Don’t Use GoDaddy

Why so many people end up doing business with GoDaddy, I have no idea.

But, of course, I must look in the mirror. As I used to use GoDaddy for my domains. Well, not anymore.

Like many who’ve been in online business for awhile, I owned a lot of domains. Close to 90 of them, actually. I have been meaning to ditch some of them that I realized I’d never use. But, in the process, I’ve decided to transfer the ones I’m keeping away from GoDaddy.

ByDavid Risley Posted on
48 Comments

Why so many people end up doing business with GoDaddy, I have no idea.

But, of course, I must look in the mirror. As I used to use GoDaddy for my domains. Well, not anymore.

Like many who’ve been in online business for awhile, I owned a lot of domains. Close to 90 of them, actually. I have been meaning to ditch some of them that I realized I’d never use. But, in the process, I’ve decided to transfer the ones I’m keeping away from GoDaddy.

I’m switching everything to Namecheap. In fact, I’ve been slowly working on this for many months now. But, recently, decided to speed it up and officially walk away. Last night, I transferred 17 domains over to NameCheap. Now, I have almost 30 of them with NameCheap. And I turned OFF auto-renewal on everything which is left in my GoDaddy account.

Here’s why:

  1. Their upsells – for the stupidest crap – are excessive and insane. I have to click “No” a ton of times just to buy a domain.
  2. Their interface sucks. Tons of clicks to do the stupidest things.
  3. They’ve been known to simply disable domains for stupid reasons, as they did to John Chow.
  4. There have been many, many cases of GoDaddy simply holding your domain hostage for various reasons. A search for “godaddy hostage” on Google returns almost 2 million results. Take your pick.
  5. I like good looking women as much as the next guy, but their commercials are still stupid. If somebody honestly thinks you’re going to see T&A when you visit GoDaddy.com from the Super Bowl commercial, you deserve the service you get.
  6. A few months ago, they mysteriously – and without me asking – enabled “Premium CashParking” on my account and started billing me $9.99/month without my permission. When I called support about it, they said it was included in their “domain club” (which I used to be in), but when I canceled that, I started getting billed for CashParking. Well, gee, thanks for making that clear at the time. :-/
  7. The CEO of GoDaddy is a pompous ass who apparently enjoys killing elephants for sport.
  8. They supported SOPA, until it pissed off enough people and they changed their mind.

It was #6 that was the final nail in the coffin and provoked a final mass transfer of my domains to Namecheap. I’ve had  it.

GoDaddy is, from my observation, a company that likes to skate on the edge and create conflict for the purposes of publicity. And, as for customers, turn them upside down and shake until all the money falls out of our pockets. Perhaps they live by the “any press is good press” mentality, but I don’t believe that’s true. A quick comment about this last night on Twitter and Facebook sparked all kinds of responses from friends of mine in the business. Here’s a sample:

So, the question one has to ask is…. if the people who are IN THE BUSINESS and deal with websites all the time are saying not to use GoDaddy, then what’s wrong here? If you’re not an expert on this stuff, don’t default to GoDaddy just because they advertise alot and use pretty women to do it.

Oh, and as for their hosting – they’re horrible. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard horror stories about their hosting accounts. Sure, there are those who’ve done just fine with them, but the ratio isn’t great.

Plus, GoDaddy is a domain company who does hosting. It isn’t their specialty. You’d be SOOO much better off getting a hosting account with Hostgator (aff link). I’ve worked with Hostgator, as do many people I know. Their support is excellent. Their servers are solid. And they actually ARE a hosting company, not a registrar posing as one.

In fact, if you want, we’ll even set up your blog FOR YOU if you sign up for Hostgator. We’ve got a deal over at PCMech – Free Website Setup Service. Sign up for Hostgator via us, we’ll set up your blog for you.

I’ll end off with this…

I’m sure GoDaddy has a lot of good people working there. And I also know there are people who have domains or hosting accounts with GoDaddy who have no complaints about their service. And I think that’s awesome. I’m sure the domain registrar business is pretty competitive, and the quest to increase profits can be pretty hard in that environment. However, it appears to me as if GoDaddy has run for the lowest common denominator. Their marketing caters to newbies and people who don’t know any better – and they charge accordingly.

