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GoDaddy SSL Cert Scam

321 points by dchest 15y ago

wccrawford 15y ago
'Scam' is a really strong word and denotes an illegal action. While these are shady practices, they are not illegal. And the 1-month ahead renewal is not shorting you of a month. It's preventing you from getting into a situation where your cert expires because your CC details were invalid and it took to long to replace them. It also gives you time to configure your server, etc. They are hardly the first company to offer a different initial price than the renewal, either. I hate that tactic, and watch for it, but it's not even unethical unless they don't tell you about it.
- dlikhten 15y ago
  I'm sorry I must disagree. Its not a scam in the classical sense but it is one. Its like the real-estate sites that ask for a credit card and a free trial, to cancel you must CALL between 3-4pm on a Wednesday when their lines are busy AND they promptly close doors at 4pm or you will get charged perpetually. However GD can offer whatever they want. HOWEVER this is deceptive marketing AND I am fairly sure you can take em to courts over this.
  - mnutt 15y ago
    If the real-estate sites really make it impossible to cancel, why not call your credit card company and get them to issue a chargeback?
    - dchest 15y ago
      It was meant as an example of "scam"; your question is irrelevant to the discussion.
- michael_dorfman 15y ago
  'Scam' is a really strong word and denotes an illegal action. Not at all. It implies deceit, but not necessarily illegality. Many scams are legal.
fomojola 15y ago
HAHAHAHA. Well, it actually gets worse. If you cancel the auto renewal, then go into Google and search for "ssl certificate" you'll get a wonderful ad (at the very top) that is for $12.99 (with the quote "why pay more"). You can then buy that cert and it gives you the exact same thing as the renewal (admittedly a bit more work, but is the convenience of auto-renewal really worth $37?). Been doing this for the last 3 years: they are TRULY retarded for using such a scheme but hey! It catches some people, so I guess tactics like that got them the $2bn "investment" from the friends at Silver Lake.
- keltex 15y ago
  Exactly. Disable auto-renew for all your GoDaddy products! Thankfully GoDaddy explains how to do this: http://help.godaddy.com/article/1042 http://help.godaddy.com/article/1042
- kijinbear 15y ago
  $12.99? Why pay more? Namecheap has SSL certs for $9/year.
RyanKearney 15y ago
>I called GoDaddy Support this Sunday afternoon. While it was a long distance call, I only had to wait about a minute to reach a person in their Billing Department. They were happy to refund me the $49.99 after I deleted the cert and sent me the instructions to disable auto-renewals I linked to above. This times 1000 I experienced this exact same issue. I was pretty pissed to say the least but I called, got a human in about 60 seconds, and they refunded me as well as told me how to disable auto renew. I see no problem here.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  > I see no problem here. Really, you don't see a problem with their "better ask forgiveness than permission" tactic?
  - ineedtosleep 15y ago
    Not many people will see a problem in this as other people's money usually rank below one's own.
  - lamnk 15y ago
    I'm playing devil advocate here: You should do research before you buy things. And it seems that the author knew Godaddy is notorious for shady practices.
    - pavel_lishin 15y ago
      "Caveat Emptor" doesn't excuse shady business practices. If I lose my money to a scam artist, I may be partially to blame, but that does not mean that the scam artist is excused, from a moral point of view.
      - lamnk 15y ago
        Yes, but I'd not call what Godaddy doing scam. The practice of discounting first payment is popular with subscription business model, to lure customer into signing up. I don't know what the situation in the US is, but here in Germany for example a lot of newspapers often try to get people signed up with first two weeks for free, after 2 weeks you will be billed. Annoying it is, if you don't read the fine-print, but it doesn't make the practice illegal.
PaulHoule 15y ago
Complain all you like but it seems at any given time I'm working for at least one organization that is running an expired SSL certificate on a server I need to use. More of these organizations should be using auto-renew.
- dchest 15y ago
  Auto-renew won't automatically setup a renewed certificate on your server.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  Auto-renew that charges you more than advertised, that you cannot opt out of without asking a human for assistance?
layzphil 15y ago
I don't really see the problem here. GoDaddy products can be had very cheaply, they are so cheap with coupon codes the probably potentially make very little per sale. All insurance companies work the same way, try hard to get a new customer, milk them dry on the tail end because they are too lazy to search out a better deal.
lamnk 15y ago
It's well known that domain/hosting companies often offer great discount for first year/payment, then charge for full price later. For example, Godaddy's $1.99 .info or Namecheap's free first year Privacy Guard or Gandi offers a free domain with their SSL cert.
sandaru1 15y ago
Any recommendations on where to buy a good ssl certificate?
- chappi42 15y ago
  gandi.net if you register the domain with them, a standard ssl cert is included. Not sure if they issue certificates if the domain is somwhere else.
  - forcer 15y ago
    DigiCert. I am currently going through the EV validation process with them and they are absolutely briliant. Very quick customer service (including online chat), well designed and easy to use website, good prices. What's more to ask?
- dpapathanasiou 15y ago
  This advice from mdasen last year helped me (I wouldn't have known about the cheaper pricing through resellers otherwise): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1318340 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1318340
