GoDaddy is a giant. They’re the household name in the DNS registrar, web hosting, and email world. However, if blindly going with the “big guy” for OK service isn’t your thing, then you’ll want to check out these top GoDaddy alternatives.
In this post, I review the best GoDaddy alternatives for DNS registration, web hosting (both shared hosting & VPS providers), and email hosting options. These alternatives to GoDaddy are based on my own experience with real accounts with each of the options provided.
Why I Don’t Recommend GoDaddy
GoDaddy’s business model is to advertise to non-technical people, many of which are entirely unaware that there are many alternatives to choose from out there. Because most of GoDaddy’s 18.5 million customers have relatively modest demands, the company doesn’t need to try too hard to satisfy them.
In fact, there are many people who are completely satisfied with GoDaddy since they use it only to host simple websites and don’t require a lot of technical assistance. If you fit that description, the chances are that GoDaddy would seem like a great internet domain registrar and web hosting company to you, and you wouldn’t even consider researching GoDaddy alternatives.
I know this because I clearly remember what I wanted from a web hosting company back when I was still just web hosting noob: low prices. But just like most people who have found success on the internet, my requirements continued to grow over the years, and the limits and downsides of GoDaddy started to show.
If I had picked a better web hosting company right from the get-go, I would have saved myself a lot of headache and time. While I can’t go back in time, I can share my knowledge and experience with you and tell you my top reasons why I don’t recommend GoDaddy.
Reason 1: Bad Customer Reviews
While it’s true that most customers are far more likely to post a review when they are angry and outraged than happy and satisfied, having nothing but bad reviews is a very strong indication that a company is doing something wrong.
GoDaddy has just 1 star out of 5 on Better Business Bureau, where it was reviewed by over 200 customers, and it also has just 1 star on Trustpilot, where it was reviewed by over 3,500 customers. Typical complaints include bad customer service, poor performance, and shady billing practices. If you want to learn more about GoDaddy’s customer reviews, skip to the last chapter of this article but make sure to come back!
Reason 2: Bad Customer Service
Since the mid-2000s, GoDaddy has improved its customer service considerably. Gone are the days of impossibly long wait times and unanswered questions. Today, you can contact GoDaddy’s support team 24/7 at 020 7084 1810 and quickly get an answer to your question.
So why is GoDaddy’s customer service bad? Because they don’t stand behind customers. Instead, they always take side with GoDaddy, especially when it comes to problems with account cancelation or billing.
“I again rang them spoke to an agent and explained once again that I am still waiting on a refund from last year and why have I been charged again. I have now taken screenshots to show and prove that I am unable to cancel auto-renewal for that site,” explains one unhappy GoDaddy customer, Neil Munro. “To add insult to me after raising a ticket with the agent that was sent to a supervisor, I then got an email to inform me that I would not be refunded. This is now at the point where I will be using the Ombudsman or a small claims court.”
Reason 3: Poor Performance
When you take price into consideration, GoDaddy’s performance isn’t really all that bad. However, it’s shared hosting plan, which most new customers start with, has some serious limitations that make it suitable only for simple websites. Running WordPress on the shared hosting plan can quickly turn into an exercise in frustration.
“Resource allocation for GoDaddy sucks. FTP is slow. SSH is slow. Server response times are slow. Database access times are slow. I’ve never not had an issue with this, across tons of clients. This is not an issue of too little resources on a server with too much traffic,” one person shares their experience with GoDaddy on Reddit.
Reason 4: Domain Tasting
When you register a domain name, you can cancel it within the first 5 days from registration and be fully refunded by the domain name registry. This 5-day window is called the Add Grace Period (AGP), and some domain name registrars abuse it to snatch domain names right under their customers’ noses, only to offer them back to them at much higher prices.
This practice is called domain tasting, and there are many reasons to believe that it’s an integral part of GoDaddy’s business model. This is what usually happens: A customer wants to purchase a domain name, so he or she visits GoDaddy and checks if it’s available. Before the customer does anything more, GoDaddy quietly snatches the domain name and makes it available for resale at, let’s say, $100.
