
GoDaddy is a scam - k0t0n0
https://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/a562gv/godaddy_is_a_scam/
======
pgrote
I have no proof of anything GoDaddy specifically does.

A while back I came across some of my archives that mentioned a BBS name that
was popular in the past. Thinking it would be neat to own the domain name of
the company that went out of business, I went to GoDaddy and checked. It was
available awesome. Got distracted, came back an hour later and it was no
longer available, but was at auction.

My first suspicion is nothing nefarious happened. I could have misread
available vs auction, but I don't think so. I might have mistyped the domain
name, but I don't think so. Something didn't feel right.

A few days later I checked another domain using whois through icaan. No
resolution. Available. Pop over to GoDaddy and do the same thing ... check
name is available. As a test, I wait an hour and come back to the name at
auction.

I cannot explain what happened it except maybe GoDaddy's name check leaks or
someone had the exact same name ideas when I had them. Again, this was years
ago and am unsure if it still occurs.

~~~
dkonofalski
I can. I used to work at GoDaddy and they have an "Executive Domain Team" that
is basically just a fancy word for a group of people that assist domain
kiters. If you search for a domain on GoDaddy's whois, they put a hold on it
and publish the list to potential domain "investors" (read: kiters) who then
have the option of purchasing it out from under you. These are people that
literally invest thousands of dollars to buy up domains on the off chance that
they can resell them at a profit. Anytime there's a sunrise period on a new
domain TLD, these guys go in and buy all the popular and common names
wholesale and they have a dedicated person that works at GoDaddy to help them
do this.

Anytime you have a question about whether something is a scam or not, just ask
yourself where the money is. In this case, it's in GoDaddy making money off of
any time a domain name is sold, re-sold, auctioned, or if it changes hands.
It's where the majority of their money made comes from, outside of services
where people just don't know that better alternatives exist.

~~~
joshuatalb
This sounds exactly like what happened to me. I had a few .london domains in
one of the early stages of the TLD launch. Sat there for about 60 days, and
then all of a sudden - gone.

GD support were useless and I lost out on a few quality domain names. Never
used them again since. In fact, I don’t even think I got my money back!

------
bad_user
For what is worth I've been using Namecheap.com for domain registration, for
several years and have been satisfied. Never had any problems.

Cloudflare is also entering this business and looks promising.

~~~
sgtcodfish
I was happy with Namecheap until they redesigned their website and included a
tonne of JS which slowed everything down. Doing something as simple as
changing an A record became unbearably sluggish, and I tend to think I have a
fairly high tolerance for that kind of thing.

I gave them a few months to see if it was teething problems with the new
design but it persisted. Eventually I moved everything to gandi, which has
been better in every way as far as I can tell - cheaper (for me), better
website, better features out of the box.

~~~
sizzle
Their online chat support is extremely helpful in my experience

------
uberswe
Nothing new. I used to buy and sell (mostly buy) lots of domains and wrote a
review of several registrars in 2014 placing Godaddy at the very last place
recommending users to stay away. Here below is what I wrote then:

"Godaddy has improved slightly on their interface since last years review.
However they still have large menus that are complicated to navigate through
and seem to be using the same bait and switch methods as before. After finally
finding a domain that you like you will receive several offers for email,
hosting, etc before you can even get to the cart. All prices seem to have an
asterisk or two telling you that their super low price is only valid if you
pay for 2 years or more. Going from previous experience I feel as if Godaddy
wants to lock me in to use their services for as long as possible or to simply
get as much money out of me before I leave. Looking around for what Godaddy
charges for renewals I found several red flags where users are getting charged
“market prices” for their renewals. You can see a forum thread regarding how
Godaddy charges way too much for renewals here
([http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1365680](http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1365680)).
This post here ([https://www.authormedia.com/6-reasons-authors-should-
avoid-g...](https://www.authormedia.com/6-reasons-authors-should-avoid-
godaddy/)) even gives an additional 6 reasons why you should stay away from
Godaddy."

[https://archives.tenghamn.com/best/domain/registrar/2014/10/...](https://archives.tenghamn.com/best/domain/registrar/2014/10/27/best-
and-worst-domain-registrars-my-review-2014.html)

~~~
ConfusedDog
I think I saw your post long time ago and switched from GoDaddy to Namecheap
because of it. Now I'm using Google Domain. Thank you for your contribution!

