Why you shouldn’t buy your web hosting from GoDaddy

Running a blog requires doing all kinds of tasks, and even handling the more technical part of things. But you don’t have to understand any technical terms. I want to share my experience with Shared hosting from Godaddy and why you shouldn’t buy your web hosting from GoDaddy.

Do you need web hosting to start a blog?

The first thing to know about web hosting before you start your travel blog, or any type of blog or website, is that you need to buy a web hosting subscription, from a reputable company, to make sure you’re website will be up and running all the time.

Most of them guarantee 99.99% up-time, but if you read the fine print, the term and conditions, you’ll start to get an idea that the guarantee they are offering isn’t that high as it seemed originally.

So without extra fluff, let me tell you a story of a blogger who wasted money, time and energy with GoDaddy and why I don’t recommend buying anything from them.

Why you shouldn’t buy your web hosting from GoDaddy – A true story

I am not making this story up.

Actually, if you search for stuff like Godaddy server issues, Godaddy shared hosting not working, you’ll run into a bunch of blogs, treads and stories about how the GoDaddy services degraded over the last years.

How my GoDaddy story started

I started my relation with Godaddy a few years back, when I bought my domain from them.

After using free hosting for my blog (which wasn’t great), I decided to buy the Basic Managed WordPress Websites subscription for my blog.

The first years were smooth.

I have some tiny problems a couple of times, caused by some incompatible plugins which caused my blog to crash.

I remember calling to their support centre, in London and they were super friendly and nice, explaining what went wrong and fixed the issue for me.

I was so pleased with their on-call support and later with the chat, that I recommended GoDaddy to my friends who wanted to start a blog or were looking for a web hosting provider.

When my issues started with GoDaddy

At the beginning of 2020, as my blog’s traffic sunk, I decided to install an SSL certificated on it. An SSL certificate is that thing that turns http:// into https:// and made the lock appear up in the address bar, next to your domain name.

I thought I was perhaps not getting that much organic traffic from Google because it was seen as if my website was not secure.

I later discovered that most web hosting providers are offering free SSL certificates, but Godaddy wasn’t one of them and they were charging a yearly fee for it.

Also, when I was logged into my account, it also advertised some sort of SEO service for my domain, to make it more Google-friendly, or something like that.

When things weren’t working, I bought more products from GoDaddy

I was pretty desperate about my traffic so I purchased the certificated and the SEO package, for 2 years!

2 yrs Standard SSL + Search Engine Optimization – 2 years = $209.13

Don’t imagine I was anywhere near getting my money back anytime soon, but I was trusting that this will help get my blog back on track.

Two months later, the word-wide pandemic struck and my tiny travel blog started to get less and less traffic each day, as nobody was even thinking about travelling anymore.

So far, I had no complains.

Except, the SSL certificate needed to be installed and it gave me some error. Usually, the installation consists of a few clicks.

I went on the chat box, to ask for assistance.

I waited for a while and then I noticed that they changed their chat support team to India. I’m not judging anyone, but the communication was poor and had to spend 30 minutes to make the operator understand that my certificate wasn’t working.

He was taking 5 minutes after each reply to answer back. It was like he couldn’t understand what were the products I had bought from Godaddy, although he has access to my costumer’s account. To this day, that conversation is a mystery to me.

After a long while, he got my problem and said he fixed it.

And then calling support became a habit

A few months later, I noticed one day that my website was not working. It was taking forever to load, although I hadn’t change anything to it.

I dropped everything I was doing and hopped to Godaddy’s website, to get in the queue for the chat support.

Forever later, one member of the same support team said ‘Hi’ and after I explained everything, he told me that I need to optimize my website and that it was working great on his side. He tried to sell to me a developer to fix my website! And they charge by the hour.

I insisted that there’s something wrong. I also pointed out that the side was not showing my SSL certificate and Chrome was saying it’s not secure.

He did some checking and said that some of the domain pointers weren’t pointed where they should have. I had no idea what he was talking about and I wasn’t able to change that, although you usually can change it.

The issue was that I had not changed anything in months and there was no explanation for that issue.

