Posted by: kmorrison33 | March 18, 2012

Good Reasons to Leave GoDaddy

The following post, Ditch GoDaddy, is from Broad Side of the Barn blog that focuses on web development and internet issues.  While the focus of the article is on GoDaddy’s terrible customer service, there are several reasons to not use GoDaddy’s services.  If there was ever a company that has earned its bad reputation, GoDaddy is it…


If you follow the buzz on the internet you probably know that GoDaddy has raised the ire of plenty of the internet’s faithful. Their latest and most damaging transgression is supporting “SOPA” a poorly written law opposing internet piracy. While opposing internet piracy is hardly a radical stance, GoDaddy was in position to know that the specific law drawn up would cause huge headaches and potential legal problems for many reputable internet sites. Godaddy eventually withdrew it support for this law when customers started leaving in protest.

This, however, isn’t GoDaddy’s only public relations blunder. The president of company trumpeting his ‘big game’ hunting, and a series of tasteless and trashy commercials have left many web professionals looking for an alternative. While they are the most well know domain name registrar they are also likely the most disliked as well.

Yet my complaint about Godaddy is due to their customer service and business practices. I strongly recommend looking for another registrar like Network Solutions or NameCheap, because GoDaddy misleads its customers and bleeds money from them through their dubious practices. The most recent example I encountered is of a client who purchased a domain and email service believing they had also signed up for a hosting account. Technically they could ‘host’ their domain at GoDaddy, but it was a severely limited plan that only allowed for a canned page to be ‘hosted’ at Godaddy, which left them without the actual service they needed.

My initial problem with GoDaddy is that I placed an order using their ‘speedy checkout’ option. This wasn’t a short cut through the order process like it sounds, it was a sneaky way to get customers to sign up for auto-renewal for particular products. Obviously I hold responsibility in this mistake, I should have read over the fine print. However, Godaddy has made a lot of money by misleading people into purchasing the wrong product.

They also hold your credit card number, and you can only check out if you agree to let them hold this information on file. For most online businesses, this is a voluntary choice, not a prerequisite to ordering. GoDaddy is the last company I trust to hold my credit card information, and I highly recommend not allowing them to store your information. At one time, GoDaddy was the only real cost effective choice for domain registration. That is no longer the case, and taking your businesses elsewhere to a company that will treat you fairly is a prudent and wise decision.


I have moved my business to NameCheap.com. I have nothing against Network Solutions, but NameCheap is more affordable and has a good domain management set up. SWITCH2NC is a coupon code you can use to get a dollar off each domain name transfer (effective early March - don’t know the expiration date.) There are other domain name registrars as well, these are just two of GoDaddy’s most prominent competitors. -Katherine Morrison


Responses

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  2. I d ‘GoDaddy misleading’ and this page came up. Wish now I had done this earlier and couldn’t agree with you more.
    I bought my domain name thru them last night with a credit card and briefly looked at their website builder for business, before retiring.
    Today I went back to purchase their ‘builder’ and when I went to my ‘cart’ it was already in there twice, so I backtracked to delete it(which was very confusing to do) and started over, but now it was in my cart 3 times! I contacted the online chat rep and was told I was already charged for all 3 but they would issue a refund in 5-7 days, even tho to my knowledge I never confirmed the order at all.
    Very confusing to deal with their site and def. not going to continue with them unless I absolutely have to in order to not be charged with transferring my domain name to another provider, which was also very confusing to understand all the mumbo jumbo on doing that as well.
    Bottom line: I hate GoDaddy.

    • They are so maddening to deal with. When you transfer domains they add an extra step ‘to ensure you intend to transfer the domain.’ Essentially there’s a setting that has to be checked off to give permission to transfer the domain. Just a heads up, as it is another GoDaddy gimmick to try to make leaving more difficult.


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