~~~
uberswe
Glad to hear it!

------
mythz
Moving away from GoDaddy was one of the most rewarding "online service"
switches I've made. I used to cringe visiting GoDaddy when renewing domain
names where I've had to carefully navigate my way through their Dark UX
patterns which feels like I've ventured into the "Dark side of the Web" where
you can't trust what you read and everything is designed to upsell scams out
of you.

I've moved everything to Google Domains, at $12 /y for .com domains it's only
a little more expensive than GoDaddy (with Coupons) but it has a straight-
forward simple and minimalist UI where I can get everything I need to get done
(e.g. dns config/renewing) quickly and easily.

It's an example of a UX-focused UI built for you by contrast I view GoDaddy's
user-hostile UX was designed against your best interests.

~~~
zepearl
I totally agree. I always dreaded the time when I had to renew my SSL cert
with GoDaddy. Then, each year, while navigating on their website, I always
ended up asking myself if they hired a group of psychos to design their UI.

After a couple of years I finally found Namecheap and never looked back.

------
AdmiralAsshat
FWIW, GoDaddy isn't the only site I've seen do this. I had the same issue a
couple years ago when I tried to use Google Domains to find a domain for my
website. At the time I was trying a few and found, to my delight, that
nothingofvalue.com was available.

I started the process of purchasing it and then got scared when it came time
to list my personal address for ownership. I stopped for about an hour to call
my father to see if he would mind if I used his PO Box as the address. When I
went back to redo/complete the registration, I was told the domain had been
purchased by someone else.

For the next year or two, I checked it periodically, just to see if anyone had
actually built a page of it. Nope. Just squatting.

I purchased nothingofvalue.org instead and have had it ever since. I also
transferred the domain to Namecheap.

------
ModernMech
I remember I once searched for a domain name on Godaddy, and found that it was
available. I waited a couple days before I decided on buying it, but next time
I checked it was registered by Godaddy. If you wen to the address, you were
directed to a website stating the domain has been "parked for your
convenience", and you could buy it from them for now twice as much. I remember
feeling so completely cheated I never did business with them again, and
certainly never searched for available domains with them.

------
two2two
I've experienced sketchy practices from several domain brokers and hosting
services. GoDaddy is just the most widely used amongst my friends and clients
--making them a necessary evil in my life--luckily not at my expense.

------
oceanghost
Godaddy is for sure a scam.

They once charged me, if memory serves, $75 to resolve a complaint about one
of my domains. They wouldn't tell me what the complaint was, who brought it,
or how it was resolved. They just charged my card on file $75 for the
"service".

I transferred my domains out and never looked back.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
Going to get a little off-topic here, feel free to downvote if you feel it's
out of place.

Many HN users presumably saw the public launch of sr.ht a few weeks ago. I've
been thinking about directions that it could be expanded in the future, and
the use-cases which fit best are both (1) things I need to do to maintain
sr.ht anyway, and could make into a service available to users; (2) things
which are annoying to do elsewhere. To this end I'm thinking about offering
domain registration. Since users pay a monthly/yearly subscription fee for
sr.ht, I can just sell domains at wholesale prices and take no margin. Then
you get to use the nice UI and API and so on sr.ht offers for doing DNS and
domain registration (DNS probably through just pushing zone files to a git
repo).

Thoughts?

~~~
colemannugent
While I have no doubt that you of all people could do DNS right, it seems a
bit like scope creep IMO. I'm very excited about sr.ht, but also worried that
it might be too much to execute all at once.

That being said, DNS records in Git sounds kinda neat. You avoid all the
special authentication nonsense of "DynamicDNS" or proprietary APIs by using
SSH keys, and you have versioning for rolling back configurations. Also you
don't need a special UI that essentially builds zone files as you'd just have
your users make their own. You might need some validation of the files before
you actually put them into BIND though.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Well, in terms of scope, this falls under

>things I need to do to maintain sr.ht anyway

I already run my own authoritative nameservers and if I automated the
maintenance and deployment of that, it'd only be an afternoon of hacking to
make available to the public, and a weekend of hacking to add domain
registration to it. I don't just work on sr.ht, too, so having a streamlined
and integrated domain registration and DNS service would be great for my other
projects.

~~~
solarkraft
Your scope, yeah, but I think the previous poster was talking about product
scope.

Though I do think it could be a good idea.

------
habosa
I spent two hours one time transferring all my domains (~10) to Google
Domains. What a relief to be done with that company. There is not one honest
step in the GoDaddy flow, you really have to keep your hand on your wallet.

Disclaimer: I work for Google, no interaction with the domains team though.