He also couldn’t change that for me so he had to contact a supervisor. After probably one hour, that got fixed. Finally. Oh, and the certificate was working properly this time. So it was not installed properly the first time. Who’s to blame here, GoDaddy?

I should have known by now that something was going bad. Why you shouldn’t buy your web hosting from GoDaddy? Keep on reading to see why.

The moment I said ‘Enough!’

Fast forward to August 2020, when my website got to a point when it was barely loading.

I called their UK support team and had to wait for almost one hour to talk to someone.

After explaining everything, he transferred me to a tier 2 team in the US. After giving them another explanation, they said they would reset something and that my website will be up in a couple of hours.

Four hours later, my blog was online but nothing was working on my dashboard interface. I couldn’t save any posts, edit, install or delete plugins. I couldn’t change anything! It was like it was not responding.

Long story short, I had to talk to their Chat support team again, they said it was working just fine from their side, and although they couldn’t fix my issue, the operator offered to help me renew my subscription, which was ‘about to expire’ in 3 months! I have screenshots. AND, my website was not working!!!

I was so angry by this point since it was 3 am already, and had no idea what was wrong with a service I was paying for.

That was the moment I decided it was draining my energy and I can’t take it anymore and bought another web service subscription from SiteGround, which I found to have great reviews online.

The next day, I had to migrate my blog to my new hosting.

Which wasn’t as easy as it sounds because I couldn’t connect via FTP client to download my database. Have no idea why.

Again gone through the chat support team, again got wishy-washy replies. A lot of hours wasted trying to explain to GoDaddy support team that the service was not working.

Ended up calling the UK team once more. Again they were busy.

Why you shouldn’t buy your web hosting from GoDaddy? Because you waste hours and days to get things you pay for to work! And they still don’t work.

After the first operator answered, I started explaining my issue and then the connection died. I like to believe he didn’t hang up on me, but that’s what it sounded to me at the moment.

By this point, I was sure my account and phone number got a flag somewhere in their system.

I called again, waited for my turned again, and then Chris answered and talked to me like I was a 5-year old and he was explaining how the internet is working. This is no joke.

The conclusion of this nonsense conversation is that he tried to convince me that my internet connection is the problem and that their servers were fine! He said I should call my internet provider and that’s all he can help me with.

Like a fool, I believed this last thing Goddady sold me (this is a joke) and called my internet provider, only to hear that their servers and my connection are working as normal.

That was the last drop.

I had to download a backup copy to move my website from Godaddy

Because I couldn’t download my up-to-date website for unknown reasons, I had to download a backup copy (thank God for that) to make sure I still had my website safe.

After trying to upload it to Sideground, and failing, I decided to spend some extra Euros to pay the support team from SiteGround and finish with the migration.

The whole this was difficult even for them. They too had to download a backup to get my website (so I wasn’t doing anything wrong there). Bottom line is that within an exchange of a few messages, the technical team from SiteGround got my website up and running and I could finally sleep.

Because all this madness got me to a point where I couldn’t sleep and was messing up with my life.

Since then, I don’t want to hear from Godaddy, I hope they go out of business because they have terrible service and support.

And they are lying to people about their servers, which are probably stuffed with websites and that’s why they are not working.

Check the internet for more terrible stories about their shitty service.

That’s why, I am super happy with the service I got from SiteGround and if I can pay my way into peaceful night sleeps, then that’s what I shall do.

Why did I choose Siteground?

• top hosting companies
• officially recommended WordPress hosting provider
• SiteGround offers fast and knowledgable technical support via phone, live chat, and email
• free SSL certificate
• you can select from their data centres across multiple geographic regions
• intuitive control panel full of tools that will help you migrate, manage, and run your website more efficiently than GoDaddy.
• and most importantly, Faster website hosting

The Siteground pricing starts from $6.99/months (5.99 EUR) if you buy the annual package.

If you are ready to build a website for your business and want to make money with it, Siteground is one of the best options right now on the market. Check out their offer here.

And obviously, that’s why you shouldn’t buy your web hosting from GoDaddy.

Yes, I always share my honest opinions. After blogging for more than ten years, I am no longer impressed by a lot of this stuff.