GoDaddy Review

Strong Uptime and Speed, But Still Some Drawbacks...

Brad Smith  —  · Read user reviews

godaddy hosting review

With more than a thousand website hosting services out there, it’s pretty difficult to find the host that’s perfect for your needs.

At first glance, GoDaddy is great, having low prices and some great features.

But if you look at customer reviews and feedback, you’ll see some polarized opinions, too.

So what is the case exactly with GoDaddy? Should you sign up with them, or not?

Well, here at HostingFacts, we want to help make the decision easier for you. So, we have signed up with GoDaddy to test their performance. We took a deep look at all their features and terms and wrote this definitive review to make it easier for you to know if GoDaddy meets your needs.

Let’s take a closer look.

General Info & Hosting Overview

SPEED: 508 ms (Last 12 months, updated October 2020)
UPTIME: 99.96% (Last 12 months, updated October 2020)
SUPPORT: 24/7 Live Chat, Phone, WhatsApp
APPS: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and 150+ Other Apps with a One-Click Install
FEATURES: Unmetered Bandwidth, 100 GB Storage, Free 1st Year for Office 365 Email and Domain Name
HOSTING PLANS: Shared, WordPress, Cloud, Reseller, VPS, and Dedicated Servers
SITE TRANSFER: Not free ($99.99 per site)
PRICING: Starting at $1.00/mo (renews at $8.99/mo)

Pros of Using GoDaddy Hosting

GoDaddy might be best known for domain names, but they have also figured out how to provide a decent hosting service.

Namely, they have delivered solid uptime and page speed over the last few years. In addition, they offer more than 150+ free integrations for your website, as well as helpful customer support.

All in all, you can say that GoDaddy is reliable. In addition to that, they’re also flexible: all pricing plans give you easy third-party app integration with over 150 popular web applications.

And all things considered, their cheapest Economy plan has good value for money, too.

But let’s go on and discuss everything in more detail.

Here are the top things we liked about GoDaddy’s hosting.

1. Decent Uptime at 99.96%

GoDaddy delivers satisfactory uptime on their shared hosting plans. As mentioned, their 12-month average uptime is 99.96%.

GoDaddy 2020 performance statistics
Live test site: hostingfacts-gd.com | Avg. uptime and speed: last 12 months

Is that any good?

Well, yes. An uptime rate of 99.96% means about 3.5 hours of total downtime per year, which is not too bad.

But it’s definitely not the best either.

In fact, some website hosting services can offer average uptimes as high as 99.995%. That translates to only about half an hour of downtime per year. Of course, 99.995% is the absolute best in the industry.

Still, after testing 40+ website hosting services, we can say that GoDaddy is well above average. Their average monthly downtime is only around 18 minutes, which is definitely not enough to derail your business during a big sale or launch.

So, even with a few big shifts in May and September, you can rely on GoDaddy to keep your site live and running.

Last 12-month average uptime:

  • October 2020: 99.96%
  • September 2020: 99.84%
  • August 2020: 99.99%
  • July 2020: 99.99%
  • June 2020: 99.99%
  • May 2020: 99.89%
  • April 2020: 100%
  • March 2020: 99.96%
  • February 2020: 99.99%
  • January 2020: 99.99%
  • December 2019: 99.96%
  • November 2019: 100%

2. Great Page Load Time at 508 ms

This might come as a bit of a surprise:

Our GoDaddy test site has shown a great average page loading time as low as 508 ms over the past 12 months. In fact, their page load time has been improving, showing a slightly decreasing trend as seen in the graph below:

GoDaddy Average Page Speed
Live test site: hostingfacts-gd.com | Avg. uptime and speed: last 12 months

This is somewhat surprising because years ago you wouldn’t associate cheaper web hosts like GoDaddy with performance as great as this.

And fast loading times aren’t just for vanity.

As a matter of fact, studies have shown that slow loading times can cause your visitors to leave the site faster. In turn, this hurts your search engine rankings (especially on mobile) and, of course, negatively impacts your conversion rates.

Unfortunately, as you won’t be able to change your web host’s server speed, it’s vital to consider it before signing up with a hosting provider. If your web host is slow on the server level then, sadly, your hands are tied.

Luckily, though, based on our tests, you won’t have to worry about page speed with GoDaddy hosting.

3. Over 150+ One-Click Install Applications

GoDaddy will let you install some powerful third-party integrations to your website. In fact, you can add over 150 of the most popular applications on the Internet – with just one click. That includes content management systems like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.

godaddy apps

GoDaddy also includes developer-friendly tools like cPanel, MySQL, CloudLinux, Python, and multiple versions of PHP.

So, they have a good variety of options that suit everyone from beginning bloggers to more experienced web developers. What’s useful for some beginners, is that they even have a drag-and-drop website builder, which comes with a separate pricing plan (starting from $9.99/mo), though.

4. Good Customer Support

One feature that we’re always happy to see is 24/7/365 customer support. GoDaddy offers exactly that. They have a speedy live chat, a great network of international phone support in a number of languages, and a decent knowledge base.

In their live chat, GoDaddy has retired the old chatbot, which was used to start the conversation by letting you choose a problem category. Now, after typing in your inquiry, you are instead connected straight with the support agent (within about a minute).

HostingFacts GoDaddy Review live chat test

So, to test out their live chat support, we asked them a few basic questions about site migration. The responses were very friendly and on average it took them a minute to respond. Although we first received general information on hosting plans instead of an exact migration fee, we did finally get the answer we needed.

HostingFacts GoDaddy review migration fee

GoDaddy has really made big improvements to their live chat support within the past years. It used to be unreliable and often felt like they were trying to sell you something, instead of helping you figure out a solution. But we’re glad that they seem to have listened to user reviews and completely reworked their live chat.

5. Basic Cheap Plan is Good Value (for a Single Basic Website)

When we originally reviewed GoDaddy (in 2017), their cheapest shared hosting plan was too expensive, and the features were really limited. At least compared to the competition.

Now, though, it seems they’ve done a 180-degree turn. Currently, the Economy plan pricing is only $1.00/month with a 12-month contract. That’s as cheap as it gets.

But for such a low price, do you actually get any value?

Well, yes. You get one website, up to 100 GB of storage, and unmetered bandwidth. Also, you’ll get a free domain with any annual plan, and free Office 365 Email for the first year. All these features are really useful and not every host offers them as part of their cheapest plan.

For example, some of the other hosts we’ve reviewed, like SiteGround, also performed well in our tests. But with them, you only get 10 GB of storage with the cheapest plan – GoDaddy gives you ten times more.

So, the overall value you’re getting from GoDaddy’s Economy Plan for a single basic website is good, considering that it’s insanely cheap.

However, despite some remarkable features and a great price, you will have to make a few compromises with GoDaddy, too. It’s only when you dig a little deeper that you realize it’s not as good as it might seem. We’ll discuss this more in detail in the next section.

