Over the last few years we have published a series The good, the bad and the ugly. Readers have been able to leave their feedback and some companies have reached out over the years and let me know they took the posts to heart.
This year I want to try to change it up a bit and, What they do right and what they do wrong. Focusing in a little deeper to give better feedback to industry participants.
When posting what they do wrong, please give your suggestions on how they could improve upon what they are doing wrong.
Do not take ad hominem or personal cheap shots. Speak about the company and give some background on how long you have been a customer.
Do not use the post as an opportunity to promote your company or a competitor.
First up is GoDaddy, What do they do right and what do they do wrong?
Right – extremely honest company. Same fou.
Wrong – haven’t find out anything till yet
Sorry my comments did not come properly.
It’s “Same for everyone. Do not differentiate among people. Treats everyone as same “
Interesting, their dishonesty on multiple occasions has been my biggest complaint.
Right – Brand recognition, they educate the public on domain names.
Wrong – auctions, they need to have two separate solutions, one for expired and the other for public auctions being sold by owner.
@VR,
Don’t they already have filters that differentiate between these 2 type of listed domains?
Yes they do but the general public does not understand that. They don’t understand why some names start at $12 and others at $500.
Right: Buyout innovative companies because they lack any innovation
Wrong: Constantly scamming their customers without caring at all:
https://www.namepros.com/threads/godaddy-scammed-me-heres-proof.1133996/
Right – I type 60wpm so love their chats when I have a problem. Fast and efficient. Always professional and have always solved my problems.
Wrong…. when I put a check in a domain name to make a change, then when I submit the change, I wish it would then remove the check before I move onto another name I want to change.
Once to often I put a check in a name, set a new sell price, submitted, then went to another name to change and, because I forgot to remove the check from the name I’d just changed, I inadvertently changed the previous one again (to a price way lower then it should have been). Needless to say, it sold at that very very low price and, it was only with the extraordinary help of three special people, that I was able to get the name back. One of those people worked at GoDaddy, so that was another thing they do right. They bend over backwards to help when they can.
Been a customer of theirs for 10 years.
Right — GoDaddy low domain name prices.
Right — Afternic sells domain names via their MLS.
Wrong — Dedicated hosted with them for 5 plus years. They wouldn’t even patch the linux core, among other issues like not freeing up cPanel SSL usage. Other companies do that for less on a dedicated server. Their dedicated server pricing and services bundle is/was not competitive as of one year ago.
Wrong — Afternic + Godaddy integration never happend. How long has it been? I have both an Afternic and GoDaddy account and what, the Afternic payment screen keeps asking me to verify my info when it’s obviously correct and duplicate of what’s on GoDaddy. I can’t click to add Afternic MLS from my GoDaddy account like Sedo does. Add to that how 1990’s the Afternic functions and skin looks.
RIGHT
I have sold 71 domains for $272,035 on the Uniregistry platform since the beginning of 2017. So naturally my overwhelming Godaddy concern is the imperative that they not only maintain the amazing Uni Market, but continue the great momentum of innovation as well.
The recent Godaddy Investor Day Report describes Uni as having “intuitive tools and capabilities for customers” and states that the acquisition will help Godaddy to “accelerate growth in talent and technology and fill out product roadmap.”
It’s vital that Godaddy retains the incredible Uni team to ensure its future trajectory. Quintin Armour the Market Technical Lead for example and the innovation team are best in world class.
So Godaddy is getting it right. It’s getting it right when Paul Nicks says this:
“The customer experience is not changing a bit. We will be building a great, combined, product but that’ll take a while.”
Paul Nicks. Twitter. April 7
WRONG
Godaddy should solve the claw-back problem which occasionally occurs in Godaddy Auctions. (Winning auctions can be rescinded even after you have paid.) I think this only happens with incompatible affiliate registrars who have unique expiry, grace period and pending delete timelines.
Good – Lowest domain prices (Discount Club)
Good – VIP Account Execs (I can get a real live person over the phone in a few minutes)
Good – Easy domain transfers from other registrars
Bad – Allows other parties to use automated programs to scrape GD auctions
Bad – Does not/delays fixing loopholes in GD auctions
Bad- Got rid of coupon codes (for most part) and Groupon offer
The Good – BULK TOOLS, they are very slick and between folders and domain profiles I can do most things in seconds.
The Bad – BULK TOOLS, whenever I try to set more than 10 domains to forward the system hangs. I tried to forward 500 or so domains to my online store (to put some domains to work during covid-19) and the system would not do it. I called support and they could not do it. They had to escalate the situation and someone there did it manually. Now whenever I try to do a masked forward I get an error. 3-10 at a time seem to work.
THe reason I moved hundreds of domains to godaddy was the bulk tools. The reason I will end up moving them out will be the bulk tools if they cannot get them fixed.
As a domainer the two things most important to me are security and bulk tools. If anyone of those is missing I need a different registrar.
PS. GoDaddy shines with both, the two factor works excellent, I would say it is more like a mulii factor. To make account changes there is a login, a pin, and I also use google authenticator. Pretty solid stuff, now they just need to get my bulk tools working again.
WRONG
1. Domain prices are not competitive even with discount club applied.
2. Still need to pay for WHOIS privacy (GDPR rules and detail masking only apply for the EU). As a result I don’t use personal information in the contact data but a virtual address and an alternative name or title. It’s also not possible to complete a transfer with privacy enabled as is possible with other registrars, so the privacy product needs to be deleted before initiating the outbound transfer otherwise transfer automatically fails. The data is now ready to be scooped up by data collecting parasite entities.
NOTE: Those that are susceptible to attack or death by state or other private individuals or entities are endangered if they include valid personal details, details which are often verified particularly at the outset when creating an account and after the first transaction. Unfortunately some people living in so called democratic countries have glazed over eyes and appear to have been born yesterday as they have never been threatened, tortured, or their family slaughtered after innocent attempts to improve their own nations democracy, or calling out powerful individuals for corrupt behaviour. Therefore setting up a website with its own domain is virtually impossible in some places, so then they need to resort to using third party platforms and risk that the owners might delete information, forward details about their users to corrupt entities, or leak data through social engineering hacks etc.
3. The website and interface is difficult to navigate. Getting to the auctions website requires that you find the other products link at the bottom of the page after you login and select the manage auctions link. Makes no sense. Clearly little attention was paid to UX/UI and two decades later you still retain the pedigree of a convoluted experience.
4. Auction participants are not clearly identified at the outset with a sensible unique identifier, making it difficult to identify fraud patterns and gauge validity of bidders up front who bid up their own names, or otherwise simply for fun or spite.
5. Mediocre names sell for much more than at other platforms. It’s evident if you participate in auctions across platforms that your Godaddy bids generally go higher, such that I no longer wait until auction end to place my bids there, just a solid proxy bid and the possibility that the fake bidders won’t pay after they outbid you and and then you will be offered the name after the fraudster fails to pay. If this is a private auction then this was actually planned so the fraudulent domain owner who orchestrated the fake bidding activity pocket more money anyway. Stats and reports regarding fraudulent auction activity and outcomes could be provided as a newsletter or as a seperate webpage to improve transparency.
RIGHT
1. Outbound transfers can be expedited.
2. Solid phone support availability.
3. They now have Uni’s platform which means they can scrap the old Godaddy interface and rebrand the Uni platform as Godaddy and extend it were necessary without holding on to any remains of the old interface patterns. Unfortunately somehow I don’t see such a logical decision will be made.