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Startups should not use GoDaddy. Ever

354 points by justnearme 15y ago

rumblestrut 15y ago
As of this post, it appears to be working. And I have to say, it's impressive. Those are some good-looking bookmarks. That's probably the oddest maintenance I'd ever think to write, but in this case, it's true!
pewpew 15y ago
Be incompetent, blame others, profit. Host your site on a shared hosting, with another 1000 users, blame godaddy when it goes down. Don't understand ssl, blame godaddy when you make mistakes. GoDaddy are freaking excellent! for domains that is. All other services are crap, and if you bothered to actually check your facts, read some reviews, you would know that.
- robryan 15y ago
  One of the only reasonable posts in this thread, sounds like it was more like the users fault than godaddy. I would agree for the kind of low tech shared hosting they provide but I have set some VPS servers up on godaddy that have worked quiet well. As long as you don't need their support and build from scratch without a plex/cpanel type setup they have been fine.
Birejji 15y ago
Dynadot is the way to go
sjs382 15y ago
I cant stand GoDaddy's hosting product. Their interface is awful, they're constantly upselling you, and changes via their Control Panel never happen instantly. I have a lot of clients who came to me using GoDaddy and continue to use GoDaddy. So I interact with GoDaddy in some form every day. But GoDaddy really shines in one area: their support. They're professional, they don't treat me or my clients like idiots, they don't bullshit me, and they're always quick to resolve issues. (Personally, I prefer name.com and prgmr.com)
bennesvig 15y ago
Does this only apply to hosting or registering domains as well?
- trustfundbaby 15y ago
  I'm not a fan but I'll admit they're pretty good with domains.
migrantgeek 15y ago
Seems like everyone agrees that GoDaddy is terrible. What's strange to me is the interface has always sucked and gets worse as they've grown. You'd think with the revenues they see, they could get some good designers to make it much more usable. I like Enom myself. The API works really well, prices are good, and the UI is clean and usable. I've been much happier since moving all of my domains over.
- BenSS 15y ago
  Nicer user interface doesn't always equate into more revenue. Sometimes it's even counterproductive (sales pages w. misspellings/mistakes can convert better!).
rickdale 15y ago
I can't believe people are still bitching about GoDaddy shared hosting. I feel like a quote from Richard Pryor is in store: "Boy, it's 1975 you betta get your shit together!" My point is that if you were smart enough to use GoDaddy shared hosting then you probably weren't smart enough at the time to have a VPS. Take what you have learned from GoDaddy and learn some more stuff and then sign up for a VPS or build a server. GoDaddy can be a good start for those just jumping into webdev and hosting, but after you have the equivalent of a yellow belt, its time to move on.
pavel_lishin 15y ago
> It’s a good thing I don’t drink, because the blur of Saturday and Sunday spent on the phone could have really been dealt with better with a couple of stiff drinks to ease the pain. What.
mtogo 15y ago
This article is spot on. I can't fathom why anyone would put themselves through Godaddy, especially a startup. I feel like you're asking for trouble though if you use Godaddy's hosting, which has a reputation for being absolutely horrible.
KaeseEs 15y ago
No one should use GoDaddy, ever; there are many other registrars in their price range that don't share their onerous practices with regards to transfer, takedown, security and privacy and which have much better customer service.
- GoGlobal 15y ago
  which 1?
  - lucisferre 15y ago
    I like Namecheap personally
    - akkartik 15y ago
      How long have you been using it?
      - qx24b 15y ago
        Not the person you asked but I've used namecheap for 3 years now and haven't had any issues, the whoisgaurd they offer is cheap when it comes up for renewal and you don't have to have a card or anything on file for when renewals come up, they do email you a bit when they do but I don't mind that. The interface isn't going to win any awards and most of my domains use linodes dns so I can't say how well their dns stacks up. I also have a few domains on nearlyfreespeech which is quite a bit down on the interface but their terms are great.
        commandar 15y ago
        >The interface isn't going to win any awards and most of my domains use linodes dns so I can't say how well their dns stacks up. Their DNS has been fantastic for me. Very straightforward interface, and even has a few nice touches like being able to automatically set up mx records for you if you use Google Apps on that domain.
      - 15y ago
rshigeta 15y ago
I've seen a lot of issues raised about godaddy recently, but any suggestions for domain registry that work better?
- mbesto 15y ago
  Just moved all of my domains from GoDaddy over to Namecheap. Interface is slick and very easy to use. First year for privatized whois info is free too!
- snorkel 15y ago
  I've been happy with dnsimple.com, not the cheapest but has a clean UI, intelligent features, and intelligent support the YC crowd here would appreciate.
  - tylerrooney 15y ago
    I'll second my vote for DNSimple. We were using GoDaddy before and we had an issue where they were returning faulty DNS records from certain hosts (which was such a pain to diagnose). After trying to deal with support at GoDaddy we were done. We switched everything over to DNSimple and I'm happy paying them $3/month so I never have to look at another GoDaddy config/upsell screen again. They also have a status page (powered by Pingdom) http://status.dnsimple.com http://status.dnsimple.com.
  - aculver 15y ago
    Yeah, totally agreed. I met one of the principles of DNSimple at MagicRuby earlier this year. Definitely worth giving these guys $3 a month for the amount of time they save me. The time their configuration templates for Heroku and Tumblr have saved me much more in time than I'll ever pay in subscription fees. They also make it super easy to get SSL certificates.
- dasil003 15y ago
  I use Dreamhost. $9.95 is reasonable, and it's great for placeholder, static or otherwise low-traffic, low-importance sites (which of course are the majority of domain registrations).
drivebyacct2 15y ago
Why is this news?! I can't count the number of times this has come up on HN, let alone reddit, let alone random prominent blogs, let alone from other big names that have had problems with GoDaddy suspending service, locking them out of their control panels and/or siding with law enforcement and acting before asking. Stop using GoDaddy. It's trivial to find other registrars, and not hard to find better ones. (Examples of better registrars: Gandi, name.com) Honestly, not a reassuring way to advertise your new company. There first intro blob admits that they knew this was a risk. "Yeah, we knew people have problems with this, but we were lazy and didn't bother taking the 30 minutes to transfer our domains elsewhere."
- pornel 15y ago
  > Why is this news?! I can't count the number of times this has come up And yet GoDaddy is still in business and doing great.
  - jbhelms 15y ago
    You can't get past the cheapness of some people. $5 a month for hosting is very attractive to someone looking to bootstrap off of savings.
    - drivebyacct2 15y ago
      You can get much better supported, more feature-full (and also more "unlimited" and oversold) hosting for $5 or less from people less scummy and likely to shut off your box or domain than GoDaddy. Seriously, is DNS so hard that typing in the nameservers of your shared hosting provider or DECENT VPS provider is so unthinkable? Or is it registering for a second account? I simply do, not, understand.
  - aninteger 15y ago
    Maybe those superbowl commercials really do work.
  - drivebyacct2 15y ago
    So? That's not a reason to use it or a reason that they're any less scummy than they are. They have flashy commercial and people use them to save 50cents on a $7 purchase. Quite frankly, it's pathetic that people give them their business. Oh, and if anyone uses GoDaddy for hosting, just leave your username after the beep so I can permanently ignore you.
dasil003 15y ago
No one should ever use GoDaddy for any reason. I thought that was geek 101 by now. Also, incidentally, you never host a startup on shared hosting. If a day or two of downtime is a big deal than you gotta go VPS at a minimum.
- mtogo 15y ago
  That's not true. For low traffic sites, NFSN and Webfaction are more than capable.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    Yeah, I'd be surprised if a typical DIY VPS webserver can beat nearlyfreespeech.net's uptimes and resilience to burst traffic.
    - davidandgoliath 15y ago
      Doubtful. Largely in part due to the average 'vps' user not managing things properly -- or knowing how much they need to scale, etc. Entities that have been doing it for years have things optimized quite a bit to handle the spikes. I suspect the average shared hosting kicks the ass of the average VPS -- particularly in the IO department.
      - dasil003 15y ago