Cons of Using GoDaddy Hosting

Although the value for GoDaddy’s cheapest plan seems good at first, you’ll find some problems once you look closer.

In fact, their low prices somewhat contribute to the problems. Namely, the cheapest plan lacks a few important features and there are a lot of upsells throughout the checkout process. Also, the renewal pricing will be much higher than the first-term discount.

In addition to that, we didn’t exactly enjoy GoDaddy’s slightly confusing and vague money-back guarantee, either.

So, here are the biggest cons we found, discussed in more detail.

1. Base Plan Lacks Critical Features (No SSL Certificate, Backups, Security, or Site Migrations)

The top hosts we’ve reviewed will throw in features like an SSL certificate or backups on every plan. In fact, these have become commonplace and are pretty much required to run a site today.

Unfortunately, GoDaddy doesn’t offer any of the mentioned features in their base plans.

Let’s take a look at SSL certificates for example. Unless you’re already paying for GoDaddy’s most expensive plan, this feature will cost you:

GoDaddy SSL Ceritificates prices

  • $63.99/year for a single domain ($79.99/year renewal).
  • $159.99/year for up to five domains ($199.99/year renewal).
  • $295.99/year for one domain and all its subdomains ($369.99/year renewal).

To be honest:

These prices are a bit too much. Especially as most hosts today will give you a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate for each and every one of your sites.

Some hosts will also give you backups and website security for free.

But with GoDaddy, backups will cost you $2.99/month and website security $5.59/month (renews at $6.99/month).

In addition to all that, there’s another common feature that GoDaddy doesn’t offer for free:

Site migrations.

Again, many hosts will move at least one existing site over to their servers for free. Many of them can even do this within a few hours of asking so you don’t have to wait around.

Not GoDaddy, though. They don’t offer any free managed migrations. This feature will cost $99.99 per site and per database, and it takes 7–10 business days. So it’s not just expensive but also slow.

If you add all of these extra costs up over the course of a few years then GoDaddy hosting doesn’t look very cheap anymore.

And all these paid extra features bring us to our second con.

2. Recent Downward Shifts in Uptime

Our measured data for the HostingFacts test site with GoDaddy shows that in May and September 2020, GoDaddy’s uptime took a downturn. We measured uptimes of only 99.89% and 99.84%, respectively.

If we draw a graph, then the data shows a slight negative trend in uptime:

HostingFacts – GoDaddy Average Uptime

Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that GoDaddy can’t be trusted anymore. Keep in mind that throughout several years, their uptime has been consistently decent. However, the downward spikes within the last few months might be reoccurring, if the causes are not taken care of soon.

To help you keep track of any changes, we’ll continue to monitor GoDaddy and we’ll let you know as soon as we have news on their performance.

3. Lots of Upsells

All the lacking features that we discussed above, lead to a lot of upsells during the signup process. In fact, GoDaddy has become somewhat infamous for upselling. The reason for offering so many upsells is to increase the final price that you’re going to pay, as the initial plan prices are absurdly low.

The first upsell that you’ll run into has got to do with the monthly cost for the hosting plan. Based on the duration of your chosen plan, the amount that you will prepay can vary greatly.

A short, three-month plan has a significant monthly cost: $10.99/month. So, for the best value, you might have to sign up for 24 or 36 months instead, getting a monthly price of $3.50 or $4.33, respectively.

With such offers, you might be tempted to get a longer plan right away. But this means you’ll have to invest a larger sum of money upfront, making a much longer commitment.

HostingFacts GoDaddy review plan length

And this is just the first of many upsells.

GoDaddy will also try to sell you a lot of extra services at checkout, too. For example, they will automatically opt you in for website backups that will cost another $2.99/month for the duration of your plan.

HostingFacts GoDaddy review website backup

Just that one upsell alone will already double your price.

And it doesn’t stop there, either. As discussed above, you’ll see upsells for SSL certificates, backups, and “essential website security” which refers to malware scans and updates.

GoDaddy’s checkout process can feel like a minefield, where you need to carefully watch each step before accidentally paying two or three times the initial price.

And as if that wasn’t enough.

4. Renewal Rates are Much Higher

All of GoDaddy’s plans follow the industry-standard pricing trick where they double or triple the price when it’s time to renew.

The Economy plan, for example, will jump to $8.99/month when you renew, compared to the initial $1.00/month. That’s nine times more than the original price. And you won’t get any extra features or better performance. You will just have to pay more.

When choosing a pricing plan and its duration with GoDaddy, you should carefully calculate all costs to see what the best option for your needs is. With the lower-tier plans, you’ll pay a smaller monthly fee but your SSL certificate will renew for a higher price. The most expensive plan, however, already includes free SSL for all your sites for the duration of your subscription.

So, if you have several sites, it might make sense to get the most expensive plan for the longest duration. This way, you can avoid at least the SSL renewal costs.

But you might also want to look at other cheap web hosts before making your choice.

Finally, we have one more downside to discuss.

5. Confusing Money-Back Guarantee

On top of the lacking features, many upsells, and very high renewal rates, GoDaddy isn’t exactly the benchmark when it comes to money-back guarantees.

Most web hosts that we’ve reviewed will give you a no-questions-asked refund if you cancel within 30 days. And on the surface, GoDaddy’s money-back guarantee looks similar: annual plans can get a refund within a month of buying.

However, here’s where issues start popping up:

If you pay for a monthly plan (anything less than an annual plan – three, six, or nine months), you have to request a refund within 48 hours. This only gives you two days to try GoDaddy.

On top of that, some of the terms of service are slightly confusing.

For example, here’s what GoDaddy’s Refund Policy says about web hosting refunds:

“If a Hosting Service has already been performed, then it is non-refundable (if not yet performed, eligible for a refund within 30 days of the date of the transaction).“

That’s not very clear, is it? When is a Hosting Service considered “performed”?

We contacted GoDaddy to find out. It turns out that the service won’t be considered “performed” as long as you submit the refund request within the set time period. At least according to one of their customer support agents.

Still, any money-related confusion is not good for business and should be avoided. And even the slightest chance of not getting your money back can be quite worrying. So, if you want to try GoDaddy out, you should definitely read the fine print and make sure you understand and follow all the rules.

