By
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Jan 4, 2018
GoDaddy’s hidden charges and lack of user-friendliness make it a inferior choice
If you’re someone who has little to zero knowledge about making a website and is planning to build one using GoDaddy, then this GoDaddy website review is for you.
GoDaddy is one of the biggest online marketing tools out there. In fact, it's considered to be the world’s largest web host and domain registrar!
It’s extremely popular not because it excels at what it does, but because it spends hundreds of billions of dollars on advertising.
Because people see GoDaddy ads on the internet, TV, print, and even during the Superbowl, they’ve become so familiar with it. So, when they think about building a website, GoDaddy is the first thing that comes to their minds. They may not even know what other website builders are available in the market.
The truth is, GoDaddy's website builder is far from being the best choice for your online store or company website. Here are several reasons why:
Without a doubt, people prefer to support companies that are honest and ethical over those that aren’t.
Unfortunately, GoDaddy doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to making morally correct decisions, which may make you think twice about entrusting a vital part of your business.
Here are some shocking things you might not know about GoDaddy:
You might think that “Past is past, so what? Things can change!” Okay, fair point.
Let’s talk about what’s currently happening to people worldwide who use GoDaddy and why you should never use it at all.
Just a warning though, this isn’t the only GoDaddy website builder review that will tell you to never sign up with them.
GoDaddy brags about their cheap services (including their free plan and free domain) when in reality they’re overpriced!
That’s false advertising right there.
GoDaddy promotes prices that are only applicable for the first year. Once you’ve registered, they’ll lock you in for more expensive renewal prices and charge you for things that you don’t need to pay for.
But of course, for non-technical people who have zero knowledge about building a website, how would they know better?
Here are three required GoDaddy payments that are absolutely free in most website builders:
GoDaddy also promotes a lot of its website builder plans as “necessary” for your website to be fully functional.
They offer “SEO” packages that are supposed to improve your search engine visibility but in reality, it doesn’t do anything, and they charge you $70 a year for it or even more! And, its GoDaddy's paid plans can reach up to $469.99/month!
There are also no clear details about what you’re going to get if you opt for one of their search engine optimization packages.
What’s even more questionable is that GoDaddy will not suggest nor alter your page for you to increase traffic, which makes you wonder if the whole thing is a scam.
Here’s a breakdown of where your money goes with GoDaddy's website builder:
GoDaddy offers “professional” email marketing services with 500 emails a day limit but it does not support basic email whitelisting feature.
This means that all sorts of emails, including important ones, are being blocked by GoDaddy’s spam filter!
If you look it up, you’ll see countless complaints about this.
What’s even sketchier is that SPAM emails can somehow “slip through” their filter. Can you imagine the amount of damage this can do to your business?
Plus, they charge you for this very bad email service when other hosting plans offer it for free!
If you’re planning to use any contact forms on GoDaddy, you might want to reconsider.
Having a fast website not only improves user experience but it also boosts conversion rates and improves your visibility in search engines.
That is why many website owners invest their time and money in making their site load faster. Unfortunately, if your website is hosted by GoDaddy, you’ll likely end up with a slow loading site, which is bad news!
GoDaddy overcrowds their servers and puts a CPU limit on a shared server environment.
It means that if your website is hosted by GoDaddy, you’re sharing a server with thousands of other people or possibly even millions.
As a hosting service provider, GoDaddy can cause a lot of issues, mainly because servers have limited resources.
So, when everybody is uploading too many files at the same time (which is highly likely), it can bring the server down.
When you buy a domain from a registrar, you have the rights to use it until the lease period ends.
If you wish to continue using that domain, then you need to buy it again, but if you don’t that domain simply expires and goes back into a pool of unused domain names.
With the GoDaddy website builder, it’s way different.
If you have a domain with them and you forgot to pay or let it expire, it’s now their property. Unless you’re willing to pay an excessive amount to get it back, then you can say goodbye to your domain forever.
GoDaddy claims that its website security program checks and protects your website from malware and other potential security violation.
But in reality, the world's biggest web host and custom domain registrar doesn’t seem to mind much if malware is spreading around on their servers.
Most hosting services temporarily block users who make too many incorrect log-in guesses or users who use POST repeatedly.
But with GoDaddy websites, users and bots can endlessly pound on login screens trying to guess passwords. Yikes!
Yet another reason why choosing the GoDaddy website builder is a bad idea is that its user interface can give you a major headache!
Before you sign up with a hosting provider, you need to check if they offer a type of database system that you’re used to in order to avoid having difficulty in the future.
It’s also important that they have a clear interface to prevent user errors. Unfortunately, GoDaddy offers a user interface and backend pages that are just confusing.
The GoDaddy builder makes you go through multiple pages just to get to the page you want to land on. So, if there’s anything you want to change on your site, you’ll need to jump through a lot of hoops to be able to do that. Good luck!
Nothing is clear on their backend pages and they’ll even bombard you with advertisements on their service pages.
When it comes to customizable themes, many would ask, is GoDaddy reliable? Does the marketing website builder come with a large number of free themes to enable users to rebuild their sites in the future?
Absolutely not.
All of the themes GoDaddy provides aren't customizable. Switching from your current theme to another one may mean that you could lose all the content on your website.
Imagine not having a backup and restore feature while changing your theme. That's gonna be a nightmare!
To sum this article up, GoDaddy will try to charge you for more and upsell you services that don’t actually work. No wonder more and more users are looking for GoDaddy alternatives!
If you're one of them and you want to switch providers to make a better business website, feel free to ask for our help!
At Digital Resource, we offer a wide range of digital marketing services, from web development and design to SEO, email marketing, and social media management.
Contact us today to speak with an Internet Marketing Consultant!
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