I wrote this as a bit of a rant – but also something that I can refer people to when people ask for my opinion.

And, so it is.

48 Comments

  1. They just brag about good user experience and customer service:

    I was buying a domain name, applied a promo code which is accepted by them. Proceeded to check out.
    Called the customer service and they ask to buy at the original price.
    In the first place, the Cart shouldn’t accept Promo Code if they call it INVALID or Expired. Technical glitches in their system and a customer suffers.
    Poor customer service and bad user experience on the website.
    Not expected from a reputed brand like Godaddy

  2. the GoDaddy sucks!… The name should be SucksDaddy. I buy for an unlimited email account and it turns out that I can only create one? And when I call they told me that I only buy the plan that I can only create one email. I have the receipt and picture image that can support my displeasure to their ridiculous services!

  3. GoDaddy does suck. Wanted to change plans and they tell me that this is an entirely new plan and I will need to switch everything myself. NEVER EVER EVER use godaddy!

  4. Hi david, I like how you convey your honest opinion. Anyways i just read this article right after i bought a domain name from godaddy. I still have a lot to learn but i guess we learn from not only our mistake but also others as well. I use blogger as my blogging platform and godaddy had a promotion, selling .com domain for 3$ for a year so i thought it was a good opportunity and a good start for me, hopefully i don’t have to face any problem 😉 i’ll try to use namecheap next time.

  5. A real Experience: Websites down ONE WEEK

    Yes that is correct a whole week. Here is the background story: I learned about a feature that Godaddy has called APC. This is a caching scheme intended to help speed website performance. After trying in vein to implement APC (or turn it on) I gave Goaddy customer support a call. What I learned was amazing! I didn’t have that feature (although Godaddy says it’s available to everyone) because I am on a LEGACY server. What I have been a customer for 6 years and I am on a legacy server?

    Yes! But we can migrate you at no cost and will be happy to assist. Great I will be on a newer faster server and have APC available. Perfect. I didn’t like learning I was on a legacy system but I guess I was just low on the priority of customers to be migrated. I don’t get much traffic and I was on only one shared Deluxe plan. At any rate the migration process started last Friday and here is the timeline.

    Friday – Spoke with customer service and learned I would be migrated to a FASTER server with APC available.
    Friday – Received an email saying the process had begin
    Friday – Received an email asking me to review and note my NEW connection strings written into my wp-config (Wordpress self hosted sites) by Godaddy. Noting all connection strings were changed less one. I made the fix and called Godaddy back (as asked) when the verification was complete.
    Friday – I was then asked to wait ans watch my account settings and when available I was to select an operating change converting from Deluxe Hosting to Deluxe Web hosting which I did.
    Saturday – No apparent changes
    Sunday – No apparent changes
    Monday – I could FTP into the new server
    Monday – Noticed some websites were live but others were not able to connect to the database.
    Monday – Verified wp-configs were as stated by Godaddy – everything looked good.
    Monday – called customer support – Ticket opened (72 hour clock started) and was told that I must have changed the passwords (which I did not) and then I was told that the tech folks could not connect to the database either. But with the ticket open it could be up to 72 hours to affect the repair.
    Thursday – 72 hours came and went and websites still down
    Thursday Called Customer support and techs were involved. Mind you this is being explained to each customer rep I speak with.
    Thursday – Customer support informs me that tech submitted a ticket to hier level tech (top of the line stuff) and it would be another 72 hours before a resolution was had.
    Friday – have websites down
    Friday – Begun receiving 503 internal server error message (server down for maintenance) from new server
    Friday tested one working site on webpagetest.org and found Time to First Byte was 2X – 4X on the 4GH server at 6 to 10 seconds. This was 2X to 4X SLOWER then on the legacy system! Oh No…not only do I have websites down but the time I have no control over (Time to First Byte) is so much worse then before. – Here is a link to a test run just moments ago: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/130405_RN_RT8/

    This is a crazy story that is still unfolding…but the end result is not looking good. Websites down without a sense of urgency from Godaddy and a worse performing outcome is the result. YIKES. I mostly ignored the bad press about Godaddy and have been a happy (maybe dumb but happy) customer for 6 years. I now join the ranks of the experienced…all the worse off.