GoDaddy Pricing, Hosting Plans & Quick Facts

Here’s a quick overview of GoDaddy’s hosting plans:

Economy Plan Deluxe Plan Ultimate Plan
Pricing $1.00/month
Renews at $8.99/mo		 $7.99/month
Renews at $11.99/mo		 $12.99/month
Renews at $16.99/mo
Websites 1 Unlimited Unlimited
Bandwidth Unmetered Unmetered Unmetered
Storage 100GB Unmetered Unmetered
Email Accounts Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited
Other Features • Free Email (renews $23.88/yr) • Free Email (renews $23.88/yr)
• Unlimited Subdomains		 • Free Email (renews $23.88/yr)
• 2x Processing Power and Memory
• Free SSL Certificate
• Premium DNS

Quick Facts:

  • Money-Back: A slightly confusing 30-day money-back guarantee.
  • Website Migration: No free transfers. Cost for managed migration $99.99 per site. The migration will take 7-10 business days.
  • Free domain: Free for the duration of the initial annual plan (12, 24, 36 months, etc.).
  • Ease of Signup: Very easy signup.
  • Payment Methods: All major credit cards and PayPal are accepted.
  • Hidden Fees and Clauses: Somewhat confusing refund policy & terms such as “If a Hosting Service has already been performed, then it is non-refundable (if not yet performed, eligible for a refund within 30 days of the date of the transaction).”
  • Upsells: A lot of upsells. Price variation for the initial term length, site migrations, backups, SSL certificates, security, and more.
  • Account Activation: Fast account activation.
  • Control Panel and Dashboard Experience: cPanel.
  • Installation of Apps and CMSs (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): Lots of 1-click installation options with the most popular open-source apps.

Do We Recommend GoDaddy?

Yes, we do.

GoDaddy has strong uptime and fast page loading speeds. They work well with the most popular web apps you would want. And the initial pricing for the cheapest plans is still good value despite lacking several important features.

Even so, you might want to look at other options, too.

GoDaddy offers many upsells for basic features that you’d assume were just included for free (SSL, backups, etc.). Adding any one of these might double the cost of your plan. But together, they could easily end up costing you significantly more than the best web hosting providers.

So while GoDaddy’s overall performance is good, they do have some drawbacks. Because of that, we recommend also reviewing other web hosts at the top of our list.

Visit www.GoDaddy.com

Do you have any personal experience with GoDaddy – positive or negative? If so, please leave us an honest, transparent review below!

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56 user reviews for GoDaddy

Blaire

3 — 

Horrible customer service

I spent 40 min on the customer chat this morning. In the end, I had to end the conversation as I had somewhere to go. The problem is not resolved. Their products do work so I'll leave them 3 stars for that.

Daniel A

2 — 

Confusing interface

The pricing is interesting but the website design page is confusing to say the least. It leaves little room for customization and it is hard to do changes. Wix is much better in that aspect

Mayank

2 — 

Gone down the drain

I have been with GoDaddy for years now, almost starting in 2006-2007. Their service was quite reliable, personally I always could reach a Tech Support agent.

Lately things have gone bad to worst, first of all they brought down the web server for days and a few days back they deleted my MS SQL DB. Apparently to restore the DB that they deleted I need to pay 100$. Tech support agents are absolutely clueless on what they are talking about.

I am definitely one of those who is considering switching my domains.

Martin

1 — 

Non existent support

Non-existent "technical support" and server issues in their cPanel hosting makes it one of the worst hosting providers I have experienced in 20 years. Not worth even a penny.

RexKramer

1 — 

You can't reach support

They have no ticketing system so, if I have a problem, I am forced to call them and wait through their ridiculously long call queue, and when you finally do reach an agent they have absolutely no training in anything other than upselling you products.

God help you when you hear the words "Let me transfer you to the correct department." You'll wait another 30 minutes only to be transferred right back into the Sales Queue where eventually you'll reach another agent that wants to transfer you again.

Forget it if you need advanced support like "Can I update the kernel on my VPS?"

Even when I tried to suggest that the agent send a message to their server team, the agent was not able to do so because he "didn't have access" to that department.

I understand that server admins are busy, and can't talk to everyone on demand. But c'mon, guys! I need to get something done, and I can't even get a message to you.

Sometimes (unpredictability) they have direct chat with the server team, but even that isn't really what I need.

Here's an amazing revelation GoDaddy: HOW ABOUT A FREAKIN' TICKET SYSTEM, EH?

Nolan

1 — 

Godaddy is awful

Absolutely horrible host. As a digital marketer, I've used 50+ hosts. Godaddy is the bottom of the barrel on my list.

Uptime and speed are okay, but their site is FLOODED with 404 errors. You want to update DNS settings? Too bad, 404. Need to add a new email? Too bad, 404.

So then you resort to reaching out to support - which sucks. "Award-Winning Support" like they advertise is a lie. They are helpful if you can get a hold of them. The wait times on the phone and live chat are often an hour or more, and that's at 6am or 5pm when I start and end my day. When you message them in the middle of the day you're looking at a few hours of wait.

Just avoid them, they're horrible. If you use them, migrate to another host (like a2, liquidweb, kinsta, or siteground) and the level of support you'll get is a night and day difference.

Kenneth

1 — 

Servers are slow and prone to overload

I had to switch from go daddy hosting to bluehost because I experience overload so frequent on godaddy hosting. I tried to upgrade the hosting plan but it was still slow and prone to overload. Their capacity is so small. WIth bluehost, even the lowest capacity is plenty.

Vinobe

1 — 

Do not fall for it, GoDaddy = NO GO

Please do not fall for their sweet talk. I've been with them for about 5.5 years now for some personal projects, and I'm currently searching for a better alternative... Which could be any because GoDaddy has degraded to one of the worst I ever saw in my career so far. My websites go down at least once a week, mostly more. I have "uptimerobot" data to support that statement. They have no free SSL, which you can expect from any other provider without even questioning it. One time I had about 30 ~ 40 visitors filling out a simple form at "the same time" (10 min window) when giving a talk, and the site went down for 15 minutes. Their chat support knows nothing, any technical term is unknown to them. Out of 4~5 support chats I only once had a person with very good knowledge of their servers, kudo's to him. But please DO NOT fall for it, take anything else but not goDaddy!

I'm a web developer in a big agency, I make custom websites and write custom WordPress themes for our clients. I'm really talking out of experience. Even a 1 star rating is too high. GoDaddy is a NO GO!

Pro U

2 — 

Poor quality and sloooooow service

Go Daddy was an average to good hosting company about 5 years ago. The quality of the service is slowing getting worse each year.

I am a freelance website designer and have built dozens of sites on the GD platform.

My clients are experiencing downtimes, incorrect billing and general poor service more than ever.

Go elsewhere.

karen

2 — 

Shady business practices

I've been using them for decades and they've been ok but now their website is hard to navigate and they trick you by forcing 2 year renewals and other products into your cart. If you aren't paying attention you'll be billed for all sorts of items that you never officially asked for or agreed to.

For example, when you sign up for a domain they assume you want their website package and in a sneaky way force a trial on you. 1 month later be ready, because if you don't cancel the trial that you didn't know about, you'll see a $288 charge on your credit card.

",When I called they said "we try to send out emails notifying you of the charge". I looked through all of my emails and nothing - not even in bulk.

I told her to cancel the 2 domain names and asked for a refund because I only had for the domains for a month. They refused.

They've become a shady company, I wouldn't recommend nor will I use them again.

Sarah

1 — 

Worst Hosting Ever

Every 3 to 4 months I had an issue with godaddy, hacking, plugins, wordpress, name it. Everything happened and they charged every.single,time around 100$ to 'fix it by a professional' So I decided to go with an external agency and they told me they couldn't fix it as the problem came from godaddy themselves. But godaddy told me they couldn't fix it because it didn't come from them.