        Are you guys serious? No doubt there is good shared hosting, but most of it is oversold to shit. "Average shared hosting" is a race to the bottom. The reason I say VPS is because that way you have guaranteed resources and the ability to debug and fix problems yourself. I guess if you know the right shared host you can get some good value there, but it still seems like a terrible risk to me due to undisclosed limits, or vulnerability to neighbors traffic spikes. When I said "startup" I thought it was implicit that it would not be expected to be a low traffic site, at least not for long.
        deleted 15y ago
larrik 15y ago
I swore off GoDaddy years ago when I was setting up a website for a friend. It took an entire night to FTP up about 100k worth of files to his account. His website was extremely slow as well, so it wasn't just me. We're talking about a website that got maybe dozens of hits per day. He was a paying customer!!!! I've never had such a bad host, even from free ones. Also, I absentmindedly signed myself up for their WHOIS privacy protection. Holy crap was that a mistake! I can't cancel it because it's actually offered by another company Domains By Proxy, but they won't let me log in because the account was magically setup using some bogus credentials and information which they got from the ether or something. So I can't even migrate that account away without sending them a driver's license, and THAT's assuming they have my correct name on file (which is a real possibility that they don't, since nothing else seems accurate). GoDaddy is no help, I have to call DomainsByProxy (which is GoDaddy, btw). DomainsByProxy is no help either, unless I send them a scan of my driver's license. It pisses me off so much I just haven't been able to bring myself to do it. It's cheaper just to keep paying. Yuck.
- libraryatnight 15y ago
  Domains by Proxy emails you credentials when you sign up. People don't pay attention to this delete or never look at the emails, then get pissed when they can't login. Their hosting blows, but I've never had a problem with registrations.
  - larrik 15y ago
    That's what they told me too, but I have every (non-spam) email I've ever gotten going back to 1998, including the emails when I bought these accounts, and there is nothing from DomainsByProxy at all in there. It's possible these emails got sucked up by the spam filter and are therefore lost to history. However, looking at how it works, and after talking with "both" companies, I'm inclined to feel and believe that they were intentionally deceptive.
- buddydvd 15y ago
  I noticed transferring a domain to different Godaddy account immediately cancels that domain's privacy-protection service. You can probably try that first before transferring your domain out of Godaddy.
timjahn 15y ago
Don't. Ever. Use. GoDaddy. Ever.
- GoGlobal 15y ago
  y?
andrewl 15y ago
Paul Graham says "I use EasyDNS. They're expensive, but reliable and never do anything evil." Source: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=150565 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=150565 Note that that comment was posted over three years ago. Does anybody have any more recent experience with them?
- jbhelms 15y ago
  DNS wasn't really the problem here, it was the hosting and setting up a ssl cert. I use GoDaddy for my DNS stuff and have never had any problem with them for that. Most of the horror stories come from people hosting with them.
  - stonemetal 15y ago
    They also provide registration and SSL.
    - jbhelms 15y ago
      Actually, after posting this I found an article that said that GoDaddy is selectively denying DNS requests, so they are now being crappy with DNS as well. I guess I need to move to a new registrar and DNS host.
- bunnyhero 15y ago
  i've been using them for years, and am quite happy. i use them for almost all of my domains.
pieter 15y ago
I agree with GoDaddy being horrible, but this really isn't just their fault. Certificate revocation does exactly what it says. It's a technical term that everyone using SSL should know and understand the implications of. Their offer of creating a new certificate for you for $15 actually sounds pretty decent. And, you don't have backups of all your data and domains? While running your sites on a shared host? This really sounds like something that was bound to happen to you. Be glad you got it fixed and I hope you learned your lesson.
- wvenable 15y ago
  Backups don't matter in this case. What is he going to do with backups?
  - dholowiski 15y ago
    His sites were down for "days". If he had backups he could have restored the sites to a different server.
    - wvenable 15y ago
      Yes, but isn't the problem related to the domains not the hosting?
- kijin 15y ago
  It seems that GoDaddy created a certificate for the wrong domain in the first place. Still, the author should have pointed out the problem and ask GoDaddy to fix it instead of revoking the certificate himself.
- caryme 15y ago
  I ran into the same situation the author did when getting SSL for a freelance client of mine. The problem is that nowhere in GoDaddy's certificate purchasing or setup process do they ask you what domain name you want the certificate to apply to. They just apply it to the "primary" domain on a hosting account, which is basically the first domain you set up and associated with that hosting. I kept expecting that the next step in the setup process would ask me what domain I wanted to use the certificate for until there was no next step and the cert was pending setup on the wrong domain. At no point did they indicate that their single-domain certificate only works on the primary domain until I was on the phone with customer service before revoking it. We ended up going with a multi-domain cert (which they did give us a discount on) rather than change the primary domain on the hosting account because their service representative said that would require downtime for all the sites on that hosting account.
leon_ 15y ago
When I was doing web stuff back in 2003 the common opinion on webmaster forums was that one should never ever use GoDaddy. (There were cases of stolen domains, etc.) Maybe they changed now - maybe not. But I'm not going to find it out.
DanielBMarkham 15y ago
I moved away from GoDaddy a couple of years ago. Now I have a few expiring domains left on there. Last week I got a notice they were going to charge me for a renewal, which I did not want. So I called the support guy. Twenty or so minutes later, he sent me to a link to fill out a form where all would be taken care of. Except it wasn't. Just like my previous few encounters with GoDaddy, when I went to the link I learned some obscure detail about my contract with them prevented me from getting what I wanted -- yet allowed them to charge me in full. I'm not going to go into details. It's a perfectly reasonable request on their part. The problem is they have created this monster of add-on services and items, all with little footnotes and gotchas. And it's all geared to extract more money from me. Last time I had a domain going to expire that I wanted to keep, I went to transfer it over to my new domain guys. The domain was expiring in a month, but I had to complete a GoDaddy form online to make it happen (sound familiar?). The only way to complete the form online was to check a checkbox. The checkbox said that once I checked it I couldn't transfer the domain for another 90 days. Fuckers got me again. I could tell you a few more like that. It's always some finely-detailed bullshit that ends up with you paying them more. Last week they got me for around 180 bucks. So now I plan on using the domain I couldn't cancel. I go to the DNS settings. Looks like the new DNS manager is overly complicated and impossibly to use easily. The "adventure" continues. I swear I hate those bastards. I consider myself a nice enough person, and I have been disappointed by online services in the past -- no big deal. Some online companies "get it" and some not-so-much. But GoDaddy has crossed a line with me somewhere. I'm not sure if it's the used-car-salesmen experience I get checking out or the policies that exist seemingly to endlessly screw me over in various and sundry ways, but it's just a really, really, really bad service in my opinion. Did I mention I didn't like it so much?
- dlikhten 15y ago
  Wow. Well... Wow. Domain registrars are things you touch once every few years, and their entire goal is to make it more time consuming to remove yourself from them then switch since its such an insignificant task, most people ignore it and keep with the same one. Is this even legal?
  - slowpoke 15y ago
mbesto 15y ago
Which is amazing considering how much GoDaddy is used for YC companies: http://jpf.github.com/domain-profiler/ycombinator.html?2011 http://jpf.github.com/domain-profiler/ycombinator.html?2011
damoncali 15y ago
I've been using GoDaddy for years. Never had a problem. I dont' use their hosting, though.
- dpcan 15y ago
  Exactly what I came here to say. I don't use their hosting because I've tried it and it's painfully slow and I have had it go down intermittently for a number of clients who I know use it still. I've had to talk with their support several times for little issues too, and I've actually had excellent interactions. Again, not for hosting however. I use their SSL certificates as well, and it's a very easy process that I've never had a problem with. I don't know why HN is the dumping ground for bad GoDaddy experiences. There are review sites for this. I've had miserable customer service experiences with countless companies, but I'm not posting them here, and they certainly wouldn't get voted to the top.
geekfactor 15y ago
