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GoDaddy is a scam

281 points by k0t0n0 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
paulpauper 8y ago
I used godaddy in 2010-2011 for domains. no problem with them. ymmv
- Waterluvian 8y ago
  That doesn't say anything about this individual's suspicion that they create a sense of artificial scarcity and/or bad faith "auctions".
- paulpauper 8y ago
  how do I delete this. I'm sorry for sharing my experience with godaddy. I was just talking about domain registration. I am suspicious of domain name auctions. There is no way to delete comment.s I would have deleted it as soon as it went to zero but could not.
  - LinuxBender 8y ago
    If that was your experience, then don't delete the comment. Doing so promotes echo chambers. If you are concerned about Karma, simply submit some articles to balance it out.
  - xapata 8y ago
    > sorry for sharing my experience with godaddy Personal experiences are sometimes useful information. However, yours is somewhat out of date and lacked detail.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    I think you often can't if it's got a reply on it. Your best bet is to edit it. My suggestion is to append a note to it instead of completely removing it or changing it, since that alters the record of what really happened, and causes replies to no longer make sense. Adding something like "Edit: Whoops, was just trying to note X, but it didn't come across right." would be sufficient, but it's up to you. To my knowledge, you have until two hours after posting to edit it, so time's running out...
- mpg515 8y ago
  GoDaddy was my first registrar in like 2004 and leaving them was an extremely difficult process at the time. I believe they made it troublesome on purpose, though I would not also rule out incompetence.
uberswe 8y ago
Nothing new. I used to buy and sell (mostly buy) lots of domains and wrote a review of several registrars in 2014 placing Godaddy at the very last place recommending users to stay away. Here below is what I wrote then: "Godaddy has improved slightly on their interface since last years review. However they still have large menus that are complicated to navigate through and seem to be using the same bait and switch methods as before. After finally finding a domain that you like you will receive several offers for email, hosting, etc before you can even get to the cart. All prices seem to have an asterisk or two telling you that their super low price is only valid if you pay for 2 years or more. Going from previous experience I feel as if Godaddy wants to lock me in to use their services for as long as possible or to simply get as much money out of me before I leave. Looking around for what Godaddy charges for renewals I found several red flags where users are getting charged “market prices” for their renewals. You can see a forum thread regarding how Godaddy charges way too much for renewals here (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1365680 http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1365680). This post here (https://www.authormedia.com/6-reasons-authors-should-avoid-godaddy/ https://www.authormedia.com/6-reasons-authors-should-avoid-g...) even gives an additional 6 reasons why you should stay away from Godaddy." https://archives.tenghamn.com/best/domain/registrar/2014/10/27/best-and-worst-domain-registrars-my-review-2014.html https://archives.tenghamn.com/best/domain/registrar/2014/10/...
- ConfusedDog 8y ago
  I think I saw your post long time ago and switched from GoDaddy to Namecheap because of it. Now I'm using Google Domain. Thank you for your contribution!
  - uberswe 8y ago
    Glad to hear it!
- ukyrgf 8y ago
  The premium renewal thing blew my mind when I first saw it. I couldn't believe they were so bold as to say that one .com is more expensive to renew than another.
two2two 8y ago
I've experienced sketchy practices from several domain brokers and hosting services. GoDaddy is just the most widely used amongst my friends and clients--making them a necessary evil in my life--luckily not at my expense.
chad_strategic 8y ago
I have known a few people who think they are going to make millions selling domains. They had hundreds of domains, with auto renew. Set it and forget it. That has to got to be 50% of goDaddy revenue. I moved over to Amazon Route 53. It's not terribly user friendly, but at least it's not GoDaddy.
- tomphoolery 8y ago
  I wasn't a big fan of Amazon's domain name prices, but Route 53 is by far the best DNS I've ever used in my life.
bad_user 8y ago
For what is worth I've been using Namecheap.com for domain registration, for several years and have been satisfied. Never had any problems. Cloudflare is also entering this business and looks promising.
- uberswe 8y ago
  I definitely agree, NameSilo is a smaller registrar but is my go to place for .com while NameCheap has a wider selection of extensions.
- mpg515 8y ago
  I've been really enjoying Namecheap for about a year now. Great service.
- throwawaymanbot 8y ago
  Use a javascript blocker and then go to the namecheap.com site -- it takes about 10 minutes to click permission on the staggering array of ad script thats on there.
- leetbulb 8y ago
  I'll second this. Namecheap is amazing company! Been using them for domains and DNS (smaller scale stuff) for years.
- bitshepherd 8y ago
  I'm going to have to be the dissenter here. Namecheap also does domain name front running and tasting, so it's not really any different.
  - dkonofalski 8y ago
    No they don't. At least not in the way that GoDaddy does it... NameCheap does this with domains that have expired and domains that are searched and reserved but fail for some reason. Since part of the service they provide is contingent on covering for people in the event of failures (missed renewals, misspellings, etc.), NameCheap auto-renews domains and reserves variations of others when they're registered. If the user doesn't end up actually renewing the domain, they mark it up and sell it as a premium domain since they now have paid for a domain without a buyer. NameCheap mostly does this as a service for existing customers. GoDaddy, on the other hand, does it explicitly for the revenue they can generate from desperate people who need domains they previously searched for.
pgrote 8y ago
I have no proof of anything GoDaddy specifically does. A while back I came across some of my archives that mentioned a BBS name that was popular in the past. Thinking it would be neat to own the domain name of the company that went out of business, I went to GoDaddy and checked. It was available awesome. Got distracted, came back an hour later and it was no longer available, but was at auction. My first suspicion is nothing nefarious happened. I could have misread available vs auction, but I don't think so. I might have mistyped the domain name, but I don't think so. Something didn't feel right. A few days later I checked another domain using whois through icaan. No resolution. Available. Pop over to GoDaddy and do the same thing ... check name is available. As a test, I wait an hour and come back to the name at auction. I cannot explain what happened it except maybe GoDaddy's name check leaks or someone had the exact same name ideas when I had them. Again, this was years ago and am unsure if it still occurs.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  I also have no proof, but I have heard enough other stories like this one that I firmly belief something is going on. Using GoDaddy to check if a domain is available is a good way to make that domain become unavailable.