In February 2007, the CEO of GoDaddy reported that the company kept only 3.6 million of 55.1 million domain names it purchased. One can only imagine just how insanely profitable domain tasting must be for GoDaddy.
Reason 5: Shady Billing Practices
GoDaddy doesn’t hesitate to bill its customers whenever it feels it has the right to do so, or when its accounting software tells it to. Just read what happened to Gregory Campbell, a member of digital marketing forum called Warrior Forum:
“Yesterday I received a strange email from Godaddy’s ‘abuse’ department stating they had received a single complaint regarding spam email promoting our web site. The email gave me 48 hours to respond or risk having our domain canceled. I responded within minutes advising we do not spam but suggested that we had over 400 active Affiliates who promoted the site.”
GoDaddy, in turn, responded with an authorization request to charge a $199 non-refundable administration fee. That’s a pretty steep charge considering that GoDaddy didn’t even present any evidence that its accusations were true.
Reason 5: GoDaddy Supported SOPA
In 2011, Lamar Smith introduced a controversial bill that sought to expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement to combat online copyright infringement and online trafficking of counterfeit goods. The bill was quickly attacked by online privacy advocates, who argued that it could reduce freedom of expression on the internet.
While many businesses and organizations immediately distanced themselves from SOPA, others decided to voice support for the controversial bill, and GoDaddy was among them. GoDaddy’s open support for SOPA resulted in a massive boycott of the web hosting company, and Wikipedia was just one of many high-profile sites that moved their domain registrations away from GoDaddy. Even though SOPA has been dead for many years, it certainly wasn’t the last legislation of its kind, and it’s understandable for people who believe in freedom of speech on the internet to avoid doing business with companies that would like to restrict it.
Reason 6: Elephant-Killing Founder
If you google “GoDaddy CEO elephant,” you will find pictures showing a man with a rifle in his hand and leaning on the dead body of a freshly killed elephant. That’s right, Bob Parson, a former Marine self-made millionaire, GoDaddy founder and ex-CEO, apparently enjoys spending the money of its customers to kill elephants in Zimbabwe.
It’s true that Parson tried to explain the whole fiasco, arguing that he was merely helping solve the “elephant situation” in Zimbabwe, but it’s hard to believe that the country really needed the wealthy CEO to fly in and “save” impoverished villagers and their crops from elephants, whose natural habitat has been shrinking for many years.
Reason 7: Sexists Advertising
GoDaddy has a long history of creating controversial ads that attempt to draw attention by sexualizing women and men alike, promoting stereotypes, and even endorsing irresponsible dog breeding. Yes, the company has been trying to change its image in recent years, but it will take many more years for its culture to change at the most basic level. Until then, GoDaddy will remain just another company that has been forced to change its image against its will.
Better Web Hosting than GoDaddy
A great alternative to GoDaddy is Bluehost. Since 2003 Bluehost has been growing, scooping up market share from older giants like GoDaddy. Currently, Bluehost has over 2-million websites hosted on their servers. Endurance Group, the parent company of Bluehost, accounts for nearly 5% of the global market share of web hosts worldwide, second to Amazon’s cloud infrastructure at 5.8% and the GoDaddy Group at 6.7%. Bluehost is one of the fastest growing shared hosting providers on the planet and is fast approaching GoDaddy’s hosting market share.
Bluehost has all the features you’d need from GoDaddy, bundled in a more appealing package. WordPress even recommends Bluehost as a web hosting provider, and it’s easy to see why. For a very affordable price, you get to enjoy a highly polished web hosting experience with automatic WordPress installation and updates, hundreds of free themes, unmetered SSD storage, unlimited subdomains, and a WordPress staging environment that lets you test any changes to your website before you make them visible to your visitors.
