NOTICE: AntiGoDaddy.com and TheAntiGoDaddy.com are not affiliated with Go Daddy, GoDaddy.com, Go Daddy Operating Company LLC, Domains By Proxy, Bob Parsons, The Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation, The Semper Fi Fund, or any of Go Daddy's related entities. It would seem rather obvious that a web site called "The Anti-GoDaddy" has nothing to do with Go Daddy, but just to make the lawyers happy we're letting you know in expressed written form. There. We said it. Super Bowl. Doritos. Snickers. Other commercials. Sorry, tourette's. We have nothing to do with Go Daddy. Our web site is a growing collection of fully-cited "Go Daddy sucks" stories, aka "Go Daddy horror stories". It's all about the seemingly endless Go Daddy complaints that are out there. Now.. on with the show..



THE ANTI-GODADDY REVOLUTION IS MOVING FORWARD

!! UPDATE: GoDaddy has now been SOLD to people that have nothing to do with the original ownership, and have no experience owning or managing a domain name or web hosting business! Your service will now suck even more!

What's worse than a company with management who just doesn't care, a bloated web site interface, outsourced technical unsupport, and an overloaded server infrastructure? A company with management who just doesn't care, a bloated web site interface, outsourced technical unsupport, an overloaded server infrastructure.. that's been sold to even less caring investors! Talk about endless possibilities for disaster. Brings about memories of what happened when Microsoft bought Danger and the company's exiting engineers bugged the system so all T-Mobile Sidekick customers lost service for a month. GoDaddy proudly plugs itself as the #1 registrar in town - so.. why sell now? Remember all the build-up over a GoDaddy public offering and then their backing out? Now this? Makes one wonder what's up.

This is how they're selling it: 
Go Daddy takes on investors to aid future expansion

The Go Daddy group announced it has signed a definitive agreement to receive strategic investments and enter into a partnership with KKR, Sliver Lake and 
Technology Crossover Ventures. The deal will help Go Daddy continue to expand its reach and meet the needs of its growing customer base.

"I've always said we would make a move like this when the right deal with the right partners could help us do the right thing for our customers and employees," 
said Go Daddy CEO and Founder Bob Parsons. "This is it! We are partnering with KKR, Silver Lake and TCV because of their technology expertise, their understanding 
of Web-based businesses and because their values align with ours. We believe, together, we will take the company to the next level, especially when it comes to 
accelerating international growth."

Ha.


THE REAL GoDaddy CUSTOMER SERVICE TELEPHONE #: 480-505-8800 for GoDaddy Office of the CEO
Thu, 1/8/2015 - 2:42am

GET WHAT You Need & ARE ENTITLED TO. Stop Wasting Your Time with the customer service call center that is structured by corporate to erode your time & resources!!!!!!!!!!!! If you are interested about Why I Needed to find the GoDaddy Office of the CEO, read my first email to GoDaddy customer service down below. After spending almost 7 hours, I got the 12 months X $4.49/mo. deluxe hosting I deserved. I didn't get it free, I got it placed in my cart for payment. That's All I wanted. AND My 7 hour mission - including +a dozen email - was accomplished in less than 5 minutes by a call to Mike at the GoDaddy Office of the CEO. When you feel you want to give up DO MORE THAN WALK AWAY OVERCHARGED + FRUSTRATED.................TAKE IT TO THE TOP!! My email to Go Daddy follows below.

-Marcus

Sirs/Madame, I write you after spending several hours last evening trying to manage your website to renew our expiring products on a timely basis & deal with your 'scripted' customer service personnel via telephone.... To NO Avail. I am a long time customer, with several domains & web hosting products in place, who [like many others that I communicate with daily] is quickly becoming infuriated with GoDaddy's treatment of its existing customers & your current methods of doing business.

My most recent problems with your company are that you issue multiple eMails offering a variety of 'promotions' with different percentages of discount that appear to be indexed to varying amounts of fee for the exact same service, [NOTE: If one selects the wrong eMail, one gets to Overpay] and that your customer service personnel is trained to emulate the worst kind of utility company representatives. [Despite the fact that you hold no such Monopoly advantage in any given region] eroding the customers' time & resources. In addition to this email marketing push, your website is set up to mislead the customer by forcing them through a pre-programmed sequence in order to Continue on, where the information displayed does not adequately identify that the pricing options listed are not applicable to renewal or expiring products. The net result is that existing customers are being misled, discriminated against & ultimately denied the optimal pricing offered in the associated pull down windows of your website. As a direct result of your website being structured in this manner, we [existing customers] are overcharged at checkout online. While I am sure that you profit greatly from this, as many individuals may not notice, or are perhaps too lacking in math skills to discern the difference....I am not one of those individuals.

After nearly 2 hours of trying, unsuccessfully, to get my cart to reflect the pricing displayed in the pull-down window under the Expiring Products header so that I could checkout & go home, I finally phoned into GoDaddy customer service to get my renewals properly completed by one of your representatives. I was horrified by your representatives' hour+ long attempts to apply a variety of coupons, which caused the total charges in my cart to INCREASE instead of decrease, to meet the simple equation of a monthly charge x 12. The first person that I dealt with was named Chris, who was very personable & actually analogized my problems while attempting these online renewals with problems that he had recently had with his cable provider! [in doing so, he had subconsciously identified your current business model] Unfortunately he was unable to get the cart balance to reduce, but rather increased the amount when applying whatever Promo Codes he was utilizing on his end, & after 30 minutes advised that he could offer nothing further. I then asked to be given over to one of his supervisors, was placed on hold & cut off. To his credit, Chris had confirmed my call-back number early in our conversation & I was phoned back by Andrew. Andrew proceeded to ask me to explain my issues & when I asked him if Chris had filled him in he said yes, but stated that he wanted to hear my concerns 'directly'. I reiterated the problem & once again walked representative #2 Andrew through the pricing pull-down window etc....