It turns out GoDaddy only issues the certificate to the domain attached to the hosting (which is somewhat of a stupid association, really, because it shouldn’t matter what domain you use as long as you’re accessing your content via a correct route). If hosting with GoDaddy was the first mistake, this assumption was the second. The whole point of an SSL certificate is to say that the server you are talking to is a server that is authorized to speak on behalf of domain xyz and, as such, they are generally tied to one or more domains.
- latortuga 15y ago
  I don't know exactly how GoDaddy works but on my namecheap account, I can issue purchased SSL certificates to any of the domains I have registered there. I assume I may even be able to issue them to domains I do not have registered there (though I have not tried and may be wrong) because they have a verification process.
  - webfuel 15y ago
    Regardless of where your domain is registered, you can indeed get an SSL cert from Namecheap. I bought a Comodo PositiveSSL for $9/y and couldn't be happier. When I ran into some issues installing it on a Mac mini server, their CS was responsive and friendly.
nyellin 15y ago
Please fix the link. It goes the blog's homepage which makes it difficult to find the article later.
skilesare 15y ago
I remember when GoDaddy was the David to NetSol's Goliath.
fatalerrorx3 15y ago
I hated using GoDaddy when doing development work for clients...I would never choose to use it for myself just based on my previous experience with them. I prefer self hosting on a fresh Ubuntu Server install on highspeed residential cable from a server I built myself..there's something satisfying about learning about all aspects of web development
TomGullen 15y ago
GoDaddy is so bad. My heart sinks whenever a client asks me to login and change some setting for them. They've managed to turn the entire process of every function on their site into a purist up-selling unusable monstrosity that confuses customers to such a degree they feel they need to pay more and more money. If you want a good Domain host try http://www.webwiz.co.uk http://www.webwiz.co.uk, the guy who runs it is very good and prompt at support, domains are a fair price and the interface is super easy to use. I have no affiliation to WebWiz but since moving all my domains over there it's been a lot easier.
mille562 15y ago
I have used GoDaddy for their DNS services and have been very happy with their customer service. No issues so far after ~2 years. I may research other DNS though, comments of how easily they shut people down makes me nervous. Note to Pinolio: I may have missed it, but I did not find a link to your service on your blog.
jeremydavid 15y ago
Has anyone here used Nearly Free Speech (www.nearlyfreespeech.net)? I have finally started to make my migration away from GoDaddy (I have been planning this for years), and NFS seems pretty good. I can't seem to find any horror stories about them... but I rarely see them brought up in discussions about registrars. Am I missing something?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- 27182818284 15y ago
  I've done small sites with them and have no complaints.
- moab9 15y ago
  I've used them for years. no problems.
- kijin 15y ago
  I've been using NFS.N for over three years now. I have a number of small sites and domains with them. The sites cost pennies a month, the feature set is staggering, and the domain registration process makes Gandi and Namecheap look clunky in comparison. They're also painstakingly honest. They recently corrected a billing error of $56 over three years over their entire client base. [1] My only complaint with them is the lack of SSL, but that's what a VPS is for. In fact, I like NFS.N so much I made a simple webmail app to interface with their e-mail forwarding service. It's highly experimental though. [2] [1] http://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2011/04/07/a-small-billing-error-corrected/ http://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2011/04/07/a-small-billing-... [2] http://www.github.com/kijin/nearlyfreemail http://www.github.com/kijin/nearlyfreemail
  - jeremydavid 15y ago
    Cheers for that! Thank you for reinforcing my decision. I may just move the rest of my domains over there this week.
- genieyclo 15y ago
onedognight 15y ago
All the complaints here about GoDaddy have nothing to do with the one reason to use them, paying the least for a domain with free DNS. If you pay them anything else then you have just nullified this advantage as they can make back the few dollars you saved on the domain by charging you more for things like hosting and SSL (free at startcom).
- ericabiz 15y ago
  It's only cheaper if your time is worth nothing. Digging through pages of upsells takes time. I prefer using a registrar where I don't have to do that. (I use both Namecheap and eNom.)
  - jzcoder 15y ago
    All the upsell checkboxes are defaulted off. I don't understand what the problem is clicking through a couple of pages without checking anything. I've done it dozens of times with no problems.
jinushaun 15y ago
Just had GoDaddy conveniently renew three expiring domain names for me for TWO years. These were domain names I didn't want any more. Thanks.
- djb_hackernews 15y ago
  I think you are being totally unfair. If they auto renewed, then YOU set them up to auto renew. If they auto renewed, this means you let them keep your billing information on file. They spam me once every week to remind me that my auto renew domains are going to auto renew. And my own personal anecdote, right before one of my domains auto-renewed I got a polite call from a CSR making sure that I was aware the domain was going to auto renew.
- hkuo 15y ago
  I had this happen to me as well. I gave them a call and they redacted it and refunded me the money. I consider it pretty suspicious activity, considering every email I got from them was telling me it would expire. But just give them a call and they'll set it straight.
nicpottier 15y ago
Does this really even need to be said here? A single visit to GoDaddy and their insane upselling strategies should be enough to disuade anyone that they are in it for anything but ripping you off. namecheap.com has been quite pleasant so far. I used joker.com for years before that without complaint as well. Plenty of reasonable options out there.
- sneak 15y ago
  Another vote for joker.com. I use them because they are not based in the US, but in Germany, which may result in a smidgeon more sanity when it comes to yanking delegations without court rulings. Maybe. Also, they are nerds and pgp sign all of their outgoing emails.
  - MostAwesomeDude 15y ago
    I could have sworn that Joker was hosted in Switzerland, which is the big factor in my recommendation of them to people worried about government interference in domain handling and DNS. Maybe I'm wrong on that, though.
scelerat 15y ago
I could have predicted this thread would turn into a PTSD support group for GoDaddy survivors. I have my horrible stories too (all from freelancing days); suffice to say I learned a couple of things: * Cheap hosting almost never is. * GoDaddys support is designed to minimize their costs, not yours. * if their support cannot help you with a problem they will try to upsell you on a plan they claim *will* fix the problem. Dealing with them on a handful of occasions ranks among the most painful experiences I've had in 15 years of building stuff on the web.
espadagroup 15y ago
I was on a deluxe account at Godaddy, tried upgrading to a VPS, had a horrible experience and now I am a happy customer of PHPFog.
derobert 15y ago
See also a previous post, "Alternatives to GoDaddy" at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2753471 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2753471
fialk 15y ago
You can buy one service from GoDaddy and they'll give you a second service free for a year, then auto-renew that second unnecessary service. You can't cancel easily via e-mail and you can't cancel over the telephone. You have to log in and face an endless amount of confusion and upselling. * This was for Domain Auto-Registration which includes GoDaddy Auctions.
mcantelon 15y ago
GoDaddy: not even once.
thisisnotme 15y ago
I am stunned that anyone would ever use them in the first place. After going through domain registration with them, and being appalled at the amount of up-sale, I decided they aren't the company I would want to trust with anything. I have been using dreamhost for years, and they make registration management painfully simple (and honest). Also GoDaddy had an issue years back where they were apparently scooping up domains that people didn't finish checkout with and then selling them at a higher price.
mikeleeorg 15y ago
I know two non-techie people (one a friend, one an acquaintance) who've used GoDaddy and gotten confused by all of the upsells and promos. My friend ended up purchasing a few extra services by accident and had a hard time trying to cancel them. The acquaintance was much less cognizant and ended up paying hundreds a month unknowingly. I've also used them too, because a cofounder had registered our domain name with them. In Aug 2010, I noticed that GoDaddy had been charging us for an extra service we never purchased. I know this because none of us had logged into the GoDaddy account in a while. Fortunately, I'm really anal with accounting records and noticed the discrepancy in our bill. After several emails and attempts to get this charge removed, I tweeted this issue with @GoDaddy included in it. THAT got an immediate response. Eventually, the charges were removed and we got a refund. Moral of the story: Don't recommend GoDaddy to your non-techie friends, and consider avoiding it yourself. But if you must use them and have a problem, tweet about it to get a quick resolution.