And if you were tempted to go with GoDaddy because they include a free domain with hosting package purchase – Bluehost does that as well through their own domain registration service. Bluehost is easily my #1 recommendation when looking for GoDaddy alternatives.
SiteGround is a step up from GoDaddy as their server configurations offer better hardware, performance, and security for around the same price. SiteGround has a great introductory offer at $6.99/month, but they do renew at $14.99/month for their StartUp plan.
When comparing SiteGround vs GoDaddy you’ll immediately note faster website speed when hosting with SiteGround. Additionally, in my experience, SiteGround websites receive less bot traffic and spam comments, contact form submissions, etc. vs websites hosted with GoDaddy.
Unlike GoDaddy, SiteGround can easily meet your growing needs thanks to its autoscalable cloud hosting, which offers powerful dedicated resources and is optimized for efficiency and speed. If you’re looking for a GoDaddy alternative that is faster, more reliable, and more secure, then I highly recommend SiteGround.
Many people choose GoDaddy because their web hosting requirements are modest, and all they want is to pay the lowest price possible, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. The only problem is that there are cheaper options than GoDaddy that do just as good job, if not better, and HostGator is among them.
This affordable alternative to GoDaddy starts at just $2.75/month for the first term, and it delivers far more value than you might expect. For starters, HostGator guarantees 99.9% uptime, and the company has no problem maintaining it. HostGator makes transferring a website from one host to another effortless and installing a content management system like WordPress is a matter of a simple click. Almost everything is unlimited, which includes disk space, bandwidth, and databases.
The only real downside of HostGator is the fact that the features it offers are quite limited. But if you’re looking for a cheaper alternative to GoDaddy with similar features and support, then I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend HostGator.
GoDaddy vs Other Hosting Companies
Perhaps the biggest differentiator between GoDaddy vs these alternatives is that GoDaddy began as a domain registrar, while Bluehost, SiteGround, and HostGator, began as web hosts. As GoDaddy’s product offering and focus is much broader than just hosting, they tend to more aggressively push their customers into bundled packages, upgrades and cross-sells.
Bluehost, SiteGround, and HostGator do one thing very well – website hosting. From there they add on features like a free domain name, good customer support, one-click installs for WordPress and other popular platforms, and a variety of other options and add-ons. GoDaddy, however, is the world’s leading Domain Registrar, which they do very well (although are far from the cheapest option). Hosting is simply an add-on for GoDaddy’s business model, and it shows through their limited offering, mediocre performance, and average support.
Buying Domain Names Elsewhere
(Friendly advice based on my personal experience over the years: Stay away from Network Solutions, Register.com, Web.com & MelbourneIT – they all suck! If you’re looking for an alternative to GoDaddy, then consider one of the registrars outlined in this post instead.)
In 2011 there was widespread push-back on GoDaddy due to their pro-SOPA position (Stop Online Piracy Act). Namecheap was an anti-SOPA advocate, and it launched a campaign on December 29, 2011 called “Move Your Domain Day”, with a coupon code “SOPASucks,” where the company donated $1 from each transferred domain to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. There was a mass exodus from GoDaddy to Namecheap, which has solidified Namecheap as my #1 recommended alternative to GoDaddy for DNS registration.
At the time of writing this article, name cheap manages over 10 million domains, and the number is quickly rising because Namecheap is arguably the most recommended domain name registrar today. A .com domain with WhoisGuard privacy protection costs just $8.88 a year, which is just one of many reasons why so many people love Namecheap. Other reasons include free domain migration, 30-day money-back guarantee, complete lack of hidden fees, simple billing plans, excellent customer service, private WhoIs registration, minimal upsell tactics, and much more.
Apart from being a great domain name registrar, Namecheap also offers a comprehensive range of hosting services, including shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated server hosting, private email hosting, and reseller hosting.
Based in Denver, Name.com happily serves over 320,000 customers with nearly 2 million domains under management. The company has solid service, and actively supports several non-profits, including the EFF. It costs just $8.99 to register a .com domain name with Name.com, and domain transfers start at $8.25.