He claimed that he could not get what I was looking at up on his screen & told me that the $4.49/mo. Deluxe Hosting was reserved for new orders only & that I had gotten to this pricing through your home page promo [ insinuating that I did not know how maneuver through a website, which I found offensive]. He stated that if I could email him a screen shot to AndrewE@GoDaddy.com showing him the pricing that I was looking at & referring to, [that has no reference limiting it to "New Customers' or 'New Orders' anywhere including 'Details'], that he would honor it. I sent the screen shot & upon receipt he then stated that it was inadequate, babbled on & on about this being for new orders, suggesting that I create a new account - migrate the existing site etc...to this new account in order to receive the listed pricing of $4.49/mo & finally REFUSED to honor the pricing AFTER ALL! By this time I was losing my patience with his antics & demanded to speak with his superior, who he advised was named Raymond, wherein he proceeded to spend more time to tell me that Raymond does not 'field phone calls', putting me on hold for another 5 minutes. With over an hour of my personal time invested into this phone interaction, he finally came back to advise me that Raymond was not in the office to take my call & pretty much left me with more of my time being depleted, the same $96 charge that exceeded the $92 one automatically generated online, a refusal to provide me a reply email with all of his statements memorialized therein, and a meager offer to give me a store credit for 25% of the $69.99 SSL charge that your company had erroneously auto-renewed after I had removed auto-renew from all of my products months ago. Needless to say, this was one of the most insulting +ineffective customer experiences of my lifetime.

I respectfully request that you make this right within the next 48hours so that my companys' online presence does NOT become compromised in any way. In closing I suggest that you carefully review your website's content to eliminate any ambiguity that could be misleading or be interpreted by the customer/consumer/public as misrepresentation & revisit your customer service training program.



HELP PLEASE
Tue, 1/6/2015 - 6:50pm

Please post to all: Have anyone got a problem solved getting access to domainbyproxy with godaddy!? I used to have my domainbyproxy accounts on an email that my ISP got liquidated and lost my email access because of it! Now i can't have access to domainbyproxy and they are not responding to my emails!? Or calls! Or letters by post! Do you think there's a solution to this? I highly appreciate your support even when you are not obliged to do so.

-Adnan


Email Problems
Tue, 12/30/2014 - 9:30am

When it works, it works great. When the server goes down you will have no access. When it finally comes back up, it can take days to get the issues resolved. You will send emails out and receive them; however, neither party will get the email. They are lost in cyber-space. Just look at their discussion forms - you will find a list of technical issues and complaints. Good luck running a business with this group.

-Drew


Toxic web domain
Fri, 12/12/2014 - 12:43pm

About a year ago I purchased a domain from GoDaddy. The domain was customconcessiontrailers.com. This domain sat dormant for a year as we were building the site and re-branding the company to this new domain name, which we thought was a clean, never used product. Yesterday, as we were speaking to our new SEO company, they informed us that the site was previously set up in 2002 and was a "TOXIC" site, meaning the site had more than 1,000 bad back links associated with the domain. With the new Google search algorithm the second we were to go live with this site we would automatically be penalized for so many bad back links. Our goal was to recreate a new untarnished site that would help us move up in the Google rankings, not start with a major disadvantage and be penalized for something we did not do. It was their responsibility to disclose that this site, which I bought from them, was "Sick" and had more than 1,000 bad back links associated with the domain. Needless to say this site is "Toxic" and should never have been sold to a new customer. This is a very bad business practice and it needs to be rectified. I am also bringing this up so it does not happen to anyone else, they need to put new policies and practices in place that before a domain is sold they must disclose if it was used before, its history and if has bad back links that will be recognized by Google in Search. This process takes 5 seconds for GoDaddy to review its history of any given site, it is also their responsibility not to market and sell outside domains that are bad.

-Mike


Dont ever check domain available at godaddy
Mon, 10/27/2014 - 4:06am

I check a very good domain at godaddy whether it still available or not. The result show it still available. 1 hour after i had checked, i purchased and it show it already taken. Whois tell me that it taken by godaddy itself. Suck!

-Yudha


GoDaddy domain stealing
Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:28

they steal domains and also put domains as like in a auction for like $200 the same day it drops, so if i want it i have to pay $200. i was using their bulk names box and for very popular names to see if available--all of a sudden my search disappeared, i believe they stole my names search to sell to big companies

-Rose


My GoDaddy Experience
Fri, 01/17/2014 - 7:45

Here's something I just now wrote to PayPal's dispute resolution center.
-upChuck

I attempted to login to my auction account, for which I had already paid the fee, and the term of which still had 2-3 remaining months of its original 1-year term before upcoming expiry in March, 2013. Login was impossible, with tech support clueless as to why. Eventually I was told that because I had called in several months earlier and asked to delete my account (which I was told is impossible), the previously paid fee is no longer valid. I was then told that if I wished to access my account again, I would need to re-pay the membership fee, which I did. Login, however, remained impossible. After a long hold while she contacted GoDaddy's "Auctions Dept.", I was told that my account had actually been "banned" because I had previously failed to transfer a sold domain - but if I paid GoDaddy another $149.95 as a reinstatement fee, my account status would be restored. I said I'd rather not, support agent said OK, and that the membership fee I had just RE-paid in the course of our call would be credited back to my account. It wasn't. Meanwhile, my eMail records show repeated attempts to get the buyer in the referenced domain sale to initiate a domain transfer, which he never did, insisting in his technical cluelessness that he had already done so, when in fact he hadn't... Although he initiated the domain purchase through GoDaddy's wretched auction interface, he obstinately assumed that that in and of itself constitutes all that is required for a domain transfer process. My eMail correspondence with the buyer shows that he did not do what absolutely must be done at his end for a domain transfer to take place, ie: initiate an incoming transfer request at the receiving registrar. GoDaddy's action in response, was - without so much as any notification whatsoever by phone, eMail or otherwise, and no indication onsite upon login either, and nothing discoverable by tech support in upwards of an hour by phone - was to "ban" (GoDaddy's own term) ~my~ account. This fee is fraudulent.