akmiller 15y ago
Is it really a problem if I simply use them as a registrar? I have many domains there but that's all I use them for is to simply register my domain. I have liked them for that because they are cheap (if you avoid all the up-sells which is easy enough) and their prices have stayed fairly consistent over the last several years. I moved to them from Yahoo. Yahoo always allowed you to register a domain for a cheap price of 9.00 but then the renewals were 34.95...a bit of bait and switch if you ask me. Anyhow, I've been happy with simply using GoDaddy as a registrar but after reading this thread I'm wondering if I should switch??
joehewitt 15y ago
Are any of the big registrars trustworthy? I'm trying to consolidate all of my domains on Namecheap right now. I transferred one domain from Dyndns and they did the transfer within a few hours (nice!). Then I went to transfer another from Network Solutions and four days later I am still waiting. Do they think I'll change my mind if they refuse to release the domain for a week?
athst 15y ago
GoDaddy is the worst company ever. Earlier this year I finally took the step to transfer all of my domains to a different company, and I haven't looked back. Instead of transitioning slowly over time, I just decided to pay the money and transfer everything - it felt a lot better to just be free of them. Imagine a company so awful your customers are willing to pay extra to not be a customer! One painful part of the transfer experience is that their "DomainsByProxy" service is entirely separate, even though it is sold alongside their domains as an add-on. My problem was that I had originally signed up with it years and years ago, and they do not keep your email or password in sync with your GoDaddy account. So I couldn't "release" the domains from DBP to be transferred without going through this crazy process of sending in forms and a copy of my drivers license to reset the account info. It was awful.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
indec 15y ago
This may be just me, but I won't use GoDaddy because of their advertising. Their "sex sells" approach seems geared to re-inforce the "boys-only club" view of tech.
larrys 15y ago
One of the reasons godaddy is successful is that they are the registrar of referral for people (web designers, programmers, ISP's) that have customers that need domain registration or renewal. When an end user has a domain they need or one up for renewal godaddy is the registrar that is suggested to them by their "tech guy". This is similar to how Microsoft gained power in a way. They were supported by a huge network of people that made money off of Microsoft. Additionally traditional tech guys want to appear smart and love (even if they don't make any commission) telling people they can get their domain registered cheaply at godaddy. "Wow I'm overpaying" says the customer. What many people don't realize is that all registrars pay exactly the same price for a domain. Any registrar charging less than a certain amount (say below or near cost) is making it up elsewhere. In the case of godaddy it is by selling you things that you don't need that have no value. One and only one example of this is "privacy protection". This is like a FUD from Microsoft. Many godaddy domains have privacy protection that have no need for privacy and in fact privacy, because they are an operating business, with a business address, is the opposite of what they should be using. While having privacy is of benefit in some cases (to criticize your employer as only one example) it is almost always safer to have a real address in the whois records if you can do that. This of course isn't limited to godaddy. Register.com is the registrar for Fred Wilson's avc.com. Avc.com has privacy protection even though Fred has a business address that he could use and has a public email address. Domain Name: avc.com Created on..............: 2008-07-18 Expires on..............: 2019-04-30 Registrant: Domain Discreet ATTN: avc.com Rua Dr. Brito Camara, n 20, 1 Funchal, Madeira 9000-039 PT
- skcin7 15y ago
  The example of the "privacy protection" reminds me when I was a n00b (I still kinda am), but like 3 years ago I wanted a domain that was taken so I paid ~$15 for them for domain backordering.... LOL. I didn't really know what it was at the time (stupid me) but now I feel so incredibly stupid for basically giving away $15 and getting duped for my money.
  - larrys 15y ago
    I wouldn't say it was stupid actually. Stupid is something that you do that most people don't do. Many of the godaddy services seem legit on first glance. That's why they sell so well. The marketing language they use is good. There are cases where someone might actually stand a chance of back ordering a domain. But when godaddy collects $15 for a domain that there is no way they are going to get for someone (like a 3 letter name as only one example) that's taking advantage of what someone doesn't know. If you want to backorder a domain use pool.com. Last I checked they don't charge anything for a backorder.
josscrowcroft 15y ago
If this doesn't convince you to leave GoDaddy, just remember that the owner and founder takes summer holidays shooting elephants.
DenisM 15y ago
Since this seems to be "my most/least favorite name service company" I recommend DynDNS. They're expensive, but they work very well in my experience. You can set very short TTLs, which obviates the need for static IPs.
jeromeparadis 15y ago
My first rule is use a registrar to register domains. Never host your site or DNS at the registrar. My second rule is do not host your DNS where you host your site. It makes it easier to switch providers without downtime. With these rules, I use GoDaddy to register domains and never had any problems. For DNS, DNS Made Easy is cheap and reliable.
myprasanna 15y ago
likealittle.com suffered with them too. They are pretty darn evil, they ask for a ransom to let you move your site.
dendory 15y ago
I used GoDaddy when I first started, years ago, but quickly moved away from them. Been with Dreamhost for years now and it's been very good. Adding SSL can't be simpler, they even streamline the process, allowing you to buy the cert directly in the panel (or import your own from a third party), assign a static IP, and everything works inside an hour. Anyways, just wanted to share my experience.
alwillis 15y ago
I couldn't agree more. I've seen firsthand people using Go Daddy to check out a possible domain only to have Go Daddy squatting on it the next day. He was able to get a few of them back, but it such a hassle. This was a couple of years ago; I can't imagine how much worse things are now.
d2 15y ago
OK kids, here's what you need to know. There are three levels of your relationship with Godaddy: Level 1: You're in balls deep. You register your domains with GoDaddy, use their DNS servers and host your shit on their servers. You also get your SSL certs from them. That's what the OP was doing. Level 2: You're in up to the balls, but that's where it stops. You register with them, host your DNS with them but your website lives on another providers servers and you get your SSL elsewhere. Level 3: You wearing a condom and don't give them their own key or underwear drawer. In other words, you register your domain with GoDaddy but you host the DNS somewhere else like DNSMadeEasy which costs, but is reliable. You also host your site somewhere else like Linode for example. And your SSL cert is something that costs more but is reliable. I have an EV cert from Verisign which costs but you get better conversions. Level 3 is the only place you want to be. Pay them the bare minimum, immediately delegate the DNS hosting to a reliable rock solid provider that doesn't black-list DNS servers and use that provider to point your A record to whatever web host you're using. You get cheap domains and the only time you have to wade through GD's cluster fuck interface is when you change DNS providers or want to register another domain. My primary domain did over 27 million DNS requests last month via DNS Made Easy with a 12 hour TTL and it's been registered with godaddy for over 4 years now with no problems at all.
- pbreit 15y ago
  I agree with hosting your site and DNS elsewhere but isn't it OK to get SSL from GoDaddy?
- palish 15y ago
  And people wonder why there aren't more women in computer science...
- soult 15y ago
  I would still be worried about the domain. If my DNS provider messes up, I change to a new one and I am back within 72 hours (at most). If the mail provider messes up, I change to a new one and I am back within X hours (where X is the TTL set for the domain). If my webhost messes up, I am back within X hours (because I of course make offsite backups), etc. The only part where one needs a 100% reliable business partner is domain registration. And after hearing all the horror stories about Godaddy, I would not trust them, not even if I was wearing your methaphorical condom.
rcavezza 15y ago
GoDaddy has the best customer service if you pick up the phone and give them a call. They're not like Google - they have a phone number listed and people are always available to pick up the phone - 24/7 if I'm not mistaken.
userhasaname 15y ago
Where does he explain how and when the hosting died? He jumps from SSL revocation to hosting downtime.
kermitthehermit 15y ago
Nobody should use GoDaddy, not only startups.