- colinprince 15y ago
  For a free cert check out: https://github.com/ioerror/duraconf/blob/master/startssl/README.markdown https://github.com/ioerror/duraconf/blob/master/startssl/REA...
- pja 15y ago
  http://www.startssl.com/ http://www.startssl.com/ will give you a free ssl certificate for a single domain (actually, they'll give you one that covers a domain plus a single subdomain). Handy if you want to setup your own mailserver somewhere: the root certs are in all the main browsers & mail clients. You'll need to have your (web|mail)server serve up the intermediate cert as well as the leaf cert which can be a slight pain to setup, but apart from that it all works just fine.
  - 15y ago
ilikepi 15y ago
Timely... At work we use RapidSSL (a division of GeoTrust) for a handful of certs. Last night I received an email with a banner warning me, "Your certificate is ABOUT TO EXPIRE". The email goes on to list the expiration date as "Oct 12, 2011". Four months is certainly generous notice, but I've always taken this as a simple marketing attempt to maintain customer loyalty. Usually I take these emails as tickler reminders and delete the first couple. When I eventually decide it's time to renew, I pull up the site by typing the URL into the browser. Upon reading this article, I wondered whether following the link in the email would result in a different pricing structure. As it turns out, the answer is yes, though after playing around, it doesn't appear to have anything to do with the email link. The first page of RapidSSL's order form handles both new orders and renewals with a pair of radio buttons. Another section of the form allows you to specify the validity period from one to five years. The prices appear alongside the choices, and are currently the same for both initial orders and renewals. First I visited "www.rapidssl.com" and clicked the "buy/renew" link for a single domain cert. I got an order form with the following prices for 1-5 years: 49, 86, 122, 159, 196 Then I pasted the link from the email (which contains a fairly simple query string that does not appear to have a unique identifier in it) into a different browser. I clicked the "buy/renew" link for a single domain cert, I get the same form with the following prices: 79, 138, 198, 257, 316 It's interesting to me that the difference in price actually increases as the validity period increases: 30, 52, 76, 98, 120 Still more interesting, after resetting the browser and pulling up "www.rapidssl.com" directly, the prices are completely different: 29, 51, 72, 94, 116 I tried the email link one more time and got the 49-86-122 pricing again. Then I tried it one more time and got 19, 33, 48, 62, 76. So clearly RapidSSL is varying their prices on the fly, presumably to gain insight as to what people are willing to pay. I was ready to claim the link in the email yielded higher prices, but that seems not to be the case. So I guess after all that, this isn't particularly interesting. I'll definitely hit the site a few times when it comes time to purchase though. Unfortunately the pricing structure for a wildcard certificate never seemed to vary.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  Maybe they're just doing A/B(/C/D) testing to see which price is optimal.
- 15y ago
onomojo 15y ago
I had the exact same thing happen to me. One of many reasons why I've not only stopped using GoDaddy for myself but also why I've decided to REFUSE to work with them for my clients. If my clients use GoDaddy, they can either get off GoDaddy or find another developer. Sometimes you have to force morality upon those without. :P
hughesdan 15y ago
Was start date of the renewal term synced to the end date of the expiring term? If so it doesn't sound so shady to me. It seems logical that they would notify you and confirm your desire for a renewal prior to the end of the previous term rather than wait until the absolute last moment, especially with something like an SSL cert. I'm not saying GoDaddy isn't shady. And they certainly are aggressive with their auto-renew policies. Heck how do you think they afford Superbowl ads and Danica Patrick at the prices they charge :) But the experience you described doesn't sound like a scam to me.
vidyesh 15y ago
Never liked GoDaddy's service. There are several reasons why. So moved to namecheap. But the point here is GoDaddy by default puts all your services on auto-renewal. I am a bit paranoid over what goes on in my accounts ( especially PayPal) so i had disabled the auto renew when i saw it. Talking about price hike, thats a marketing strategy. You usually don't get coupon codes for renewals ( if you do get, those are usually for bulk renewals ). These service providers always lure you to register at special prices so you stick with them forever and in this case it auto renewed :\ About the cert. expiration, that seems a bit odd but better talk to GoDaddy Support, they would help you out.
frankdenbow 15y ago
They auto-renewed some auction service for $75 that I have never used or heard of. Really sick of Godaddy
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
CoffeeDregs 15y ago
Okay, I use godaddy for domains and DNS. Never had a problem with them. But these 'godaddy sucks' posts and the godaddy buyout are starting to worry me. Who would you recommend as a replacement for registration and DNS?
- stanleydrew 15y ago
  Its not hard to find viable alternatives. There was a big thread on it about a year ago if I remember correctly. I use name.com and have been very happy. A lot of people here use namecheap. I bet other people will reply to this comment with more options.
- fbuilesv 15y ago
  I can't recommend DNSimple enough (http://dnsimple.com http://dnsimple.com). Pretty straight forward pricing, nice one-click integration with stuff like Google Apps and they'll even give you a discount if you transfer domains off GoDaddy.
  - CoffeeDregs 15y ago