GoDaddy Issue
Mon, 01/06/2014 - 15:38

I've apparently been paying for some web hosting I never approved or purchased. It's been automatically debiting an old joint account I had when I was married. It was taking 3.99/mo out until 2012 when it started taking out 5.99/mo. I never authorized this, nor did my ex-wife. I called GoDaddy, and they keep telling me they have nothing on file. I've gotten nowhere with them and now this old account is overdrawn 60.00 and no one can seem to find any billing information for the account they've been debiting for the past 4 years...... I'm closing the account, but still out all this money. I don't have a clue how to resolve this.

-dz


Godaddy blocking whois info to discourage domain transfers
Mon, 01/06/2014 - 14:17

So I initiated a transfer from godaddy to directnic and the transfer hangs without going forward for days. I called directnic to find out what's the hold up and they say that godaddy isn't sharing any contact information with verisign whois database which is the central and only whois database that matters. Since domain transfers rely on looking up administrative contact email and sending a confirmation link to proceed with the transfer, godaddy effectively made domain transfer as painful as pulling teeth, although godaddy claim they're not sharing whois info to protect you from bots that harvest information. How nice of them but how come all the info IS available through godaddy's own whois lookup? Wouldn't harvesters access their own whois too? I'm not buying your protecting me bs godaddy, you're just blocking whois info on verisign to prevent streamlined domain transfer process. People end up having to call the new registrar and go through manual song and dance. What if you have dozens or hundreds of domains? Should I quit my job and spend the next few months transferring out domains manually? WTF???!@!

-Mr. Data


From under my nose
Tue, 12/10/2013 - 19:45

I had some kind of clever thought for a domain name. Searched on GoDaddy the availability, luckily could grab it for $12. But I decided to stew on the decision for all of 10 minutes. By the time I went back to purchase it (through a different site Hover.com after advice from a friend), it turns out GoDaddy picked it up and put it on auction: for $30,000. Mother-flippin piracy. Glad that idea has two bullets in the gut, shame on me for typing its words aloud.

I am just glad that it was a side project, and that I don't have business pinned to this situation. I can imagine this manipulative model has made more than a few heads roll. Don't even look at GoDaddy, they'll scam you right in your face.

-Frustrated & Disappointed

GoDaddy Is A Blackmailing Bully

Our organization has a reason to want to purchase only one year of private registration, even though our domain registration is for four years. We were informed that we must purchase four years private registration and that it was "all or nothing." As we told the rep, that is just another example of why we now have only 5 domains with Godaddy while last year we had well over 100. Signed,

-- October 16, 2013 | One Pissed Off NGO
GoDaddy embraces profane nature of its business model

I am writing about the domain Fuckgodaddy.com. I love how GoDaddy have registered the name fuckgodaddy.com, just to stop people from using that domain to shame on Go Daddy. Pathetic!

-- October 16, 2013 | Sam W.
GoDaddy stole my domain idea

I tend to go through a lot of domains because I get whims to make websites but they don't always last till the next year. GoDaddy had a deal for .50 cent domain name. I purchased a domain which was essentially my username and the name I go by online. This name is very unique, and two words and has never been used except for me. I used the domain till it was going to expire and cancelled my contract etc. Almost immediately after it expired I noticed some strange Japanese website had taken my domain. I have owned at least 4 or 5 other domains through 1and1 and they are all still available and not being used after I let them expire. I can only assume that GoDaddy sold my domain for some cheap price to someone. I was very upset because this wasn't just some silly name but the domain is MY alias. Now when you Google my name it is the first thing that shows up instead of my profiles or my own website. I hope eventually the domain will be free once again and my name won't be associated with some Japanese spam-site.

-- August 28, 2013 | Shay
GoDaddy So Many Problems

My story starts about 5 years ago when I was a young web designer, and was doing my very first website for a client. Without having much knowledge of web hosting and reputable company to host my clients site on I gave into the advertisement I saw during the Super Bowl. Obviously, GoDaddy was where I chose to buy my domain and host my website (with a shared plan). As you will soon learn GoDaddy was a complete waste of time and I encourage others to avoid hosting with them as me and MANY experienced webmasters have discovered there are much better hosting services to use for your website's needs.

So, aside from there wonky control panel (Plesk), which isn't horribly bad, but isn't as easy to navigate as cPanel. I soon discovered that installing a simple Wordpress site was a chore and didn't function correctly on GoDaddy's overpacked servers.

Upon, installing the Wordpress CMS (content management system) I completed designing the website for my client in about 2 months. My client was very ecstatic about finally getting his site launched and soon invested thousands of dollars in SEO for some fairly competitive keywords.

After 6 months of having SEO work done on his website he finally started to rank in Google. However, about 2-3 times a week I would get a call out of the blue from my client stating that his site was down. I would access his site and see a 500 error deeming the site useless. For several months this problem would persist 2-3 times a week. I would pick up the phone and call GoDaddy providing them with my clients security information and about 8 times out 10 a GoDaddy representative would assure me everything was ok and they were just doing some maintenance on their servers.

This persisted for about a month. My client became upset and wanted answers which I couldn't provide him with. Now, this is the odd part, a 500 error usually indicated something is configured incorrectly on the server. GoDaddy flat out lied to me and told me they were doing maintenance. Thanks for your help GoDaddy.

After that I upgraded my clients site to a VPS package, which was even a bigger mistake. Not only were we getting 500 error messages randomly, nearly every 3-4 days either my antivirus program would go haywire when I went to his website. At times it would work correctly and then you would become booted off with malware. Over and over GoDaddy would state that everything was fine and that maybe my client should consider a dedicated server to solve the issue.

Finally, I called GoDaddy because we were getting booted off the website and there tech decided maybe they should run there anti-virus applications on the website. To my surprise GoDaddy stated that the site had been infected with malware. There was some funky script installed in the PHP.

