- I feel like this is like a 12-step program
for GoDaddy users.
Like, if you've been hurt by GoDaddy,
this is the video to watch.
If you're using GoDaddy for domains or web products,
you may not realize you're being robbed.
You need to stop using GoDaddy,
and here's why.
so what is GoDaddy?
Well, GoDaddy is a top marketplace to buy domains,
web hosting, email hosting,
any sort of web product you would use to build your website.
They were founded in 1997,
and you may know them from their Superbowl ads
or aggressive online marketing over the years.
So why is GoDaddy relevant?
Well, GoDaddy is sort of like the Walmart of web products.
That's because they spend a lot of money on marketing
to keep a clean image,
and get the general public to recognize them.
I happen to think they have one of the best looking websites
I've ever seen.
And I don't say that lightly.
I'm pretty particular about UIs and visuals,
and GoDaddy does a great job.
They are expert marketers at getting their site
to look very engaging and appealing.
It's apparent that GoDaddy has a huge user base
by the brand recognition they have.
It begs the question,
how could something be wrong with GoDaddy?
I mean, they have to be doing something right
for all these people to be using them, right?
First, GoDaddy is overcharging you
for basic web products and you may not know
what a fair price even is.
This continues in their sea of upsells,
where they're trying to sell you products you don't need,
and make it seem like a big deal.
"Oh, don't you want privacy protection for $10 a year?
We promise it'll keep your domain from being hacked."
Well, you may not even know
that the main way to protect your domain name
from compromise is to stop people from logging in
to your domain registrar account.
So if you buy a domain from GoDaddy,
you have a username and password on your GoDaddy account,
and you can also enable two-factor authentication for free.
But GoDaddy is just blindly trying to tell people,
"Hey, if you want extra security on your domain,
pay us $10 a year,"
or whatever it is for their advanced privacy protection.
It's evolved over the years,
but they're still doing it.
They're charging you for things you shouldn't be paying for
like SSL certificates.
And GoDaddy is the only domain registrar I've ever seen
that will list domain prices monthly
depending on the price.
Sometimes it's annual, sometimes it's monthly,
but in the domain industry,
everything operates in annual payments.
You pay for a year of your domain name, period,
regardless of where you register it.
But GoDaddy is playing the shady game of saying,
"For only $3 a month, you could have this domain name."
But you might say,
"Okay, Christian, sure,
GoDaddy charges a lot of money,
but isn't that valid if they have really good service?
I mean, you yourself just said
they have one of the best looking websites out there
and everybody knows about GoDaddy.
So it has to be good, right?
Right?"
No, I mean, their dashboard is atrocious.
Have you ever even tried to change nameservers
in the GoDaddy dashboard?
I have never seen such an incompetent interface
where I'm scratching my head and I'm frustrated,
left Wondering how do I just change the nameservers
and point my domain to my web hosting.
You know what,
producer Matthew over here
does not use GoDaddy.
I mean, he's used it in the past,
but it's been a while since he's used GoDaddy.
Now, I've just tried this the other day
so I sort of know how you change the nameserver,
but producer Matthew,
it's been a hot minute, hasn't it?
- [Matthew] Yeah, I haven't used GoDaddy in years, probably.
- Yeah, so, you know, let's get you over here.
- Okay.
So I'm in the dashboard
um, and wow, this is dumbed down.
Is this the domain that we're using?
- [Christian] Yes. - Okay, aah,
Manage Domain maybe.
Use my domain, contact information,
WHOIS privacy, Use My Domain.
That do anything?
Oop, nope, that's a sell flow page.
They're gonna try to get you to buy hosting
or buy a website builder.
Maybe it's in their DNS.
Manage zones, okay.
Aah, nameservers.
(Christian laughing)
That's interesting. (chuckles)
Aah, hello?
Okay, connect my domain to website I've built.
Ew! (Christian laughing)
What, do I just select WordPress,
- [Christian] Or connect to my own nameserver.
- Oh, yeah, that's to WordPress.com.
Oh, okay, going back.