    Looks nice, but it seems to have a significant price premium over GoDaddy (seems to be $14/domain/year + $120/year for DNS). Is the benefit worth the premium?
    - rbritton 15y ago
      You can use something like Amazon Route53 for your name servers at much lower than that. It's $1/mo per domain + a small cost per unit of traffic
    - newman314 15y ago
      Actually, I've been using Cloudflare for the last couple of weeks and have been pretty happy with it so far. Side benefits, CDN caching and threat detection/protection.
    - fbuilesv 15y ago
      I'm not sure how many domains you handle, but in my case I have less than 10 domains so I pay $36 yearly + 8 per domain transfer from GoDaddy (or $14 as you mentioned). With one click you get stuff like Google Apps or Heroku setup for you. After dealing with registrars for a long time I've realized that paying extra $5 per domain per year is totally worth it if you don't have to deal with companies like GoDaddy. I'm not familiar with the Amazon service, but if it's $1 per domain per month then you'd save $0.7 for every domain using DNSimple. EDIT: I should link to another HN discussion on the subject: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2753471 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2753471. One comment that resonates by jbyers: "Read your registrar's terms. See if you still want to save that $6 a year".
CoffeeDregs 15y ago
Okay, I use godaddy for domains and DNS. Never had a problem with them. But these 'godaddy sucks' posts and the godaddy buyout are starting to worry me. Who would you recommend as a replacement for registration and DNS?
jivejones 15y ago
I had the same problem, signed up last year, set it up a month later and now I'm getting time to renew emails. Also although its 'easy' to disable the auto-renew I've had products that still renewed after disabling the auto-renew.
gst 15y ago
I never understood why GoDaddy has such a monopoly-like status - even in the startup scene. I've only used their services once (because someone transfered a domain to me and prefered to do this as GoDaddy-internal transfer), but the first thing I did was transfering the domain to another registrar (the one that I typically also use for my other domains). Reasons why I wouldn't use GoDaddy: GoDaddy is not really one of the cheapest registrars. I find their pricing "tactics" (as also mentioned in the article) very questionable. Their whole website isn't just really appealing to me (I know, very subjective).
- beedogs 15y ago
  The guy that owns them has said/done some things that annoy me, too. That plus cheaper, less-hassle registrars were enough for me to avoid it.
  - sesqu 15y ago
    He sold it a week ago. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304584004576420372308902058.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230458400457642...
    - dspace 15y ago
      If I'm reading that article correctly, GoDaddy is more than $1 billion in debt?
      - dangrossman 15y ago
        I don't think you're reading it correctly. When it says part of the deal price is debt, that means the purchaser is using debt to finance the acquisition (taking loans or issuing bonds). It's nothing to do with GoDaddy's balance sheet.
- Shenglong 15y ago
  What's cheaper than GoDaddy? All my .com and .net domains end up costing me $7.49. I'd love to know...
jbyers 15y ago
The author's first point is incorrect. GoDaddy doesn't take a month off the length of the cert. They do start sending you reminders 60 days ahead that say your cert needs to be renewed in 30 days, but you get your full extra year. I've had the pleasure of doing this dozens of times for our certificates, the last thing we buy from GoDaddy after moving our domain business elsewhere.
powertower 15y ago
Domains are GoDaddy's loss-leader. All profits come from cross-selling, up-selling, and shady tactics. A registrar that has sold 1 million domains at $10/year price, and does nothing else, is one that will make at most about $25,000/year in profit max after various costs (reg fees, support, etc), but more likely will be in the hole. I stopped blaming GoDaddy a long time ago. This is just the nature of the game.
aneth 15y ago
Godaddy is he only place I've found "Extended Validation" certs at a reasonable price - $99 instead of $499+. I hate their website and crosselling, but I do appreciate as the author points out that they have people you can call - how many registrars have that? Are there any alternatives for EV certs that are not a ripoff?
- sunchild 15y ago
  If you call GoDaddy, they'll spend most of their time upselling you.
- waterside81 15y ago
  How arduous was the EV process? What did you have to provide as proof? I tried to go down this route with Comodo and it was a colossal waste of time. The documents they require would make the FBI blush.
- zokier 15y ago
  What's the point of EV certs?
jonathanjaeger 15y ago
Same thing would have happened to me but my credit card on file expired. Talked to customer service and was never charged. Despite some of the obvious disadvantages of using GoDaddy, I've always gotten great customer service from them.
unreal37 15y ago
This isn't really a scam. I have dozens of domains with GoDaddy, as well as some of their other services. "How can I get the cheapest price" is a game we all play with them. Revision3 has a handy page with GD discount codes, and I've been referring to that page for years. I am helping keep Digg in business from the affiliate fees. Can we agree the "auto-renew" was not scammy? They didn't rip you off a year. Just reminding you 60 days early as they should. Can we agree its not shady or unethical to charge different prices for 1st year versus a higher price for subsequent year renewals? Or different prices for different people, in some type of A/B test? Everyone does that. Even amazon.com shows different prices to different people. Can we agree their customer support was really helpful to you? So what's the problem exactly?
- lukeschlather 15y ago