For 1 month this persisted to happen a couple times a week (very very frustrating). As you can see this problem set us back a numerous months and was a massive waste of time and money. The vulnerabilities on GoDaddy's servers are unacceptable. Just Google "GoDaddy hacks" or "GoDaddy Problems" and you will clearly see that GoDaddy has lots of issues and many people are unhappy with there service with GoDaddy.

Packed up and left and haven't had any issues since. Since then I have worked on a number of clients sites and I seem to have issues every time. It seems logical to point people to almost any other web hosting company. In this case GoDaddy wasted over 8 months of our time and constantly didn't help do anything and just wanted us to keep on upgrading.

-- April 20, 2012 | Garen
Hostage By Proxy

I registered my domain name with GoDaddy in 2008. At the time they offered a free year of their privacy service, which I took advantage of. Since then I have renewed the domain and the (now paid) privacy service 3 times, but I have now decided to transfer my domain name to a new company. In order to transfer to the new company, I need to have the privacy service removed from the domain name. I have now found out that the privacy service automatically created a second account for another website called 'domainsbyproxy.com' and I never received the login information for this account. I contacted support to update the login information for this account so that I may remove the privacy service and transfer my domain name. They told me I had to prove ownership of the account by sending them a photocopy of my drivers license, which I did. I was then told that my information did not match that on the account, and so they have provided me with ZERO information, and no way to remove their privacy service. Both the domain name and the privacy service have always been paid for on MY credit card. To renew the domain, I also have to renew their privacy service, which they will not let me remove... forcing me to pay additional costs for this domain name. Now that I want to move the domain to another company, I am unable to do so because of the privacy service on the domain. I have contacted support and been emailing with them back and fourth attempting to get some help or guidance on what options I have. I am hitting a brick wall and they are simply taking my domain name hostage essentially. Forcing me to stay with GoDaddy, and also forcing me to pay additional fees for the privacy service if I choose to renew it with them.

-- January 2, 2012 | C.R.


Don't Fall For It

There are two companies that I would recommend you NOT do business with in regards to domain name registration. One is Go Daddy. They will woo you in with hot chicks in bikinis and $0.99 first year registration fees but by the end of the transaction you'll be buying $85 worth of useless add-ons that you think sound great but you'll really never use. They also have policies which literally lock you in to their services. It's impossible to navigate through their clusterfuck of a control panel to do anything like update contact information, get authorization code for a transfer out, even update DNS. And everything is QUEUED there. They do not do any account changes in real time, you're placed in a queue and they process stuff in batches. This is 2011 people! Now the other company is VistaPrint. They too woo you with sneaky marketing - free, free, free, everything is FREE! 100% off! and by the time you're done, you're paying $26.92 per month for your small web site to be hosted and you don't even OWN the domain name you ask them to register for you! It will be registered under VistaPrint's information and you'll never have access to it in their control panel. That's right, at VistaPrint you NEVER own the domain name, you're basically RENTING it and if you ever want to transfer it to a different registrar they will charge you $19.99 to transfer the domain from VistaPrint to another company. Bait and switch anyone?

-- May 6, 2011 | Aarone
Why GoDaddy Sucks

A couple of years back, Barack Obama gave a speech. In it, he mentioned that we (America) must 'brave new directions.' I immediately checked whether 'bravenewdirections.com' was available. It was. I thought it had massive potential for a campaign - whether political or commercial. A command like that doesn't fall out of the tree every day. Only, my hosting company was migrating servers as the result of an acquisition and my account was temporarily locked. Fearing I might lose the domain, I reluctantly went to GoDaddy. As a father to daughters, I always loathed GoDaddy's sensationalistic ad campaigns featuring the exploitation of women. Sure, the women were probably paid handsomely, but just because a woman in a tight shirt can convince the Neanderthals of North America to do business with them doesn't make it right. Advertising like this is more than the exploitation of women, it's exploitation of the weakness of stupid men. Anyway, I procured both bravenewdirections.com and bravenewdirection.com with GoDaddy.

Then earlier this year, after previewing another ridiculously bad GoDaddy Super Bowl commercial, I decided that I'd had enough. It didn't matter to me that my two domains represented less than $20 a year to the company, nor did I care that I had to run the GoDaddy gauntlet of upsell in my attempt to close my account - I wanted the domains moved. Doing any business with GoDaddy was like endorsing their existence. When I was finally able to close my account, I felt like I did my little part to make the world a better place.

Until this week, I haven't thought about GoDaddy again. But then news surfaced of GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons bagging an elephant. Now I'm not going to get into the argument as to whether it was just or moral of him to kill the elephant, but the fact that he did it with a film crew present sickens me. What did he think we'd think? Of course he knew we'd be outraged. But then, if you take a look at his Twitter stream, it's obvious that he is in business for one reason - money (note the banned Serena Williams soft porn commercial he thinks will do well on cable). I don't know anything about Parsons other than this. He may be a sweetheart of a guy who donates his salary to battered women for all I know. But I doubt it. He comes across as a person who thrives in shocking people into submission through sensationalism.

I've helped create and steer brand messaging for more than a decade. And the one thing I've always believed about crafting communications for any brand is that the truth always works best. When you try to paint a pig purple and sell it as a porsche - it will always fail. If your'e a pig, you're a pig. Just be the best pig possible. The most authentic brands are true to their core beliefs. And those beliefs start with the people who run the company. Everything you need to know about a brand flows out from these core truths. In the case of Parsons murdering the elephant for glory, combined with years of GoDaddy sensationalistic marketing, and you can clearly see the core beliefs of the company. Shock and awe.

No doubt there are people here who will cite how this was a huge branding black eye for GoDaddy, and then they'll provide a range of ways that GoDaddy can overcome this mistake as they validate their status as branding a expert. But I don't think this was a mistake at all. It's a true representation of the core beliefs of the brand. Shock people. Make them gasp. Then hit them hard with upsell.

If you're still using GoDaddy after this week, shame on you. And please, don't complain about this country being fucked up when you're helping contribute to it. Here's GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons in one of the most disgusting corporate photos in history:


-- March 31, 2011 | Jim M.
Don't be fooled by the GoDaddy Superbowl Commercials!

