No awful problems until it’s renewal time. They nag the hell out of you. When I didn’t re-up right away, I couldn’t login to manage my site. Support said it was due to maintenance. Hah! Middle of the day? No one else (I immediately had friends login to their sites) had this problem. I’m now looking for a new hosting company.
this is freak, it is very slow snail.
Fantastic post but I was wondering if you could write a litte more on this
topic? I’d be very grateful if you could elaborate a little bit further.
Appreciate it!
Good article. Makes me want to leave GoDaddy as my website’s host. My WordPress has been slow, but I had no idea it might be GoDaddy’s fault. Also, I liked point #6. I didn’t realize GoDaddy had smutty ads, although I had wondered. Nice to see someone else bothered by that. Definitely going to think about switching away.
Great article, thanks! I’ve also been somewhat underwhelmed by their service. When my term ends with them, I’m going to check out namecheap.
Godaddy “award winning” :):):) customer support :):):) they dont have EMAIL SUPPORT. To me it look slike the crapiest stuff you can get online even if Im still using it. But customer support is the worst from all online providers Ive ever had connection with – especially if u call to US support desk – aggressive, rude and dumb.
has anyone else had a problem with godaddy that the website godaddy charges good money to host gets hacked and when you ask godaddy what happened and how to resolve, the answer from godaddy is you are on your own?
Hi,
We switched from GoDaddy to CloudSpaceHosting.com their servers are much faster on a shared server aspect. They have great priced VPS servers too.
Try them out.
Cloud Space Hosting has $1.99 hosting and unlimited bandwidth and free domain registrations with each hosting account.
The use plesk panel so you have better access to do what you want. 10.99 new domain registrations.
Great article, everything above is completely true. I left GoDaddy because my WordPress websites were extremely slow. 10 seconds to load a simple WordPress site without plugins… It was unacceptable for me. Now I’m with https://www.rosehosting.com and the difference is enormous.
As you can see, it’s very easy to get on a GoDaddy rant. However, this post is much more than a rant. I’m well beyond rant with them in terms of their hosting. The fact is that their hosting is poor, and that costs us and our customers time that could be better spent working on projects that make money or doing something more enjoyable than pulling our hair out.
My experience with Godaddy has been worst. In the last 7 months, the services were down continuously. Database sometimes worked very slowly, it is impossible to connect to the database. The response from customer care is frustating. I can’t bear and migrated my site to Asphostportal based on my friend recommendation. With Asphostportal, site and database work 2 times faster.
To be honest, I find GoDaddy expensive. They are good with the domains at the first year but right after that, it gets expensive. I tried their hosting but it is extremely slow and you’ll need to keep on upgrading especially if you’ve reached a higher amount of traffic. Even their highest option which is Ultimate still fails me for a website that has 1000 UV daily.
I don’t know if the customer support is still terrible, but the prices seem more competitive since this written.
I still wouldn’t advice godaddy to my customers though, better speed and control elsewhere for sure.
I don’t know why do we hype all these hosting domain selection issues, in the beginning, i mean common just start with whatever hosting or whatever domain registrar you have. Just start the work and when you make money out of it just reinvest to get better. There’s nothing to you know discuss about and waste time on just the do the freakin work