We try to be very flexible with our customers choices and do our best to give the absolute most helpful and insightful advice on all subjects. But there comes a time when it’s necessary to speak out against some of the poor options out there. Specifically, I’d like to explain why I “don’t GoDaddy” and why I’d prefer if you didn’t either.
Why I “don’t GoDaddy”: Customer service matters.
Time is the most valuable resource any of us possess. It should be valued. So when you’re put on hold for incredulous amounts of time while trying to get in touch with customer service, that should matter.
When GoDaddy chat support has to forward you to another department because they couldn’t answer the question, giving you a phone number is really sad. When you ask for an email address for that department instead, you get “support@godaddy.com”. When you email that address, you get an auto-response saying that GoDaddy no longer offers email support and that you should call.
And when you ask a question, it’s really frustrating to be handed a deluge of Help Desk documents that you already found when you Googled the question before calling — and we all google before calling, right?!
Why I “don’t GoDaddy”: Quick access to backups matters.
If you use GoDaddy for WordPress, then you have probably learned (or will learn shortly) that GoDaddy doesn’t play nicely with modern and leading backup solutions available, like iThemes BackupBuddy, for instance.
The good thing is that GoDaddy’s managed WordPress hosting offers 30 days of backups as part of the service. Cool. The bad news? There is no way to access those backups.
What happens if your site is hacked, or if a plugin conflict takes your site down, or you just get sick of using GoDaddy’s obnoxious interface and you decide you want to get a backup and move your site to another host? You can’t get a hold of one of those healthy backups and export it.
They’ll let you know that you can manually download all the files via FTP (slow) and export the database via PHPMyAdmin (a multi-step process too advanced for most site owners). So you’ll have to hire a professional to get that info, which is going to cost you more money.
When things go awry, you don’t want to be battling your way through a complicated backup/export process. You want simple control of your site files, which you could have if GoDaddy was willing to work with iThemes. Hear directly from iThemes why they don’t recommend GoDaddy.
Why I “don’t GoDaddy”: Speed matters.
Whether using the circular and thoroughly lacking control panel for GoDaddy hosting, or running a site on their overly populated servers, you can count on it taking more time than needed.
Page speed load time is a value for search engines. If your site is loading slowly, it’s probably costing you visits and SEO rankings, which equates to money. Page load time matters to Google.
So, if you care about page load time and you should, then it’s important to note that, based on this study, if you have over 25 visitors at a time, their server response time is deplorable.
Why I “don’t GoDaddy”: Providing a great product before up-selling matters.
You can’t get three clicks through the GoDaddy website without getting sold a more expensive option.
When you call in, the common solution is to upgrade your hosting.
If their products was what they claimed it was, then rare would be the case that the only solution is to upgrade service. Give the client a product they can be proud of, their company will grow, and then it makes sense to upgrade services. But at that point, the customer is making enough money to afford that new service as a reasonable expense.
#DontGoDaddy
Friends don’t let friends GoDaddy. So do the right thing and let us move your WordPress website for you.
We use WPEngine and Kinsta for hosting our clients. If you can’t afford premium hosting with them, we also recommend SiteGround. We are proud supporters and affiliates of all of these companies.
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