Name.com employs dedicated, professional customer support staff, and it has an extensive knowledge base with detailed step-by-step instructions that make it accessible even to those who have never registered and managed a domain name before. If you manage multiple domain names, you can take advantage of Name.com’s API v4 managing domains, DNS records, email forwarding, and more and use it to integrate Name.com’s backend system with your own website for reseller purposes or just added convenience.
Just like Namecheap, Name.com isn’t just a domain name registrar. Its other services include web hosting, website builder, and email. If, for some reason, you would rather avoid using Namecheap as a GoDaddy alternative when it comes to buying domain names, Name.com is a great second choice.
Hover is an accessible giant. The company is owned by Tucows Incorporated, the second largest ICANN-accredited domain registrar in the world (second only to GoDaddy), and it offers premium services without all the gimmicks and upsells of titan providers like GoDaddy. Hover feels much like Namecheap and Name.com, but it has a more robust infrastructure behind it.
A .com domain name will cost you $12.99/year with free Whois privacy if you choose to register it with Hover, but there are many other extensions to choose from if your preferred .com domain name happens to be taken, including the .global domain, which costs only $14.99 and has a very nice ring to it.
If you want to, you can easily match your email address to your domain with your Hover’s email hosting services, which cost as little as $20 a year with 10 GB of storage, mail forwarding, vacation autoresponder, and built-in malware protection. If you have any questions regarding Hover, you can call the company at 1-866-731-6556 or email it at help@hover.com, and its friendly customer support staff will quickly show you why Hover is the third best alternative to GoDaddy.
How does GoDaddy Stack up to Other Domain Name Registrars?
GoDaddy has made a name for itself mainly as a domain name registrar, but its prominent position on the market alone isn’t enough to make it the best choice. The main thing that prevents GoDaddy from being the number one domain name registrar when compared with the three GoDaddy alternatives listed above is its tendency to use shady pricing tactics.
GoDaddy likes to hide the real price behind various discounts, which tend to expire after a year, leaving you with a much higher price to pay than what you signed up for originally. There are also many reports online that indicate that GoDaddy often practices domain tasting to artificially increase the price of certain domain names.
GoDaddy alternatives like Namecheap, Name.com, and Hover are much more upfront with their customers, and that’s something anyone can appreciate. Their customer support also tends to be more knowledgeable and friendly, which probably has to do a lot with the fact that they are not forced to constantly upsell various products and services.
Email Solutions Rivaling GoDaddy
Starting at only $2/month per email, Rackspace offers affordable email hosting for your small business. They’ve been in the email game for over 13 years, and they know what they’re doing. They have great spam and virus protection, and their security is top notch. This alternative email service offers Outlook, webmail and mobile access, a 100% uptime guarantee, and a massive 25 GB storage per mailbox.
Do you already have GoDaddy webmail but looking to migrate? No problem! Rackspace offers free email migrations with a few simple clicks. Its industry-leading email hosting solution is used by such prominent customers as AeroMexico, Micron, Coinstar, CloudMine, Mazda, PayLease, Under Armour, and Six Flags, just to give you a few examples.
But you don’t have to be a major corporation to enjoy Rackspace’s Fanatical Experience, which includes 24x7x365 live support via chat, tickets, or phone. It’s the combination of the power of always-on service with best-in-class tools and automation that makes Rackspace the best GoDaddy alternative when it comes to email hosting.
If you don’t want to mess around with your company’s email, simply head directly to Microsoft and signup for an Exchange account. Starting at $4/month per user, Exchange offers an enterprise-class solution that’s now accessible to the masses. If that’s not enough, the next step is to upgrade to Office 365, which includes email access and the entire suite of Microsoft Office products, accessible anywhere, on the go.
