by 4 Reasons Why You Should Avoid Godaddy
By any chance, if you are familiar with domain registrars or web hosting, you must have heard of Godaddy. Godaddy, known as one of the most popular web hosting company and a domain registrar in the world. They have been providing their service to more than 20millions customers across the globe.
What are Web Hosting & Domain Registrars?
Web hosting is the server that is used to store your website’s folders online. Web Hosting companies lease out their servers in different hosting plans. Other than web hosting services, users can also register their domain with Domain Registrars. By registering a domain name, the domain belongs to you in a certain period and you would need to renew the domain over time.
Most of the time, for people who are inexperienced in building websites, Godaddy is the first web hosting company that comes to their mind due to Godaddy’s massive advertising effort and popularity. However, they might not be the best choice at all times. Here, we will tell you what to consider when choosing a web hosting company and why Godaddy might not be a suitable choice.
Reason Why Experienced Users Tend to Avoid Godaddy
- Slow Web Hosting Speed
One most significant drawbacks of using Godaddy is its slow web hosting speed. It is known among knowledgeable and experienced users, that Godaddy is slow when it comes to web hosting. This is because Godaddy overcrowds its servers and there are CPU limits enforced on shared hosting. When you exceed the limits, Godaddy would then restrict your bandwidth which slows down your website loading speed.
However, most of the users do not understand the technical part. This often causes misperception where users think that the problem is on their own site, not the server. They will try to minify everything on their website, but end up still having poor loading speed. The truth is, you would have gotten decent hosting from another honest hosting provider such as Exabytes while paying at the same price. Exabytes is the largest leading cloud hosting provider in Southeast Asia and the US. You can check out more about Exabytes here.
2. Goddady Bait Users with Promotion / Cheap Pricing
Setting up a website involves some costs which you may or may not know about. Other than hosting plans and domain registration, Godaddy also charges for other items such as WhoIS Privacy, SSL certificate, Domain Privacy & Protections, emails, etc. These items are mostly offered free along with Web Hosting plans during a purchase at other web hosting providers. At first glance, it seems that Godaddy has a lower price but when you add these up, it is much more expensive than other providers.
Another strategy that Godaddy likes to use to lure users is promotion. You would find that Godaddy is running an all-time promotion. Whenever you are purchasing a new domain, they offer you a super low discounted price for the first year, then lock you in with much expensive renewal prices. Don’t fall into the trap!
3. Your Domain Belongs to Godaddy
When you buy a new domain from any registrar, you are the owner and have full rights on it until the end of the leasing period. After the domain expired, you would need to renew it again. Failing to do so will cause the domain to be expired and the expired domain will return to the pool of unused domains. However, at Godaddy, this does not work the same. If you registered a domain at Godaddy and happened to forget to renew or did not continue the renewal, the domain name would then become Godaddy’s property.
What happens next if you or another user wants to purchase it back? Godaddy would give the domain a value-priced, which you would need to pay an excessive amount to purchase the domain from Godaddy again. Take note here, they can price the domain at $100 or even $10,000, any amount they want. Unless you are willing to pay, or else the domain stays with Godaddy! Other than pricing it at a fixed value, Godaddy will also put these expired domains in auction for bidding, anyone with a higher price could purchase it.
4. Bad Technical Support / Customer Service
I have been using Godaddy for quite some time as a beginner. One of the things that I found struggled the most with Godaddy is their bad technical support! It would take forever for their customer service to answer your question correctly or provide any useful solution. I have been experiencing websites going down without reason a few times on different domains. When I checked with customer services, they could not find out the reason why and most of the time, I would need to delete my entire site and reinstall it again.
Bad customer service is already labeled on Godaddy among the users. Have a search on the Internet and you would find plenty of complaints. There is a lack of appropriate knowledge of Godaddy customer support which is unable to help the users. If you are from non-technical background or inexperienced users, the most they can help is to throw you with their articles and ask you to read and implement yourself.
What Are Some Recommended Alternatives to Godaddy?
1. Exabytes (Domain Registrar, Web Hosting)
Exabytes is a very popular service provider among experienced users. Similar to Godaddy, they are a one-stop service where you can find all related services needed when building a website. They serve users internationally and also localized to regions such as Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. You would find it surprising at how good their package is in terms of value and quality. What’s even better is that they are at relatively lower prices but come with great value.
2.Namecheap.com (Domain Registrar)
Namecheap is the second-largest domain registrar after Godaddy. They have the cheapest domain registration cost and with good services that you can consider.
