Top 5 Reasons People Hate Go Daddy
Of all the domain registrars where you can register a domain, the one with the loudest voice is Go Daddy. Ironically, they are also a service that people love to hate. They may have lower rates than many other services, but while reading through the list below, ask yourself if that low cost, high profile service is worth the discounted rates.
- Too many ads, especially when registering or renewing a domain (2 pages worth before getting to checkout)
- They try to be everything to everyone, offering more services than necessary, which over-complicates all of their offers.
- Menus are over-crowded, making navigation tough.
- Tech support reads answers to your questions from a web page you could have read yourself.
- Changing name servers requires looking in multiple places, with some links buried out of sight.
Yes there are other low-cost services, but I have come to know and like DirectNIC. While their prices are a little higher, their website interface is easy to navigate, support is helpful and fast to respond and managing large lists of domains is far easier than I have seen elsewhere.
So when comparing domain registration services, you have to look at the entire picture, not just the up-front costs. Choose wisely.
Jim Hutchinson
Date posted: Saturday, July 12th, 2008 11:10 AM | Under category: Hosting
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Great post, Jim, and it definitely speaks to the concerns of professional online folk like me. I have been working with godaddy for three years or so, and have yet to have a problem. I currently have three sites with them, and while I have heard a lot of other having problems, it just never seems to happen to me.
That said, I recently was hanging out on http://www.bloggeries.com and saw an ad for http://hostgator.com which caught my interest because you get unlimited numbers of sites instead of paying separate Hosting charges for each domain. Perfect for bloggers and online entrepreneurs like me. I will also check out DirectNIC thanks to your post.
Happy blogging! Keep up the great work!
Thanks for the comments. I am glad you have no issues with Go Daddy. Many others do though. I like HostGator too. In fact all of my web servers are with them. I just change the plans a little, offer help setting up blogs and support for them. Many people do not understand that the unlimited domains plans are actually limited to the storage space available. So I put real numbers to those plans that people can understand.
Plus the HostGator low-end plan allows only one domain. Also keep in mind that most hard drives are less than the 600GB that the $7.95 plan shows. Most companies that offer that much space do so with shared storage space, knowing that maybe 1% of their customers will get anywhere near that, especially new businesses who are just getting started.
This entire site uses less than 60Mb. Imagine someone with a brand new site using or needing anything close to the 777Mb I offer.
For blogs and the kind of content I am producing right now, storage is less the consideration than bandwidth (if you are successful). However, the new project I am working on will probably end up needing more storage if it takes off as I hope it will.
The biggest problem I have heard from people with GoDaddy has been their tendency to shut down sites on simply the accusation of copyright infringement. I have never had this problem, myself, but a good friend of mine who is involved with the Rollergirls sport scene had their site tanked simply because there was a color and shape similarity to someone else’s logo. When called, customer service at GoDaddy said it was their policy to “shoot first, ask questions later” about intellectual property issues and that they hadn’t even looked at the site yet.
Again, I haven’t had this problem in three years of running sites with them, but I am always looking around for better choices because I am afraid of their idiosyncratic policies coming down on me at an important time and costing me a deal.
Another thing I hate about them is that they don’t have a toll free tech support line! WTF? As much money as those guys are making, they can afford to offer toll free tech support.