Explain Yourselves (Godaddy Haters)

I know they have their faults but, cheap food always tastes best.

[rollinj]

You know what I'm talking about.

You could spend $40 eating some caviar, blue cheese, thincrust organic pizza. But the pepperoni one from the chain down the street for $10 is so much more satisfying!

I have read for years that "Go Daddy Sucks", but I ask you complainers to put your money where your mouth is.

I ventured outside of my comfort zone earlier this week, I was ready and willing to buy a domain from one of "the other guys".

To my surprise, they wanted ridiculous amount of money for things like "private registration" ($11 at one big name registrar! $3/year at another). Sure, many of them offered free private registration, but only for 1 year.

And the cost of their domain names? Asinine! $10/year for domain names? From Name"Cheap"? And I still have to pay for privacy registration on top of that (which will probably have increased by) next year?

I for one never pay more than about $7.50 for my .com domains with free privacy registration for up to 10 years in a row. And I buy them from GoDaddy.

Maybe it's because I have been with them for over 4 years now and I know where to get all the coupons, but I tried my veteran couponing skills on all of their competitors and came up empty handed.

Please tell me why I should take the plunge? My wallet will not allow me to.

EDIT: Now network solutions is trying to rob me for $12.99/year!? That's almost double what I'm used to paying. How does anyone justify this overspending? /rant

[mromero]

Just checking back Wheel never did reveal his recommended registrar?

[ChanandlerBong]

I wouldn't use GoDaddy if their domains were $2 a throw. No, really! I had to transfer one domain out of there once after buying a site and it was a FREAKING NIGHTMARE. GD are one step away from being a protection racket.

[wheel]

Just checking back Wheel never did reveal his recommended registrar?

I eventually mostly ignore threads like this. In any event, I don't have a recommended registrar. Use whoever you like, there's not THAT much difference between them. I use moniker myself because they were the first really SEO friendly registrar with great service. And they used to have booths at WebmasterWorld pubcon so you could go meet the staff etc etc etc.

[martinibuster]

Just because a company employs a sales team isn't a reason to hate them.

You ask for reasons why someone would hate Godaddy and people gave them to you. No need to discount them, reason them away or point your finger back at the person who has a legitimate reason to not use GoDaddy. Their low opinion of GoDaddy does not negate your high esteem for them, and vice-versa. It doesn't make you wrong if someone else has a reason to dislike GoDaddy.

Many of my domains are purchased through GoDaddy because their control panel is easier to navigate than those from other companies. I do own many domains on other registrars as well. They are cheaper and easy to navigate but some make it extremely difficult to cancel a domain if you should ever decide to not renew it.

I like GoDaddy. Have never been burned by GoDaddy. Have found their customer service to be helpful in obtaining discounted pricing on my domains, and find it easy to navigate. As long as you don't break their rules or are falsely accused of breaking GoDaddy's rules by a competitor or a jerk, they're a decent registrar.

However I do appreciate that others have legitimate reasons to consider GoDaddy less than ideal for them. I would definitely consider moving all of my domains to Moniker if GoDaddy ever gave me a reason to move (which they haven't).

[nolajim]

I don't mind registering names through godaddy but I'll never use their hosting services anymore. Of course I wasn't running with their most expensive service but with their dedicated hosting I believe I was experiencing as much as twenty percent downtime.

[mromero]

Wheel - thanks for the feedback. I have an account with the Moniker but have never registered /moved my stable yet.

Are they still PUBCON exhibitors and if not, why?

Did the ownership change?

P.S. - In recovering my password one option is to remember the first AND last name of my favorite teacher - no way to do that.

[incrediBILL]

My wallet will not allow me to.

Maybe you're in the wrong business then?

EDIT: Now network solutions is trying to rob me for $12.99/year!? That's almost double what I'm used to paying. How does anyone justify this overspending? /rant

I've been with NetSol for a couple of my primary domains for over 16 years and I don't care what they charge because the domains earn $$$,$$$/yr and yes, I even have SSL certs with them which isn't the cheapest either.

All the rest of my domains are with GoDaddy, and private registrations, and I don't even care how much they cost.

At this point, to do the research and figure out the cheapest place to move my domains would cost me more than they actually cost in my time which is better spent making more big money online than worrying about insignificant business expenses.

The bottom line is you're either making money online and these domain costs are an insignificant business expense or your business is not doing well if these prices bother you.

[Lapizuli]

At one point, I was almost sold on GoDaddy's $1 .info domains. Then I read the fine print - and it was fine print in the classic sense of the term - and found that the second year was priced much higher - don't remember how much, maybe $18? - and that if you didn't want to keep it for the second year, you were still obligated to pay. So the $1 first year was effectively just a low downpayment, but you ended up paying about the same, anyway.

At least, that's how I remember it. If I read it wrong, my apologies to GoDaddy. In their defense, I did use them once and had no problems.

About the $1 offer - think I wouldn't have minded so much if they'd been straightforward about it. But I get stressed when I deal with companies that try to trick the consumer into thinking they're getting a deal at the expense of the company. I'd rather feel the company is making a fair profit and is open about it, and isn't taking a hit now so they can hit you back, later.

We use a non-flashy, no-discounts, no-crazy-high-rates, no-crazy-low-rates, WYSIWYG, human-who's-not-a-grunt-responds-fast-even-on-weekends type of host and domain registrar. They walked me through my ignorance patiently. My spouse has used them for years.

[Kahless]

I got burned from them. I have a dozen or so domains with them and let automatic renewal occur. Received all the notices it would automatically renew. Did not worry about I until a few months later I found someone setup a website on one of my domains. Checekd all my old Godaddy emails all saying it would automatically renew. Just so happened out of all the domains one of them had a credit card date that had expired. You think they would have contacted me before giving the domain to someone else in 15 days, a domain I had for 5 years.

[StoutFiles]

GoDaddy is a great registrar. However, they are an awful host. I keep my domains with them and link to my host.

[quesera]

Kahless comments about a GoDaddy renewal failing because of an expired CC.

I've almost had that happen too, I really don't understand why GoDaddy auto-renews domains on the expiration date, instead of a week or two before.

On the other hand, my other primary registrar (whom I otherwise love and is in direct contrast to GoDaddy's "EXTREME UPGRADE NOW JUST 9.99 PLUS SuperSomething(TM) AT NO EXTRA COST _{for two months then automatically billed forever how convenient} YA YA WHEE!" website from hell...)

...sorry. My other primary registrar autorenews two weeks before the expiration, which is great, but mysteriously the autorenewals always try to use a credit card I've deleted from my account (went invalid when my bank was bought, but the Card Exp Date is still in the future).

[Go60Guy]

The bottom line is you're either making money online and these domain costs are an insignificant business expense or your business is not doing well if these prices bother you.

I agree with that, but must interject that Godaddy does do some questionable stuff, and I'm referring to domainsbyproxy. I no longer need that protection, and have tried to cancel it on several domains to no avail.

I set up my Godaddy account well over ten years ago, and domainsbyproxy still has the old, completely out of date, info supplied at that time. I can't even log into the account to discontinue the service which should only take a few clicks to reset the forgotten password, etc.

Instead, they require you to submit a signed request for change of account and photo ID, company info, business license, etc. I no longer have the company on record, and even tossed the file on it years ago. So, they refuse to allow me to have access to my account. As a consequence, they keep charging me for whois protection I don't need.

Fortunately, I only have it for a few domains, some of which I no longer need to keep. So, I'm allowing those to expire.

If you just use Godaddy to register domains, and for nothing else, you're probably OK. But, if you sign on for anything else, good luck canceling it. Bottom line - don't fall for any of the up-selling.