~~~
Aaargh20318
How is Google’s support for domains ? I am very hesitant to buy anything from
Google that may require support, as an Android developer I’ve heard too many
horror stories to trust Google in this area (basically, there is no way to
even talk to a human being, you can send an email and get a canned response
from a bot. You’re better off talking to a brick wall).

~~~
behringer
It's exactly what you can imagine. I'd instead recommend gandi.net. It's a few
bucks more but they take their motto to heart.

~~~
brendyn
I posted this on the reddit too:

I tried to buy a domain with gandi. I left it in my cart for a day and then
the price went up $20 dollars. I loaded up the Tor Browser, searched the same
domain name and it was back at the normal price. It would stay that way even
when i looked up new .scot domains. Proof:
[https://i.imgur.com/7kMutbB.png](https://i.imgur.com/7kMutbB.png) . The "no
bullshit" moto just sounds like Googles "don't be evil" moto, bullshit
designed to fool geeks into thinking they're honest people. Does there even
exist a site to buy domains that doesn't do this bullshit?

~~~
behringer
The current price on .scot domains is $49. Perhaps you're seeing a difference
due to exchange rate? This is the first and only report I've ever heard of
Gandi even remotely doing something like this. Unlike Google, Gandi actually
does live up to its motto. And like Google, if they ever fail I'm ready to
jump ship.

On what date was this picture taken?

[Edit] I just checked the exchange rate on google and 49usd is 67aud. Looks
like it was just an exchange rate mixup on your part.

~~~
brendyn
I think you are right, which makes me feel quite stupid. I think what tricked
me is that I must have logged in to gandi at some point and then come back to
look at my cart I'd made while logged off and it switched to AUD, which also
uses $, so I thought it had changed without me doing anything.

------
herghost
Their domain privacy service just blackholes any emails sent to it instead of
forwarding them on.

Almost cost me a domain due to their scammy set-up - since the domain was
listed as "Domains By Proxy" or something similar, GoDaddy argued that it
wasn't actually mine (despite selling it to me, and selling the privacy
service to me) and the request to transfer couldn't go ahead.

Thankfully Nominet were incredibly helpful (and seemingly well aware of
GoDaddy's M.O.) and they managed to sort it for me.

Sadly, I've just checked their site and they list GoDaddy as a registrar to
use them looking for a domain, which is a shame.

------
philshem
Couldn’t we reverse this on them? For example, get a list of available domains
and reverse-scrape from various users to trick the algorithm into thinking the
domains were valuable?

------
ukyrgf
A few years ago, I typed in a domain I wanted and was surprised to see a link
to Godaddy Auctions saying I could have it "Buy It Now"-style for $80. I've
had miserable experiences with Godaddy so I really didn't want to do it, but I
wanted the domain and figured they'd jack it up to $5,000 if I hit refresh. A
few days went by with no registration details, and all I could find in my
account was the receipt. I called them up and was told that somebody else
already owns the domain, but, if they don't re-register it when it expires,
and they don't re-register it during the 30 day grace period, then I'd have
the pleasure of being able to own it. When I told the person that I could have
just waited and registered it on my own without spending $80, she said that
since it's a 5-letter domain, Godaddy would have put it on the market as a
premium domain. Apparently, I got a bargain.

I transferred it out of Godaddy as quick as I could, and one of the first
things I did at my current job was convince my boss to start transferring his
400+ domains out of Godaddy. He had no idea that the "premium domains" that
they charge him $100/yr to "premium renew" aren't actually anything special,
and other registrars don't do that.

------
EGreg
Link to hacker news from... 7 years ago

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2326790](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2326790)

~~~
saltyshake
404 ?

~~~
EGreg
Nopie

------
andrewmcwatters
My understanding of GoDaddy over the last couple of decades is that they
weren't always a bad player in the space. They are, supposedly still, the
largest registrar. I don't see a future where that can ever stay true,
however. I used to use them, but my final straw was their backing of SOPA in
an incredibly heated time for Internet legislation which has reverberated into
present day.