- strict9 8y ago
  Drop to a bash shell and do this: $ whois example.com It's what I've always turned to first for availability. Super fast and less chance of a middleman grabbing it because you expressed interest.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - dewey 8y ago
    Doesn’t give you the price though which is one of the things people are looking for when searching for a domain and if it’s not one of the popular TLDs where you already know a ballpark figure.
    - 8y ago
aviv 8y ago
Relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18632988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18632988
oceanghost 8y ago
Godaddy is for sure a scam. They once charged me, if memory serves, $75 to resolve a complaint about one of my domains. They wouldn't tell me what the complaint was, who brought it, or how it was resolved. They just charged my card on file $75 for the "service". I transferred my domains out and never looked back.
mtw 8y ago
Godaddy got a domain I searched and did not buy, and generally the user experience is like doing business with a scammer and penny pincher. On the other hand, they found a buyer for one of my domains for $5000. Kinda of a wash.
throwawaymanbot 8y ago
Since GoDaddy were bought by a hedge fund a few years ago, they have basically gone in to "screw you buddy" mode. AS an example, I tried to purchase a domain using one of their famous coupons. I put it in, it worked, (10% off or something like that) I then went to pay and discovered that it wouldnt apply when I put in my CC to complete the transaction. I rang Customer support and I'm told that since I have used 10% coupon ONCE before (about a year and a half previous) that I could no longer avail of 10% coupons. The next day after I hung up, I moved ALL sites to another vendor. It was relatively painfree. I'm not mad at godaddy, I'm mad at the hedgefund thats clearly setting policy and that thinks it can just drop its balls about in a consequence free manner. Never use a product from GoDaddy again.
azhenley 8y ago
GoDaddy made me angry earlier this summer when it broke domain forwarding when they added shortlinks. All my URLs instantly broke. Customer support said it was by design. To fix it, we made NavHere (https://navhere.com/ https://navhere.com/) to be a simple domain forwarding service. Just a few weeks ago, GoDaddy announced they are going to fix their domain forwarding...
- jermaustin1 8y ago
  That said, domain forwarding is still broken on GoDaddy for people who wish to forward domain-a.com/* to domain-b.com/base-path/* and preserve the path.
AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
FWIW, GoDaddy isn't the only site I've seen do this. I had the same issue a couple years ago when I tried to use Google Domains to find a domain for my website. At the time I was trying a few and found, to my delight, that nothingofvalue.com was available. I started the process of purchasing it and then got scared when it came time to list my personal address for ownership. I stopped for about an hour to call my father to see if he would mind if I used his PO Box as the address. When I went back to redo/complete the registration, I was told the domain had been purchased by someone else. For the next year or two, I checked it periodically, just to see if anyone had actually built a page of it. Nope. Just squatting. I purchased nothingofvalue.org instead and have had it ever since. I also transferred the domain to Namecheap.
habosa 8y ago
I spent two hours one time transferring all my domains (~10) to Google Domains. What a relief to be done with that company. There is not one honest step in the GoDaddy flow, you really have to keep your hand on your wallet. Disclaimer: I work for Google, no interaction with the domains team though.
- Aaargh20318 8y ago
  How is Google’s support for domains ? I am very hesitant to buy anything from Google that may require support, as an Android developer I’ve heard too many horror stories to trust Google in this area (basically, there is no way to even talk to a human being, you can send an email and get a canned response from a bot. You’re better off talking to a brick wall).
  - behringer 8y ago
    It's exactly what you can imagine. I'd instead recommend gandi.net. It's a few bucks more but they take their motto to heart.
    - brendyn 8y ago
      I posted this on the reddit too: I tried to buy a domain with gandi. I left it in my cart for a day and then the price went up $20 dollars. I loaded up the Tor Browser, searched the same domain name and it was back at the normal price. It would stay that way even when i looked up new .scot domains. Proof: https://i.imgur.com/7kMutbB.png https://i.imgur.com/7kMutbB.png . The "no bullshit" moto just sounds like Googles "don't be evil" moto, bullshit designed to fool geeks into thinking they're honest people. Does there even exist a site to buy domains that doesn't do this bullshit?
      - behringer 8y ago
        The current price on .scot domains is $49. Perhaps you're seeing a difference due to exchange rate? This is the first and only report I've ever heard of Gandi even remotely doing something like this. Unlike Google, Gandi actually does live up to its motto. And like Google, if they ever fail I'm ready to jump ship. On what date was this picture taken? [Edit] I just checked the exchange rate on google and 49usd is 67aud. Looks like it was just an exchange rate mixup on your part.
Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
Going to get a little off-topic here, feel free to downvote if you feel it's out of place. Many HN users presumably saw the public launch of sr.ht a few weeks ago. I've been thinking about directions that it could be expanded in the future, and the use-cases which fit best are both (1) things I need to do to maintain sr.ht anyway, and could make into a service available to users; (2) things which are annoying to do elsewhere. To this end I'm thinking about offering domain registration. Since users pay a monthly/yearly subscription fee for sr.ht, I can just sell domains at wholesale prices and take no margin. Then you get to use the nice UI and API and so on sr.ht offers for doing DNS and domain registration (DNS probably through just pushing zone files to a git repo). Thoughts?
- colemannugent 8y ago
  While I have no doubt that you of all people could do DNS right, it seems a bit like scope creep IMO. I'm very excited about sr.ht, but also worried that it might be too much to execute all at once. That being said, DNS records in Git sounds kinda neat. You avoid all the special authentication nonsense of "DynamicDNS" or proprietary APIs by using SSH keys, and you have versioning for rolling back configurations. Also you don't need a special UI that essentially builds zone files as you'd just have your users make their own. You might need some validation of the files before you actually put them into BIND though.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