I'm switching providers this week.

Shady

1 — 

Do it yourself company!

It is that type of Do it yourself because we are afraid to break your website - type of company! I am no developer, and luckily I have some knowledge, but what happens to people without the knowledge needed? If support fucks up something, they direct you to Experts service where you need to pay to correct technical support's mistakes!! Unbelievably awful business model. Go for BlueHost or NameCheap better! Professionals and they do not treat you as a developer!

carly

1 — 

Terrible!! Watch out!

I've ran into countless problems with GoGaddy, where do I even start.

Built a staging site, tried pushing it over (this has always been a hit or miss... usually leaving a few things wonky). This time it broke the whole site. I tried to push a few times and had no luck. Was chatting with support for 1.5 hrs with no resolution and got disconnected!!! The rep even suggested that I should change my permalinks!!! I went ahead and restored the original version and THEN was not able to get into /wp-admin/... would get redirected to /wp-admin/insall.php/. I've been on the phone with them for an hour now, being tossed around through tech reps. Database is apparently erased... I cannot stress enough to not use this company!!!

Their CDN simply does not work, and there are a bunch of random server side errors when I run my page through GTMetrix. Tried calling about that too and they suggested that it was "probably a plugin", and blamed the fact that i'm using PNGs. I disabled and checked all plugins and there was no difference.

Before you call, know your stuff! You'll most likely get manipulated into thinking that its your fault.

Rahul

1 — 

Worst Hosting Ever

Their service is the worst in this whole world. I made a mistake of renewing with them for 1 year which is my prod server. Everytime they push some idiotic update and server is down for minimum 24 hours. When you complain they will blame you that you would have filled the storage disk to max capacity and now the server is down because of this. They make big claims that 99.99% uptime is all fake and a marketing scam.

K

1 — 

Bought 3 years and canceled in 2 months - no money back

I have purchased a 3 years hosting plan and cancelled by mistake and immediately contacted them to either restore service or give me a refund but they did nothing. Customer service is very poor asking me 150 more to re-enable services. My mistake I went with godaddy - their ssl enablement is also a very lengthy process. Overall my recommendation if you are looking for hosting there are so many other providers - in top 10 hosting providers godaddy is not one of them.

Peachy E

1 — 

Incompetent

Our website was down for two weeks getting 502 errors which was a hosting issue. The customer service and their ticketing is a headache. For two weeks I was over the phone more than 5 hours a day listening to their rubbish music. We built momentum in 10 months for Christmas sales and just 3 weeks before Christmas we had this hosting issue which killed all our sales and business. I had no choice but to migrate the hosting to another provider.

David

1 — 

Go Daddy Horrible

Let's start with that I signed up with GoDaddy, built a site which took me at least 30 hours to complete. All was ok until one day I noticed my site was down. Called Go daddy up and spoke to a rep who said my site was taken down .He explained that credit card # must have changed and they couldn't make recurring payment. I thought Ok no problem here's my new card # as the old one was probably expired or more likely credit card co changed #. To my disbelief he says sir your site is gone we erased it and didn't save it? Whaaaaat? I thought he was kidding but he was not! They actually casually tell you its gone oh well. They said we sent an EMAIL yes and email and you were notified! They couldn't call? What a sleazy unprofessional company Go daddy is!! Now I have no site due to utter incompetence, arrogance and unprofessionalism on Godaddy's end. They could care less about customer. How do you erase someone's entire site and not adequately notify customer?

Eric

1 — 

Terrible Customer Service When You Need It

I'll spare you all the details and just say they are fine when selling you stuff, but when they screw something up they are arrogant and cocky. Many calls and chats go to India where they have no idea what they're talking about and just transfer you around. Then after they cost you a bunch of money and are forced to condescendingly admit they they are not willing to do anything in return... not even credit you for the time your sites were down. I'll make a long story short. They knocked 3 of my websites offline for weeks and made me spend hours convincing them it was their fault before they would do anything about it. They were rude and nonchalant until they realized it was indeed their fault. Much of their support was in India and it was terrible. Tons of transfers, scripts, and long hold times. After they realized it was their fault they acted like they cared but still managed to do a terrible job. Then I asked for a credit after having my revenue bearing sites down for weeks and all they offered was 30% off a firewall I previously told them I didn't even want. Based on my experience I would not recommend dealing with Godaddy if you have any other decent choice.

Alex P

1 — 

The worst!

The worst ! I have told myself I will switch to 1and1 so many times , but I guess going through the process is what I have been avoiding. Site down all the time, in maintenance mode all the time, very very slow because of shared hosting. Customer service is incompetent anytime you buy something or try to have them fix it, one month later its something new. So many things that were added on like SSL and never properly either activated or installed. On hold with another rep this very second from what a rep yesterday said that he fixed for me from what rep before him didn't do, that said he will fix what rep before him forgot to do. Very unreliable hosting.

Robin

1 — 

Why GoDaddy is a bad provider

GoDaddy is a very poor service provider. The server packages are extremely slow and weak, while being more expensive than the competition.

We had some hard speed issues on our site after transitioning to GoDaddy. We called multiple times to solve the issues, but were met with the only recommendation of increasing the package and test the website on GTMetrix, a suggestion an intern could have made.

Once we upgraded packages, we were still facing the same issues and repeated the process. The only recommendation / "support" we received was to increase once more the package we had with them. We did so, and this did not solve the issue whatsoever.

Once we switched to a provider with a much cheaper and lower end package, the website starting running as smoothly as on our staging site.

Very poor customer service, quality of service and useless recommendations.

0/10 Would absolutely not recommend.

Eric

1 — 

Horrible

I would not deal with this company if I was making a decision today. I had 2 websites with them and their rep accidentally deleted both of my sites when he was trying to put me on a new hosting plan. I had to spend hours on the phone with their reps (most who barely spoke English) and they did nothing to help besides asking me to pay a fee to reinstate my sites. It took a full week and 4 times of me contacting them to finally convince them to pull the audio recording of the initial call, and them finally admit they were clearly at fault. At which point I was beyond frustrated because they had let both of my revenue generating websites be down while they tried to convince me to pay to reinstate my sites and take no responsibility. When I asked what they could offer me as a form of recompense for my troubles when they finally realized they were at fault, all they did was offer me 30% off a firewall product that I didn't even want and to renew 2 unused domains for a year for free. It was beyond a horrible experience, and what bothers me most is their arrogance and complete lack of care that they took two thriving websites down. In my experience Godaddy is definitely not the type of organization that cares about your business or customer service.

Michael H

5 — 

So far so good

I have used GoDaddy for over a year and have bought new domains as well as bought expired domains through their auctions. I haven't had any issues transferring to other web hosts. I would recommend them so far since I have had no issues.