    Current Status:

    ONE WEEK WITHOUT SOME WEBSITE …
    AND WORSE PERFORMANCE FROM THE ONES THAT ARE WORKING!

    AFTER MIGRATING FROM A LEGACY SYSTEM TO THE NEW AND SUPPOSEDLY FASTER 4GH SERVERS.

  6. I just saw the Godaddy 2013 commercial and could not believe they actually paid money to be hated by millions. They bought into kardashian sex-tape cash-cow fame, that bad-publicity is still a publicity. Wrong demography. Just initiated transfer of my 300+ domains, hope to have completed by end month. The stench of their sheer stupidity of equating sex or porn to my business is astounding. I’ll alert my clients in my weekend newsletter to follow suits.

  8. David, you’ve practically taken the words out of my mouth here. I’ve been thinking the same about Go Daddy. I had a number of sites hosted with them to my regret. I’m in the process of moving them over to Namecheap and Hostgator. 

    GoDaddy? I say No Daddy! Cheap and nasty, that’s them.

  9. I signed up with Godaddy just a few weeks ago. I suddenly started getting weird 800 and 802 area calls late at night. Id answer and they wouldnt say anything. Id call back and teh number would say disconnected.  So far Ive gotten about 50 calls from 2 of the same phone numbers. I just hit ignore. I find it very odd that just after I buy a domain from Godaddy tha these calls start. So i call Godaddy and say yea its is probably them just saying thanks for signing up with them! WTH? So i asked to give me a refund. I bought a domain and the website maker they offer for like $50 or so. They promised a refund. That was 3 days ago. Still no refund. Im still getting these calls and they still hang up when I answer. I also get constant junk mail now FROM godaddy to buy other stuff they offer but they offer it for a large discount. Um No. F You! There service is like dealing with a loan shark. There website is like a maze of links that make you have to call them to figure out what to click. When you call, guess what they do, try to sell you something. I cant f in stand that bullshyt. IThe only reason I went them these nut huggers is cause I heard advertisements on Hannity. Yea F u hannity. You advertise for a bunch of nut hugging azzholes.

  11. Godaddy lost almost 60% of there clients and potential customers after they address that they support SOPA. And after that decision godaddy lost a lot of clients including there loyal and long time customers. By which they were really sorry about there choice. But I guess it was to late for them now. Some of there clients switched to other services.

  12. That’s really interesting.  We were only just saying tonight that godaddy had so many commercials on TV these days. Writing this from Australia.  You’d have to wonder why they have to spend so much of their advertising dollars on TV when no other of the registers are doing the same.

  13. I think I should start a company using the name StopMommy, I am just kidding. The publicity that GoDaddy gets because of their unsatisfied customers are really hitting the roof. I don’t know if publicity  creates more customers for GoDaddy but I do hope that they will change their ways. Maybe I should call StopMommy to discipline GoDaddy. 

  14. David, so here is the question that I have with GoDaddy versus NameCheap.  While I would transfer away from GoDaddy in a heartbeat, I currently have 430 domains with them and am a member of the Domain Buying Club which gives me a 30% discount off of new and renewed domains.  With this many domains, 30% off adds up and NameCheaps rates are higher than GoDaddy with the discounted rate.  Any suggestions?

  15. Well I bought my first domain at “Register” (years and years ago). At the time I knew nothing about domains or hosting companies, so then I found out about GoDaddy and moved there AND also bought hosting with them.

    After a while and getting a little bit more knowledgeable, I found out I was an idiot for having hosting with a registrar company and moved my files over to Hostgator but stayed with GoDaddy as well.

    Again, some time afterwards, felt like an idiot once more for realizing I had my domain names practically kidnapped by GoDaddy’s rules.