    Well, in terms of scope, this falls under >things I need to do to maintain sr.ht anyway I already run my own authoritative nameservers and if I automated the maintenance and deployment of that, it'd only be an afternoon of hacking to make available to the public, and a weekend of hacking to add domain registration to it. I don't just work on sr.ht, too, so having a streamlined and integrated domain registration and DNS service would be great for my other projects.
    - solarkraft 8y ago
      Your scope, yeah, but I think the previous poster was talking about product scope. Though I do think it could be a good idea.
codyogden 8y ago
I use domainr.com for this very reason.
saltyshake 8y ago
I had a very similar experience back in 2007. Searched for the domain, was available (and super unique). Next day ready to buy and it was up for auction. Nowadays I would only use Google. They have a reputation to worry about if they try and pull over these tactics, unlike Godaddy and similar shady companies.
- SQL2219 8y ago
  I had my suspicions about searching for domains on godaddy. Do a search for a domain, come back in a few days and it was purchased by someone else.
ryeguy_24 8y ago
Couldn’t this be considered “front running”?
- etjossem 8y ago
  Ding ding ding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_front_running https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_front_running
- ryanlol 8y ago
  How do you go from this post to "front running"? The guy is talking about a domain auction lasting more than 90 days.
  - ryeguy_24 8y ago
    I could be mistaken by the main point was that they are searching for a domain on Godaddy and finds it was purchased and subsequently put up for auctions moments after the search.
    - ryanlol 8y ago
      I doubt that's the main point. There's simply nothing in the original post that suggests this. The guy later commented that GoDaddy had registered the domain the same day he searched it, but judging by his original comment it doesn't seem that he ever saw it available. >Okay, so I searched for one domain name on godaddy. It was available but it was on 'auction' being sold for more than $10k. After reading OPs post over and over again, it seems pretty clear that the guy is upset about the auction lasting more than the 90 days that was originally promised. >The auction was supposed to last 90days. After these 90 days there were 4 views in total (all by me) and it got renewed for another 90 days and it keeps saying that the auction has started the day I searched for the domain for the first time. >If someone is able to justify this as not a scam, please post your opinion I think it's very weird that all the commenters seem to be assuming that there's frontrunning happening here. I guess it's just easy to hate on GoDaddy while totally ignoring the facts. It's far more likely that this guy resolved the domain to check if it exists and got fucked by passivedns instead of GoDaddy.
onemoresoop 8y ago
Should be called DaddyStopIt!
taytus 8y ago
I'm just an user, I'm not in the business of buying/selling domains. Besides their shitty website, I never had a problem with GoDaddy. I've been a customer of theirs for about 15 years. Just sharing my experience.
- taytus 8y ago
  Guys, I really don't mind the downvotes. And I won't ask for clarification either. But I believe sharing someone's experience I believe doesn't deserve a downvote. Anyway, downvote as much as you want :)
- dmortin 8y ago
  Same for me. I have a couple of domains with hosting at them, which get about 20k users per day in total. I've been a customer for 10 years or so and while there were some hiccups sometimes, usually it just works without problems. Their 1st line support is not the greatest when there is an actual problem, though. Luckily I only had a few problems during the years.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- stubish 8y ago
  I moved over a decade ago purely because of their shitty website. It just made me angry, wading through what could be a satire of all the annoying, shady and deceptive sales tactics that I don't think existed anywhere else at the time. I started paying more elsewhere to avoid the stress, and expected them to die off in the race to the bottom. But there they still are, and they aren't the cheapest and aren't offering anything unique. They are one of the reasons I'm so intolerant of advertising in general, because what I see is marketing driving people to give money to an abusive company, when just about every alternative is a better option. It just seems wrong.
- DonHopkins 8y ago
  15 years, huh? If a video of "hungry villagers" butchering the elephant GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons murdered while wearing neon orange GoDaddy baseball caps doesn't give you a problem with GoDaddy, and you also have no problem with all the dark patterns on their terrible web site and the shady shenanigans so many people are reporting that GoDaddy currently perpetrate on their users, then what would they have to actually do to convince you to switch to a more reputable service? https://gawker.com/5787676/meet-godaddys-ridiculous-elephant-killing-ceo https://gawker.com/5787676/meet-godaddys-ridiculous-elephant...
herghost 8y ago
Their domain privacy service just blackholes any emails sent to it instead of forwarding them on. Almost cost me a domain due to their scammy set-up - since the domain was listed as "Domains By Proxy" or something similar, GoDaddy argued that it wasn't actually mine (despite selling it to me, and selling the privacy service to me) and the request to transfer couldn't go ahead. Thankfully Nominet were incredibly helpful (and seemingly well aware of GoDaddy's M.O.) and they managed to sort it for me. Sadly, I've just checked their site and they list GoDaddy as a registrar to use them looking for a domain, which is a shame.
ryanlol 8y ago
What is godaddy supposed to have done wrong here? OP strangely enough doesn't seem to make any specific claims of wrongdoing.
- chengiz 8y ago
  They registered a domain soon as OP searched for it and jacked up the price, basically.
  - ryanlol 8y ago
    That's not what the OP says though. The OP says the domain was registered the same day he searched it on GoDaddy, he never specifies when this happened. If you read the guys comments, it almost feels like he's going out of his way to avoid specifying this really important detail. https://www.reddit.com/user/joevenet/comments/ https://www.reddit.com/user/joevenet/comments/ And if this thread is supposed to be about godaddy squatting, why the story about the 90 day auction expiry? To me this definitely reads like a complaint about Godaddy auction processes and not about squatting.
andrewmcwatters 8y ago