A lot of their market presence in the past had to do with their marketing,
such as the Super Bowl commercials they ran, GoDaddy partner Danica Patrick,
and some local philanthropy in Arizona, where their headquarters is.

Eventually, people found better deals with Gandi, Namecheap, and others, and
their industry force evolved into one with far less impact.

Now the industry is evolving into one with no overhead with Cloudflare
providing domains at-cost as companies provide value-added services which
subsidize operating costs for providing domains to customers. This will
ultimately put companies we've known in the past to be giants, and to this day
are still publicly traded, in dire straits as they find new ways to stay
relevant.

GoDaddy provides no high-value value-added services in comparison to other
market leaders. So, for most who have moved on, there's no reason to go back.
They are a now a middleman for no one other than small agencies or individual
customers at best, who arguably do not provide any value for them either.

We'll see what happens to GoDaddys, Namecheaps, and Network Solutions when you
can't charge people for domains anymore. What happened to TLS certificates
will almost certainly happen to domains, too, albeit with ICANN fees remaining
as the last overhead.

~~~
ryanlol
>GoDaddy provides no high-value value-added services in comparison to other
market leaders

I don't think there's all that much serious competition for
auctions.godaddy.com

------
azhenley
GoDaddy made me angry earlier this summer when it broke domain forwarding when
they added shortlinks. All my URLs instantly broke. Customer support said it
was by design.

To fix it, we made NavHere ([https://navhere.com/](https://navhere.com/)) to
be a simple domain forwarding service. Just a few weeks ago, GoDaddy announced
they are going to fix their domain forwarding...

~~~
jermaustin1
That said, domain forwarding is still broken on GoDaddy for people who wish to
forward domain-a.com/* to domain-b.com/base-path/* and preserve the path.

------
theartfuldodger
This was always accepted as a reality within the affiliate marketing
communities, we knew never to use godaddy services to search for an available
domain unless you purchased it immediately.

I heard many anecdotal stories as consequently I owned the #1 us organic
position for "available domain" and primarily referred people to godaddy and
namecheap.

 _edit_ I see a godaddy insider confirmed the practice

------
chad_strategic
I have known a few people who think they are going to make millions selling
domains. They had hundreds of domains, with auto renew. Set it and forget it.
That has to got to be 50% of goDaddy revenue.

I moved over to Amazon Route 53. It's not terribly user friendly, but at least
it's not GoDaddy.

~~~
tomphoolery
I wasn't a big fan of Amazon's domain name prices, but Route 53 is by far the
best DNS I've ever used in my life.

------
mtw
Godaddy got a domain I searched and did not buy, and generally the user
experience is like doing business with a scammer and penny pincher. On the
other hand, they found a buyer for one of my domains for $5000. Kinda of a
wash.

------
brokenmachine
Probably off-topic, but I've always wondered how malware authors register
domains that are generated by Domain Generation Algorithms, without it being
trackable back to them.

------
KitDuncan
I just sold a domain on GoDaddy two weeks ago. Should I be afraid, that I
won't get my money? I thought there was nothing to worry about, since it's
such a big company....

------
appleiigs
Are there any landmines to step on when transferring a domain? Seems like you
pay a transfer cost but they extend you by 1 year. Easy as that? I'm ok with a
bit of downtime.

~~~
tombrossman
You shoudn't have any downtime. Copy your current DNS records for your
transferring domain(s) and input them at the destination Registrar, then
initiate the transfer, and done. It is surprisingly easy.

The only edge case to check is if you are using non-standard or less common
DNS record types (ALIAS, CAA) then first confirm with the destination
Registrar that they support the record types you need.

Or if you want to keep things really simple, switch to a third-party DNS host
before transferring and use the same name-server settings.

And yes, paying the target Registrar should extend your registration time. For
example, say you bought a domain last year and paid to register it for five
years (so four years remain). Now you transfer it to Gandi.net and pay their
transfer fee. You used up one year originally, transferred, and it's yours for
five years again. Your unused years at the outgoing Registrar 'roll over' to
the new one.

~~~
appleiigs
Thank you.

------
quadyeast
Totally off topic but I must. Because of the the painful UI to the horrible
marketing to the elephant killing paid for by the founder, I celebrate
everything anti-Godaddy.

------
aviv
Relevant:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18632988](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18632988)

------
ryeguy_24
Couldn’t this be considered “front running”?