354 points by justnearme 15y ago

As of this post, it appears to be working. And I have to say, it's impressive. Those are some good-looking bookmarks. That's probably the oddest maintenance I'd ever think to write, but in this case, it's true!

pewpew 15y ago

Be incompetent, blame others, profit. Host your site on a shared hosting, with another 1000 users, blame godaddy when it goes down. Don't understand ssl, blame godaddy when you make mistakes. GoDaddy are freaking excellent! for domains that is. All other services are crap, and if you bothered to actually check your facts, read some reviews, you would know that.

robryan 15y ago
One of the only reasonable posts in this thread, sounds like it was more like the users fault than godaddy. I would agree for the kind of low tech shared hosting they provide but I have set some VPS servers up on godaddy that have worked quiet well. As long as you don't need their support and build from scratch without a plex/cpanel type setup they have been fine.

Birejji 15y ago

Dynadot is the way to go

sjs382 15y ago

I cant stand GoDaddy's hosting product. Their interface is awful, they're constantly upselling you, and changes via their Control Panel never happen instantly. I have a lot of clients who came to me using GoDaddy and continue to use GoDaddy. So I interact with GoDaddy in some form every day. But GoDaddy really shines in one area: their support. They're professional, they don't treat me or my clients like idiots, they don't bullshit me, and they're always quick to resolve issues. (Personally, I prefer name.com and prgmr.com)

bennesvig 15y ago

Does this only apply to hosting or registering domains as well?

trustfundbaby 15y ago
I'm not a fan but I'll admit they're pretty good with domains.

migrantgeek 15y ago

Seems like everyone agrees that GoDaddy is terrible. What's strange to me is the interface has always sucked and gets worse as they've grown. You'd think with the revenues they see, they could get some good designers to make it much more usable. I like Enom myself. The API works really well, prices are good, and the UI is clean and usable. I've been much happier since moving all of my domains over.

BenSS 15y ago
Nicer user interface doesn't always equate into more revenue. Sometimes it's even counterproductive (sales pages w. misspellings/mistakes can convert better!).

rickdale 15y ago

I can't believe people are still bitching about GoDaddy shared hosting. I feel like a quote from Richard Pryor is in store: "Boy, it's 1975 you betta get your shit together!" My point is that if you were smart enough to use GoDaddy shared hosting then you probably weren't smart enough at the time to have a VPS. Take what you have learned from GoDaddy and learn some more stuff and then sign up for a VPS or build a server. GoDaddy can be a good start for those just jumping into webdev and hosting, but after you have the equivalent of a yellow belt, its time to move on.

pavel_lishin 15y ago

> It’s a good thing I don’t drink, because the blur of Saturday and Sunday spent on the phone could have really been dealt with better with a couple of stiff drinks to ease the pain. What.

mtogo 15y ago

This article is spot on. I can't fathom why anyone would put themselves through Godaddy, especially a startup. I feel like you're asking for trouble though if you use Godaddy's hosting, which has a reputation for being absolutely horrible.

KaeseEs 15y ago

No one should use GoDaddy, ever; there are many other registrars in their price range that don't share their onerous practices with regards to transfer, takedown, security and privacy and which have much better customer service.

GoGlobal 15y ago
which 1?
- lucisferre 15y ago
  I like Namecheap personally
  - akkartik 15y ago
    How long have you been using it?
    - qx24b 15y ago
      Not the person you asked but I've used namecheap for 3 years now and haven't had any issues, the whoisgaurd they offer is cheap when it comes up for renewal and you don't have to have a card or anything on file for when renewals come up, they do email you a bit when they do but I don't mind that. The interface isn't going to win any awards and most of my domains use linodes dns so I can't say how well their dns stacks up. I also have a few domains on nearlyfreespeech which is quite a bit down on the interface but their terms are great.
      - commandar 15y ago
        >The interface isn't going to win any awards and most of my domains use linodes dns so I can't say how well their dns stacks up. Their DNS has been fantastic for me. Very straightforward interface, and even has a few nice touches like being able to automatically set up mx records for you if you use Google Apps on that domain.
    - 15y ago

rshigeta 15y ago

I've seen a lot of issues raised about godaddy recently, but any suggestions for domain registry that work better?

mbesto 15y ago
Just moved all of my domains from GoDaddy over to Namecheap. Interface is slick and very easy to use. First year for privatized whois info is free too!
snorkel 15y ago
I've been happy with dnsimple.com, not the cheapest but has a clean UI, intelligent features, and intelligent support the YC crowd here would appreciate.
- tylerrooney 15y ago
  I'll second my vote for DNSimple. We were using GoDaddy before and we had an issue where they were returning faulty DNS records from certain hosts (which was such a pain to diagnose). After trying to deal with support at GoDaddy we were done. We switched everything over to DNSimple and I'm happy paying them $3/month so I never have to look at another GoDaddy config/upsell screen again. They also have a status page (powered by Pingdom) http://status.dnsimple.com http://status.dnsimple.com.
- aculver 15y ago
  Yeah, totally agreed. I met one of the principles of DNSimple at MagicRuby earlier this year. Definitely worth giving these guys $3 a month for the amount of time they save me. The time their configuration templates for Heroku and Tumblr have saved me much more in time than I'll ever pay in subscription fees. They also make it super easy to get SSL certificates.
dasil003 15y ago
I use Dreamhost. $9.95 is reasonable, and it's great for placeholder, static or otherwise low-traffic, low-importance sites (which of course are the majority of domain registrations).

drivebyacct2 15y ago

Why is this news?! I can't count the number of times this has come up on HN, let alone reddit, let alone random prominent blogs, let alone from other big names that have had problems with GoDaddy suspending service, locking them out of their control panels and/or siding with law enforcement and acting before asking. Stop using GoDaddy. It's trivial to find other registrars, and not hard to find better ones. (Examples of better registrars: Gandi, name.com) Honestly, not a reassuring way to advertise your new company. There first intro blob admits that they knew this was a risk. "Yeah, we knew people have problems with this, but we were lazy and didn't bother taking the 30 minutes to transfer our domains elsewhere."

pornel 15y ago
> Why is this news?! I can't count the number of times this has come up And yet GoDaddy is still in business and doing great.
- jbhelms 15y ago
  You can't get past the cheapness of some people. $5 a month for hosting is very attractive to someone looking to bootstrap off of savings.
  - drivebyacct2 15y ago
    You can get much better supported, more feature-full (and also more "unlimited" and oversold) hosting for $5 or less from people less scummy and likely to shut off your box or domain than GoDaddy. Seriously, is DNS so hard that typing in the nameservers of your shared hosting provider or DECENT VPS provider is so unthinkable? Or is it registering for a second account? I simply do, not, understand.
- aninteger 15y ago
  Maybe those superbowl commercials really do work.
- drivebyacct2 15y ago
  So? That's not a reason to use it or a reason that they're any less scummy than they are. They have flashy commercial and people use them to save 50cents on a $7 purchase. Quite frankly, it's pathetic that people give them their business. Oh, and if anyone uses GoDaddy for hosting, just leave your username after the beep so I can permanently ignore you.

dasil003 15y ago

No one should ever use GoDaddy for any reason. I thought that was geek 101 by now. Also, incidentally, you never host a startup on shared hosting. If a day or two of downtime is a big deal than you gotta go VPS at a minimum.