    I have been slowly moving every single thing out of GoDaddy (to NameCheap) for a while and hopefully I’ll be GoDaddy free sooner or later.

    I strongly recommend the Hostgator + Namecheap combination over anything else and just for the record, I agree with you David in that GoDaddy has been asking for trouble for a while.

    – Sergio.

    PS. Bob Parsons (GoDaddy’s Ex-CEO) sold the company but will remain active as a shareholder but I still hate GoDaddy and won’t go back, EVER.

  16. I had a bunch of domains on GoDaddy back about 5 years ago, but transferred out mainly because of how annoying it was to use their system compared to others, like you mention so many clicks. I just use my host now, I like having it all in one place, it’s quicker that way.

  18. I cannot even guess how many issues I’ve had with them. Clients have told me repeatedly that they own all this stuff and they don’t even know what it is because slowdaddy upsold them and they didn’t even know it happened til they got their credit card bill. They should be avoided at all costs. Funny you should mention namecheap. That’s who I use also. For whatever it’s worth, I have had a great experience with them also.

  19. Great post David. I transferred from GoDaddy to name cheap a long time ago. Their up-sells and console was too problematic. Oh and I don’t want to get started about the customer service,

  22. Who else are you going to bash next for an affiliate ad (which it is plainly obvious is what you are doing here)?   Have some class and delete this post, a real pro doesn’t write crap like this.   You can do the same thing minus the bashing you know!

    No issues with Godaddy and have used them for 6 years with 50+ domains and multiple web sites and blogs.  

    1. I’m glad you’ve had no issues with GoDaddy. But, I have. And, this post wasn’t written in order to drop an affiliate link. But, when I do link to something and I have an aff link handy, I use it.

  23. I also started with godaddy, and then last year made a mistake, and lost access to my website. After having talked with several people on the phone support, they told me they could only retrieve my info for $100
    I wanted my stuff back asap, so agreed and then asked how long it would take. They responded with…..about 3-4 days…..!! Pissed me off right there, to have the guts to ask me $100.

    Same day build the website back up on hostgator, and are still very pleased.
    I still have domainnames and stuff on godaddy, and need to get that out there.

    It might be a good gig, if somebody offers a service, to take all your stuff out godaddy

  24. I had read stories how some domain registrars pay attention to your domain searches, and if it meets their algorithm for volume, etc. they might register it THEMSELVES if you don’t do it right away. Well, GoDaddy did that to me. They own several registrars, and in less than 5 minutes, the domain I wanted to register was registered by one of their subsidiaries. Again, this was not some person that coincidentally registered the domain I was interested in. It was a GoDaddy subsidiary. This is one of the sleaziest things I have ever witnessed in business in over 30 years. They also screw you on the private registration fees and domain as well. Namecheap and HostGator are the way to go. And stay away from 1and1 – they are incompetent and will screw up your private registrations.

    1. I’ve heard that rumor about GoDaddy. I have no way to know for sure whether it is true, and honestly, so far it seems like an urban legend of the Internet. 🙂 But, again, I have no idea. If it happened to you, then there you go.

      And yeah, while I have no direct experience with 1&1, I’ve heard the same about them.

      1. They are sleaze. If your domain expires and you don’t redeem it at their excessive redemption rate, and its an internal rate only since they still have control of the domain, they will sell it out from under you if someone had paid them money to “backorder” your domain, and hold it themselves if they think the domain name is a good one in order to sell it an exorbitant price to some third party in the future.

        Also, the price they charge for domain autorenewals is unbelievable, and they sometimes change the price for manual renewals between the time you start the process and when you get to check out.

        Like David, we’ve transferred most of our domains elsewhere. We’d have transferred them all, if we didn’t have some important email accounts associated with the remaining domains.

  25. GO Daddy so sucks. If you let your domain lapse, they want $100 to give it back to you. They squat on it FOR EVER. Don’t like their non-existent customer service, the way they objectify women in their ads, their rude employees or anything about them. Google them. They stay in trouble for all kinds of scams and problems. Ugh.