My understanding of GoDaddy over the last couple of decades is that they weren't always a bad player in the space. They are, supposedly still, the largest registrar. I don't see a future where that can ever stay true, however. I used to use them, but my final straw was their backing of SOPA in an incredibly heated time for Internet legislation which has reverberated into present day. A lot of their market presence in the past had to do with their marketing, such as the Super Bowl commercials they ran, GoDaddy partner Danica Patrick, and some local philanthropy in Arizona, where their headquarters is. Eventually, people found better deals with Gandi, Namecheap, and others, and their industry force evolved into one with far less impact. Now the industry is evolving into one with no overhead with Cloudflare providing domains at-cost as companies provide value-added services which subsidize operating costs for providing domains to customers. This will ultimately put companies we've known in the past to be giants, and to this day are still publicly traded, in dire straits as they find new ways to stay relevant. GoDaddy provides no high-value value-added services in comparison to other market leaders. So, for most who have moved on, there's no reason to go back. They are a now a middleman for no one other than small agencies or individual customers at best, who arguably do not provide any value for them either. We'll see what happens to GoDaddys, Namecheaps, and Network Solutions when you can't charge people for domains anymore. What happened to TLS certificates will almost certainly happen to domains, too, albeit with ICANN fees remaining as the last overhead.
- ryanlol 8y ago
  >GoDaddy provides no high-value value-added services in comparison to other market leaders I don't think there's all that much serious competition for auctions.godaddy.com
EGreg 8y ago
Link to hacker news from... 7 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2326790 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2326790
- saltyshake 8y ago
  404 ?
  - EGreg 8y ago
    Nopie
mythz 8y ago
Moving away from GoDaddy was one of the most rewarding "online service" switches I've made. I used to cringe visiting GoDaddy when renewing domain names where I've had to carefully navigate my way through their Dark UX patterns which feels like I've ventured into the "Dark side of the Web" where you can't trust what you read and everything is designed to upsell scams out of you. I've moved everything to Google Domains, at $12 /y for .com domains it's only a little more expensive than GoDaddy (with Coupons) but it has a straight-forward simple and minimalist UI where I can get everything I need to get done (e.g. dns config/renewing) quickly and easily. It's an example of a UX-focused UI built for you by contrast I view GoDaddy's user-hostile UX was designed against your best interests.
- zepearl 8y ago
  I totally agree. I always dreaded the time when I had to renew my SSL cert with GoDaddy. Then, each year, while navigating on their website, I always ended up asking myself if they hired a group of psychos to design their UI. After a couple of years I finally found Namecheap and never looked back.
ww520 8y ago
Godaddy is a scam and a massive domain squatter.
appleiigs 8y ago
Are there any landmines to step on when transferring a domain? Seems like you pay a transfer cost but they extend you by 1 year. Easy as that? I'm ok with a bit of downtime.
- tombrossman 8y ago
  You shoudn't have any downtime. Copy your current DNS records for your transferring domain(s) and input them at the destination Registrar, then initiate the transfer, and done. It is surprisingly easy. The only edge case to check is if you are using non-standard or less common DNS record types (ALIAS, CAA) then first confirm with the destination Registrar that they support the record types you need. Or if you want to keep things really simple, switch to a third-party DNS host before transferring and use the same name-server settings. And yes, paying the target Registrar should extend your registration time. For example, say you bought a domain last year and paid to register it for five years (so four years remain). Now you transfer it to Gandi.net and pay their transfer fee. You used up one year originally, transferred, and it's yours for five years again. Your unused years at the outgoing Registrar 'roll over' to the new one.
  - appleiigs 8y ago
    Thank you.
ModernMech 8y ago
I remember I once searched for a domain name on Godaddy, and found that it was available. I waited a couple days before I decided on buying it, but next time I checked it was registered by Godaddy. If you wen to the address, you were directed to a website stating the domain has been "parked for your convenience", and you could buy it from them for now twice as much. I remember feeling so completely cheated I never did business with them again, and certainly never searched for available domains with them.
DonHopkins 8y ago
It's not surprising a company founded by an elephant murderer turned out to be a scam. https://gawker.com/5787676/meet-godaddys-ridiculous-elephant-killing-ceo https://gawker.com/5787676/meet-godaddys-ridiculous-elephant...
quadyeast 8y ago
Totally off topic but I must. Because of the the painful UI to the horrible marketing to the elephant killing paid for by the founder, I celebrate everything anti-Godaddy.
philshem 8y ago
Couldn’t we reverse this on them? For example, get a list of available domains and reverse-scrape from various users to trick the algorithm into thinking the domains were valuable?
KitDuncan 8y ago
I just sold a domain on GoDaddy two weeks ago. Should I be afraid, that I won't get my money? I thought there was nothing to worry about, since it's such a big company....
ukyrgf 8y ago
A few years ago, I typed in a domain I wanted and was surprised to see a link to Godaddy Auctions saying I could have it "Buy It Now"-style for $80. I've had miserable experiences with Godaddy so I really didn't want to do it, but I wanted the domain and figured they'd jack it up to $5,000 if I hit refresh. A few days went by with no registration details, and all I could find in my account was the receipt. I called them up and was told that somebody else already owns the domain, but, if they don't re-register it when it expires, and they don't re-register it during the 30 day grace period, then I'd have the pleasure of being able to own it. When I told the person that I could have just waited and registered it on my own without spending $80, she said that since it's a 5-letter domain, Godaddy would have put it on the market as a premium domain. Apparently, I got a bargain. I transferred it out of Godaddy as quick as I could, and one of the first things I did at my current job was convince my boss to start transferring his 400+ domains out of Godaddy. He had no idea that the "premium domains" that they charge him $100/yr to "premium renew" aren't actually anything special, and other registrars don't do that.
ris 8y ago
Can anyone be surprised at how worried I was when I learned that webfaction were being bought by GoDaddy?
theartfuldodger 8y ago
This was always accepted as a reality within the affiliate marketing communities, we knew never to use godaddy services to search for an available domain unless you purchased it immediately. I heard many anecdotal stories as consequently I owned the #1 us organic position for "available domain" and primarily referred people to godaddy and namecheap. edit I see a godaddy insider confirmed the practice
nojvek 8y ago
I’m glad Godaddy is getting shamed. I hope they lose a ton of business over this.
brokenmachine 8y ago
Probably off-topic, but I've always wondered how malware authors register domains that are generated by Domain Generation Algorithms, without it being trackable back to them.