  It's unethical to charge someone one price for a recurring service and then more than triple the price, in an opt-out fashion. If you raise prices, you need to do your due diligence to make sure your customers are aware they're paying more. This kind of a price increase should really be opt-in rather than opt-out.
  - BlazingFrog 15y ago
    I totally agree with you. The same thing happened to me with another registrar/hosting company (ipage). Hosting for a year went from around $50 to over $100 with auto-renew. I did receive an email notifying me of the upcoming renewal but no price was included in the email. When I confronted them after the fact they told me that the information was on their home page where it says something to the effect of "Hosting only $50/year" and then right underneath in small print "(save 50%)". Maybe I should have assumed that saving 50% now meant I would be charged twice as much the next time but I guess I'm not that bright. Also, when asked for an explicit price list in a chat session, they gave me a link to a page buried in the FAQ to which, they acknowledged, you couldn't get directly in any easy way. I guess they're all the same.
    - msbarnett 15y ago
hippich 15y ago
For anyone who needs SSL certificate without perks, consider free one from http://www.startssl.com/ http://www.startssl.com/ It do not offer strong encryption and do not do personal identification (obviously - it is free), but it is very cost-effective solution to have https:// https:// on your website to prevent eyes droppers sniff traffic. (not sure if it is enough for e-commerce, like google checkout tho) Now you have no excuse to not have https:// https:// in your website where people enter their passwords =)
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
richcollins 15y ago
Same thing happened to me for a $200 dollar cert. I complained through their support ticket system and they issued me a refund.
apedley 15y ago
The $12.99 price is a special price and always has been. You can still find discount codes and apply it to them when you renew to get it at the same price. Godaddy can be insanely cheap if you never auto renew and always manually renew with discount codes. Though yes you need to get off Godaddy. As do I. Just waiting for a little more revenue from my site to move to Rackspace Cloud :)
- mtogo 15y ago
  You can also buy a RapidSSL cert from namecheap for $11 every year, no coupon codes.
- cosgroveb 15y ago
  Sale prices that are always in effect are not "special" prices.
winternett 15y ago
The same thing happened with a Network Solutions hosting plan I had. They auto-renewed me when I had over one month before renewal. Their service had been horrible on Drupal sites. Just the DNS resolution to my hosting account was taking 2-3 seconds. I enlisted an up-time monitoring service and found that my site was down frequently even while I was paying for this renewal I did not want. Shame such a dominant company in the 90s has basically laid the road map for shady hosting.
- wladimir 15y ago
  Yes, network solutions is also terrible. I still have a domain with them, and it takes five clicks just to get to the DNS management interface. Every step in the way they try to make as unclear as possible by flashing banners and shiny buttons in your face to get you to buy more of their services.
phil 15y ago
So obviously they should disable auto-renew by default and start emailing you the day before expiry, right? Except that's nuts -- many of their customer's certs would lapse before they renewed. That's so bad that most sites should even put up with the extra 30 bucks to reduce their risk.
WettowelReactor 15y ago
This makes me happy that we decided to go with Digicert. Although not the cheapest their customer service is above par. We just got a renew (not auto-renew) notice 60 days from expiration. Not only where they offering a 15% discount on renewal but for every day early we renew we get 2 days added to the new cert. I.E. renew 60 days early on a 12 month cert and they give us 14 months.
jeromeparadis 15y ago
I also use GoDady because they are cheap and it does the job. For DNS, I use DNS Made Easy because it's never a good idea to have your DNSes at your registrar (if you ever need to move). The trick with GoDaddy, don't check the box to leave your credit card with them. You'll then have to manually renew all services and you never run into the risk of forgetting to uncheck some auto-renew option...
Metapony 15y ago
I know people who work for GoDaddy and the confusing website is part of the upsell. That GoDaddy would screw people with SSL certificates is no surprise. My requirements for hosting are always 'Anyone but godaddy."
- po 15y ago
  I used to have an 'Anyone but godaddy" policy. Then I ended up with some names at eNom and they just emailed me my password. Now I'm shopping around to move.
plasma 15y ago
Another "scam" I associate with GoDaddy is that when you pick to pay for the Whois Privacy protection, you also get a 'Business Registration' fee added (like $5/year or something trivial). All this fee does is list your domain name or something similar in a GoDaddy ran business directory -- useless. It's an extra charge they hope you don't notice, and it's only added to your cart when you add Whois Privacy protection. You need to remove it from your cart afterwards.
mancjew 15y ago
Thanks you just saved me $70 bucks, I got charged extra for one year already and they didn't refund me after I complained.
AltIvan 15y ago
Use paypal guys. All those auto-renew things get 100% visible on your paypal dashboard so its pretty easy to remove them all.
desaiguddu 15y ago
Screw you GoDaddy !
asciilifeform 15y ago
All SSL certs are a rent-seeking scam. Pay the protection money, get a string of bits which cost the vendor nothing to produce. Or choose between zero security or users' browsers whining about "self-signed certificate" every time they visit your site.
follownicholas 15y ago
Luckily if you pay via credit card then you are always protected, if you file a credit card chargeback.