Nameservers, change.
Aah, here it is. - Oh, look at that.
Oh my goodness.
So why is changing a setting like this so difficult?
I mean, you just saw,
GoDaddy has a beautiful website.
The buttons are elegant, everything looks clean and nice.
Surely they know what they're doing with UI design,
and they do.
They're designing it this way on purpose.
The entire GoDaddy system is knit together
so that you'll get frustrated
and ended up just buying
the GoDaddy Website Builder.
Like, "Hey, if you have a GoDaddy domain,
it's so easy to connect it to the GoDaddy Website Builder
and use that to build your website."
Or "Hey, if you're set on WordPress,
haha, lucky for you,
GoDaddy sells WordPress hosting."
And of course they're gonna make it super easy
to connect your domain name to WordPress hosting.
And look, it's not bad for this to be a thing
with a domain registrar,
I mean, most any domain registrar sells web hosting
and maybe a website builder.
And they're all gonna make it easy to connect your domain
from that registrar to the website builder
of the same company,
that's sort of standard.
But what isn't standard
is trying to make changing your nameservers
to something else hard.
I have never seen a domain registrar before
who's intentionally trying to stop you
from pointing your domain to another web host
because they just don't want you to do it.
They want you to spend more money on them.
Now, it's not exactly wrong for a company
to want customers to buy multiple products from them,
but the quality of GoDaddy products is just so bad.
And don't expect GoDaddy's other products
to be that great either.
The same concept applies of overcharging
and under-delivering to their web hosting
and their website builder.
I have reviews for both of these products on my channel.
The managed WordPress hosting
is actually among the best GoDaddy hosting I've ever tried.
I have seen their products improving
and I've legitimately noticed the experience get refined
and more intuitive over the years.
I think there are people at GoDaddy
on certain teams that really mean well,
and they do want to make the product as good as it can be.
But unfortunately,
no matter how good a team makes a particular product
like the managed WordPress hosting
which I'm kind of a fan of,
it's still GoDaddy.
It's still being sold by the company
that's gonna try and charge you for things
that you don't need,
get you to pay way too much for a particular product.
And no amount of good in that sea of bad
is ever worth pursuing.
Now let's talk customer support.
The customer support at GoDaddy is generally terrible.
The live chat is just bad.
The reps can never seem to understand your problem
and you're having to overexplain or repeat yourself,
they don't speak very clearly.
That's just a poor experience.
Now the phone support is rather interesting
because if you call GoDaddy,
you're sure to experience not very long hold times,
which is great.
And also, the reps speak very clearly.
They're easy to understand.
So in other words, you call GoDaddy,
you get to talk to someone relatively quickly.
They're clear speakers.
It seems promising.
You're kinda going,
"Great, I think this is gonna be
a pretty good support experience."
But unfortunately, in my experience,
I've noticed that the reps are more salespeople
than support people.
Yeah, they're smooth talkers
and they'll chat you up and say,
"Hey, tell me about what you're doing.
What is your business?
What do you sell?
What do you make?"
They act very interested in you
because they're trying to sell you more products.
They'll say, "Hey, have you tried
the GoDaddy website builder?
It's got an online store.
We can help you sell your product.
And they're quick to identify products
that they want you to buy,
but as soon as you say,
"Oh no, I'm actually just calling
about this technical issue,"
then the hold start.
You're constantly put on hold,
they have to look stuff up,
they're usually not very helpful.
And I've also this pattern of GoDaddy phone reps
trying to turn it around and put it on you,
and basically tell you,
"Well, you're doing something wrong."
"Oh yeah, you're using WordPress?
Well, WordPress is not a GoDaddy product
so even though you have WordPress web hosting,
yeah, you're just gonna have to figure it out."
I've seen them make up crap like this.
And just, it's almost like they're masters at manipulation.
Like, they try and flip things
and genuinely make you feel like,
"Oh, ooh, yeah, I'm the problem here.
I just did something wrong."
That's unacceptable.
It's nonsense.
It's absolute crap.
No web host or domain registrar
should ever be treating you this way.