GoDaddy is a scam

281 points by k0t0n0 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

paulpauper 8y ago

I used godaddy in 2010-2011 for domains. no problem with them. ymmv

Waterluvian 8y ago
That doesn't say anything about this individual's suspicion that they create a sense of artificial scarcity and/or bad faith "auctions".
paulpauper 8y ago
how do I delete this. I'm sorry for sharing my experience with godaddy. I was just talking about domain registration. I am suspicious of domain name auctions. There is no way to delete comment.s I would have deleted it as soon as it went to zero but could not.
- LinuxBender 8y ago
  If that was your experience, then don't delete the comment. Doing so promotes echo chambers. If you are concerned about Karma, simply submit some articles to balance it out.
- xapata 8y ago
  > sorry for sharing my experience with godaddy Personal experiences are sometimes useful information. However, yours is somewhat out of date and lacked detail.
- kbenson 8y ago
  I think you often can't if it's got a reply on it. Your best bet is to edit it. My suggestion is to append a note to it instead of completely removing it or changing it, since that alters the record of what really happened, and causes replies to no longer make sense. Adding something like "Edit: Whoops, was just trying to note X, but it didn't come across right." would be sufficient, but it's up to you. To my knowledge, you have until two hours after posting to edit it, so time's running out...
mpg515 8y ago
GoDaddy was my first registrar in like 2004 and leaving them was an extremely difficult process at the time. I believe they made it troublesome on purpose, though I would not also rule out incompetence.

uberswe 8y ago

Nothing new. I used to buy and sell (mostly buy) lots of domains and wrote a review of several registrars in 2014 placing Godaddy at the very last place recommending users to stay away. Here below is what I wrote then: "Godaddy has improved slightly on their interface since last years review. However they still have large menus that are complicated to navigate through and seem to be using the same bait and switch methods as before. After finally finding a domain that you like you will receive several offers for email, hosting, etc before you can even get to the cart. All prices seem to have an asterisk or two telling you that their super low price is only valid if you pay for 2 years or more. Going from previous experience I feel as if Godaddy wants to lock me in to use their services for as long as possible or to simply get as much money out of me before I leave. Looking around for what Godaddy charges for renewals I found several red flags where users are getting charged “market prices” for their renewals. You can see a forum thread regarding how Godaddy charges way too much for renewals here (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1365680 http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1365680). This post here (https://www.authormedia.com/6-reasons-authors-should-avoid-godaddy/ https://www.authormedia.com/6-reasons-authors-should-avoid-g...) even gives an additional 6 reasons why you should stay away from Godaddy." https://archives.tenghamn.com/best/domain/registrar/2014/10/27/best-and-worst-domain-registrars-my-review-2014.html https://archives.tenghamn.com/best/domain/registrar/2014/10/...

ConfusedDog 8y ago
I think I saw your post long time ago and switched from GoDaddy to Namecheap because of it. Now I'm using Google Domain. Thank you for your contribution!
- uberswe 8y ago
  Glad to hear it!
ukyrgf 8y ago
The premium renewal thing blew my mind when I first saw it. I couldn't believe they were so bold as to say that one .com is more expensive to renew than another.

two2two 8y ago

I've experienced sketchy practices from several domain brokers and hosting services. GoDaddy is just the most widely used amongst my friends and clients--making them a necessary evil in my life--luckily not at my expense.

chad_strategic 8y ago

I have known a few people who think they are going to make millions selling domains. They had hundreds of domains, with auto renew. Set it and forget it. That has to got to be 50% of goDaddy revenue. I moved over to Amazon Route 53. It's not terribly user friendly, but at least it's not GoDaddy.

tomphoolery 8y ago
I wasn't a big fan of Amazon's domain name prices, but Route 53 is by far the best DNS I've ever used in my life.

bad_user 8y ago

For what is worth I've been using Namecheap.com for domain registration, for several years and have been satisfied. Never had any problems. Cloudflare is also entering this business and looks promising.

uberswe 8y ago
I definitely agree, NameSilo is a smaller registrar but is my go to place for .com while NameCheap has a wider selection of extensions.
mpg515 8y ago
I've been really enjoying Namecheap for about a year now. Great service.
throwawaymanbot 8y ago
Use a javascript blocker and then go to the namecheap.com site -- it takes about 10 minutes to click permission on the staggering array of ad script thats on there.
leetbulb 8y ago
I'll second this. Namecheap is amazing company! Been using them for domains and DNS (smaller scale stuff) for years.
bitshepherd 8y ago
I'm going to have to be the dissenter here. Namecheap also does domain name front running and tasting, so it's not really any different.
- dkonofalski 8y ago
  No they don't. At least not in the way that GoDaddy does it... NameCheap does this with domains that have expired and domains that are searched and reserved but fail for some reason. Since part of the service they provide is contingent on covering for people in the event of failures (missed renewals, misspellings, etc.), NameCheap auto-renews domains and reserves variations of others when they're registered. If the user doesn't end up actually renewing the domain, they mark it up and sell it as a premium domain since they now have paid for a domain without a buyer. NameCheap mostly does this as a service for existing customers. GoDaddy, on the other hand, does it explicitly for the revenue they can generate from desperate people who need domains they previously searched for.

pgrote 8y ago

I have no proof of anything GoDaddy specifically does. A while back I came across some of my archives that mentioned a BBS name that was popular in the past. Thinking it would be neat to own the domain name of the company that went out of business, I went to GoDaddy and checked. It was available awesome. Got distracted, came back an hour later and it was no longer available, but was at auction. My first suspicion is nothing nefarious happened. I could have misread available vs auction, but I don't think so. I might have mistyped the domain name, but I don't think so. Something didn't feel right. A few days later I checked another domain using whois through icaan. No resolution. Available. Pop over to GoDaddy and do the same thing ... check name is available. As a test, I wait an hour and come back to the name at auction. I cannot explain what happened it except maybe GoDaddy's name check leaks or someone had the exact same name ideas when I had them. Again, this was years ago and am unsure if it still occurs.