Every year during the NFL Superbowl, Godaddy, who is a web hosting provider runs a series of commercials featuring their "GoDaddy Girl". Normally the commercials are sexually suggestive and are designed to get viewers to visit their website (good marketing I guess ). The problem is, that many people are not aware of the fact that there are actually much better web hosting providers on the web, other than Godaddy. In fact, I have researched web hosting providers for over three years and I have found that Godaddy is actually one of the WORST value web hosting providers on the web.

Believe it or not, GoDaddy is not the biggest web hosting provider. Others actually have surpassed them in total number of clients hosted. Godaddy does host the most domains though. Anyways, if you simply want to see the rest of the commercial than you are fine ... go check out their site. However, if you seriously are interested in building a website or a blog DO NOT go with GoDaddy ... not even for a domain. Because domains are what is referred to as a loss leader for them. They lure you in and you might find cheap domains but before you know it your shopping cart has $120 worth of extra items. You will be disappointed and will be yet another victim fooled by Godaddy's Superbowl Commercials.

-- Feb 4th, 2011 | Lance's Media Review

Boycott Go Daddy for Sexist Super Bowl ads

 After watching last night's Super Bowl advertising, I'm totally sick of sexism in advertising. Specifically, I'm sick of Go Daddy's 5-year naked girl campaign.

This morning's reports tout the "success" of Go Daddy commercials at driving website traffic and converting sales. Apparently that the ads were called "lowest of the low" by business experts makes CEO Bob Parsons happy. He makes me want to throw up.

Perhaps I understood using sex to sell brand awareness when Go Daddy wasn't a household name and folks went to the website to see hot women, certainly, but also to figure out what in the world the company was about. Now that Go Daddy has #1 market share in domain registration, why is their strategy still about acquisition by titillation (Hey, that's a nice phrase; I'll have to use it again)? From a business perspective, I'll bet that the new customers Go Daddy got during the Super Bowl are not long-term, high-volume accounts that could pay for the yearly sexist sporting-event crap-vertising.

In 2010, plenty of women buy domain names, run websites, and pay good money for hosting services. Thankfully plenty of non-neanderthal men do the same, and all of us should proclaim "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." At least I am. This website is hosted by Go Daddy, and my account expires in 10 days: I will not be renewing it, but rather taking my business to another host that doesn't test my gag reflex. I'll also be transferring my domain names to another company, incurring the hassle it takes to do so.

In 2010 I just can't abide by a company that ignores my existence, and blatantly demeans women for sport. If you agree, you can take your business to one of the myriad ICANN-accredited domain name registrars.

For the WordPress aficionados like me who came to Go Daddy out of perceived ease and low cost, know that many companies offer WordPress hosting that is far easier to use than Go Daddy and equal to or cheaper than. Find a new place where the customer service is spectacular and you might even be willing to pay a little more than Go Daddy.

Come on, everyone. There's no reason to support the ridiculous assumption that "computer geeks" are motivated by the need to see boobies on the internet. There's also no reason for evolved, cognizant men to make business decisions motivated by Mr. Happypants. And just for the record, I get my soft-core porn from Cinemax, not from my website host.

--February 8th, 2010 | MPO

Monday, 18 May 2009
GoDaddy sucks

There, I said it. Much has been said about GoDaddy and its reputation, but more and more people have voiced their frustrations about GoDaddy, and I am now officially one of them. Some will recall that I blogged about 1&1 and its atrocious technical support in January. However, I have recently discovered that GoDaddy is even worse, and in this case, I'm not only referring to the technical support but to everything about GoDaddy. However, rest assured that it does come with the inevitable useless and incompetent technical support that seems to come with most hosting services these days (except GoDaddy's technical support is much worse than 1&1's, which, by itself, is quite a feat).

GoDaddy's problems start no sooner than the home page:

Too much content, too little space, making the home page a real mess, and don't even get me started about the advertising.

Actually, screw that - I am going to rant about GoDaddy's annoying advertising schemes.

GoDaddy shoves advertising down your throat at every opportunity, and never ceases to tout all its special offers and shamelessly spends all its time and poorly-designed pages convincing you to buy packages and options you will absolutely never need. I went through the domain purchase process (not that I actually needed to buy one, but just to verify how bad it was), and the amount of times GoDaddy tried to get me to buy tons of useless features is truly flabbergasting.

Holy crap, I sure need all these packages, domains, and features! For some reason, GoDaddy would not let me do a domain search for f***godaddy.com or even godaddysucks.com and ihategodaddy.com. What the hell just happened to my freedom of free speech? Thankfully, I was able to make dubious domain searches such as thiswebsitesucks.com and aborttheinternet.com. Due to my inability to make any domain search with "godaddy" in it, I reckon it would be pointless to use it should I ever want to register gogodaddy.com although the latter may have absolutely nothing to do with GoDaddy.

This down-your-throat advertising is made even worse by the fact that it NEVER STOPS. Indeed, some advertising at the stage of the domain search would come across as normal. Most hosting providers do it albeit not as obtrusively as GoDaddy. However, GoDaddy goes way further by relentlessly throwing its "special offers" at every step of the registration process.

Wow! SFAMILY.ME is available? It has absolutely nothing to do with my purchase of aborttheinternet.com, but I might as well forget the recession and buy a domain name that bears no relevancy to my original purchase. Think that's enough?

At the checkout option, GoDaddy automatically selects the 2 year registration length instead of the more logical 1 year option. This is of course accompanied by several Economy, Deluxe, and Unlimited package offers, which basically equal throwing your hard-earned money down the gutter.

Thankfully, the shopping process is something one completes fairly quickly unless you like buying domain names and hosting space by the dozen. Unfortunately, this is where the real problem starts. GoDaddy's control panel is an ill-conceived piece of trash whose sole purpose is to annoy users.. However, this deserves its own post, so stay tuned for this post for my foul-mouthed rant on GoDaddy's atrocious control panel.

