Go Daddy

Overview

GoDaddy.com would have been named "BigDaddy.com" had the latter name been available at a time when its founder Bob Parsons and a group of employees were brainstorming new names for the company formerly known as Jomax Technologies. "Go Daddy" may not have been nearly as catchy as ‘Big Daddy’ when it was first conceived, but years later, https://www.godaddy.com/ has turned into one of the go-to sites for domain registration and is still getting bigger. Founded in 1997, the company has since expanded from being a domain registration business into web design, hosting and online marketing publicly-traded giant.

Usability

Very few domain registrars come close to GoDaddy.com’s highly intuitive interface. Services and products – domains, website design, hosting, web security, online marketing, and email and office tools – are prominently and neatly displayed on top of the home page, and are hard to miss. Budding entrepreneurs looking to establish an online presence would have no trouble navigating the menu and exploring other services that Go Daddy offers. Searching for a domain name is very straightforward, results are accurate, and checking out your cart is just as hassle-free. Once a customer decides on a domain, promotions (eg., ‘Get 3 domains, save 81%’) and extensions are offered, but not too blatantly as to overwhelm the user with choices.

On the other hand, Go Daddy does offer plenty of products and services which can be a bit overwhelming; someone who clicks on ‘All Products’ might find the large variety of services a bit confusing. Luckily, the site is designed with the most important feature – domain registration – front and center. The account panel is also designed for maximum ease of convenience for all types of users. The control panel is smartly designed, with Domains, Hosting and Email neatly outlined in the back-end with search and filter functions that make management so convenient.

Go Daddy is the site to choose if you want a simple registrar that offers the most basic domain name down to the nitty-gritty of web security, all offered in a neat package.

Domain Privacy

Privacy is a major concern in registering a domain and Go Daddy definitely covers this base. Reasonably priced at $7.99 a year per domain, Go Daddy’s domain privacy ensures customers’ name, email and contact details are kept safe and away from the prying eyes of hackers and online thieves. For less than a dollar a month, a user gets an extra layer of protection from its partner, Domains By Proxy. A user who avails of this security plan gets an account at DomainsByProxy.com which allows the user to amend contact details. Having a third party privacy account works to the registrant’s advantage as this additional level of protection provides hackers another hurdle to surpass. There are options to protect a single website ($62.9/year), multiple websites ($134.99/year) and all domains ($269.99/year).

Domain privacy is offered for two types of customers: individuals (Privacy Protection, $7.99 a year per domain) and businesses (Privacy and Business Protection, $14.99 a year per domain). While the two have similar functions, the business privacy protection comes with more features including preventing accidental loss of domain due to expired credit card, protection from accidental or malicious transfers (called ‘Deadbolt Transfer Protection’), Certified Domain Seal, and a WhoIs directory online business card. A WhoIs business card is basically a virtual business card that contains your store description, phone number, website snapshot, four images and hyperlinks, and a map to your store.

Features

Users looking to establish an online presence understandably want the convenience of getting all their web tools from a single source. Aside from a basic domain registration, it offers additional services such as domain auction which lets owners buy and sell domains in a consistently reliable auction page that lists everything a bidder and a seller needs to know for domains under bid.

Other services and features include a do-it-yourself website builder; eCommerce web design; Wordpress hosting; cloud, virtual private, and dedicated servers; malware removal; do-it-yourself and expert online marketing services; online bookkeeping and other email and office tools. Go Daddy offers all the necessary bells and whistles a customer could need and these are just some of the services that are not prominently offered in other registrars but are worth highlighting.

Bulk Registrations and Management

Simplicity has worked for Go Daddy since its founding, from the company name to the logo down to the practical aspects of the service, primarily in searching for the ‘perfect domain name’. Go Daddy applies the same principles to its bulk registration and management features. Searching for several domains at a time is never complicated and most noteworthy in bulk domain management is comparing prices across domain extensions, length of registration, and price range.

When bulk registering, you can filter your search based on the top-level domains (TLDs) that you wish to be included. Since Go Daddy has one of the largest and most varied TLDs among registrars, it might be important to use this functionality when searching for a large number of domains in order to efficiently filter results. Bulk search allows up to 500 domains to be searched at a time and offers both unavailable domains and selected or available domains.

Discounts for bulk registration is also frequently offered – just refer to the sidebar on the right side of the search box for the most recent promotional offers. Managing your domains can be done by filtering domain name or extension. The interface, as it is elsewhere in the registration process up to web hosting, is free from unnecessary buttons that only serve to confound rather than help.

Access Level and Delegating

GoDaddy.com has one of the easiest access level processes. It allows account holders to safely share access to other users without surrendering complete control. An account owner may have to be familiar with what each access level can grant a third party user, but for those who are already familiar with account management, setting up and delegating access won’t take too long to set up.

Go Daddy has one of the best tools for assigned account administrators for an account. Under ‘SETTINGS’ in the control panel, you could add an unlimited number of account administrators by clicking on the add icon and putting their name and email address. An email gets sent to these added users and once they accept, they’re immediately added to your Account Administrator member list. You determine the access level for each account admin for specific supported products on your account.

Access levels are categorized into the following levels: 1. Manage Products & Purchase; 2. Manage Products; 3. Account Connection Only; and 4. No Access/remove relationship. Varying degrees of authority for each type of access ensures the account holder entrusts only specific functions to the right individual, with ‘Account Connection Only’ having the least amount of authority. The Account Administrator feature, however, will be retired soon and will be replaced by Account Access function which does practically the same things. This convenience is one of several reasons why Go Daddy is ideal for domain owners who require multiple users with varying levels of authority.

Pricing and Coupons

A .com domain in Go Daddy is currently offered at $2.99 and per market standards is more than reasonable; in fact, it’s one of the cheapest you can get today. Go Daddy offers a $1/month domain, which includes domain registration, website design and email set-up (Microsoft Office 365), but requires a 2-year minimum registration. Even with this requirement, that pricing scheme is still hard to match. A .com registration for 1 year will total $13.17 (including the standard ICANN fee of $0.18 per year). While this is in fact very cheap, the renewal fee might be too high especially considering how low the introductory price of $2.99 is. In any case, this is still a good deal at least for the first year of registration.

Promotional deals are also available, including low offers for web hosting ($4.99/month, in an annual plan that comes with a free domain), a reduced rate for email marketing services ($4.99/month), and other bundled offers. There is a dedicated page for coupons – a rarity in domain registrars – that offers separate coupons for bundled plans (domain + website + email), domain deals, and partner deals.

Customer Service

It calls its support team ‘award-winning’ and with good reason. Support can be obtained through their hotline [(480) 505-8877] or through email. Problems with bulk management, issues with pricing and queries on product and service features are inevitably going to come up for certain people, so its 24/7 help team is an indispensable feature that takes care of users’ concerns. There is a live chat function but is not always online, and often takes hours to connect. Users looking for immediate answers can also refer to the Help page which provides an organized system of resolving issues on account management, cloud servers, domains and other service areas.

Management Summary

GoDaddy.com is, without a doubt, one of the most popular domain registration companies operating today which boasts of 13 million customers and more than 60 million domains hosted at present. It is also one of the best; all aspects of domain registration, from domain searching, bulk domain management, building and/or hosting a website, to the more complex processes of web design, online marketing, and designating access levels, are covered. There are but a few procedures on establishing domain name registering that can’t be done in Go Daddy. Yet another reason to use their service is the seamless process of transferring domains. But what truly makes GoDaddy stand out from all the ‘one-stop shops’ is their easily navigable website. GoDaddy.com’s services and features are simple, efficient and reasonably priced.