Wowfunhappy 8y ago
I also have no proof, but I have heard enough other stories like this one that I firmly belief something is going on. Using GoDaddy to check if a domain is available is a good way to make that domain become unavailable.
strict9 8y ago
Drop to a bash shell and do this: $ whois example.com It's what I've always turned to first for availability. Super fast and less chance of a middleman grabbing it because you expressed interest.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dewey 8y ago
  Doesn’t give you the price though which is one of the things people are looking for when searching for a domain and if it’s not one of the popular TLDs where you already know a ballpark figure.
  - 8y ago

aviv 8y ago

Relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18632988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18632988

oceanghost 8y ago

Godaddy is for sure a scam. They once charged me, if memory serves, $75 to resolve a complaint about one of my domains. They wouldn't tell me what the complaint was, who brought it, or how it was resolved. They just charged my card on file $75 for the "service". I transferred my domains out and never looked back.

mtw 8y ago

Godaddy got a domain I searched and did not buy, and generally the user experience is like doing business with a scammer and penny pincher. On the other hand, they found a buyer for one of my domains for $5000. Kinda of a wash.

throwawaymanbot 8y ago

Since GoDaddy were bought by a hedge fund a few years ago, they have basically gone in to "screw you buddy" mode. AS an example, I tried to purchase a domain using one of their famous coupons. I put it in, it worked, (10% off or something like that) I then went to pay and discovered that it wouldnt apply when I put in my CC to complete the transaction. I rang Customer support and I'm told that since I have used 10% coupon ONCE before (about a year and a half previous) that I could no longer avail of 10% coupons. The next day after I hung up, I moved ALL sites to another vendor. It was relatively painfree. I'm not mad at godaddy, I'm mad at the hedgefund thats clearly setting policy and that thinks it can just drop its balls about in a consequence free manner. Never use a product from GoDaddy again.

azhenley 8y ago

GoDaddy made me angry earlier this summer when it broke domain forwarding when they added shortlinks. All my URLs instantly broke. Customer support said it was by design. To fix it, we made NavHere (https://navhere.com/ https://navhere.com/) to be a simple domain forwarding service. Just a few weeks ago, GoDaddy announced they are going to fix their domain forwarding...

jermaustin1 8y ago
That said, domain forwarding is still broken on GoDaddy for people who wish to forward domain-a.com/* to domain-b.com/base-path/* and preserve the path.

AdmiralAsshat 8y ago

FWIW, GoDaddy isn't the only site I've seen do this. I had the same issue a couple years ago when I tried to use Google Domains to find a domain for my website. At the time I was trying a few and found, to my delight, that nothingofvalue.com was available. I started the process of purchasing it and then got scared when it came time to list my personal address for ownership. I stopped for about an hour to call my father to see if he would mind if I used his PO Box as the address. When I went back to redo/complete the registration, I was told the domain had been purchased by someone else. For the next year or two, I checked it periodically, just to see if anyone had actually built a page of it. Nope. Just squatting. I purchased nothingofvalue.org instead and have had it ever since. I also transferred the domain to Namecheap.

habosa 8y ago

I spent two hours one time transferring all my domains (~10) to Google Domains. What a relief to be done with that company. There is not one honest step in the GoDaddy flow, you really have to keep your hand on your wallet. Disclaimer: I work for Google, no interaction with the domains team though.

Aaargh20318 8y ago
How is Google’s support for domains ? I am very hesitant to buy anything from Google that may require support, as an Android developer I’ve heard too many horror stories to trust Google in this area (basically, there is no way to even talk to a human being, you can send an email and get a canned response from a bot. You’re better off talking to a brick wall).
- behringer 8y ago
  It's exactly what you can imagine. I'd instead recommend gandi.net. It's a few bucks more but they take their motto to heart.
  - brendyn 8y ago
    I posted this on the reddit too: I tried to buy a domain with gandi. I left it in my cart for a day and then the price went up $20 dollars. I loaded up the Tor Browser, searched the same domain name and it was back at the normal price. It would stay that way even when i looked up new .scot domains. Proof: https://i.imgur.com/7kMutbB.png https://i.imgur.com/7kMutbB.png . The "no bullshit" moto just sounds like Googles "don't be evil" moto, bullshit designed to fool geeks into thinking they're honest people. Does there even exist a site to buy domains that doesn't do this bullshit?
    - behringer 8y ago
      The current price on .scot domains is $49. Perhaps you're seeing a difference due to exchange rate? This is the first and only report I've ever heard of Gandi even remotely doing something like this. Unlike Google, Gandi actually does live up to its motto. And like Google, if they ever fail I'm ready to jump ship. On what date was this picture taken? [Edit] I just checked the exchange rate on google and 49usd is 67aud. Looks like it was just an exchange rate mixup on your part.

Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago

Going to get a little off-topic here, feel free to downvote if you feel it's out of place. Many HN users presumably saw the public launch of sr.ht a few weeks ago. I've been thinking about directions that it could be expanded in the future, and the use-cases which fit best are both (1) things I need to do to maintain sr.ht anyway, and could make into a service available to users; (2) things which are annoying to do elsewhere. To this end I'm thinking about offering domain registration. Since users pay a monthly/yearly subscription fee for sr.ht, I can just sell domains at wholesale prices and take no margin. Then you get to use the nice UI and API and so on sr.ht offers for doing DNS and domain registration (DNS probably through just pushing zone files to a git repo). Thoughts?

colemannugent 8y ago
While I have no doubt that you of all people could do DNS right, it seems a bit like scope creep IMO. I'm very excited about sr.ht, but also worried that it might be too much to execute all at once. That being said, DNS records in Git sounds kinda neat. You avoid all the special authentication nonsense of "DynamicDNS" or proprietary APIs by using SSH keys, and you have versioning for rolling back configurations. Also you don't need a special UI that essentially builds zone files as you'd just have your users make their own. You might need some validation of the files before you actually put them into BIND though.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
  Well, in terms of scope, this falls under >things I need to do to maintain sr.ht anyway I already run my own authoritative nameservers and if I automated the maintenance and deployment of that, it'd only be an afternoon of hacking to make available to the public, and a weekend of hacking to add domain registration to it. I don't just work on sr.ht, too, so having a streamlined and integrated domain registration and DNS service would be great for my other projects.
  - solarkraft 8y ago
    Your scope, yeah, but I think the previous poster was talking about product scope. Though I do think it could be a good idea.

codyogden 8y ago

I use domainr.com for this very reason.

saltyshake 8y ago

I had a very similar experience back in 2007. Searched for the domain, was available (and super unique). Next day ready to buy and it was up for auction. Nowadays I would only use Google. They have a reputation to worry about if they try and pull over these tactics, unlike Godaddy and similar shady companies.