--Ashvin Sawmynaden





What Is GoDaddy.com?
Date Published: 19th May 2009


Go Daddy was founded in 1997 as Jomax Technologies by Bob Parsons, who previously founded the software development company Parsons Technology, Inc. The Go Daddy Group, Inc., which includes flagship registrar GoDaddy.com, Wild West Domains (its re-sale brand) as well as Blue Razor (its bulk domain brand) has offices in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa and Washington D.C.Go Daddyis currently the largest ICANN - accredited registrar in the world, and is three times the size of its closest competitor.It was first ranked largest ICANN-accredited registrar in April 2005, when it surpassed Network Solutions in market share of total domain names registered.Media speculation for the gain included lower prices and the expansion of the Go Daddy product line.The company also offers Web site design and hosting packages, among other services.

As Go Daddy has grown, it has taken part in activities concerning the Internet in general. For its first anniversary show, founder Bob Parsons interviewed Adam Lovell, founder of WriteAPrisoner.com. In 2007 and 2008, the company increased its presence in Washington D.C., lobbying in favor of legislation that would crack down on unscrupulous online pharmacies and child predators.

In 2006, Go Daddy was sued by Web.com for patent infringement.In 2005, GoDaddy criticized the US Department of Commerce for disallowing private registrations of .us domains.In 2002, Go Daddy sued VeriSign for domain slamming and again in 2003 over its Site Finder service.This latter suit caused controversy over VeriSign's role as the sole maintainer of the .com and the .net top-level domains.

VeriSign shut down Site Finder after receiving a letter from ICANN ordering it to comply with a request to disable the service.

January 16 2009, Go Daddy was hit by a DDoS attack affecting thousands of its shared hosting customers for several hours.From 2003 2005,Go Daddy was recognized as one of the fastest-growing tech companies in Arizona.

--SamyRoumieh

GoDaddy sucks
Thu, 05/07/2009 - 11:14

I am unable to express my anger, frustration and rage of the events of the last three days with respect to my company's domain name. So, in the interest of documenting it, here's the email I sent to a lawyer trying to find someone, nearly anyone at this point, to take my case.

I've spent the last couple days calling lawyers and referrals from lawyers and more referals from lawyers. GoDaddy, complicit in the error of my domain name being transferred away, as both ignored the issue, disavowed there is a problem with their system (there is: if I select "autorenew" and can't autoremew because no payment has been applied to the account, don't tell me the domain will autorenew: it's a simple as that).

I, at this moment, completely and utterly despise GoDaddy and will be transferring my domains away from them as soon as I find a registrar with DNS hosting and a decent interface. At this point, I don't care much about the cost.

Fuck GoDaddy.

Hmmmm.... maybe the anger is starting to show through.

Hi, Mr. Greenstein,

We talked briefly last night about my domain name dispute case. Thank you for taking my call so late in the day.

In January, I had transferred ownership of my company's domain name codingclan.com from my business partner's account at the registrar GoDaddy, to my account at GoDaddy. When doing so, I verified I had auto-renew on for the domain, so that the domain would automatically renew at the end of March when it came due. I have all of my domains on auto-renew so that I don't have to worry about renewing them. Given that I also have a valid credit card on file with GoDaddy, I assumed the domain would automatically renew.

I found out on Tuesday that not only had the domain not renewed, as GoDaddy's systems indicated it would when I logged in to look at my domains, but, when it expired, it was purchased by another company who had placed it on back order.

I am unable to find out the new company's name, as they have registered it under GoDaddy's Domain By Proxy service. When I called GoDaddy and the Domain by Proxy company, both refuse to give me information. Similarly, when I emailed the tech contact's email address listed in the domain's new whois information, I receive no answer.

The new owners of the codingclan.com domain name scraped my site before they transferred the domain to their servers. They have my company information, and company logo on their new site. They are receiving email into my old accounts, essentially impersonating me and my company.

I would like my domain name back.

I would like to begin a domain dispute. Their actions of impersonating me by displaying my site and company information without any indication they are not me, constitutes fraud.

I would like GoDaddy to fix the problem with their setup by which internal transfers of domains cannot be listed as 'auto-renew' unless they can actually autorenew. GoDaddy's current system does not apply the default payment method in an account to internally transferred domains, which is the loophole my domain fell into.

GoDaddy's system also does not display expiring domains which do not have a default payment method assigned to them. To find default payments requires numerous steps, buried in the site, which a technician on a 45 minute phone call had to show me where the listing, and I've been using their services for over five years.

Is this a case you are willing to take? If not, can you refer me to someone who can.

Thanks.

Kitt.

Updated July 26th, 2009: Here is what happened to my domain name:

I transferred my company's domain name from my business partner's GoDaddy account to my GoDaddy account with an internal transfer in January, as my business partner had left the company. When I made this transfer, I made sure the domain name had automatic renewal on. My credit card on file does not expire until next year, so I figured I was all set.

After receiving an email that the domain was about to expire, I logged in to my GoDaddy and verified the domain was on automatic renewal. It was, so I logged back out and didn't worry about it. Recent calls to GoDaddy support confirm that I logged in and viewed my domain page, and would have seen the domain was set to automatically renew.

On May 5th, I was informed by a colleague that email to my business email account was bouncing. Turns out, my domain was NOT renewed, and here's why:

GoDaddy has a bug in their system where INTERNALLY TRANSFERRED DOMAINS DO NOT HAVE SAVED PAYMENT TYPES (CREDIT CARD ON FILE) AUTOMATICALLY APPLIED TO THEM

Despite the fact the GoDaddy website TOLD ME MY DOMAIN WOULD AUTOMATICALLY RENEW, it did not.

When I didn't manually renew the domain name (why would I? it was set to automatically renew), GODADDY SOLD IT AT AUCTION for over $500. This is $500 of profit for GoDaddy ON THE BUG IN THEIR SYSTEM.

