This post on godaddy.com has been sitting on the back burner for a while. August I plan to ramp up posts in hopes of building traffic for a special announcement. I apologize if my thoughts on Godaddy.com seem scattered.
Godaddy.com has been an odd pairing for me. I say that because normally I look at a company before signing up with them. I did not know about their commercials, or even take a look at what Bob Pasron was doing. It just seemed like a good idea at the time because Godaddy.com was not on webhostingstuff.com’s top 25 list nor were they on hostaz.com’s . I was looking for some place to host hosting-reviews-exposed.com other than my own hosting companies. In short I failed to do what I asked other people to do and actually kicked the proverbial tires. They were not really considered a competitor as there were other hosts dominated in the web with their own ads. Sure Godaddy.com had ads online but you were more likely to see one from hostgator.com.
My short history with Godaddy.com
Seriously if I had been paying attention I would have gone elsewhere. But when I signed up for service November 2007 I had a rage against webhostingstuff.com, and all my energies were focused on creativity. For 2.5 years I really had no reason to pay attention because the hosting was only handling a single simple html page. On top of that I did not keep track of the up time. I have no idea how many times if any the site was offline. Not like now where I actually do pay attention to the traffic. Once I started a blog for hosting-reviews-exposed.com it would only be a few months before I would move off iatemple.net (August 2010), than off to Rackspace.com this year.
In the beginning my only complaint was their shopping cart reminded me of shopping at Fry’s Electronics. Their checkout lanes have a maze of shelves you have to go through before you can reach a cashier. Those shelves have tons of items that easily get someone like me to leave with more than they were planning. During the holiday season you would be surprised how fast they get people through the lines. However the products that Godaddy.com tried to push on me are less interesting than low cost Godzilla movies, video games, Iron Maiden cd’s, flash drives, almonds, Coke, and sd cards that Fry’s Electronics tried to push on me.
So only one issue with godaddy.com?
I wish I could say that the only reason I had left Godaddy.com was simply that they were just best as a started solution. But the problems I had with godaddy.com made it impossible to want to keep any site that had any good momentum behind them. By the time I had sold off my hosting companies and started the blog I was in need of hosting for several projects that I had started up. I bought 3 VPS containers as I figured why not try Godaddy.com (yeah I had no idea of how well the servers were working as stated before). Getting a stable server was a roll of the dice. One third of the time I would be placed on something problematic. The worst of it was getting support to actually do anything. At one point the ips that was assigned to me became unbound to the VPS container, and my webmaster was often referred to F.A.Q. sections. This repeated as often as 5 times before the tech on the other end actually decided to look and always they found the issues was on their end. Plus if I wanted timely support I had to call in. Seriously I hate talking to people on the phone for a variety of reasons (doing customer support, dealing with companies like Bank of America to name a few) After two months of this, and the coming realization that hosting-reviews-exposed.com was performing slower everyday under the shared account it was on. It was clear my time using Godaddy.com as a hosting solution was done.
Didn’t I try to promote Godaddy.com?
I made a post which had affiliate links to Godaddy.com, in other words you bought an account through that link I got paid:
https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=316
I could not in good conscience give them a ringing endorsement; at best I could say they were a solution for starting up a site. Because at worst that really was all that Godaddy.com was good for. Clearly I encouraged no one sign up with halfhearted review about Godaddy.com, as I never made a commission.
Skip this if you already know the details of Godaddy.com’s history
If I knew what I know now I would never have signed up with Godaddy.com. No I am not here to bash godaddy.com, but I have for some time held off on my criticisms of this company all because they hold control over this domain. But recently I had read that Warren Adelman is taking the reins of Godaddy.com after a $2,250,000,000.00 deal with SilverLake, KKR, and Technology Cross Ventures. From everything I have read he is trying to redeem the soul of Godaddy.com and encourage the tech industry (geeks and nerds like me) that Godaddy.com is a place to do business. Sometimes I do get contacted by hosts, even so far as the owner of the company such as Hostgator.com’s Brent Oxley. He is as any host represented allowed to voice his or her two cents. This brings me to the whole point of this post which is what I think is wrong with the company. Half of the problem is Bob Parson. Despite him not having the reins of the company any more his blog can still be found on Godaddy.com.
Bob Parson shoots an Elephant
I had kept the kids gloves on in regards to Bob Parson’s elephant hunting fiasco.
https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2056
For those wondering if the cat was adopted, yes she was. Her new family found her through this blog.
The claim was that Bob went to Africa to help people in need. So why all the focus on the killing of the elephant if he wants to turn the spot light on those in need? There is a Christian phrase that comes to mind here and that goes something like this: Give a man a fish feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a life time. Never mind killing one elephant every year seems like a small amount of effort (especially after a week or month stay?), after all there are other alternatives to keeping elephants away. Not to mention I am more than certain if people in Zimbabwe are happy to get an empty plastic bottle, they would be ecstatic over a water filtration system. Frankly I could write a whole counter argument to Bob Parson’s claim that could take a few posts, bottom-line he did it because he has the money to do it. Wrapping it up in the guise of charity is what made it blow out of control. Just like me visiting a client in his home state for a few hours just because it was on my way to spend a week with my grandmother does not make my trip business related.