SQL2219 8y ago
I had my suspicions about searching for domains on godaddy. Do a search for a domain, come back in a few days and it was purchased by someone else.

ryeguy_24 8y ago

Couldn’t this be considered “front running”?

etjossem 8y ago
Ding ding ding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_front_running https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_front_running
ryanlol 8y ago
How do you go from this post to "front running"? The guy is talking about a domain auction lasting more than 90 days.
- ryeguy_24 8y ago
  I could be mistaken by the main point was that they are searching for a domain on Godaddy and finds it was purchased and subsequently put up for auctions moments after the search.
  - ryanlol 8y ago
    I doubt that's the main point. There's simply nothing in the original post that suggests this. The guy later commented that GoDaddy had registered the domain the same day he searched it, but judging by his original comment it doesn't seem that he ever saw it available. >Okay, so I searched for one domain name on godaddy. It was available but it was on 'auction' being sold for more than $10k. After reading OPs post over and over again, it seems pretty clear that the guy is upset about the auction lasting more than the 90 days that was originally promised. >The auction was supposed to last 90days. After these 90 days there were 4 views in total (all by me) and it got renewed for another 90 days and it keeps saying that the auction has started the day I searched for the domain for the first time. >If someone is able to justify this as not a scam, please post your opinion I think it's very weird that all the commenters seem to be assuming that there's frontrunning happening here. I guess it's just easy to hate on GoDaddy while totally ignoring the facts. It's far more likely that this guy resolved the domain to check if it exists and got fucked by passivedns instead of GoDaddy.

onemoresoop 8y ago

Should be called DaddyStopIt!

taytus 8y ago

I'm just an user, I'm not in the business of buying/selling domains. Besides their shitty website, I never had a problem with GoDaddy. I've been a customer of theirs for about 15 years. Just sharing my experience.

taytus 8y ago
Guys, I really don't mind the downvotes. And I won't ask for clarification either. But I believe sharing someone's experience I believe doesn't deserve a downvote. Anyway, downvote as much as you want :)
dmortin 8y ago
Same for me. I have a couple of domains with hosting at them, which get about 20k users per day in total. I've been a customer for 10 years or so and while there were some hiccups sometimes, usually it just works without problems. Their 1st line support is not the greatest when there is an actual problem, though. Luckily I only had a few problems during the years.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
stubish 8y ago
I moved over a decade ago purely because of their shitty website. It just made me angry, wading through what could be a satire of all the annoying, shady and deceptive sales tactics that I don't think existed anywhere else at the time. I started paying more elsewhere to avoid the stress, and expected them to die off in the race to the bottom. But there they still are, and they aren't the cheapest and aren't offering anything unique. They are one of the reasons I'm so intolerant of advertising in general, because what I see is marketing driving people to give money to an abusive company, when just about every alternative is a better option. It just seems wrong.
DonHopkins 8y ago
15 years, huh? If a video of "hungry villagers" butchering the elephant GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons murdered while wearing neon orange GoDaddy baseball caps doesn't give you a problem with GoDaddy, and you also have no problem with all the dark patterns on their terrible web site and the shady shenanigans so many people are reporting that GoDaddy currently perpetrate on their users, then what would they have to actually do to convince you to switch to a more reputable service? https://gawker.com/5787676/meet-godaddys-ridiculous-elephant-killing-ceo https://gawker.com/5787676/meet-godaddys-ridiculous-elephant...

herghost 8y ago

Their domain privacy service just blackholes any emails sent to it instead of forwarding them on. Almost cost me a domain due to their scammy set-up - since the domain was listed as "Domains By Proxy" or something similar, GoDaddy argued that it wasn't actually mine (despite selling it to me, and selling the privacy service to me) and the request to transfer couldn't go ahead. Thankfully Nominet were incredibly helpful (and seemingly well aware of GoDaddy's M.O.) and they managed to sort it for me. Sadly, I've just checked their site and they list GoDaddy as a registrar to use them looking for a domain, which is a shame.

ryanlol 8y ago

What is godaddy supposed to have done wrong here? OP strangely enough doesn't seem to make any specific claims of wrongdoing.

chengiz 8y ago
They registered a domain soon as OP searched for it and jacked up the price, basically.
- ryanlol 8y ago
  That's not what the OP says though. The OP says the domain was registered the same day he searched it on GoDaddy, he never specifies when this happened. If you read the guys comments, it almost feels like he's going out of his way to avoid specifying this really important detail. https://www.reddit.com/user/joevenet/comments/ https://www.reddit.com/user/joevenet/comments/ And if this thread is supposed to be about godaddy squatting, why the story about the 90 day auction expiry? To me this definitely reads like a complaint about Godaddy auction processes and not about squatting.