mtogo 15y ago
That's not true. For low traffic sites, NFSN and Webfaction are more than capable.
- _delirium 15y ago
  Yeah, I'd be surprised if a typical DIY VPS webserver can beat nearlyfreespeech.net's uptimes and resilience to burst traffic.
  - davidandgoliath 15y ago
    Doubtful. Largely in part due to the average 'vps' user not managing things properly -- or knowing how much they need to scale, etc. Entities that have been doing it for years have things optimized quite a bit to handle the spikes. I suspect the average shared hosting kicks the ass of the average VPS -- particularly in the IO department.
    - dasil003 15y ago
      Are you guys serious? No doubt there is good shared hosting, but most of it is oversold to shit. "Average shared hosting" is a race to the bottom. The reason I say VPS is because that way you have guaranteed resources and the ability to debug and fix problems yourself. I guess if you know the right shared host you can get some good value there, but it still seems like a terrible risk to me due to undisclosed limits, or vulnerability to neighbors traffic spikes. When I said "startup" I thought it was implicit that it would not be expected to be a low traffic site, at least not for long.
      - deleted 15y ago

larrik 15y ago

I swore off GoDaddy years ago when I was setting up a website for a friend. It took an entire night to FTP up about 100k worth of files to his account. His website was extremely slow as well, so it wasn't just me. We're talking about a website that got maybe dozens of hits per day. He was a paying customer!!!! I've never had such a bad host, even from free ones. Also, I absentmindedly signed myself up for their WHOIS privacy protection. Holy crap was that a mistake! I can't cancel it because it's actually offered by another company Domains By Proxy, but they won't let me log in because the account was magically setup using some bogus credentials and information which they got from the ether or something. So I can't even migrate that account away without sending them a driver's license, and THAT's assuming they have my correct name on file (which is a real possibility that they don't, since nothing else seems accurate). GoDaddy is no help, I have to call DomainsByProxy (which is GoDaddy, btw). DomainsByProxy is no help either, unless I send them a scan of my driver's license. It pisses me off so much I just haven't been able to bring myself to do it. It's cheaper just to keep paying. Yuck.

libraryatnight 15y ago
Domains by Proxy emails you credentials when you sign up. People don't pay attention to this delete or never look at the emails, then get pissed when they can't login. Their hosting blows, but I've never had a problem with registrations.
- larrik 15y ago
  That's what they told me too, but I have every (non-spam) email I've ever gotten going back to 1998, including the emails when I bought these accounts, and there is nothing from DomainsByProxy at all in there. It's possible these emails got sucked up by the spam filter and are therefore lost to history. However, looking at how it works, and after talking with "both" companies, I'm inclined to feel and believe that they were intentionally deceptive.
buddydvd 15y ago
I noticed transferring a domain to different Godaddy account immediately cancels that domain's privacy-protection service. You can probably try that first before transferring your domain out of Godaddy.

timjahn 15y ago

Don't. Ever. Use. GoDaddy. Ever.

GoGlobal 15y ago
y?

andrewl 15y ago

Paul Graham says "I use EasyDNS. They're expensive, but reliable and never do anything evil." Source: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=150565 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=150565 Note that that comment was posted over three years ago. Does anybody have any more recent experience with them?

jbhelms 15y ago
DNS wasn't really the problem here, it was the hosting and setting up a ssl cert. I use GoDaddy for my DNS stuff and have never had any problem with them for that. Most of the horror stories come from people hosting with them.
- stonemetal 15y ago
  They also provide registration and SSL.
  - jbhelms 15y ago
    Actually, after posting this I found an article that said that GoDaddy is selectively denying DNS requests, so they are now being crappy with DNS as well. I guess I need to move to a new registrar and DNS host.
bunnyhero 15y ago
i've been using them for years, and am quite happy. i use them for almost all of my domains.

pieter 15y ago

I agree with GoDaddy being horrible, but this really isn't just their fault. Certificate revocation does exactly what it says. It's a technical term that everyone using SSL should know and understand the implications of. Their offer of creating a new certificate for you for $15 actually sounds pretty decent. And, you don't have backups of all your data and domains? While running your sites on a shared host? This really sounds like something that was bound to happen to you. Be glad you got it fixed and I hope you learned your lesson.

wvenable 15y ago
Backups don't matter in this case. What is he going to do with backups?
- dholowiski 15y ago
  His sites were down for "days". If he had backups he could have restored the sites to a different server.
  - wvenable 15y ago
    Yes, but isn't the problem related to the domains not the hosting?
kijin 15y ago
It seems that GoDaddy created a certificate for the wrong domain in the first place. Still, the author should have pointed out the problem and ask GoDaddy to fix it instead of revoking the certificate himself.
caryme 15y ago
I ran into the same situation the author did when getting SSL for a freelance client of mine. The problem is that nowhere in GoDaddy's certificate purchasing or setup process do they ask you what domain name you want the certificate to apply to. They just apply it to the "primary" domain on a hosting account, which is basically the first domain you set up and associated with that hosting. I kept expecting that the next step in the setup process would ask me what domain I wanted to use the certificate for until there was no next step and the cert was pending setup on the wrong domain. At no point did they indicate that their single-domain certificate only works on the primary domain until I was on the phone with customer service before revoking it. We ended up going with a multi-domain cert (which they did give us a discount on) rather than change the primary domain on the hosting account because their service representative said that would require downtime for all the sites on that hosting account.

leon_ 15y ago

When I was doing web stuff back in 2003 the common opinion on webmaster forums was that one should never ever use GoDaddy. (There were cases of stolen domains, etc.) Maybe they changed now - maybe not. But I'm not going to find it out.

DanielBMarkham 15y ago

I moved away from GoDaddy a couple of years ago. Now I have a few expiring domains left on there. Last week I got a notice they were going to charge me for a renewal, which I did not want. So I called the support guy. Twenty or so minutes later, he sent me to a link to fill out a form where all would be taken care of. Except it wasn't. Just like my previous few encounters with GoDaddy, when I went to the link I learned some obscure detail about my contract with them prevented me from getting what I wanted -- yet allowed them to charge me in full. I'm not going to go into details. It's a perfectly reasonable request on their part. The problem is they have created this monster of add-on services and items, all with little footnotes and gotchas. And it's all geared to extract more money from me. Last time I had a domain going to expire that I wanted to keep, I went to transfer it over to my new domain guys. The domain was expiring in a month, but I had to complete a GoDaddy form online to make it happen (sound familiar?). The only way to complete the form online was to check a checkbox. The checkbox said that once I checked it I couldn't transfer the domain for another 90 days. Fuckers got me again. I could tell you a few more like that. It's always some finely-detailed bullshit that ends up with you paying them more. Last week they got me for around 180 bucks. So now I plan on using the domain I couldn't cancel. I go to the DNS settings. Looks like the new DNS manager is overly complicated and impossibly to use easily. The "adventure" continues. I swear I hate those bastards. I consider myself a nice enough person, and I have been disappointed by online services in the past -- no big deal. Some online companies "get it" and some not-so-much. But GoDaddy has crossed a line with me somewhere. I'm not sure if it's the used-car-salesmen experience I get checking out or the policies that exist seemingly to endlessly screw me over in various and sundry ways, but it's just a really, really, really bad service in my opinion. Did I mention I didn't like it so much?

dlikhten 15y ago
Wow. Well... Wow. Domain registrars are things you touch once every few years, and their entire goal is to make it more time consuming to remove yourself from them then switch since its such an insignificant task, most people ignore it and keep with the same one. Is this even legal?
- slowpoke 15y ago

mbesto 15y ago

Which is amazing considering how much GoDaddy is used for YC companies: http://jpf.github.com/domain-profiler/ycombinator.html?2011 http://jpf.github.com/domain-profiler/ycombinator.html?2011

damoncali 15y ago

I've been using GoDaddy for years. Never had a problem. I dont' use their hosting, though.

dpcan 15y ago
Exactly what I came here to say. I don't use their hosting because I've tried it and it's painfully slow and I have had it go down intermittently for a number of clients who I know use it still. I've had to talk with their support several times for little issues too, and I've actually had excellent interactions. Again, not for hosting however. I use their SSL certificates as well, and it's a very easy process that I've never had a problem with. I don't know why HN is the dumping ground for bad GoDaddy experiences. There are review sites for this. I've had miserable customer service experiences with countless companies, but I'm not posting them here, and they certainly wouldn't get voted to the top.