~~~
ryanlol
How do you go from this post to "front running"? The guy is talking about a
domain auction lasting more than 90 days.

~~~
ryeguy_24
I could be mistaken by the main point was that they are searching for a domain
on Godaddy and finds it was purchased and subsequently put up for auctions
moments after the search.

~~~
ryanlol
I doubt that's the main point. There's simply nothing in the original post
that suggests this.

The guy later commented that GoDaddy had registered the domain the same day he
searched it, but judging by his original comment it doesn't seem that he ever
saw it available.

>Okay, so I searched for one domain name on godaddy. It was available but it
was on 'auction' being sold for more than $10k.

After reading OPs post over and over again, it seems pretty clear that the guy
is upset about the auction lasting more than the 90 days that was originally
promised.

>The auction was supposed to last 90days. After these 90 days there were 4
views in total (all by me) and it got renewed for another 90 days and it keeps
saying that the auction has started the day I searched for the domain for the
first time.

>If someone is able to justify this as not a scam, please post your opinion

I think it's very weird that all the commenters seem to be assuming that
there's frontrunning happening here.

I guess it's just easy to hate on GoDaddy while totally ignoring the facts.

It's _far more likely_ that this guy resolved the domain to check if it exists
and got fucked by passivedns instead of GoDaddy.

------
ris
Can anyone be surprised at how worried I was when I learned that webfaction
were being bought by GoDaddy?

------
nojvek
I’m glad Godaddy is getting shamed. I hope they lose a ton of business over
this.

------
saltyshake
I had a very similar experience back in 2007. Searched for the domain, was
available (and super unique). Next day ready to buy and it was up for auction.

Nowadays I would only use Google. They have a reputation to worry about if
they try and pull over these tactics, unlike Godaddy and similar shady
companies.

~~~
SQL2219
I had my suspicions about searching for domains on godaddy. Do a search for a
domain, come back in a few days and it was purchased by someone else.

------
DonHopkins
It's not surprising a company founded by an elephant murderer turned out to be
a scam.

[https://gawker.com/5787676/meet-godaddys-ridiculous-
elephant...](https://gawker.com/5787676/meet-godaddys-ridiculous-elephant-
killing-ceo)

------
taytus
I'm just an user, I'm not in the business of buying/selling domains.

Besides their shitty website, I never had a problem with GoDaddy.

I've been a customer of theirs for about 15 years.

Just sharing my experience.

~~~
stubish
I moved over a decade ago purely because of their shitty website. It just made
me angry, wading through what could be a satire of all the annoying, shady and
deceptive sales tactics that I don't think existed anywhere else at the time.
I started paying more elsewhere to avoid the stress, and expected them to die
off in the race to the bottom. But there they still are, and they aren't the
cheapest and aren't offering anything unique. They are one of the reasons I'm
so intolerant of advertising in general, because what I see is marketing
driving people to give money to an abusive company, when just about every
alternative is a better option. It just seems wrong.

------
ww520
Godaddy is a scam and a massive domain squatter.

------
codyogden
I use domainr.com for this very reason.

------
ryanlol
What is godaddy supposed to have done wrong here? OP strangely enough doesn't
seem to make any specific claims of wrongdoing.

~~~
chengiz
They registered a domain soon as OP searched for it and jacked up the price,
basically.

~~~
ryanlol
That's not what the OP says though. The OP says the domain was registered the
same day he searched it on GoDaddy, he never specifies when this happened.

If you read the guys comments, it almost feels like he's going out of his way
to avoid specifying this really important detail.
[https://www.reddit.com/user/joevenet/comments/](https://www.reddit.com/user/joevenet/comments/)

And if this thread is supposed to be about godaddy squatting, why the story
about the 90 day auction expiry? To me this definitely reads like a complaint
about Godaddy auction processes and not about squatting.

------
paulpauper
I used godaddy in 2010-2011 for domains. no problem with them. ymmv

~~~
paulpauper
how do I delete this. I'm sorry for sharing my experience with godaddy. I was
just talking about domain registration. I am suspicious of domain name
auctions. There is no way to delete comment.s I would have deleted it as soon
as it went to zero but could not.

~~~
LinuxBender
If that was your experience, then don't delete the comment. Doing so promotes
echo chambers. If you are concerned about Karma, simply submit some articles
to balance it out.