321 points by dchest 15y ago

'Scam' is a really strong word and denotes an illegal action. While these are shady practices, they are not illegal. And the 1-month ahead renewal is not shorting you of a month. It's preventing you from getting into a situation where your cert expires because your CC details were invalid and it took to long to replace them. It also gives you time to configure your server, etc. They are hardly the first company to offer a different initial price than the renewal, either. I hate that tactic, and watch for it, but it's not even unethical unless they don't tell you about it.

dlikhten 15y ago
I'm sorry I must disagree. Its not a scam in the classical sense but it is one. Its like the real-estate sites that ask for a credit card and a free trial, to cancel you must CALL between 3-4pm on a Wednesday when their lines are busy AND they promptly close doors at 4pm or you will get charged perpetually. However GD can offer whatever they want. HOWEVER this is deceptive marketing AND I am fairly sure you can take em to courts over this.
- mnutt 15y ago
  If the real-estate sites really make it impossible to cancel, why not call your credit card company and get them to issue a chargeback?
  - dchest 15y ago
    It was meant as an example of "scam"; your question is irrelevant to the discussion.
michael_dorfman 15y ago
'Scam' is a really strong word and denotes an illegal action. Not at all. It implies deceit, but not necessarily illegality. Many scams are legal.

fomojola 15y ago

HAHAHAHA. Well, it actually gets worse. If you cancel the auto renewal, then go into Google and search for "ssl certificate" you'll get a wonderful ad (at the very top) that is for $12.99 (with the quote "why pay more"). You can then buy that cert and it gives you the exact same thing as the renewal (admittedly a bit more work, but is the convenience of auto-renewal really worth $37?). Been doing this for the last 3 years: they are TRULY retarded for using such a scheme but hey! It catches some people, so I guess tactics like that got them the $2bn "investment" from the friends at Silver Lake.

keltex 15y ago
Exactly. Disable auto-renew for all your GoDaddy products! Thankfully GoDaddy explains how to do this: http://help.godaddy.com/article/1042 http://help.godaddy.com/article/1042
kijinbear 15y ago
$12.99? Why pay more? Namecheap has SSL certs for $9/year.

RyanKearney 15y ago

>I called GoDaddy Support this Sunday afternoon. While it was a long distance call, I only had to wait about a minute to reach a person in their Billing Department. They were happy to refund me the $49.99 after I deleted the cert and sent me the instructions to disable auto-renewals I linked to above. This times 1000 I experienced this exact same issue. I was pretty pissed to say the least but I called, got a human in about 60 seconds, and they refunded me as well as told me how to disable auto renew. I see no problem here.

pavel_lishin 15y ago
> I see no problem here. Really, you don't see a problem with their "better ask forgiveness than permission" tactic?
- ineedtosleep 15y ago
  Not many people will see a problem in this as other people's money usually rank below one's own.
- lamnk 15y ago
  I'm playing devil advocate here: You should do research before you buy things. And it seems that the author knew Godaddy is notorious for shady practices.
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    "Caveat Emptor" doesn't excuse shady business practices. If I lose my money to a scam artist, I may be partially to blame, but that does not mean that the scam artist is excused, from a moral point of view.
    - lamnk 15y ago
      Yes, but I'd not call what Godaddy doing scam. The practice of discounting first payment is popular with subscription business model, to lure customer into signing up. I don't know what the situation in the US is, but here in Germany for example a lot of newspapers often try to get people signed up with first two weeks for free, after 2 weeks you will be billed. Annoying it is, if you don't read the fine-print, but it doesn't make the practice illegal.

PaulHoule 15y ago

Complain all you like but it seems at any given time I'm working for at least one organization that is running an expired SSL certificate on a server I need to use. More of these organizations should be using auto-renew.

dchest 15y ago
Auto-renew won't automatically setup a renewed certificate on your server.
pavel_lishin 15y ago
Auto-renew that charges you more than advertised, that you cannot opt out of without asking a human for assistance?

layzphil 15y ago

I don't really see the problem here. GoDaddy products can be had very cheaply, they are so cheap with coupon codes the probably potentially make very little per sale. All insurance companies work the same way, try hard to get a new customer, milk them dry on the tail end because they are too lazy to search out a better deal.

lamnk 15y ago

It's well known that domain/hosting companies often offer great discount for first year/payment, then charge for full price later. For example, Godaddy's $1.99 .info or Namecheap's free first year Privacy Guard or Gandi offers a free domain with their SSL cert.

sandaru1 15y ago

Any recommendations on where to buy a good ssl certificate?