John W

1 — 

Worst hosting ever and serious privacy concerns

I don't know why anyone still uses these guys. Their servers are slow, customer service is seriously lacking and there are problems around every corner. I contacted their support because I have a client that is using their Ultimate shared hosting package. I know... shared hosting isn't always the best, but it's what the client wanted. So, we ran into an issue where emails from the website were always going to spam.

The simple solution is to change it so that emails are being sent via smtp through an email account. It shouldn't be a problem. I've done this before. Except for when I went to run a test and found out that all email ports (25, 465 and 587) were being blocked. I ran a quick port checker from an external site and confirmed that they were open on the email server. It appeared that Godaddy was blocking the website from connecting to those ports.

So, I contact customer support in order to see if we can work out a resolution. Besides, this is the first time I've ever run across this issue with any web host... even shared hosting from other web hosts. I tell the tech what the issue is and instead of being straight with me and telling me that that won't allow a website to connect to port 587, he leads me on this hour long journey to prove to me that our website can send through their email server at port 25 ONLY. What he doesn't say is that the emails will only end up in your spam. Even their own chat transcript ends up in my spam. Great solution, huh???

Worse yet, they want all email from their shared hosting to flow through THEIR unencrypted email servers. Do you have secure password reset links that need to be sent from your website. Bad news... Godaddy want to read that email? That's exceptionally bad for website owners and their customers. He couldn't give me a straight answer as to why they won't permit it and that means they're okay with bad privacy standards.

Do not ever work with this company. I'm moving all of my domain names away and I will never recommend them again!

Darren

1 — 

Terrible for WordPress

I've built a large number of wordpress sites for clients in the last few years, and Godaddy is a host I refuse to work with. One thing they never tell you upfront is the amount of RAM allocated to your site. It's so pathetic that it CRASHES your host service for 10-15 mins when you install certain plugins into Wordpress. I've had to spend extra time tweaking settings on both the server and WP's side just to counter this nonsense. Considering that most other hosts are pretty much install and go for WP, Godaddy should be avoided if you're gonna use WP.

Dexter C

1 — 

Terrible Customer Support

I have been a Godaddy customer for over 3 years. They were the first host I ever tried. When I needed SSL, I bought a certificate, but it took them forever to install it. when I contacted support, they tried successfully upsell me to a more expensive (managed certificate) at nearly twice the advertised price.
My sites worked well when they worked, but whenever I had an issue, customer support was more interested in renewing upcoming product renewals than solving my issues.

If you want to contact support through their chat, I've discovered you have to lie and say you are interested in sales, instead of a support issue. Then you get through to chat agent. They deliberately make it almost impossible for you to contact them for support issues.

They had been sending me emails for the past month or so asking me to upgrade to a Business Hosting plan from shared hosting. I decided I will try it. Their help and support pages boast that it will be a better plan and that the migration will take 30-40 minutes.

I paid for the upgrade, and they do nothing for two days. I contact support to find out why it wasnt done, they give me some reason that my storage space (on the lower plan) was more than what I was allowed on the higher plan, which makes no sense, and that I need to remove some files. When I check my files, I was using less than 1/2 of the storage allowed for either plan, but I still removed some files and asked them to please migrate my site since I already paid for it.

They attempted to migrate the site, and send me an email that it was completed (of course asking me to purchase something else as well). But when I check my migrated site, they did not transfer the databases, so the sites were not loading on the new server.

I contacted support again (after lying and saying my issue was a sales related issue) so that the live chat button will be active, and tell them that the sites are not loading. They open a ticket for me and tell me to wait, and still have the audacity to tell me that my ssl certificate is expiring in the next 4 months, and if I want to renew it now, while my sites are down.

After another day of my site not loading, they tell me they are having some issues with my databases being corrupted (they were working fine before) and that I have to wait another 72 hours with my sites down for them to rectify it. When I ask for a refund and to revert my plan to the shared hosting plan, they refuse and say I must wait for the 72 hours for them to sort out the problem.

I am now convinced that Godaddy is only concerned with upselling, and not about support. I will definitely be moving my sites to another host at the end of my current hosting period. I will not advise anyone to use Godaddy for anything other than a basic website without any databases or any need for real technical support

Joe

1 — 

They reel you in and steal your money

As most of you who are small business owners know, there are times when you are to busy to check the details. About 3 years ago I added an email for a temporary employee to my account . When the employee left I called GoDaddy and canceled the email. Yet they continued to charge me for it for 3 years(I didn't notice the charges because I had my main emails set to auto renew every 3 years.) When I called them out on it they refused to refund my money and told me that it was my responsibility to manage my auto renewals and that even though I canceled the email. When asked I asked where to find my auto renewals I was directed down a path that required four clicks to find the secure location of the auto renewals. The charge was relatively small for a big company like GoDaddy however they said they couldn't refund it because the charge was more than 30 days old even though the product wasn't being used. I am trapped because I just renewed for 3 years. Don't make the same mistake I did and support the unethical culture of this company.

Melanie B

1 — 

GoDaddy shut my business down

If I could leave zero stars, I absolutely would! I've been with GoDaddy for awhile, and for the most part, everything seemed okay until last year when they pressured me to upgrade my emails to Outlook 365 - that's been a nightmare of its own, but we've mostly worked thru that or dealt with the issues.

But, yesterday pushed me over the edge. So, I was advised by a kind customer that our site was down. When I checked, it looked like an SSL certificate issue, which had just auto-renewed thru GoDaddy. So I called them.

First call: 35 minutes on hold - I had to leave the office for an appointment so I hung up.

Second call: 1 hour, 14 minutes on hold - I was told that I have duplicate SSL certificates on my account, so they cancelled one and refunded the money for it. Interestingly, this was the one that was connected to my site. So, they are going to connect the other one to the site, and that will solve the problem.

Today, third call: no hold time, but today I'm told that it could be up to 72 hours for resolution of the SSL issue. So, a total of up to 5 days my site will possibly be down. No backup plan, no solution offered, no possibility to escalate the issue for faster resolution. Nothing. Just "sorry ma'am".

I run a property management company - our listings are on our site; our application is on our site; our login portals for tenants to pay their rent are on our site!

So, with their auto-renewing SSL, GoDaddy failed and my site went down. Then, when I called to get it fixed, their "fix" caused it to remain down for up to an additional 3 days!

I'll spend those 3 days looking for a new hosting company that cares whether I'm shut down or not....and that answers their customers' calls in less than an hour!

Rick

1 — 

Moved all my domains away

Godaddy is the most unethical domain registrar you can think of.

1. They use dark patterns and try to push their worthless upsells as much as they can, making you think it's a default add-on you really need.

2. They make transferring domains away a real PITA by purpose. Examples:
- Bought a Godaddy auction domain? There's a 60 days waiting period before you can transfer away.
- Changing domain contact info? You can, but after this you can't transfer the domain away for 60 days.
- Transferring away? You first need to turn off WHOIS privacy and expose your private contact details. No other registrar I know of does this.