Microsoft is a global leader in cloud services, and it uses its redundant servers and premier disaster recovery capabilities to deliver a guaranteed 99.9% uptime, backed by a service level agreement. If you need an email service you can depend on, Microsoft Exchange Online is a fantastic choice. The same can be said about its security, which stands on decades of experience of some of the world’s leading cybersecurity experts and modern security practices, such as two-factor authentication (which is provided by Microsoft Authenticator).
The same usability principles and user interface design guidelines that have helped Windows 10 become on the most successful versions of the Windows operating system ever also make Microsoft Exchange Online easy to use and manage. Its clean user interface provides anywhere access to email, calendar, and contacts on all major browsers and across devices, and automatic patching eliminates the time and effort of maintaining your system. As a hassle-free alternative to GoDaddy, Microsoft Exchange Online simply rocks!
If you’re looking for a secure, ad-free email with a 99.9% uptime guarantee, then you’ll want to look at Zoho Mail. The Mail Lite base plan is only $1/month, and it includes 5GB of storage per user and all the features you’ll require, including IMAP/POP access, Exchange ActiveSync, forwarding, aliases, and more. The Standard Plan, at $3/month, includes 30GB per user and access to the Zoho Office Suite of tools. Finally, the Professional Plan, which is beefed up with all the Zoho Workplace applications for enterprise use, costs $6/month.
Regardless of which plan you go with, Zoho Mail always rewards you with a secure, ad-free inbox with 99.9% uptime guaranteed, powerful control panel that allows you to easily set up individual mailbox quotas and privileges, email policies, or group accounts, and integration with other services from Zoho, such as Zoho CRM, an online Customer Relationship Management system for managing your sales, marketing, and support.
Zoho Mail also works great on mobile devices thanks to the Zoho Mail app, which is available on the App Store and Google Play Store. The app alone makes Zoho Mail a much better email service than GoDaddy because it allows you to stay connected with your email even when you’re on the move.
Better Options to GoDaddy Email Service
GoDaddy’s email is… meh. I’m not sure how else to put it. It does its job, it’s relatively easy to setup, but the functionality, customization, and growth opportunities are not there. GoDaddy also lacks key features you’d expect in a hosted email solution. GoDaddy is primarily a domain name registrar and a shared hosting company – not an email service provider. Their email program has historically been a bolt-on to their existing services, as an upsell for current accounts, rather than a stand-alone product.
GoDaddy email isn’t cloud-hosted, and the base plan has one of the smallest staring storage capacities out there – only 5GB! Additionally, if you want to pay month-to-month, GoDaddy raises rates over the advertised annual price.
With the three alternative GoDaddy email hosting solutions listed above, you can get a lot more value for your money and an email service that’s actually usable as an integral part of your workflow and not just something you put on your business card and auto-forward to Gmail. GoDaddy probably knows that its email is subpar, and it certainly has the resources to make it better, but the company probably lacks the motivation to improve it because only a few of its customers actually use it.
Best GoDaddy Alternatives: All-in-One Solutions
I’ve mentioned Bluehost several times already in our overview of GoDaddy vs alternatives, and I don’t hesitate to mention it again because it has so much to offer. Founded in 2003 and currently owned by Endurance International Group, Bluehost is among the 20 largest web hosting companies in the world, and it powers around 2 million websites worldwide.
Bluehost is a prime example of an all-in-one web hosting company. That is, a web hosting company whose services include everything from domain name registration to affordable shared web hosting to high-performance dedicated hosting. Most small web hosting companies can’t pull this off because they lack the resources necessary to offer such a broad range of services, while many large web hosting companies fail to provide satisfactory customer support or performance (GoDaddy is a great example).
Bluehost has somehow managed to offer the best of both worlds: a leading uptime of 99.99% percent as well as good and quick customer support, which is why it’s the best all-in-one web hosting solution. It’s also recommended by WordPress.org as a reliable hosting platform for the popular CMS.