chappi42 15y ago
gandi.net if you register the domain with them, a standard ssl cert is included. Not sure if they issue certificates if the domain is somwhere else.
- forcer 15y ago
  DigiCert. I am currently going through the EV validation process with them and they are absolutely briliant. Very quick customer service (including online chat), well designed and easy to use website, good prices. What's more to ask?
dpapathanasiou 15y ago
This advice from mdasen last year helped me (I wouldn't have known about the cheaper pricing through resellers otherwise): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1318340 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1318340
colinprince 15y ago
For a free cert check out: https://github.com/ioerror/duraconf/blob/master/startssl/README.markdown https://github.com/ioerror/duraconf/blob/master/startssl/REA...
pja 15y ago
http://www.startssl.com/ http://www.startssl.com/ will give you a free ssl certificate for a single domain (actually, they'll give you one that covers a domain plus a single subdomain). Handy if you want to setup your own mailserver somewhere: the root certs are in all the main browsers & mail clients. You'll need to have your (web|mail)server serve up the intermediate cert as well as the leaf cert which can be a slight pain to setup, but apart from that it all works just fine.
- 15y ago

ilikepi 15y ago

Timely... At work we use RapidSSL (a division of GeoTrust) for a handful of certs. Last night I received an email with a banner warning me, "Your certificate is ABOUT TO EXPIRE". The email goes on to list the expiration date as "Oct 12, 2011". Four months is certainly generous notice, but I've always taken this as a simple marketing attempt to maintain customer loyalty. Usually I take these emails as tickler reminders and delete the first couple. When I eventually decide it's time to renew, I pull up the site by typing the URL into the browser. Upon reading this article, I wondered whether following the link in the email would result in a different pricing structure. As it turns out, the answer is yes, though after playing around, it doesn't appear to have anything to do with the email link. The first page of RapidSSL's order form handles both new orders and renewals with a pair of radio buttons. Another section of the form allows you to specify the validity period from one to five years. The prices appear alongside the choices, and are currently the same for both initial orders and renewals. First I visited "www.rapidssl.com" and clicked the "buy/renew" link for a single domain cert. I got an order form with the following prices for 1-5 years: 49, 86, 122, 159, 196 Then I pasted the link from the email (which contains a fairly simple query string that does not appear to have a unique identifier in it) into a different browser. I clicked the "buy/renew" link for a single domain cert, I get the same form with the following prices: 79, 138, 198, 257, 316 It's interesting to me that the difference in price actually increases as the validity period increases: 30, 52, 76, 98, 120 Still more interesting, after resetting the browser and pulling up "www.rapidssl.com" directly, the prices are completely different: 29, 51, 72, 94, 116 I tried the email link one more time and got the 49-86-122 pricing again. Then I tried it one more time and got 19, 33, 48, 62, 76. So clearly RapidSSL is varying their prices on the fly, presumably to gain insight as to what people are willing to pay. I was ready to claim the link in the email yielded higher prices, but that seems not to be the case. So I guess after all that, this isn't particularly interesting. I'll definitely hit the site a few times when it comes time to purchase though. Unfortunately the pricing structure for a wildcard certificate never seemed to vary.

pavel_lishin 15y ago
Maybe they're just doing A/B(/C/D) testing to see which price is optimal.
15y ago

onomojo 15y ago

I had the exact same thing happen to me. One of many reasons why I've not only stopped using GoDaddy for myself but also why I've decided to REFUSE to work with them for my clients. If my clients use GoDaddy, they can either get off GoDaddy or find another developer. Sometimes you have to force morality upon those without. :P

hughesdan 15y ago

Was start date of the renewal term synced to the end date of the expiring term? If so it doesn't sound so shady to me. It seems logical that they would notify you and confirm your desire for a renewal prior to the end of the previous term rather than wait until the absolute last moment, especially with something like an SSL cert. I'm not saying GoDaddy isn't shady. And they certainly are aggressive with their auto-renew policies. Heck how do you think they afford Superbowl ads and Danica Patrick at the prices they charge :) But the experience you described doesn't sound like a scam to me.

vidyesh 15y ago

Never liked GoDaddy's service. There are several reasons why. So moved to namecheap. But the point here is GoDaddy by default puts all your services on auto-renewal. I am a bit paranoid over what goes on in my accounts ( especially PayPal) so i had disabled the auto renew when i saw it. Talking about price hike, thats a marketing strategy. You usually don't get coupon codes for renewals ( if you do get, those are usually for bulk renewals ). These service providers always lure you to register at special prices so you stick with them forever and in this case it auto renewed :\ About the cert. expiration, that seems a bit odd but better talk to GoDaddy Support, they would help you out.

frankdenbow 15y ago

They auto-renewed some auction service for $75 that I have never used or heard of. Really sick of Godaddy

deleted 15y ago

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CoffeeDregs 15y ago

Okay, I use godaddy for domains and DNS. Never had a problem with them. But these 'godaddy sucks' posts and the godaddy buyout are starting to worry me. Who would you recommend as a replacement for registration and DNS?

