Why I dumped GoDaddy
Posted by Andrew | Filed under General
After a week of updating nameservers and redesigning blogs and updating WordPress plugins and installs, I can finally write on my web empire once more. My first topic on my new host (I went with iPage if you’re curious), is why I dumped my old host, GoDaddy.
I used to trumpet GoDaddy as a wonderful company, and they were, at least to their relatively new customers. I bought 15 whole months of hosting from them and was happy how easy it was to get started with WordPress and start writing posts. Then, I started having problems, particularly with their billing practices.
For two straight months, each one of the three credit and debit card numbers that I had given them over the last few years had been wrongly charged without prior notice, sometimes for products that I hadn’t even ordered. They were also overzealous, renewing domains and my email hosting account weeks before they were due for renewal. These practices caused checks to my power and DSL companies to bounce and even resulted in Qwest disconnecting my home internet for two days.
I continue to receives emails with an almost threatening tone to them saying that If I don’t renew certain products right away that there will be consequences in the form of “missing out” on great deals. GoDaddy didn’t seem to understand that like most human beings, I have to live on a budget, and a razor thin one as a college student, and that each purchase has to be planned in advance, particularly $60 to $80 hosting purchases. I know, I am poor and I don’t really care.
Then Leo Laporte started talking about GoDaddy (or as he and Scoot Bourne referred to them, “the one with the sexy race car driver“) talking about some of the business practices that they practice. The main example was the trumpeting of company founder Bob Parsons over pulling their business out of China shortly after Google did the same. Clearly riding on the coattails of an internet giant and not mentioning that less than 1% of their business comes from China and that there is no significant loss to them.
I certainly hope that my experience with my new host is a lot better than the past one, and so far it has been very good. iPage has a good support staff and a system of hosting just as good as GoDaddy’s and it was significantly less cost than what GoDaddy wanted to renew my account. If only it was easier to move websites from one low cost host to another, but maybe in the future, it will be.
Speaking of which, do you like the integrated design between here and Duo Citizen? Or should I go back to different designs?