geekfactor 15y ago

It turns out GoDaddy only issues the certificate to the domain attached to the hosting (which is somewhat of a stupid association, really, because it shouldn’t matter what domain you use as long as you’re accessing your content via a correct route). If hosting with GoDaddy was the first mistake, this assumption was the second. The whole point of an SSL certificate is to say that the server you are talking to is a server that is authorized to speak on behalf of domain xyz and, as such, they are generally tied to one or more domains.

latortuga 15y ago
I don't know exactly how GoDaddy works but on my namecheap account, I can issue purchased SSL certificates to any of the domains I have registered there. I assume I may even be able to issue them to domains I do not have registered there (though I have not tried and may be wrong) because they have a verification process.
- webfuel 15y ago
  Regardless of where your domain is registered, you can indeed get an SSL cert from Namecheap. I bought a Comodo PositiveSSL for $9/y and couldn't be happier. When I ran into some issues installing it on a Mac mini server, their CS was responsive and friendly.

nyellin 15y ago

Please fix the link. It goes the blog's homepage which makes it difficult to find the article later.

skilesare 15y ago

I remember when GoDaddy was the David to NetSol's Goliath.

fatalerrorx3 15y ago

I hated using GoDaddy when doing development work for clients...I would never choose to use it for myself just based on my previous experience with them. I prefer self hosting on a fresh Ubuntu Server install on highspeed residential cable from a server I built myself..there's something satisfying about learning about all aspects of web development

TomGullen 15y ago

GoDaddy is so bad. My heart sinks whenever a client asks me to login and change some setting for them. They've managed to turn the entire process of every function on their site into a purist up-selling unusable monstrosity that confuses customers to such a degree they feel they need to pay more and more money. If you want a good Domain host try http://www.webwiz.co.uk http://www.webwiz.co.uk, the guy who runs it is very good and prompt at support, domains are a fair price and the interface is super easy to use. I have no affiliation to WebWiz but since moving all my domains over there it's been a lot easier.

mille562 15y ago

I have used GoDaddy for their DNS services and have been very happy with their customer service. No issues so far after ~2 years. I may research other DNS though, comments of how easily they shut people down makes me nervous. Note to Pinolio: I may have missed it, but I did not find a link to your service on your blog.

jeremydavid 15y ago

Has anyone here used Nearly Free Speech (www.nearlyfreespeech.net)? I have finally started to make my migration away from GoDaddy (I have been planning this for years), and NFS seems pretty good. I can't seem to find any horror stories about them... but I rarely see them brought up in discussions about registrars. Am I missing something?

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
27182818284 15y ago
I've done small sites with them and have no complaints.
moab9 15y ago
I've used them for years. no problems.
kijin 15y ago
I've been using NFS.N for over three years now. I have a number of small sites and domains with them. The sites cost pennies a month, the feature set is staggering, and the domain registration process makes Gandi and Namecheap look clunky in comparison. They're also painstakingly honest. They recently corrected a billing error of $56 over three years over their entire client base. [1] My only complaint with them is the lack of SSL, but that's what a VPS is for. In fact, I like NFS.N so much I made a simple webmail app to interface with their e-mail forwarding service. It's highly experimental though. [2] [1] http://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2011/04/07/a-small-billing-error-corrected/ http://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2011/04/07/a-small-billing-... [2] http://www.github.com/kijin/nearlyfreemail http://www.github.com/kijin/nearlyfreemail
- jeremydavid 15y ago
  Cheers for that! Thank you for reinforcing my decision. I may just move the rest of my domains over there this week.
genieyclo 15y ago

onedognight 15y ago

All the complaints here about GoDaddy have nothing to do with the one reason to use them, paying the least for a domain with free DNS. If you pay them anything else then you have just nullified this advantage as they can make back the few dollars you saved on the domain by charging you more for things like hosting and SSL (free at startcom).

ericabiz 15y ago
It's only cheaper if your time is worth nothing. Digging through pages of upsells takes time. I prefer using a registrar where I don't have to do that. (I use both Namecheap and eNom.)
- jzcoder 15y ago
  All the upsell checkboxes are defaulted off. I don't understand what the problem is clicking through a couple of pages without checking anything. I've done it dozens of times with no problems.

jinushaun 15y ago

Just had GoDaddy conveniently renew three expiring domain names for me for TWO years. These were domain names I didn't want any more. Thanks.

djb_hackernews 15y ago
I think you are being totally unfair. If they auto renewed, then YOU set them up to auto renew. If they auto renewed, this means you let them keep your billing information on file. They spam me once every week to remind me that my auto renew domains are going to auto renew. And my own personal anecdote, right before one of my domains auto-renewed I got a polite call from a CSR making sure that I was aware the domain was going to auto renew.
hkuo 15y ago
I had this happen to me as well. I gave them a call and they redacted it and refunded me the money. I consider it pretty suspicious activity, considering every email I got from them was telling me it would expire. But just give them a call and they'll set it straight.

nicpottier 15y ago

Does this really even need to be said here? A single visit to GoDaddy and their insane upselling strategies should be enough to disuade anyone that they are in it for anything but ripping you off. namecheap.com has been quite pleasant so far. I used joker.com for years before that without complaint as well. Plenty of reasonable options out there.

sneak 15y ago
Another vote for joker.com. I use them because they are not based in the US, but in Germany, which may result in a smidgeon more sanity when it comes to yanking delegations without court rulings. Maybe. Also, they are nerds and pgp sign all of their outgoing emails.
- MostAwesomeDude 15y ago
  I could have sworn that Joker was hosted in Switzerland, which is the big factor in my recommendation of them to people worried about government interference in domain handling and DNS. Maybe I'm wrong on that, though.

scelerat 15y ago

I could have predicted this thread would turn into a PTSD support group for GoDaddy survivors. I have my horrible stories too (all from freelancing days); suffice to say I learned a couple of things: * Cheap hosting almost never is. * GoDaddys support is designed to minimize their costs, not yours. * if their support cannot help you with a problem they will try to upsell you on a plan they claim *will* fix the problem. Dealing with them on a handful of occasions ranks among the most painful experiences I've had in 15 years of building stuff on the web.

espadagroup 15y ago

I was on a deluxe account at Godaddy, tried upgrading to a VPS, had a horrible experience and now I am a happy customer of PHPFog.

derobert 15y ago

See also a previous post, "Alternatives to GoDaddy" at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2753471 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2753471

fialk 15y ago

You can buy one service from GoDaddy and they'll give you a second service free for a year, then auto-renew that second unnecessary service. You can't cancel easily via e-mail and you can't cancel over the telephone. You have to log in and face an endless amount of confusion and upselling. * This was for Domain Auto-Registration which includes GoDaddy Auctions.

mcantelon 15y ago

GoDaddy: not even once.

thisisnotme 15y ago

I am stunned that anyone would ever use them in the first place. After going through domain registration with them, and being appalled at the amount of up-sale, I decided they aren't the company I would want to trust with anything. I have been using dreamhost for years, and they make registration management painfully simple (and honest). Also GoDaddy had an issue years back where they were apparently scooping up domains that people didn't finish checkout with and then selling them at a higher price.

mikeleeorg 15y ago

I know two non-techie people (one a friend, one an acquaintance) who've used GoDaddy and gotten confused by all of the upsells and promos. My friend ended up purchasing a few extra services by accident and had a hard time trying to cancel them. The acquaintance was much less cognizant and ended up paying hundreds a month unknowingly. I've also used them too, because a cofounder had registered our domain name with them. In Aug 2010, I noticed that GoDaddy had been charging us for an extra service we never purchased. I know this because none of us had logged into the GoDaddy account in a while. Fortunately, I'm really anal with accounting records and noticed the discrepancy in our bill. After several emails and attempts to get this charge removed, I tweeted this issue with @GoDaddy included in it. THAT got an immediate response. Eventually, the charges were removed and we got a refund. Moral of the story: Don't recommend GoDaddy to your non-techie friends, and consider avoiding it yourself. But if you must use them and have a problem, tweet about it to get a quick resolution.