stanleydrew 15y ago
Its not hard to find viable alternatives. There was a big thread on it about a year ago if I remember correctly. I use name.com and have been very happy. A lot of people here use namecheap. I bet other people will reply to this comment with more options.
fbuilesv 15y ago
I can't recommend DNSimple enough (http://dnsimple.com http://dnsimple.com). Pretty straight forward pricing, nice one-click integration with stuff like Google Apps and they'll even give you a discount if you transfer domains off GoDaddy.
- CoffeeDregs 15y ago
  Looks nice, but it seems to have a significant price premium over GoDaddy (seems to be $14/domain/year + $120/year for DNS). Is the benefit worth the premium?
  - rbritton 15y ago
    You can use something like Amazon Route53 for your name servers at much lower than that. It's $1/mo per domain + a small cost per unit of traffic
  - newman314 15y ago
    Actually, I've been using Cloudflare for the last couple of weeks and have been pretty happy with it so far. Side benefits, CDN caching and threat detection/protection.
  - fbuilesv 15y ago
    I'm not sure how many domains you handle, but in my case I have less than 10 domains so I pay $36 yearly + 8 per domain transfer from GoDaddy (or $14 as you mentioned). With one click you get stuff like Google Apps or Heroku setup for you. After dealing with registrars for a long time I've realized that paying extra $5 per domain per year is totally worth it if you don't have to deal with companies like GoDaddy. I'm not familiar with the Amazon service, but if it's $1 per domain per month then you'd save $0.7 for every domain using DNSimple. EDIT: I should link to another HN discussion on the subject: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2753471 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2753471. One comment that resonates by jbyers: "Read your registrar's terms. See if you still want to save that $6 a year".

CoffeeDregs 15y ago

jivejones 15y ago

I had the same problem, signed up last year, set it up a month later and now I'm getting time to renew emails. Also although its 'easy' to disable the auto-renew I've had products that still renewed after disabling the auto-renew.

gst 15y ago

I never understood why GoDaddy has such a monopoly-like status - even in the startup scene. I've only used their services once (because someone transfered a domain to me and prefered to do this as GoDaddy-internal transfer), but the first thing I did was transfering the domain to another registrar (the one that I typically also use for my other domains). Reasons why I wouldn't use GoDaddy: GoDaddy is not really one of the cheapest registrars. I find their pricing "tactics" (as also mentioned in the article) very questionable. Their whole website isn't just really appealing to me (I know, very subjective).

beedogs 15y ago
The guy that owns them has said/done some things that annoy me, too. That plus cheaper, less-hassle registrars were enough for me to avoid it.
- sesqu 15y ago
  He sold it a week ago. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304584004576420372308902058.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230458400457642...
  - dspace 15y ago
    If I'm reading that article correctly, GoDaddy is more than $1 billion in debt?
    - dangrossman 15y ago
      I don't think you're reading it correctly. When it says part of the deal price is debt, that means the purchaser is using debt to finance the acquisition (taking loans or issuing bonds). It's nothing to do with GoDaddy's balance sheet.
Shenglong 15y ago
What's cheaper than GoDaddy? All my .com and .net domains end up costing me $7.49. I'd love to know...

jbyers 15y ago

The author's first point is incorrect. GoDaddy doesn't take a month off the length of the cert. They do start sending you reminders 60 days ahead that say your cert needs to be renewed in 30 days, but you get your full extra year. I've had the pleasure of doing this dozens of times for our certificates, the last thing we buy from GoDaddy after moving our domain business elsewhere.

powertower 15y ago

Domains are GoDaddy's loss-leader. All profits come from cross-selling, up-selling, and shady tactics. A registrar that has sold 1 million domains at $10/year price, and does nothing else, is one that will make at most about $25,000/year in profit max after various costs (reg fees, support, etc), but more likely will be in the hole. I stopped blaming GoDaddy a long time ago. This is just the nature of the game.

aneth 15y ago

Godaddy is he only place I've found "Extended Validation" certs at a reasonable price - $99 instead of $499+. I hate their website and crosselling, but I do appreciate as the author points out that they have people you can call - how many registrars have that? Are there any alternatives for EV certs that are not a ripoff?

sunchild 15y ago
If you call GoDaddy, they'll spend most of their time upselling you.
waterside81 15y ago
How arduous was the EV process? What did you have to provide as proof? I tried to go down this route with Comodo and it was a colossal waste of time. The documents they require would make the FBI blush.
zokier 15y ago
What's the point of EV certs?

jonathanjaeger 15y ago

Same thing would have happened to me but my credit card on file expired. Talked to customer service and was never charged. Despite some of the obvious disadvantages of using GoDaddy, I've always gotten great customer service from them.

unreal37 15y ago

This isn't really a scam. I have dozens of domains with GoDaddy, as well as some of their other services. "How can I get the cheapest price" is a game we all play with them. Revision3 has a handy page with GD discount codes, and I've been referring to that page for years. I am helping keep Digg in business from the affiliate fees. Can we agree the "auto-renew" was not scammy? They didn't rip you off a year. Just reminding you 60 days early as they should. Can we agree its not shady or unethical to charge different prices for 1st year versus a higher price for subsequent year renewals? Or different prices for different people, in some type of A/B test? Everyone does that. Even amazon.com shows different prices to different people. Can we agree their customer support was really helpful to you? So what's the problem exactly?

