Whats actually wrong with GoDaddy?

Question

I've heard in many places that Godaddy is a horrible hosting provider, but rarely exact reasons on why. I've been with them for a 2+ years and am okay with their hosting. And I run roughly 7 low traffic sites over 3 domains. Currently right now I'm on their Shared Linux hosting with PHP and MySQL (one which is public facing, something that a host rarely offers).

But whats actually wrong with them? Do they really deserve all the negative comments?

Things they do good (mainly with Shared hosting as thats the only experience I have with them)

• Decent support - To my knowledge they still have support staff in the US and haven't outsourced, which is always good. Most of the staff actually know what their talking about, and you don't have to wait on the phone much. They've been useful many times
• Great PHP and MySQL hosting - Haven't found a problem yet with them
• Long list of language support - They claim to support many languages, which is gives tons of flexibility
• OS choice - Always good

Things I can think of that are bad.

• Terrible interface - Domain management takes place in 5 different interfaces. My paid account and hosting account are separate. Getting to hosting manager takes way to many clicks. Bad menu items. Slow file manager. Etc.
• Bad rails support - Currently on day 5 or 6 of trying to install a Rails app.

That's all that I can think of. Besides Rails support, I don't see anything that would make everyone hate GoDaddy. What is it that I'm missing? Or are most people that complain wrong?

Answer 1

Recently someone posted a netcraft link comparing different web hosts, and GoDaddy ranked near the bottom with over 1% downtime, which is pretty terrible. That said, they also showed Rackspace with over 2% downtime.

My biggest problem with Godaddy, aside from the interface, are their skeezy business practices. Domain registrars are in a position of power. That means they also have a lot of responsibility. Traditionally, large registrars have abused their power and neglected their responsibilities (see the Site Finder scandal and all the BS that Network Solutions has pulled over the years). Godaddy has followed in the footsteps of those registrars by working with domain squatters—people/companies who use automated scripts to buy up large quantities of domains that they can resell at extortionate prices. That's sort of like Google working with blackhat SEOs and people who create spam sites instead of fighting them. It's a huge conflict of interest that hurts the online community.

Aside from their constant peddling of squatted domains and domain brokerage services, they were also busted for running a domain warehouse. And even though Standard Tactics has been shutdown, there's still evidence that Godaddy sells search data to domain squatters (frontrunning by registrars is illegal now, but they can still make money by helping other squatters do it), and they've long been accused of being a haven for spammers.

Lastly, Godaddy's practice of turning expired domains or past-due hosting accounts into self-promotional billboards is really unprofessional. I mean, if any other company put up pages like those (zero content but crammed full of advertising), they'd be labeled a spammer. Mind you Godaddy is putting up hundreds of thousands of these types of pages. That alone should be reason enough to go with another host/registrar.

Answer 2

To begin with, I hate their name. It's always smelled off for me.

Secondly, you'll find that the large players in any field are hated. People hate Microsoft, people hate Apple and some people even hate Google. The problem is that the people who hate something are a lot more vocal than the people who love something.

My Samsung TV died the other week. I actually like the brand, and they've been very good about replacing it under its warranty (even getting an upgrade), but if someone asks me about my TV I'm going to say "Well, it stopped working after 2 years and sometimes it turns itself on at 3am", but if it hadn't died, I would be very unlikely to say "It's been 2 years and it hasn't needed to be replaced", I'd just say "It's fine".

It's just the way of the world.

Answer 3

I currently host sites with Godaddy and I've never had problem with them. I know there are people that's had real problems with the reliability of their hosting, but I've never had a single problem.

Answer 4

One complaint I've heard is that their custom control panel isn't very good when compared to common control panels like cPanel or Plesk.

They used to have a stupid policy in place that made you use their proxy server to do contact other servers through your software. They did away with that a few years ago but they may have contributed to some people's negative opinion of them.

Answer 5

Do they really deserve all the negative comments?

If your own experience would suggest that the negative comments you come across are not obviously being made up, I think that might give you credulity on this point.

Yes they do deserve some criticisms (particularly where their management interface is concerned) - and that's a surprising thing to get wrong, given that other providers have figured out how to get it right. A company with GoDaddy's resources could easily design a better interface for its customers (or just copy the best aspects of cPanel's interface) - that they've chosen not to should be some indication of something.

Registering a domain at GoDaddy without buying hosting always seems to require more work than registering a domain while buying hosting - can't say I appreciate the ignorance/annoyance-factor upselling (seems to suggest that most of GoDaddy's hosting customers "came for the domain, stayed for the hosting").

Answer 6

I only have purchased domains from GoDaddy because of their prices. This is my first year with any domain hosting, I'm still new to my domains.

I got my first domain with eNom and their set up is extremely well done to edit DNS settings. I started using GoDaddy and for the first few days I wasn't able to get around with anything for example I couldn't edit the frame/redirect URLs and once I was able to, it took over a few hours to just take effect. And when I switched from my first domain's name to the one hosted with GoDaddy, my site started loading slower, it was less responsive and I've been having domain problems such as the page not being found and I can't get the server access to the site's back-end.

Answer 7

Personally I've had terrible issues with their setup and requiring extra fees to enable features for domains. I've also seen people who have used their domain search tool to see if a domain was available, which it was, then to have it suddenly no longer be available as the goDaddy squatter company purchased it for the 72 hour window. Upon contacting them about this I was literally offered the domain at a much higher price (they knew we wanted it) which we declined and just purchased another domain elsewhere. The domain we originally wanted became available shortly after the trial period scams they were running showed zero interest to their click spam and we were able to register the original name.

They also seem to sell personal data about their customers. I signed up a website for a joke idea during one of their 99cent deals only to have constant marketing spam sent to my email account I registered with ( I use anonymous 1 time accounts for these sort of things to track whos selling my info ). I literally also received over a dozen phone calls directly to the number I gave them from goDaddy trying to upsell other products an services even though I told them I only bought the site for a quick joke and was already done with it and not interested in any further services.

Another issue is with transferring domains off their service. They make it absolutely nearly impossible and so painful I refuse to even help people with it anymore.