Another web hosting company that has earned a recommendation from WordPress.org is SiteGround, a Bulgaria-based web hosting company that services nearly 2 million domains worldwide and provides shared hosting, cloud hosting, and dedicated servers as well as email hosting and domain registration.
With SiteGround, you can start literary from scratch thanks to its partnership with Weebly, one of the easiest and most powerful site builders in the world. It can take you less than an hour from the moment you purchase your domain name to the moment you make your first website public. Of course, you can also use WordPress or just about any other content management system you want—your options are virtually infinite.
If you have an existing website—perhaps with GoDaddy—SiteGround will gladly transfer it to their platform free of charge. The transfer will be done by its experts, so you can rest assured, knowing everything will turn out perfect. Unlike GoDaddy, SiteGround is renowned for its customer support, which shares its customer-oriented mindset and is driven by a passion for web hosting.
It’s no coincidence that the third best all-in-one alternative to GoDaddy is also one of only three officially recommended hosting partners by WordPress.org. Founded in 1996, DreamHost is one of the oldest web hosting companies in the world, and it’s also one of the most successful. A winner of PCMag’s “Editors’ Choice” 4 years in a row, DreamHost gives customers many reasons to choose it over GoDaddy.
For starters, its custom control panel makes it exceptionally easy to use by removing many of the headaches commonly associated with web hosting. Since DreamHost goes well beyond standard web hosting services and provides everything from a web builder to a cloud hosting platform, it can help your website grow from a rough idea to the first stop in Google’s search engine results page.
DreamHost is so confident in the quality of its services that it offers an industry-leading 97-day money-back guarantee. That’s right! As a DreamHost customer, you can test out its services for over 3 months before you have to make any sort of commitment. The only reason why DreamHost hasn’t gone bankrupt yet is that most of its customers decide to stay with it long-term.
Measuring GoDaddy against the All-in-One Solutions
Although this is The Ultimate Guide to GoDaddy Alternatives, I can’t knock GoDaddy too hard. After all, they do some things very well! GoDaddy is a great option for those looking for an “all in one” solution for domain name registration, hosting, and email solutions. There is something to be said about the convenience and simplicity of having all your web needs managed under one roof.
But honestly, there are simply better GoDaddy alternatives out there, specializing in all of the GoDaddy product offerings. If you’re looking to move everything over from GoDaddy to one single alternative, then Bluehost, SiteGround, and DreamHost are your best options.
With these three alternatives to GoDaddy, you won’t have to constantly reject various upsells, pray every time you contact customer support that you get connected to someone who actually knows more than you do about web hosting and related topics, and be anxious when you’re about to receive an invoice because GoDaddy likes to display promotional prices to hide the true cost of its services.
What the GoDaddy Customer Reviews Say
When researching anything on the internet, you should always keep in mind that not all review sites are as honest and transparent as this one is. To get a second opinion, your best bet are various independent customer review sites, which aggregate reviews written by real customers. While true that fake and extremely biased reviews can be found even there, they tend to disappear in the vast see of legitimate reviews.
To save you time when researching GoDaddy alternatives, I’ve explored some of the most popular customer review sites on the internet to find out what real customers have to say about GoDaddy, and here’s what I’ve learned.
Consumer Affairs has GoDaddy rated at 2.7/5 stars for overall satisfaction, based around 400 ratings.
- “Low intro rates then they jack up their prices after you are established with them. They become very very expensive after your “intro period”.”
- “Cons of Godaddy Managed WordPress: 1. Extremely Slow Performance. 2. Dumbest Customer Support. 3. You face a problem every other day. 4. The site will go down even if there are 5-6 visitors at a time. 5. Very Low PHP limits. 6. Very Low RAM. 7. Old and slow servers. 8. OVERSOLD (10-15 times the capacity). 9. Only Godaddy SSL allowed. 10. Support chat and phone are of very little to no help.”
- “Don’t fall for Godaddy’s fake promotions. Their so called customer service people are so rude and hang up or throw you back in the queue if they are not going to make any sales and commission off your call.”