lukeschlather 15y ago
It's unethical to charge someone one price for a recurring service and then more than triple the price, in an opt-out fashion. If you raise prices, you need to do your due diligence to make sure your customers are aware they're paying more. This kind of a price increase should really be opt-in rather than opt-out.
- BlazingFrog 15y ago
  I totally agree with you. The same thing happened to me with another registrar/hosting company (ipage). Hosting for a year went from around $50 to over $100 with auto-renew. I did receive an email notifying me of the upcoming renewal but no price was included in the email. When I confronted them after the fact they told me that the information was on their home page where it says something to the effect of "Hosting only $50/year" and then right underneath in small print "(save 50%)". Maybe I should have assumed that saving 50% now meant I would be charged twice as much the next time but I guess I'm not that bright. Also, when asked for an explicit price list in a chat session, they gave me a link to a page buried in the FAQ to which, they acknowledged, you couldn't get directly in any easy way. I guess they're all the same.
  - msbarnett 15y ago

hippich 15y ago

For anyone who needs SSL certificate without perks, consider free one from http://www.startssl.com/ http://www.startssl.com/ It do not offer strong encryption and do not do personal identification (obviously - it is free), but it is very cost-effective solution to have https:// https:// on your website to prevent eyes droppers sniff traffic. (not sure if it is enough for e-commerce, like google checkout tho) Now you have no excuse to not have https:// https:// in your website where people enter their passwords =)

deleted 15y ago
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richcollins 15y ago

Same thing happened to me for a $200 dollar cert. I complained through their support ticket system and they issued me a refund.

apedley 15y ago

The $12.99 price is a special price and always has been. You can still find discount codes and apply it to them when you renew to get it at the same price. Godaddy can be insanely cheap if you never auto renew and always manually renew with discount codes. Though yes you need to get off Godaddy. As do I. Just waiting for a little more revenue from my site to move to Rackspace Cloud :)

mtogo 15y ago
You can also buy a RapidSSL cert from namecheap for $11 every year, no coupon codes.
cosgroveb 15y ago
Sale prices that are always in effect are not "special" prices.

winternett 15y ago

The same thing happened with a Network Solutions hosting plan I had. They auto-renewed me when I had over one month before renewal. Their service had been horrible on Drupal sites. Just the DNS resolution to my hosting account was taking 2-3 seconds. I enlisted an up-time monitoring service and found that my site was down frequently even while I was paying for this renewal I did not want. Shame such a dominant company in the 90s has basically laid the road map for shady hosting.

wladimir 15y ago
Yes, network solutions is also terrible. I still have a domain with them, and it takes five clicks just to get to the DNS management interface. Every step in the way they try to make as unclear as possible by flashing banners and shiny buttons in your face to get you to buy more of their services.

phil 15y ago

So obviously they should disable auto-renew by default and start emailing you the day before expiry, right? Except that's nuts -- many of their customer's certs would lapse before they renewed. That's so bad that most sites should even put up with the extra 30 bucks to reduce their risk.

WettowelReactor 15y ago

This makes me happy that we decided to go with Digicert. Although not the cheapest their customer service is above par. We just got a renew (not auto-renew) notice 60 days from expiration. Not only where they offering a 15% discount on renewal but for every day early we renew we get 2 days added to the new cert. I.E. renew 60 days early on a 12 month cert and they give us 14 months.

jeromeparadis 15y ago

I also use GoDady because they are cheap and it does the job. For DNS, I use DNS Made Easy because it's never a good idea to have your DNSes at your registrar (if you ever need to move). The trick with GoDaddy, don't check the box to leave your credit card with them. You'll then have to manually renew all services and you never run into the risk of forgetting to uncheck some auto-renew option...

Metapony 15y ago

I know people who work for GoDaddy and the confusing website is part of the upsell. That GoDaddy would screw people with SSL certificates is no surprise. My requirements for hosting are always 'Anyone but godaddy."

po 15y ago
I used to have an 'Anyone but godaddy" policy. Then I ended up with some names at eNom and they just emailed me my password. Now I'm shopping around to move.

plasma 15y ago

Another "scam" I associate with GoDaddy is that when you pick to pay for the Whois Privacy protection, you also get a 'Business Registration' fee added (like $5/year or something trivial). All this fee does is list your domain name or something similar in a GoDaddy ran business directory -- useless. It's an extra charge they hope you don't notice, and it's only added to your cart when you add Whois Privacy protection. You need to remove it from your cart afterwards.

mancjew 15y ago

Thanks you just saved me $70 bucks, I got charged extra for one year already and they didn't refund me after I complained.

AltIvan 15y ago

Use paypal guys. All those auto-renew things get 100% visible on your paypal dashboard so its pretty easy to remove them all.

desaiguddu 15y ago

Screw you GoDaddy !

asciilifeform 15y ago

All SSL certs are a rent-seeking scam. Pay the protection money, get a string of bits which cost the vendor nothing to produce. Or choose between zero security or users' browsers whining about "self-signed certificate" every time they visit your site.

follownicholas 15y ago

Luckily if you pay via credit card then you are always protected, if you file a credit card chargeback.