HYPERAXE

I had been a long time GoDaddy customer and if my memory serves me right I had been with them for more or less 6 years already. It was actually the first company to whom I had registered my first domain and learned about domain registration and management. Generally speaking, I was a happy customer and never did I experience major problems with them. Then again, due to a lot of changes they had done with their services or domain offerings, I just felt that they are becoming inappropriate for my needs and budget. So I decided to just move on and look for another registrar.

Here are a couple of reasons why I decided to move away from GoDaddy:

• Price - GoDaddy had been the cheapest registrar I can find 6 years ago which have good reviews from their customers so I chose them for my first ever domain registration experience. But things have changed throughout the years with their pricing schemes. I understand that ICANN may have increased domain registration fees but looking at other options GoDaddy is a bit more expensive now compared to some good domain registrar out there. They now charge $9.99 (domain registration fees) + $0.20 (ICANN fees) = $10.19 for new domain registration and renewals of  the most common domain extensions (e.g. .COM, .NET, etc.). Some of their offerings which I need are also a bit pricey such as Private Domain Registration which costs $8.99/year. This is a bit too much, at least in my case wherein most of my domains are for personal use.
• Support – I never really tried calling GoDaddy’s 24/7 telephone support since it would cost me a fortune to do so considering my country of origin, but with regards to their email support, it really takes a while before I can receive an email response, usually around 20 hours or more, but never really more than their guaranteed 24 hours response time. This is not something I am complaining about but would love a faster response time or better yet a live chat help which I found another registrar to be offering and tried myself.
• Complexity of Site – A lot of things had changed with GoDaddy’s website since I registered my first domain with them a few years back. Not only did their list of product and services had increased significantly but their site had become quite complex to use. I am a fan of simple web designs in terms of navigation and functionalities so I am not really that happy on how GoDaddy’s website had evolved through all those years I had been with them. Moreover, they have a lot of marketing stuffs on their site that I think clutters things a bit. There are also a lot of domain related products that they offer that actually confuses me. There was even one instance that due to this confusion, I failed to disable a service auto-renew agreement so I was surprised to get charge of something that I didn’t intend to use. Well, it’s my fault actually so since then, I tried to double check all my domains and auto-renew settings of services just to make sure something like this won’t happen again.
• Free Stuffs In Exhange for Ads -  It’s true that GoDaddy may be the registrar with the most number of freebies that comes with new domain registration or transfer, but most of this freebies are for their ads promotion. Take for example their free web space which is really cool since you autmatically have  web space to use after registering a domain, but sad to say when you grab this offer, your site would contain GoDaddy ads. If you want this ads removed, then you have to pay for their web hosting services which again, does not come cheap compared with other good web hosts out there.

Again, I am not saying that GoDaddy’s services are bad or something like that. I still think they are one of the reliable companies in their line of business, but as I’ve said they just don’t fit anymore with my needs and budget. I am now in search of a domain registrar would solve most of the issues I raised on this post about GoDaddy and currently, NameCheap is on top of my choices. I just hope I make the right choice and won’t have any regrets in the long run..

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