Godaddy.com has a breast fetish
Don’t get me wrong Godaddy.com had a client base that made mine look small. However from the beginning they seemed more interested in being a cheap solution. Despite my partners looking at them as a competitor, I looked at companies like Rackspace and Amazon with envy instead. So I really had no interest in seeing godaddy.com’s advertising. Not to mention the ads did not appear on channels I watched such as Sci Fi, cartoon network, bbc, the history channel, and well a lot of channels that there new target audience were likely to watch. Sure there are geeks out there that watch sports. In fact it was not until 2009 that I actually saw one. It was because while I was getting my hair cut the lady who was cutting my hair had to ask what it was I did. As always I had to explain what webhosting was. Being that we were in Arizona I figured that Godaddy.com would be the best example. I had asked her if she had seen one of their commercials, and yes she had seen them. She thought Godaddy.com was a porn site. After watching some of the commercials I can understand where she got that impression. After all “There is more at Godaddy.com” followed many advertisements of what insinuated girl on girl action.
For some out there they can see the appeal of half clad women, but seriously what does that have to do with web hosting? Sure I get seeing half clad women doing a vacation commercial, lingerie, car commercial, weight loss, and a variety of other commercials. But hosting, well of course it depends on what kind of cliental you want to attract. After all you advertise to who you want to bring in. How many professional women, you know the gender you portray in less in nothing in sometimes girl on girl action are going to be sold on your service based on that? Still those ads are running as I saw one last week.
Me I look at everything in percentages. One being that there are more women than men on this planet. So in short I like to offend as few people as possible. Which means you have to look at how you can make sure you appeal to everyone. Having half clad women in commercials seems like it would repeal professional women. Despite the rumors yes the female persuasion is online, they play video games, (take it from the only guy in a 10 man raid group in World of Warcraft) and they also form businesses. Which means the female persuasion has money.
Godaddy.com and PIPA/SOPA
Back when this blog went black in protest, I had joined giants, business rivals (former and new), and many others in protest. There was only one hosting company that stood out in support of these ill thought out laws and that was godaddy.com. Never mind some of those giants like Rackspace.com or godaddy.com competitors like Hostgator.com were against it, Godaddy.com was for it. I am pretty sure there was no host that was not a firm believer in copy right protection.
Constructive Criticism for Warren Adelman of Godaddy.com
The safe guards I have placed to keep the domain have made it pretty hard to transfer elsewhere. This is pretty much the opportunity to get me to stop transferring . Granted all I have with godaddy.com now is this domain. Yet I am always looking for other hosting solutions. At this point I am not inclined to move hosting-reviews-exposed.com off of Rackspace.com as I am happy with their services. But my design clients are not always willing to pay what I pay for a hosting solution.
The other problem is support, the problems I have had are similar to those that people complain about with outsourced support. I recall one time it took me 6 call in attempts to get godaddy.com support to actually check and issue where ips were not binding to an account. Keep in mind i hate to call in for support but that seems the only way to get expedited support.Those 6 phone calls totaled about 2 hours (including wait time), not to mention all the time waiting I had between calls. Never mind that is a very encouraging factor for looking at other hosts. godaddy.com is paying a tech for the time that they dealt with me be it failed or successful service. Failed attempts to get support done right are costly. It would have taken less time and capital to get done right the first time.
Another thing I find annoying is calling in everything is a matter of top security. Case in point I had a friend that registered a domain with you. Never mind I have my own domain register, and have done countless hours of free work for this friend. I ended up getting dragged in to doing godaddy.com‘s support. Because my friend got a phone call dealing with his domain. The person to call left little details as to the nature of his call. My friend’s domain had 4 years, and he received no notice about anything being wrong via email. No notice of what company it is, and calling the number that called my friend I got someone not willing to identify themselves. But they want my friend to identify who he is by asking for his account information. This just screams phishing. So we hung up on the guy and called godaddy.com from the number they had listed on their site. In order to confirm if the phone number was with godaddy.com or not we had to verify the account. Seriously why does anyone have to confirm their account to know if a phone number belongs to godaddy.com? Upon confirming the account we were told there was no problem with the domain, and no she did not answer the reason we called. After 10 minutes of explaining my friends concern it became clear to her that she should see if the number belong to godaddy.com. While waiting (another 15 minutes), searches on the number through google reveled lots of complaints and one site listed it as number to avoid, even though it was located in the same geo physical area as godaddy.com. Finale we found that yes the number indeed belonged to godaddy.com. Is it any surprise that there number is listed as possible fraud? We still do not know why godaddy.com called about my friend’s domain. I can only assume it was to get him to buy more service.
The clear thing to do is actually check into the very nature of a customers problem. The first case the tech should have looked at the ips, but no he blindly went with the standard cut and paste response. The lady in the billing dept. could have skipped sending us through hoops and made sure that someone was indeed not trying to scam my friend out of his domain or money. I would say I was persistent because I was patient, but the truth is I can be stubborn. Not everyone that is looking for a serious hosting solution is going to be as stubborn as me and move after the first few failed attempts at getting support.
The next issue I have is the actually product. Which is hosting be it shared, vps, or dedicated. I can’t say I have been impressed with the speed. Hence why I don’t tell people godaddy.com is long term solution. In order to be a long term solution godaddy.com needs to offer the ability adapt. I can’t say I know of any company that offers so called unlimited hosting, that offers the ability to adapt. A friend of mine (the one that wrote the hostgator.com review) is in the progress of leaving hostgator.com because they shut his account down due to exceeding resources under their Seo plan. Never mind that any thing dealing with seo means you are interested in lots of traffic. rackspace.com instead of shutting my account down will just bill me for the extra resources needed. I realize there are a lot of customers out there that do not want to pay a lot for hosting. But there are people like me who realize that pennies a day service rarely means you have successful site.
Godaddy.com has a long ways to go to be up to rackspace.com‘s standards. But there are things that Godaddy.com can do to offer hosting to existing cliental as well as those who need serious hosting solutions.