It turns out, the person who bought the domain at the auction, scraped my site before transferring the domain. My company's logo, phone number and (this is critical) company email address are currently on the website of the domain name I lost. The new registrant is committing a copyright violation, a trademark violation and fraud by impersonating my company. This scraping happens to be the only chance I'll get my company's domain name back, because of the fraud committed. My case is currently pending in the domain arbitration process that everyone agrees to when they register a domain.

Ideally, I'd like for the defendant to join me in a case to force GoDaddy to fix their system. I'd support a case where GoDaddy pays for my court costs, the defendant's court costs and his auction monies.

In the meantime, I'm looking for a new registrar. Given that I have over a hundred domain names (many as gifts to friends), my leaving will be a noticeable chunk of change. I expect GoDaddy to give me a call when I leave, the same way they annoyingly call to thank me for my business when I now manually renew all of my domains to prevent this error from happening again.

Did I say GoDaddy sucks? Sorry, I meant, GoDaddy FUCKING sucks.

--kitt

GoDaddy Sucks
Tuesday, Jul. 4 2006

I'd like to write the first entry in what may turn into a series, however I haven't decided yet. My first victim is going to be GoDaddy. I've never liked GoDaddy. They suck..hard. Anybody who uses them knows that there administration system is crappy, and the signup process for a domain name is ridiculous because of the amount of advertising that is done along the way. They do nothing but sell sell sell all the way during your purchase. It's ridiculous. I decided to document the whole GoDaddy experience a little better so people can see what it's like.

#1. HomePage
What a beautiful homepage(not!). Definitely built for the first time visitor to the site to show off all their wonderful features(because you won't find about them at all through a domain purchase). It's loaded with tons of blurbs about their various services and such. Let's login to an account so we can see the wonderful new interface they present to their regular users.

#2. After Login
Wait a minute.I thought I logged in. Oh that's right, I did. What do you know, I'm still bombarded with useless advertisements. The page is pretty much the exact same as before. No sight of anything remotely useful to someone who needs to modify their existing domain name information. Anyway, I came to register a domain, so that's what I'm going to do. Let's run a little search and see what we come up with.

#3. After Search
Good news for me, MYREGISTRARSUCKS.com is available, just what I wanted to hear. I can get the .net, .org and several other variations with just the click of a button. And oh goody, .info and .us are on sale! And just in case that wasn't the domain I wanted, they came up with about 1,000 other variations of the domain name. Let's buy this puppy, it should only take a couple of seconds.

#4. After Continue from Search
Wow, what a great offer they on this page, they will offer me the .biz, the .net, and the .info all for only an additional $16.00. That would save me 41%! There is nothing to this page other than to offer me this great deal. I think I'll pass.

#5. After Continue from Crappy Sales Page
What a joy, options for me to choose from! What do you know, registration length is automatically set to 2 years, I get to change that to one. Also set to automatically renew and automatically bill me each year, set that to manual. It is set to standard registration instead of deluxe, so I don't have to change anything there. Although, they care about me, so they want me to know that the standard registration leaves my information available to the public through a WHOIS search. This "exposes you to an untold number of potential problems - and yes, it can happen to YOU". I'm glad they warned me, because I wanted to pay and extra $8.95 so no one could get my information and they could make an extra $8.94 in profit. On to the checkout preferences..Automatically selected is the option to "Show me exclusive offers that will help me get the most from my domain." Gotta click over to the "Quick Checkout" option, then we can wrap this thing up in a page or 2, right? All that should be left is for me to enter the credit card info.

#6. Trying to Checkout
Another special limited time offer. I'm sure this special offer will be going away any day now because it's so special. I can keep my personal information private for only $4.99 a year instead of the normal $8.99. I feel honored and blessed to have this option given to me, but once again, I'll pass. Nothing to this page other than the special limited time offer. So let's continue to the checkout.

#7. Still Trying to Checkout
Wonderful, I get to review my order. Let's see, 1 year(I can change it to 2 or more very easily if I was mistaken). I can change it to private for only an extra $4.99 a year in case I changed my mind from the first 5 times they offered it to me. $8.95 for the domain, plus and extra $.25 for the ICANN fee. It would've taken out of their profit to just roll this into the domain name cost apparently. A nice fee of $9.20 for 1 year of domain registration. So let's finally checkout now!

#8. Finally Entering Information
Hooray! A screen that's actually useful to me. I can enter my personal and billing information with not a sales pitch in site(other than the standard ads on top). Let's enter that info and get it done with.

#9. Security Check
Thank you, Bob Parsons for putting a security checkpoint here. "The access code you see an additional security process GoDaddy.com has developed to protect you" Thank goodness, I wouldn't want a bot to come in and purchase a domain name, then I just wouldn't feel safe shopping for domain names here anymore. Thank you again Bob Parsons for leaving this personal note here letting me know how much you care about me personally. I feel safe, I feel secure.

#10. And I'm Spent
We're done, finally! It only took going through 10 pages and about 50 different pitches to get the domain name I wanted. I do need to hurry though, because the "clock is ticking" and they've got tons(in fact, a whole pageful) of special prices that expire in just 30 minutes. I better jump on these before they expire.

--Macgyver





Held Hostage: Domain transfers from Godaddy.com
February 2009
How to transfer domains away from GoDaddy

It's Super Bowl Sunday, a day I particularly enjoy transferring domain names out of GoDaddy, the registrar that once tempted me with low prices but now mostly just annoys me. Here's how to move your domains to a new registrar quickly, easily and without fouling anything up (you don't want your website to disappear!) in the process.

Aside: I happen to be transferring domains to FYNE.com, a company I've been using for many years that offers great pro features at good value. One thing that's nice is that they anonymize your domain record for free, so your name and address aren't crawled by a million spiders (many registrars like the aforementioned GoDaddy charge extra for that "privacy"). If you're transferring to a new registrar that's not FYNE.com, don't worry, these are generic directions and all about how to transfer away from the night mare that is GoDaddy.