I'm using them for 10+ years, but moved all my domains away a long time ago. Unfortunately, I still need to deal with this gang of crooks whenever I buy a Godaddy auction domain which I transfer away as fast as possible.

TL;DR: Godaddy sucks big time!

Gretchen A

1 — 

Terrible

We were warned about go daddy previously and wish we would have changed our service sooner. In June, a representative from go daddy called us and told us we needed to update something on our web domain hosting. Instead they set up an entirely new website called new.jackandg.com that we weren’t aware existed until now, nine months later, charged us $318, and refuse to refund us. We never authorized this, or received any sort of documentation letting us know this happened. The customer service supervisor, Cache, claimed there is nothing they can do to refund the charges even if we cancel the 3 year hosting now. They claim that since they emailed us and we never called to dispute the charges within the 30-day window then it is our responsibility. This is a bait scheme that they use where they claim you need some new service but they are just ripping you off and creating new websites that no one ever uses. After 7 years of being a loyal customer, with four domains hosted we are transferring all domains to a new host. We tried to reason with you GoDaddy but your lack of interest in retaining loyal customers is abhorred. Insulting!

david

1 — 

Used to be great but now they suck

Godaddy used to provide amazing service with exceptional, knowledgeable staff who could communicate clearly in english. Now I believe they have oversold their product and are understaffed. Waiting on the phone for 30 minutes is not unusual. Once you finally get someone on the line they are inexperienced, poorly trained and constantly put you on hold in order to speak to someone who knows what they are doing. This is a big disappointment. Godaddy has inexperienced staff, with low level knowledge. I spent most of my time with them explaining how websites work to their amateur staff. I am moving all of my sites away from godaddy and towards a hungry web hosting company who needs business and who has the customer service standards that godaddy used to have years ago.

Kelly J

1 — 

30 day money back is a LIE

I had been working on my future site during my trial period. Getting to know the site I must have created another website under the same name. However I have not worked on the dummy site. Long story short when renewing the site that I actually want to eventually have go live I somehow renewed the dummy site. When I realized my error i immediately cancelled the renewal and renewed the correct site (all within 15-20 mins). Due to life happening I had time to place a call on Sunday afternoon ( maybe 3 days later) to have my money refunded for the dummy site. I paid for the correct site too. I was told i was past the 48 hrs refund policy. Bad customer service and false advertisement.

Andrene

2 — 

Scamers

Godaddy will change their price in a heartbeat (I've been dealing with them for several years, and haven't found anyone else, plus I would of to change my hosting). I called on 2/12/19 and spoke with agent Richard in hosting. I asked Richard to increase the PHP to the max file size of 256 or above, he stated if he does it, it will cost $30.00, however; I can do it myself and he will he send the instruction via email to me. I forward the instruction to the site builder, but she was unsuccessful in doing so. I called back on 2/14/19, and spoke to agent name Bret, he quoted me $50.00. I stated to him, that Richard quoted me $30.00, then he said "I don't know how long he's been here, but I've been with the company for 6 years". This guys was so arrogant and rude. I could not tolerate the back and forth, I told him no worries I will call back and speak with another agent, which I did. I called back and spoke with John, much better conversation, and he was able to explain the difference between the $30 and the $50, needless to say the $30 is what I needed Bret for my WordPress site.

Sad

1 — 

GoDaddy Was Not Honest When Selling Me Products

I've used GoDaddy for a variety of products over the years and it has been nothing but trouble. Stay away from GoDaddy. The latest fiasco is that I made the mistake of purchasing Office365 through GoDaddy, only to find out it is NOT the same product and NOT the same support you get if you go through MS directly. I was told it was the same. But when I called to point out that I was misled, the rudest tech support manager of all time, Eric, told me that was not what I meant. Seriously? OBVIOUSLY, I meant am I getting the SAME PRODUCT? Now I've prepaid for 3 years of Office365 with GoDaddy only to be stuck with a shoddy product and tech support accuracy of a cockroach.

In addition I've had non-stop problems with my other GoDaddy products and have steadily been transferring out. One problem is that my hosting was on a bad, compromised, hacked server and they did not tell me that the quality of hosting I was getting was sub-par from most of their other servers AND they charged me more. Ironically, their bad servers cost more than their better ones. Either way, it is not OK to put customers at risk. Not surprised to read the reviews here saying their sites were infiltrated with porn. It's the bad servers. I had to go to the work of migrating every site, but I never would have known I was on a bad server if I had not pressed the issue.

On top of that, I have almost never had accurate info in any tech support call with GoDaddy EVER! Each person tells you a different, made-up, guessed answer. I've even spent hours on the phone with tech support only to be told at the end, "Yah, I don't really know how to do this. I was just guessing. Why don't you call back later?" What?

Thanks a lot, GoDaddy. Worst service and ethics. What makes them stand out most is that they take no responsibility for telling you false information to convince you to buy something. If I am considering buying a product I should be told the TRUTH about what I am buying. Instead, GoDaddy had LIED/MISLED me. They have gone downhill as a company. Stay away from GoStinky GoDaddy. GoSomewhereElse.

RJK

1 — 

Good tech support is declining

I was on the phone with Godaddy on chat for over an hour discussing a several years long problem. I kept getting emails coming from just about everywhere. The email TO section from the incoming emails was your standard "[email protected]." They asked me if I own this email and I told them it was an email assigned by Godaddy when I first developed the online store. After over an hour of escalating the issue to higher up the chain, they finally came back and stated it was coming from my Contact Page. I asked them then how do I block the trash coming in from everywhere using my contact page. Godaddy had no answer and I could tell the Godaddy rep was tired of working the issue (I could tell by her short irritating remarks at the end) as I was just as tired getting nowhere. So, no resolution provided by Godaddy, so I dug deeper on my own. Come to find out, there was a solution and I found it on my own. Godaddy tech reps, know your systems network capabilities well before you begin to work with customers. It was a one-step process that I did to correct the system preventing incoming garbage emails. Your Incompetency precedes you.

Preechamon

1 — 

Worst than worst!

I will give them a zero star if I could. I mean, take a look all the people on here giving them 2-3 stars, I'm on their delux plan with less than 100 product Images and they constantly asking me to upgrade, and it's been over 7months now I can't even launch my website as I get 503 Service Unavailable Error almost everyday! This guys need to go out of business.

Yonas

2 — 

GoDaddy? Nope!

Your review of GoDaddy is to the point - sadly, I have had the same experience mentioned above. I am the victim of one of the sketchy tactics of "Free" outlook for one year scheme. They used my saved payment method on their site to be used for the auto-renewal of this product. I haven't even used the product during their so-called "Free" offer time. In fact I did not register for the product and I have never even used it. Even though I explained that to their support team - - their response was "No refund after 30 days". Disappointed! I am looking for alternative hosting company.

Jessica

1 — 

They never help!

