I know that I am far from the only person who has had problems with this company at one time or another. The internet is chock full of customer complaints and just about everything about the

m sucks.

I am writing my own review based on my own personal headache with his company that came about last year. Right now I still have my site domain names there since I only have 4, but I pulled out all my hosting in January. There was one site I had to pull out sooner than that, but I will explain that momentarily.

If you want to look at other complaints simply Google: Godaddy complaints, Godaddy hosting, etc.

Also check out these websites: Godaddy Sucks and https://www.unoeurorabatkode.dk/

I had been a paying customer on Godaddy since 2012 (not that customer loyalty means anything to these people). At that time I only had one website (my author website), and I don’t remember any significant problems with them. At that time I had my domain names at WordPress.com. Of course, there were times the site was a bit slow, but I didn’t know any better at that time and it wasn’t a significant issue. It could even been the internet connection.

This website was not self hosted at that time, and I didn’t have other websites either. For me starting out their lower pricing for hosting was attractive.

About 4 years down the line, I decide my author website needed a new makeover, and my author brand needed a facelift. I hired a well recommended website designer who did a wonderful job at a reasonable price, and it included plugins and the whole nine yards. After it was all said and done, I had a great website…until Godaddy happened.

Okay, about a few months prior, another colleague that I work with was having issues with Godaddy being slow. I had noticed it on my websites as well (I now had 3 websites on their hosting plan). There was a lot of crashing and timeouts during updates, and the slowness was hurting my SEO and Google ranking. Site SEO can be harmed by website slowness! I was even doing SEO and had the Yoast plugin and my ranking still sucked. Freaking Godaddy! Ugh!

The Mystery of the Disappearing Plugin

One day I get on my author website to do something–I think it was to update one of my pages–and all of the content on the pages was GONE! Poof! Disappeared. What in the heck just happened? I did recall that I received an internal server error the day before, could that have something to do with it?

I let my designer and my colleague know and we try to figure out something. Then I seemed to notice that Thrive Content Editor button seemed to be missing on the backend with the WP editor for posts and pages. The only pages that had content was the blog. I asked the designer which plugin it was and and she said it was the Thrive Visual Editor. Okay I check my list and I don’t see it there. It almost appeared as it had been deleted by someone. The designer had trouble reinstalling it. She sent me the file, and I tried one time, but then the site said the plugin was there. Where?

I tell the designer and send her a screenshot. She felt I needed to call Godaddy. Great. So I do. The first person I speak with really tried to help. It didn’t work or explain why I am having this issue. I call back and get a different person who is a complete and utter douchenozzle. He gave me the runaround and basically tried to blow smoke up my butt and talk down to me like I was an idiot. He gave me the techno-talking-to with the cliche about an auto mechanic. So I am thinking to myself, So like the automotive mechanic when a woman walks into the shop to get her oil changed, and you suggest she needs a new set of brakes, a head gasket, and a rearend to boot just because the husband is at work and he sent the wife to get the oil changed? I may not know all there is to know about website design, but I know enough about it to know when someone is trying to rip me off or talk down to me like an imbecile. Un-freaking-believable, sexist prick. So I’m boiling and trying to keep my temper in check as I try to wind up the conversation.

I report to my contacts about what happened, and they feel bad for me and try to help me further since Godaddy isn’t going to, and there is always a solution. We go through the FTP and delete the file and I resinstall the plugin and activate it, and the stuff comes back, so it’s there, but it can only be seen if the plugin is active. So it was like somebody deleted the plugin, but I couldn’t prove it. My designer reintroduces me to someone I already know online, but I didn’t know she offered hosting and did website support. She wasn’t really taking on new clients at that time, but she decided to help me since I was so far in over my head with no one else to turn to. She has definitely earned her black belt in WP since she talked about stuff I never heard of before.

A few emails later I decide to go with her hosting plan. It was more than I was paying, but I felt the value was better than the other options and there were bonuses, too. There were a lot of other issues that had to be fixed, and Godaddy had been screwing up the site. Am I surprised? Not really. She confirmed my suspicion that they had somehow deactivated the plugin and hid it to where I couldn’t access it. The did the exact same thing, and it was gone again in 24 hours. Now, I had their Deluxe hosting, not their WordPress hosting. They shouldn’t be removing plugins without my permission when I installed it or approved its installation. If they break my site, then it’s my problem. That’s exactly what happened, too.

To make this long story short, the website was up and running again. It was faster. Everything was so much better. I decide to later get on her maintenance plan since Thrive was a little fussy and wouldn’t open sometimes.

History Repeats Itself

After having my author site on this new host, the slowness of my other sites began to irritate me a lot. I decided to move all my other sites close to time for my hosting to come up for renewal. The crashing got so bad I stopped trying to update my websites for fear that it would damage them.

On this website, my Yoast SEO and Wordfence plugins do a disappearing act. When I was going to optimize my post, I wondered where my Yoast box went to? I save the draft and I see that it was gone and so was Wordfence. Godaddy strikes again. To test, I try to reinstall, and it was deja vu all over again. Not only could I not update my freaking sites, they now put me at risk of being hacked by removing my security plugin, and my SEO took a nose dive.

That’s it, I’ve freaking had it; I can’t take it any more. I contact the host and ask when I could schedule a move and get on her maintenance program. I now plan on doing it sooner than I initially planned, and I explained that Godaddy was messing with plugins again, and I haven’t been able to update them without them timing out.

Working something out, I transferred to a better and more secure host.  She made sure the updates were done and everything was stable. YAY! My Google rankings, SEO visibility, and traffic have improved on my busier sites.

I didn’t use their email or any of their addons. You can find a lot of complaints about them, too. So, no loss of contacts or any of that crap or being unable to access my email. AOL and Gmail will do just fine.

A Friend’s Plight

One of my Facebook friends had a run in with Godaddy with them auto-renewing a five year hosting plan that cost her $800. She is so busy that she didn’t find out until too late. It was an honest, human mistake, but Godaddy refused to give her a refund. The credit card company couldn’t help since the 30 days had passed. So she’s stuck with it. She’s going to use it for something. She received a lot of support for her rant. It would be cool if it went viral.

Now this kind of stuff happens to a lot of people, believe it or not. Or there is the flip side of the coin, stuff don’t renew and people lose their sites and they auction off the domain. Umm, WTF?

Stay away from Godaddy. That goes for authors or anyone trying to run a business online.

Rating: 1/5 Stars. Sucks! >:(