- “I bought one domain name from them and had it for several years, but I always ONLY do manual renewals, I NEVER do automatic renewals. Well this year they took my credit card from last renewal in 2011 and charged it for this years renewal, after I let it lapsed. When I called to cancel and request my refund, they said it is their policy NOT to refund any accounts.”
- “DO NOT purchase domain privacy and protection from GoDaddy! I recently purchased several domain names and paid extra for privacy and protection for each one. Within days I began getting calls and texts from people soliciting work related to the domain names.”
On Trustpilot.com, GoDaddy has just 1/5 stars for overall satisfaction, based on around 3,500 reviews, which is terrible even as far as web hosting companies go.
- “I have been with Go Daddy for almost 10 years and my last few experiences have been really disappointing. I was twice sold a product and full information was not given meaning I had to actually purchase additional products for it to work. I was twice told to expect a call from a supervisor but it never came. They refuse to take responsibility for their actions and I am considering taking my business elsewhere.”
- “I have been using GoDaddy products for almost 10 years. I was charged over £170 for a website builder and a domain name that I did not use, and I believed to be set to not auto renew. The fee was taken from a bank card that had been cancelled, but still somehow taken from my account.”
- “The customer service agents don’t even try to pretend to care about my website issues. They have very poor customer service and zero emotional intelligence.”
- “Very questionable business practices, send “urgent” emails with links to renew products that I do not even need or am using…”
- “Go daddy use to be fantastic with fantastic 24 hour support but now we get put through to people who’s first language not English and incapable of understanding your query”.
As if the horrible customer reviews published on leading customer review sites weren’t enough, GoDaddy is also not rated well on GlassDoor.com, a website where current and former employees anonymously review companies.
- “GoDaddy’s management has consistently diminished their technical scope of support while adopting a “up sell over support” mentality. As I write this, there is not a single tech support department option for their customer base. When a customer calls in for technical support the “tech support” team is required to attempt to sell them a new product, regardless of their issue.”
- “It’s like working at a frat house. Managers are allowed to curse at you, call you names, and humiliate you in front of colleagues. If you are a woman, I would advise you to look else where for employment.”
- “Came into this job thinking it was customer service only to find out sales was really what this job entailed, they don’t care about their customers, only want to find out what can be sold instead of fixing what is wrong.”
- “Go Daddy is no longer what they once were, nor will they ever be again. They are money first, and if you arent part of the Good Ole Boys club you are dispensable. Its amazing to me how many people get recruited into departments because their best friend is the manager or director.”
- “GoDaddy is in a downward spiral and management is failing to address it. For all the new sales they are brining in, much of the potential profits are being squandered on new employee training costs.”
To summarize various user-submitted review websites, GoDaddy complains typically center around the following issues:
- Frustration at the increased renewal rates.
- Dissatisfaction with the outsourced international based support.
- Displeasure with slow website hosting speed and server performance.
- Concerns over domain name registration after the user submits a query.
- Shady business practices whose legality is highly questionable.
While many of the GoDaddy complains you’ll read online are very concerning, it is important to note that some reviews are obviously biased and do not tell both sides of the story.
GoDaddy’s terms of service, for example, clearly explain how renewals will increase from introductory rates, as is also clear on their pricing and checkout pages. Another item to note is that our comprehensive analysis of the fastest web hosts ranks GoDaddy among the top providers. Additionally, some websites such as G2Crowd.com give GoDaddy a 3.8/5 stars based on nearly 500 user submitted reviews.
The general consensus is, however, that GoDaddy’s service is frustrating, and their product offering often leaves something to be desired.
Comparing GoDaddy to their Competition
Looking for other alternatives to GoDaddy? Check out these hosting reviews as we go in-depth with the most popular host vs host lineup. How does GoDaddy stack up to its biggest competition?
- Bluehost vs GoDaddy
- HostGator vs GoDaddy (coming soon)
- SiteGround vs GoDaddy