These people are terrible at helping. I needed a assistance to guide me on how to link a page on the Text Button, and the first call sent me this website with more links to figure out my self. How if they know the answer they could not assist a beginner on such a task? it would of take me less time for him to guide me through the task than finding the answer, actually I never did found the answer in their website, and within a day I called back. I got the same response, but this representative send me the link with the exact location of the article. I LOSE HOURS OF WORK trying to find a simple answer. Their job supposed to be helping customers with this problems. I was not asking to help design my website, I was asking for a solution to an action button that I wanted to add to my website. I am now highly considering to close my account. I can not stand their support.

Nikos

1 — 

No customer oriented

Every time I call tech support, I've got a different answer. They have no more willing to help customers, they just throwing a whatever answer. They charged me twice on a product and they don't recognize it. I showed them the bill and they still deny. I disputed one of the charges and they shut down my entire site. I would not recommend godadyy anymore... bad tech support.

cesar

1 — 

RIP-OFF

Worst service ever. I turned auto renew off for my domain and was charged anyway. I proved to them with several emails that auto renew was off. They don't care! They said if I wanted to get money back I need to delete this domain. I did it and now I don't have the domain and don't have the money. I would give a minus rating if I could.

Veronika

1 — 

Lost all my content

I was using their services for Managed Wordpress site for 1,5 years, then due to my card becoming inactive, I was late around 20 days on the payment. Lost all my data. Wasted 3 hours chatting with the support which was very unhelpful and didnt resolved the issue. Moving somewhere else.

Samir

1 — 

Bad Refund Policy

I purchased a virtual phone line and selected 1-year plan. There was a free month trial. Five days past the 30 days, I called to cancel but refused to issue a refund: they would be glad to cancel but no refund.

I don’t recommend GoDaddy for lack of flexibility in issuing a refund.

Steve

1 — 

worst hosting

upgraded the hosting to ultimate and guess what? few days was fine then hangs up, website down, 20 seconds to load a page, tried to copy site from different hosting less than the price I paid in Godaddy and it works just fine maximum of 3 seconds load normal

called Godaddy and the suppport person said "you need to talk to your developer" yup blame it on developer, "you need to upgrade your plan" another lame excuse.

stay away from godaddy

Andrew

1 — 

Stay away!

Would not recommend this company to any one. Charged much more than just for the domains on auto renew without asking if I wanted extra options and when I noticed it on my credit card they did not want to return the money for unwanted options even after I cancelled, said that more than 30 days went by since auto renew took place. I get the impression that all they seem to care about is to squeeze as much money as possible out of me. Will never use them again!

Ozmen

1 — 

Worst Experience

I've been billed for emails that I deleted and haven't used for over 6 months. Their delete account button somehow empties their slot but keeps on billing you "just in case you may assign another email". Then all of a sudden weird emails popped up one day with username user1, user2 etc in the weirdest way. It took a while for the support person to figure out what's going on etc as well as me. Bad experience, bad billing practises, bad support. Stay out.

Russ

1 — 

Why all the calls?

I'm about to stop buying domain names from Go Daddy. A day or two after I purchase a domain I am flooded with emails and phone calls trying to sell me web building, hosting or other such products. Apparently, Go Daddy is selling my contact information to these third-party vendors. It's annoying and a disruption to my workday. This has to stop...

John L

1 — 

Customer Service On Decline

I've been with GoDaddy for 13 years. I've noticed over the last few years their customer service has become crap. Before, they would help you. Now, it's so good. Each time I call about a problem, the person who answers tells me a different story, which usually ends in the problem not being solved, and then them trying to upsell me on some product I don't need.

Jay

1 — 

GDaddy's Got Sleezy

I recently agreed to have GoDaddy restructure my web page. I should have known better when they made me pay up front for the service. After spending a significant and detailed amount of time explaining the essence of our work and specifying precisely which content CANNOT be continued in the new version, I received a presentation piece I can only say was written by a first year high school student masquerading as a marketing professional. If it weren't for the $1,600.00+ dollars at stake I would find it humorous. It seems GoDaddy is hiring kids to perform the work of a professional, paying them the usual chump change, and passing this off as first rate craft. Then they want to rewrite what they didn't understand the first time...so guess what. Now, you the customer, will have to spoon feed every morsel of data to someone who has no understanding of or interest in your business. At this point you can get 30% back or roll the dice and let them redo for all the money. So now "Who's The Moron?" Now I'm looking for another web provider and they will eventually loose more money than the $1,600.00 they stole. Hopefully, the word will get out and other buyers will beware. Hats off to Matt at GoDaddy...nice work!

Sandi

1 — 

I feel like I've been scammed!

I have been with GoDaddy for many years. I have had problems with them a long the way, however, nothing compared with what has happened the past two months.

In mid September, 2018 my website went down. They said it had been hacked and needed info that it needed had been deleted. For a mere $360+ they said they could fix it and provide security that would protect my site from ever being hacked into again. This also included them monitoring my site to make sure it was okay.

It is now November 9th, 2018 and my email and my website have both been down for about a week. I called Google since I use gmail and they said it was a problem with GoDaddy and that they did not see any type of security on my site. They did say they found several infections.

I then called GoDaddy and after 3 hours on the phone may have my website and email back.

The reason it was down? I could not believe it when they said I had cancelled my domain about a week after I had paid them all that money. When I asked to see whatever they think I sent to cancel, they said they cannot show it to me because it is a matter that I need to contact their legal department about. Bottom line...I need to get an attorney and and get a supena to see a document that doesn't exist. So much for their expensive security which is not refundable even though I just paid them about 1 1/2 months ago.

They said they would put my site and email back up, however, it would cost me $80.

When I complained they said they would do it for $40.00. I truly believe that I have been scammed and it seems to me that they took down my site so they could charge me more money to put it back. I had to do all the work to get the site back up and after spending over an hour trying to get my domain verified and having Nathan, a supervisor, tell me that he had no problem doing his own site and could not help he told me that I was having the problem because something was wrong on their end. They had many calls about the same issue.

My experience speaking with Nathan for nearly 3 hours was extremely unpleasant. I felt like he was antagonistic rather than helpful. It was absurd that it took 3 hours to get very little accomplished and feel like I have been working with a company that is not honest and misrepresents their services. I will change as soon as possible. He told me I had to wait for a few weeks for some reason. Not much of what he said made any sense and he had problems talking with me in terms I could understand. I would not recommend using this company.

Chingon

1 — 

Scam

I bought a 3 years both domain name and host in godaddy. About 260$ if i remember properly. I choosed it just because their publicity said that they have special support and optimization for wordpress pages.

Well, the first problem i found with wordpress, i contacted godaddy customer support because wordpress guys said that my host is the only one who can change some particular configuration, important to make my web works.

The first minutes with godaddy customer support was nice. Mostly asking your credentials, blablabla and then, when they really know what your problem is: just change some PHP configuration, they ask for $30 to make any change.

WHAT? i just paid yesterday $260! now you want to scam just to make your work? ok, im done, what could i expect with that stupid name.