akmiller 15y ago

Is it really a problem if I simply use them as a registrar? I have many domains there but that's all I use them for is to simply register my domain. I have liked them for that because they are cheap (if you avoid all the up-sells which is easy enough) and their prices have stayed fairly consistent over the last several years. I moved to them from Yahoo. Yahoo always allowed you to register a domain for a cheap price of 9.00 but then the renewals were 34.95...a bit of bait and switch if you ask me. Anyhow, I've been happy with simply using GoDaddy as a registrar but after reading this thread I'm wondering if I should switch??

joehewitt 15y ago

Are any of the big registrars trustworthy? I'm trying to consolidate all of my domains on Namecheap right now. I transferred one domain from Dyndns and they did the transfer within a few hours (nice!). Then I went to transfer another from Network Solutions and four days later I am still waiting. Do they think I'll change my mind if they refuse to release the domain for a week?

athst 15y ago

GoDaddy is the worst company ever. Earlier this year I finally took the step to transfer all of my domains to a different company, and I haven't looked back. Instead of transitioning slowly over time, I just decided to pay the money and transfer everything - it felt a lot better to just be free of them. Imagine a company so awful your customers are willing to pay extra to not be a customer! One painful part of the transfer experience is that their "DomainsByProxy" service is entirely separate, even though it is sold alongside their domains as an add-on. My problem was that I had originally signed up with it years and years ago, and they do not keep your email or password in sync with your GoDaddy account. So I couldn't "release" the domains from DBP to be transferred without going through this crazy process of sending in forms and a copy of my drivers license to reset the account info. It was awful.

deleted 15y ago

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indec 15y ago

This may be just me, but I won't use GoDaddy because of their advertising. Their "sex sells" approach seems geared to re-inforce the "boys-only club" view of tech.

larrys 15y ago

One of the reasons godaddy is successful is that they are the registrar of referral for people (web designers, programmers, ISP's) that have customers that need domain registration or renewal. When an end user has a domain they need or one up for renewal godaddy is the registrar that is suggested to them by their "tech guy". This is similar to how Microsoft gained power in a way. They were supported by a huge network of people that made money off of Microsoft. Additionally traditional tech guys want to appear smart and love (even if they don't make any commission) telling people they can get their domain registered cheaply at godaddy. "Wow I'm overpaying" says the customer. What many people don't realize is that all registrars pay exactly the same price for a domain. Any registrar charging less than a certain amount (say below or near cost) is making it up elsewhere. In the case of godaddy it is by selling you things that you don't need that have no value. One and only one example of this is "privacy protection". This is like a FUD from Microsoft. Many godaddy domains have privacy protection that have no need for privacy and in fact privacy, because they are an operating business, with a business address, is the opposite of what they should be using. While having privacy is of benefit in some cases (to criticize your employer as only one example) it is almost always safer to have a real address in the whois records if you can do that. This of course isn't limited to godaddy. Register.com is the registrar for Fred Wilson's avc.com. Avc.com has privacy protection even though Fred has a business address that he could use and has a public email address. Domain Name: avc.com Created on..............: 2008-07-18 Expires on..............: 2019-04-30 Registrant: Domain Discreet ATTN: avc.com Rua Dr. Brito Camara, n 20, 1 Funchal, Madeira 9000-039 PT

skcin7 15y ago
The example of the "privacy protection" reminds me when I was a n00b (I still kinda am), but like 3 years ago I wanted a domain that was taken so I paid ~$15 for them for domain backordering.... LOL. I didn't really know what it was at the time (stupid me) but now I feel so incredibly stupid for basically giving away $15 and getting duped for my money.
- larrys 15y ago
  I wouldn't say it was stupid actually. Stupid is something that you do that most people don't do. Many of the godaddy services seem legit on first glance. That's why they sell so well. The marketing language they use is good. There are cases where someone might actually stand a chance of back ordering a domain. But when godaddy collects $15 for a domain that there is no way they are going to get for someone (like a 3 letter name as only one example) that's taking advantage of what someone doesn't know. If you want to backorder a domain use pool.com. Last I checked they don't charge anything for a backorder.

josscrowcroft 15y ago

If this doesn't convince you to leave GoDaddy, just remember that the owner and founder takes summer holidays shooting elephants.

DenisM 15y ago

Since this seems to be "my most/least favorite name service company" I recommend DynDNS. They're expensive, but they work very well in my experience. You can set very short TTLs, which obviates the need for static IPs.

jeromeparadis 15y ago

My first rule is use a registrar to register domains. Never host your site or DNS at the registrar. My second rule is do not host your DNS where you host your site. It makes it easier to switch providers without downtime. With these rules, I use GoDaddy to register domains and never had any problems. For DNS, DNS Made Easy is cheap and reliable.

myprasanna 15y ago

likealittle.com suffered with them too. They are pretty darn evil, they ask for a ransom to let you move your site.

dendory 15y ago

I used GoDaddy when I first started, years ago, but quickly moved away from them. Been with Dreamhost for years now and it's been very good. Adding SSL can't be simpler, they even streamline the process, allowing you to buy the cert directly in the panel (or import your own from a third party), assign a static IP, and everything works inside an hour. Anyways, just wanted to share my experience.

alwillis 15y ago

I couldn't agree more. I've seen firsthand people using Go Daddy to check out a possible domain only to have Go Daddy squatting on it the next day. He was able to get a few of them back, but it such a hassle. This was a couple of years ago; I can't imagine how much worse things are now.

d2 15y ago

OK kids, here's what you need to know. There are three levels of your relationship with Godaddy: Level 1: You're in balls deep. You register your domains with GoDaddy, use their DNS servers and host your shit on their servers. You also get your SSL certs from them. That's what the OP was doing. Level 2: You're in up to the balls, but that's where it stops. You register with them, host your DNS with them but your website lives on another providers servers and you get your SSL elsewhere. Level 3: You wearing a condom and don't give them their own key or underwear drawer. In other words, you register your domain with GoDaddy but you host the DNS somewhere else like DNSMadeEasy which costs, but is reliable. You also host your site somewhere else like Linode for example. And your SSL cert is something that costs more but is reliable. I have an EV cert from Verisign which costs but you get better conversions. Level 3 is the only place you want to be. Pay them the bare minimum, immediately delegate the DNS hosting to a reliable rock solid provider that doesn't black-list DNS servers and use that provider to point your A record to whatever web host you're using. You get cheap domains and the only time you have to wade through GD's cluster fuck interface is when you change DNS providers or want to register another domain. My primary domain did over 27 million DNS requests last month via DNS Made Easy with a 12 hour TTL and it's been registered with godaddy for over 4 years now with no problems at all.

pbreit 15y ago
I agree with hosting your site and DNS elsewhere but isn't it OK to get SSL from GoDaddy?
palish 15y ago
And people wonder why there aren't more women in computer science...
soult 15y ago
I would still be worried about the domain. If my DNS provider messes up, I change to a new one and I am back within 72 hours (at most). If the mail provider messes up, I change to a new one and I am back within X hours (where X is the TTL set for the domain). If my webhost messes up, I am back within X hours (because I of course make offsite backups), etc. The only part where one needs a 100% reliable business partner is domain registration. And after hearing all the horror stories about Godaddy, I would not trust them, not even if I was wearing your methaphorical condom.

rcavezza 15y ago

GoDaddy has the best customer service if you pick up the phone and give them a call. They're not like Google - they have a phone number listed and people are always available to pick up the phone - 24/7 if I'm not mistaken.

userhasaname 15y ago

Where does he explain how and when the hosting died? He jumps from SSL revocation to hosting downtime.

kermitthehermit 15y ago

Nobody should use GoDaddy, not only startups.