andrewmcwatters 8y ago

My understanding of GoDaddy over the last couple of decades is that they weren't always a bad player in the space. They are, supposedly still, the largest registrar. I don't see a future where that can ever stay true, however. I used to use them, but my final straw was their backing of SOPA in an incredibly heated time for Internet legislation which has reverberated into present day. A lot of their market presence in the past had to do with their marketing, such as the Super Bowl commercials they ran, GoDaddy partner Danica Patrick, and some local philanthropy in Arizona, where their headquarters is. Eventually, people found better deals with Gandi, Namecheap, and others, and their industry force evolved into one with far less impact. Now the industry is evolving into one with no overhead with Cloudflare providing domains at-cost as companies provide value-added services which subsidize operating costs for providing domains to customers. This will ultimately put companies we've known in the past to be giants, and to this day are still publicly traded, in dire straits as they find new ways to stay relevant. GoDaddy provides no high-value value-added services in comparison to other market leaders. So, for most who have moved on, there's no reason to go back. They are a now a middleman for no one other than small agencies or individual customers at best, who arguably do not provide any value for them either. We'll see what happens to GoDaddys, Namecheaps, and Network Solutions when you can't charge people for domains anymore. What happened to TLS certificates will almost certainly happen to domains, too, albeit with ICANN fees remaining as the last overhead.

ryanlol 8y ago
>GoDaddy provides no high-value value-added services in comparison to other market leaders I don't think there's all that much serious competition for auctions.godaddy.com

EGreg 8y ago

Link to hacker news from... 7 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2326790 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2326790

saltyshake 8y ago
404 ?
- EGreg 8y ago
  Nopie

mythz 8y ago

Moving away from GoDaddy was one of the most rewarding "online service" switches I've made. I used to cringe visiting GoDaddy when renewing domain names where I've had to carefully navigate my way through their Dark UX patterns which feels like I've ventured into the "Dark side of the Web" where you can't trust what you read and everything is designed to upsell scams out of you. I've moved everything to Google Domains, at $12 /y for .com domains it's only a little more expensive than GoDaddy (with Coupons) but it has a straight-forward simple and minimalist UI where I can get everything I need to get done (e.g. dns config/renewing) quickly and easily. It's an example of a UX-focused UI built for you by contrast I view GoDaddy's user-hostile UX was designed against your best interests.

zepearl 8y ago
I totally agree. I always dreaded the time when I had to renew my SSL cert with GoDaddy. Then, each year, while navigating on their website, I always ended up asking myself if they hired a group of psychos to design their UI. After a couple of years I finally found Namecheap and never looked back.

ww520 8y ago

Godaddy is a scam and a massive domain squatter.

appleiigs 8y ago

Are there any landmines to step on when transferring a domain? Seems like you pay a transfer cost but they extend you by 1 year. Easy as that? I'm ok with a bit of downtime.

tombrossman 8y ago
You shoudn't have any downtime. Copy your current DNS records for your transferring domain(s) and input them at the destination Registrar, then initiate the transfer, and done. It is surprisingly easy. The only edge case to check is if you are using non-standard or less common DNS record types (ALIAS, CAA) then first confirm with the destination Registrar that they support the record types you need. Or if you want to keep things really simple, switch to a third-party DNS host before transferring and use the same name-server settings. And yes, paying the target Registrar should extend your registration time. For example, say you bought a domain last year and paid to register it for five years (so four years remain). Now you transfer it to Gandi.net and pay their transfer fee. You used up one year originally, transferred, and it's yours for five years again. Your unused years at the outgoing Registrar 'roll over' to the new one.
- appleiigs 8y ago
  Thank you.

ModernMech 8y ago

I remember I once searched for a domain name on Godaddy, and found that it was available. I waited a couple days before I decided on buying it, but next time I checked it was registered by Godaddy. If you wen to the address, you were directed to a website stating the domain has been "parked for your convenience", and you could buy it from them for now twice as much. I remember feeling so completely cheated I never did business with them again, and certainly never searched for available domains with them.

DonHopkins 8y ago

It's not surprising a company founded by an elephant murderer turned out to be a scam. https://gawker.com/5787676/meet-godaddys-ridiculous-elephant-killing-ceo https://gawker.com/5787676/meet-godaddys-ridiculous-elephant...

quadyeast 8y ago

Totally off topic but I must. Because of the the painful UI to the horrible marketing to the elephant killing paid for by the founder, I celebrate everything anti-Godaddy.

philshem 8y ago

Couldn’t we reverse this on them? For example, get a list of available domains and reverse-scrape from various users to trick the algorithm into thinking the domains were valuable?

KitDuncan 8y ago

I just sold a domain on GoDaddy two weeks ago. Should I be afraid, that I won't get my money? I thought there was nothing to worry about, since it's such a big company....

ukyrgf 8y ago

A few years ago, I typed in a domain I wanted and was surprised to see a link to Godaddy Auctions saying I could have it "Buy It Now"-style for $80. I've had miserable experiences with Godaddy so I really didn't want to do it, but I wanted the domain and figured they'd jack it up to $5,000 if I hit refresh. A few days went by with no registration details, and all I could find in my account was the receipt. I called them up and was told that somebody else already owns the domain, but, if they don't re-register it when it expires, and they don't re-register it during the 30 day grace period, then I'd have the pleasure of being able to own it. When I told the person that I could have just waited and registered it on my own without spending $80, she said that since it's a 5-letter domain, Godaddy would have put it on the market as a premium domain. Apparently, I got a bargain. I transferred it out of Godaddy as quick as I could, and one of the first things I did at my current job was convince my boss to start transferring his 400+ domains out of Godaddy. He had no idea that the "premium domains" that they charge him $100/yr to "premium renew" aren't actually anything special, and other registrars don't do that.

ris 8y ago

Can anyone be surprised at how worried I was when I learned that webfaction were being bought by GoDaddy?

theartfuldodger 8y ago

This was always accepted as a reality within the affiliate marketing communities, we knew never to use godaddy services to search for an available domain unless you purchased it immediately. I heard many anecdotal stories as consequently I owned the #1 us organic position for "available domain" and primarily referred people to godaddy and namecheap. edit I see a godaddy insider confirmed the practice

nojvek 8y ago

I’m glad Godaddy is getting shamed. I hope they lose a ton of business over this.

brokenmachine 8y ago

Probably off-topic, but I've always wondered how malware authors register domains that are generated by Domain Generation Algorithms, without it being trackable back to them.