Gary J

1 — 

A disaster

Shortly after I started having issues with Bluehost, who I had been with for more than ten years. I thought I would give GoDaddy a try. I moved one of my seventeen sites. What a mistake!

Within twenty-four hours my site was hacked with all sorts of terrible porn. I had never once been hacked with Bluehost. I contacted GoDaddy tech support and after being transferred all around the company eventually got to a senior tech. "No problem", he said. Just pay the $150 fee to restore your site and everything will be fine.

Luckily I had a site backup with DropBox. Couldn't transfer my site back to Bluehost fast enough.

Matthew M

1 — 

The Absolute Worst

I've been with GoDaddy for @20 years and have over 100 domain sites registered with them. They also host my business website. They have gone from stellar to a total disaster. I'd write a longer, more specific review if I and my co-worker hadn't spent over 4 hours on the phone with their lack-of-tech-support over the past 4 hours. No two people give the same information or advice. It's terrifying for anyone in business. Truly a NIGHTMARE!

Matthew M

2 — 

Technical Support?

When I call for technical support, I get the queasy feeling the customer and GoDaddy are using two different responsibility matrices. I don't get that feeling until I call tech support. The way I understand the relationship is: I put in the data. I pay GoDaddy to host that data, so I don't have to worry about that part. My job is: data and money. GoDaddy's job is: everything else. I am not sure if it is possible to corrupt GoDaddy's software or servers with my "managed", it seems locked down in every other way, WordPress. It seems when I call, I understand my responsibilities, but GoDaddy is iffy/waffling all the way back towards "Go-who? Servers? What servers?" It seems difficult to get GoDaddy technical support to accept responsibility except for 1) data, and 2) money, which I clearly have indicated are mine.

I have to patiently and professionally buttonhole, which is a real pain in the ass to do, them into trying attempting something other than their telling me "You fix it!" Getting them to actually attempt to think about looking under the hood rather than brush me off is painful. But, you know when they do, they go "Hey! You know what? There is something wrong with us?" Ya think?

Bob K

2 — 

Deteriorating support

I have supported a number of sites over the years, many of them hosted by GoDaddy. When I first started using GoDaddy I was generally able to connect with support staff who understood the technology they were supporting when issues arose, and if the problems weren't urgent, the option of reporting and tracking issues via email was available. Over the years GoDaddy has injected layers of less knowledgeable staff, and it is no longer possible to communicate directly with the folks who actually manage the servers directly. Reporting and tracking of issues were silently eliminated. I awarded a score of 20 instead of something lower because uptime is still reasonably good and performance is acceptable most of the time, but the servers have been acting increasingly flaky (for example, one of the servers randomly changes the fingerprint for its RSA key, which breaks the scheduled backup scripts; for another example, that same server regularly kills the editor process in the middle of modifying a file on the server). GoDaddy isn't interested in resolving the problems and as renewal deadlines come around I've been recommending to the site owners that another hosting provider be selected.

kevin g

4 — 

Cost Not Bad, Support is REALLY Hit or Miss

I've used GoDaddy for a few years, have four different hosting servers for over nearly two dozen sites and test sites. While the cost of working with GoDaddy isn't terrible (it is getting more costly), their support is very uneven. When it comes to critical issues, like something tanked and a whole site is down, they've generally been helpful with getting the problem resolved quickly. For pretty much all other issues, the response is sometimes good, other times awful. Let's start with some good or at least, not bad things.

In getting an SSLs setup, GoDaddy was pretty easy to work with, but we did the actual installs and did not pay extra for them to do it.
Backups have been easy and reliable. The CPanel interface is familiar and simple to use. Site speed has generally been good with no issues.
The GoDaddy site requiring you to constantly login over and over as you move across their site = pain in the ass

We had a premium security feature expire on a site, but prior to it expiring, the name of it actually changed. Let me back up just a moment. Premium security isn't something GoDaddy actually handles. They third party it out, used to be SiteLock, but now they run their premium support clients through Securi. We weren't informed of the change, so when the old premium planned expired, it wasn't renewed b/c someone in the office didn't recognize the Securi name on the renewal. No big deal. Security expires, and while the site isn't a little less secure, everything still should be fine, right? I began having a variety of issues on the live version of the site. After three different calls about a variety of connected issues, someone over there finally put things together and found what the issue was - left security software that was directing my site traffic to a dead firewall. Took a fourth support ticket and another week for it be removed and resolved.

In another instance, we used their premium WordPress support (and I know this isn't actually hosting related, but it's a service they offer). Prior to this particular time, we'd used the premium an average of about one time per year. Each time, they were able to resolve the issue, whether it be with a buggy theme or issue with a plugin causing problems. The last time though will be the last time I use that service. After submitting a ticket and going back and forth with the tech (btw, like the security, these are not actual GoDaddy or in-house folks; it's third-partied out), nothing was resolved. The final solution was to have the plugin dev rebuild the plugin or simply stop using it. Sorry, but saying, "I cannot fix this. Someone else will have to fix this" and then taking someone's money isn't an actual solution.

Lastly, I will say that in general, we've had more issues with the Enterprise server than with the other dedicated servers we use through them.

Ashley

4 — 

Not a Fan

The big reason I gave GoDaddy a shot was because they advertise an easy-to-setup process and good prices. I am not fluent in website building and am certainly not made of money, so this seemed like a great way to get started.

Nope!

Their "getting started" process was confusing and I paid BEYOND more than what I was told at the beginning because they make it sound like your site will not be up and running without certain add-ons. I bit my tongue at my first payment and moved forward with getting my site set up. I took it slowly and did not immediately publish it - apparently, that's not allowed and my draft was deleted after a week or two. Lesson learned, I redid my site, published it and everything seemed good.

Real life happened and I couldn't mess with it for a couple months. Some people were asking about my site one night and I went to pull it up on my phone... FILE NOT FOUND. Well that doesn't make sense, I dropped $200 dollars on unnecessary junk they tricked me into, they can at least host my site properly. I log onto my account once I was able to access my computer and... everything was gone!

I rebuilt my site AGAIN, published it, and made sure to check up on it along with any GoDaddy emails to make sure this didn't happen again. Things seemed fine for a few months and I forgot about my concerns. Yesterday, I got an email for the renewal of one of those useless add-ons that in hindsight I should've canceled when I had the chance. Well since I'm on the topic of spending $60 on my website I've been neglecting, let's go and work on it. Log-in and guess what... DELETED!!!!! I am expected to start from scratch AGAIN and I am fed up.

though that's their big selling point) - your wallet will get sucked dry for next to nothing.

Needless to say, I'm changing my game plan.

Brian V

2 — 

about GoDaddy

I bought a 5-yr contract and have been with them maybe 3+ years now.
Customer support is pretty good, their phone guys are patient and experienced and relate well to everyday problems. But the SITE is really awkward to navigate and often stumbles upon itself when trying to get into pages. Structure is odd too.... VERY odd. I think it's a mess and could be done better. Likely I will NOT renew, and will consult your service again when time to make the move.