  26. At my full time job we bought an SSL Cert from GoDaddy and then found out that they couldn’t produce a high enough bit security (only 128) for our needs.  Ended up eating the cost and going with someone else.  Personally I use Hover but they just changed their affiliate rules (only credit no cash) so I’m looking at namecheap to recommend and use.

  27. I set up a site for a non-profit organization and purchased the domain through GoDaddy. We’ve been trying to transfer ownership for almost a week now. GoDaddy transfer process is extremely confusing and the domain has not yet transferred. I’m beginning to think it is being held hostage as in this article. I’ve always purchased my domains with GoDaddy and have never until now had a problem. I host my sites with Hostgator but am thinking of moving my domain names so this can’t happen again. Just super annoying.

    1. Transferring out of Godaddy isn’t super hard, but yes, they do make it confusing. 

      (1) Make sure the transfer lock is turned OFF, to enable the domain to be transferred.
      (2) The new registrar will need what’s called an EPP code. In GoDaddy, this is called the “Authorization code”. Hit the link to have that code emailed to you. You’ll need to make sure your admin contact email on your domain is still valid so you will get that email.
      (3) Once you enter the EPP code at the new registrar, wait a bit. Then, you’ll get another email with a link you need to click to confirm the transfer. Do that.
      (4) Lastly, you’ll have to visit the page for “Pending Transfers” on GoDaddy and accept the change.

      It is kind of complicated. Some of it is because of ICANN transfer policies, but surely, some of it is because GoDaddy makes it hard to figure out for their target clientele.

  28. I bought my first domain through GoDaddy, and quickly moved it to HostGator when I learned how incompetent the tech support was. I’m now in the process of transferring my dad’s photography website to my hosting – GoDaddy is REFUSING to release the domain. It’s the most annoying process I’ve ever been through. I’m glad to know I’m not the only one.

      1. His whois privacy was still turned on when we initiated the transfer, so GoDaddy said it had to be turned off for the transfer to complete. Now that we’ve disabled it, GoDaddy is saying there’s a mandatory 60-day wait because we made a change to whois privacy. It’s ridiculous!

        1. That strikes as a load of BS. If I’m not mistaken, ICANN has a 60-day wait on domain transfers. So, you couldn’t purchase or transfer a domain, then do it again within 60 days. That’s pretty standard. But, in terms of simply canceling an INTERNAL subscription inside of GoDaddy, I don’t see how that would come into play at all.

          I think this is an internal thing GoDaddy is doing. Nothing more. And another way to screw with people, if you ask me.

        2. I had the same problem but sent a very strongly worded email to support and the transfer got initiated as soon as they received it.

          They said the 60 day thing is security for customers domains and my response was basically “if you gave security to your customers domains then you would have gave me back over 100 domains that were stolen from my account, purchased with my credit card and still showing my information in whois”. Some how they claimed that’s insufficient proof that I owned the domains.

  29. We just lost our domain (company went under) and switched to Namecheap as an intermediary, and my experience with them for the short period we were there was pretty good. Currently we are at inMotion, which has been great so far and I look forward to operating my site with them. But I totally agree about GoDaddy, I know plenty of people who have had nothing but problems with them!

  30. Thanks for this article David. I’m moving my website to Host Gator at renewal time next month. When I started the site, I had never hosted with anyone else, and unfortunately chose GoDaddy. Their upsell technique is extremely annoying, their back end can be confusing, and their shared hosting experiences some major slow downs.

    Since then, I’ve used Host Gator several times and really do appreciate their solid service.

    2. I just completed an updated version of my website with Go Daddy. Did you and do others know that you cannot print pages from a Go Daddy website? Their support team doesn’t even know that all new versions of their web sites do not have the ability to print even though their programmers automatically put a print button on the site. The support team even tells customers that once the site is published that the print feature will be activated…not so!
      This is unacceptable as I am able to print other web site pages without any problem.

      1. Yeah, I’m also a victim spent ages trying to design my website… They were quick to take payment but the service is dreadful, I can not even look at my site. They told me it was active… Craps service. Anyone in the UK that can just exchange everything over with the hassle

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