It should be,
"I'm so sorry you're experiencing this issue.
Let's figure out the solution."
I passionately hold a grudge against GoDaddy
because I've seen so many business owners
spend a lot of money on GoDaddy products
just to have a lackluster website
that's ultimately hurting their business
in the long run.
I've been making videos on web products
and domains for years.
So the topic of GoDaddy has come up in many of my videos.
And I can't tell you how many comments I've read
from business owners who either say,
"Oh my goodness,
I was with GoDaddy for years.
Everything you said is true.
I am so happy I switched away."
Or people who haven't bought a domain name yet
and they say, "Thank you for saving me.
I've watched your videos.
I've read the comments of other people
and read their experiences.
And I am so glad I avoided this pothole
in this mistake of going into the GoDaddy ecosystem."
So next time you're gathered around the dinner table
at Thanksgiving and uncle Jim is telling you,
"Yeah, just go down to GoDaddy
and get you a domain and some web hosting
for your blog that you keep saying you wanna start,"
you can say, " No, uh uh, I ain't doing this.
I watched a Craylor made video,
I learned that GoDaddy is horrible.
Uncle Jim, you're not using GoDaddy, are you?
Please tell me you're not using GoDaddy.
If you're using GoDaddy,
we need to get your domain transferred somewhere else."
You're gonna tell the whole world, "Don't use GoDaddy!
Stop, stop, please!"
Just do everybody a favor
and let's normalize using anybody other than GoDaddy.
- [Matthew] So who else should you use?
- Yeah, so who else should you use?
That is a great question.
I would say Namecheap and Porkbun are great options.
I also have an entire domain name registrar comparison
you can watch covering many options.
But Namecheap and Porkbun are two companies that I prefer.
Namecheap is a great one-stop shop
if you want domains, and web hosting,
email hosting all under one roof.
You can do that at Namecheap and get a really great value.
Or if you're simply after getting a cheap domain name
and you're gonna buy web hosting elsewhere
or you say, Squarespace or Wix
to build your website,
Porkbun is a great option.
They have some of the cheapest domain names in the industry,
but they still deliver high quality service.
And that begs the question,
what should you look for in a domain registrar?
It should be a mix of value, features, and customer support.
You don't necessarily want to go
for the cheapest domain name out there.
I wanna stress that
although I've been really hard on GoDaddy's pricing,
I'm not against a company charging more for something
if they can deliver a level of service
that makes it work the extra money.
And a company like Namecheap,
I think is a great example of that.
Namecheap is not the cheapest company out there.
They're sort of middle of the road with pricing.
They offer a great mix of value, features,
and great customer support
so you're gonna be in good hands,
and you're not gonna have a frustrating experience.
And if you already have a domain name
at GoDaddy, don't panic,
because you can actually transfer it out to any registrar.
Unsurprisingly, GoDaddy doesn't make this
a very easy process, but it's also not rocket science.
There's nothing technical or scary about it,
you've just gotta get in that panel
and you've got to find the authorization code
so that you can give that to your new domain registrar
you're transferring to,
and they can take possession of that domain name.
The only caveat here is if your domain name
is newer than 60 days,
meaning you bought it less than two months ago,
you are not able to transfer it out from GoDaddy
until it's been 60 days.
And this is actually not something
to be angry at GoDaddy for,
because this is not something
that they are doing specifically.
This is a regulation from ICANN,
which is the organization that regulates domain names.
They say that a domain should be at a registrar
for 60 days before it is transferred to another registrar.
So that is actually one thing,
although it's very frustrating,
it's not really GoDaddy's fault.
And although GoDaddy is annoying,
your domain name will be fine
living at GoDaddy for a few more months.
You can point it to wherever you need to.
I mean, look, GoDaddy products are functional,
It's just a very, very frustrating experience.
So if you've used GoDaddy,
I would love to know your experience in the comments below.
Also be sure to check out
my domain name registrar comparison
to learn the best place to buy a domain name for your needs.
With that said, I will catch you guys next time.