1. Make sure your domain is at least 90 days old
GoDaddy fabulously won't let you transfer a domain name you just registered. (OK, there are some ICANN regulations at work, too.) Of course, if you're about saving money, you'll probably wait until your domain is close to expiring before you transfer it - you've already paid your year's rent.

2. Change your GoDaddy settings and get your auth code
In the GoDaddy Domain Manager, find the domain you want to transfer and click it's lock icon to unlock it (if it's already unlocked, you can just click on the domain name to manage the domain).

- Make sure that "Privacy" and "Domain Ownership Protection" are Off and that the domain is unlocked (if you just did this, it will still show up as "Locked" as in the screenshot, but don't worry, if you just unlocked it, then it's unlocked - GoDaddy is just really slow to update its control panel with recent modifications made).

- Make sure your email address is correct in the administrative contact, because GoDaddy will be emailing your transfer authorization code (Email!?!?! What is this, 1995? @%&*$#@ GoDaddy!)

- DNS settings: Chances are, you're using GoDaddy's free DNS service (ns23.domaincontrol.com etc means GoDaddy). If you're already using your own name servers or some other 3rd party DNS servers, you don't need to do anything and can skip to the next step.

The important thing to know here is that this setting is part of your domain record, and will transfer over to the new registrar (i.e, it won't automagically switch to your new registrar's DNS servers, because there's nothing about being a domain host that says you also provide DNS), so if you are using GoDaddy's servers you need to change these now, before you transfer the domain! If you're using GoDaddy's DNS and you transfer the domain with the record still pointing to ns.domaincontrol.com, then your site will go dark because ns.domaincontrol.com will start telling folks it's never heard of your domain.

So, if you're using GoDaddy's free DNS service, here's what you need to do:

- Easy: If you've just got a parked domain or you're only using the domain name for a website - you only care about example.com and www.example.com (and you're not using subdomains like mail.example.com for your email) - just change these to your new registrar or DNS host's nameservers. For FYNE, these are ns1.shopco.com and ns2.shopco.com.

- Hard: If you do have special DNS records (like mail.example.com or ones you've manually created), you need to load these into your new registrar/DNS host before you change the nameservers. Unfortunately, some big registrars like Network Solutions have crappy systems and won't let you start setting DNS records on a domain until after you've transferred the domain - so if you're in a situation like this you can either half-ass it and just live with a few hours of downtime while you scurry to reinput your DNS records, or you can use a "real" DNS host like UltraDNS or run your own DNS (which you could just do temporarily - just for a few days and then change nameservers to your new registrar's free DNS once you're registered with them). Anyway, once you've got your special DNS records set up with your new nameservers (or have decided to half-ass it), follow the directions above in "Easy" to update your domain record with the new nameservers.

- Click "Send by Email" and GoDaddy will email you the transfer authorization code you need to give to your new registrar

3. Transfer the name into your new registrar
Your new domain name registrar's website will walk you through this. You'll need to give them the auth code that GoDaddy just sent you.

Once your new registrar has verified the auth code with GoDaddy, it may ask you to confirm the transfer. The new registrar usually does the verification in a few seconds, then sends you an email with a link you have to click to confirm.

4. Wait (Or, go back to GoDaddy Domain Manager and confirm)
You're done! After you complete the previous step, GoDaddy will send you an email written by someone barely proficient in English to say that the domain transfer is approved and the domain will automatically transfer over in 5 days.

So, you legally don't have to do anything more at this point. BUT if you're totally OCD, GoDaddy has created one excess step for you to follow to reassure yourself: you can go back to GoDaddy's Domain Manager, select Pending Transfers, check the checkbox next to your name(s) and use the Accept/Decline button to Accept the transfer. Naturally, GoDaddy has intentionally worded this to confuse you, so on the confirmation screen I think you actually have to select "Cancel" as in "Cancel this domain from my GoDaddy account" to "Accept" the transfer. So, just don't get caught by their trap and accidentally cancel the transfer, or you'll really feel like an idiot. Enjoy your newfound freedom once the transfer is complete. Rinse and repeat.

--l. twoi

Why GoDaddy Sucks Ballz?

I've been playing with some of GoDaddy's services lately and well their interfaces are slow and lackluster.

-Can't change your catch-all's for all your domains at once.
-Very un intuitive interface with redundant things that require decencies of each other.
-SPAM have, talk about the spammiest interface in the world, good lord.
-FUCKERS Call you and try and pitch you their crappy service
-Bob Parsons is a retard, need I say more.
-And the ultimate reason they suck, read below

The ultimate in trying to fuck their customers -
So I called their support line for some help trying to figure out how to use their convoluted controls, mistake 1. The guy on the phone was helpful and nice, and was looking at the information on my domain we were working on. Then about 3 minutes later I get a notice that they auto charged my paypal account for 10$. So I called back thinking there was a mistake and the guy charged me a second time for hosting we were setting it up and I had already paid for once. And I come to find out NOPE they charged me for having the wrong whois information.

So I talk with the support guy for a while trying to figure out what I need to do to have these ridiculous charges reversed. We go round and round about 10 minutes and he says let me transfer you to billing. Then some guy picks up and says hello, in his friendly chunky dory voice. By this time I livid with the nerve of these people. Not that I give two shits about 10 bucks but the nerve to treat their customers like complete and total shit. So we talk and basically he says it's impossible to reverse the charge. Now realize this, GoDaddy pays about 32$ per new customer from the estimates I've heard. Not sure if they're correct of not but I've heard it on multiple occasions multiple time, so who know.

Now if they were a decent company I have about 20 domains and hosting with them you'd think they'd want to treat their customers right so they come back for more. Nah they try to fuck them in the ass. These fuckers have the nerve to charge me 10$ for not having proper information in the whois of my domain. Now we all know how flawed of a system the whois system is. It exposes personal information and makes you a target, especially if you have high value domains. If people know you have money you become a target. If you're looking to buy domains or hosting GO FAR AWAY FROM GODADDY!

--Smaxor



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