GoDaddy Web Hosting
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GoDaddy is a hosting company that specializes in shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting, name registration, web site design software, and e-business services. The company was founded in 1997 as Jomax Technologies, and changed its name to the memorable GoDaddy in 1999. In 2011, it was ranked the world's largest domain name registrar by Tier 1 Research, and it is consistently ranked as one of the best places to work in its headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona.
The company offers domain registration, hosting, SEO consultation, and other services to its customers. GoDaddy has become one of the leaders in the industry via its quality products and sometimes edgy advertising. The company is an international presence and has been widely recognized with numerous awards for its innovation.
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The Good
- Transparent with prices
- Data centers in North America, Asia, and Europe
- Solid reliability
Price Range
GoDaddy offers regular discounts for its hosting products, which are usually about 50 percent less than the renewal rate. Unlike many companies, GoDaddy is fully transparent with its renewal prices, so that customers are able to see the rate that they will be paying when the initial term expires.
Another difference between GoDaddy and its competitors is that GoDaddy prices its Linux and Windows shared hosting at the same rate. Normally, the industry standard is to price Windows plans higher due to different licensing agreements required between the hosting company and Microsoft. GoDaddy's pricing is competitive and extremely transparent. For those just starting with a web presence, the company's ability to manage all of one's web needs is attractive.
Data Center
The company does not disclose much information about the centers online and its representatives are reported to have given vague answers about the centers, only stating that they are state of the art centers in North America, Asia, and Europe.
Conversely, the company has informative tours inside one of its data centers, featuring the resources used to maintain uptime, keep the servers secure, and reduce the company's carbon footprint. GoDaddy's data center tour gives viewers an inside look at the workings of the data center, which is both informative and unique. GoDaddy uses both generators and batteries to ensure that the servers do not experience power interruption. Cooled water is one of the primary methods that the company uses to cool its data centers, which is both environmentally friendly, but extremely effective.
Reliability
GoDaddy states that it maintains at least 99.9 percent uptime. The company has delivered this uptime percentage at or above this level for the last several years. BestCompany.com uses data from independent testing sources that send thousands of pings to a hosting company's servers per month to randomly determine if the site is up. GoDaddy has performed very well historically on these tests, having been monitored for several years continuously. The only exception to this exemplary performance was a series of outages on September 10, 2012, which left the servers down for hours, resulting in an uptime percentage of 99.674 percent for that month. Users should have little concern about GoDaddy and its reliability.
Customer Service Support
GoDaddy's customer support is one of the best in the industry. The company offers phone support that is available 24/7. The support is also available for international customers with local numbers. GoDaddy's knowledge base and forum are comprehensive and easily searchable. GoDaddy has live chat options available for its customers as well. Customers report that agents are knowledgeable and professional.
Variety of Features
GoDaddy gives its customers access to more than 125 apps on its cPanel/Linux hosting. These are easily installed with a few clicks. Users can access their accounts with FTP as well as the cPanel. Users have the option of several add-ons that its customers can purchase for security and privacy. The company offers its customers access to top level domains that are not easily accessible through other website hosting providers.
The Bad
- Transparency regarding refund policy
- Customer service lacks email option
- Transparency regarding data centers
Refund Policy
GoDaddy has a 30 day refund policy, but we are concerned about all of the fine print that accompanies the refund. Some reviews cite a 30-day return policy, which is only partially correct. Customers purchasing an annual plan have 30 days to receive a refund. Monthly hosting subscribers have 48 hours from the time of the order to initiate a refund request. Other products have varying time periods during which a refund can be requested and granted by the company. While GoDaddy is transparent about its policies by directing customers to visit GoDaddy's Refund Policy, the policy itself is filled with many varying terms that make it difficult to navigate.
Small Drawbacks
While there isn't a lot to complain of with GoDaddy's services, we would like to see some changes. Currently, they do not offer email support. This seems like a basic customer service tool that should have been added a long time ago. We would like the company to be more transparent regarding their data centers and their refund policy as well.
The Bottom Line
GoDaddy offers its customers the best options in hosting and domain registration. The company is one of the leaders in the industry for domain registration. The company's customer service is exemplary in an industry that is lacking in quality customer service. In spite of the peculiar rules regarding refunds, GoDaddy remains a solid option for many customers. The company is transparent about its renewal pricing being different than its introductory discounts, and customers are able to compare their choices easily. GoDaddy is a company that should be considered when shopping for web hosting services.
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User Reviews
Star Rating
10 Reviews
Review Breakdown
Sentiment Criteria
GoDaddy has lots of hosting options and provides easy-to-use templates so that even users without web development experience can create an attractive site. They quickly got back to me when I had a problem and resolved it quickly.
I've used GoDaddy to host several sites, and although I found the initial setup a little confusing, their customer service walked me through it and were very friendly and helpful without making me feel stupid. Ironically, I feel like their own website is a little hard to use, but once you figure it out it's not bad.
GoDaddy has hosted my sites for years. They are dependable and do what they say they do. The only beef I have is all the up-selling that goes on when you register a new domain. They would nickel and dime you to death if you let them. But you can always say no, so it's not that bad.
Great company with a ton of tools to make your website run smooth.
They are ok you get what you pay for. The entry level packages look so cookie cutter but to have it look and be great like anything else it gets pricey. Domains are good.
Go daddy trapped me in a bad situation where I had to choose between paying massive hidden fees or having my website shut down and as a young kid who doesnt have a ton of money to spare I had to let go of my website i spent countless hours working on.
We have used them for many different websites. Great products. Great customer service. Never experienced a problem thus far.
The only reason I keep my business with Go Daddy, is because of the time/energy of trying to transfer over the 15-20 sites I host with them. They regularly change the settings of my servers (breaking my sites without warning) - the way I find out, my customers call to complain. When I call in to customer service, it usually takes 3-4 different people on the line, before any of them are aware, or will acknowledge that something has changed. Even with their "premium" services, I can not think of a single time that any of the customer service representatives have tried to go out of their way to assist with anything. They have a script, and avoid breaking from it. Aside from that, how is it even possible that a WEB company doesn't offer a way to submit an email or trouble ticket electronically? The only options, call in (and regularly wait for 15-20 minutes for a callback) - or "chat" with a representative that has NO REAL AUTHORITY or power, and ultimately just tells you you have to speak with someone to get something done.
I contacted them (by email) right away for a cancellation of two domains (it was on automatic renewal) and a refund. They asked me to call to make the cancellation, which i did. The customer agent asked me to remove the privacy settings of one of the domains first, which i did and that he would cancel the 2 domains after. i even received an email with the subject line "The items have been deleted" which was my confirmation that they were canceled. later on, i checked my payment history and noticed that the refund had not been made. Despite of all the proofs, they refuse to refund me. I have talked to about 10 customer service reps and spent hours (on one occasion i was with the customer service rep for 3 hours!). i sent them all the written (email) proofs yet they have not accepted to refund me. i will never do business with them. this is the company i have done business with. it is complicated to do business with them every single time. do not do business with them, use one of their competitors instead.
Their standard Spam filter is as useful as a bucket with holes in it. Their customer service spouts, how can we turn your day into Awesome. Until they hit a brick wall where they run out of limited resources to solve your issue and then just hide away. You won't hear from them. Great! Cause you still have your issue for a service you have paid for! They won't escalate anything. And even when you Tweet the CEO, you still have to go back and re-tweet the CEO again to get them to do something. Very painful. Avoid at all costs!