Every year I would come back to renew and it was getting more and more difficult. Eventually, it became ridiculous. The checkout process was finding the "No I don't want this shit" link (yes, link), listing through five pages of "GoDaddy girl" and special offers.
Speaking of the GoDaddy girl. That's how I knew they completely lost touch with their business. I remember their newsletters (were they newsletters?) about "seeing the GoDaddy girl in the shower" or something. I mean, wtf?
I still have a couple of domains there, for complicated reasons, but all others, I've transfered out of there long ago, new business goes to Namecheap.
Thanks for that. I actually remembered their color scheme/design, but couldn't find the website back when I was looking for a new registrar. It looks like they have a much larger selection of tld's compared to Namecheap. That will come in handy.
I think it's a common situation for non-experts. If you're in satisficer mode (versus the maximizer mode common to experts), you pick the first thing that's quick, convenient, and apparently safe. Lots of commercials means a recognizable brand, which feels safe to a lot of people when they are comparing a bunch of apparently equivalent choices.
Personally, I wouldn't be sad if GoDaddy went bankrupt tomorrow. I recently had to deal with their latest scam: sending notifications that suggest your domain name is up for auction. Having seen people lose domains before due to missing a renewal and/or outright thievery, my blood pressure went through the roof. It's a marketing lie, of course, to get you to sign up for get more crap.
Learning about it has definitely changed some of my behaviors. E.g., in restaurants I use to try to maximize by picking the very best item. Which made me kinda crazy, as there was never sufficient information to know. Now I take the satisficer approach and pick the first thing that looks good. Which is maximizing a different variable, so my nerdy side still approves.
I think there was a certain comfort in their size. You assumed that, because they were so prominent, nothing bad would happen because they were small.
Also, there is definitely a momentum effect -- it was the first registrar many people heard about and just kept using them, because that was the path of least resistance.
It wasn't the first registrar I heard about, but it was the first register I heard about besides Network Solutions, which used to be a monopoly, and charged (IIRC) $70 per domain. GoDaddy was pretty damn customer-friendly by comparison.
Yeah, GoDaddy made its name as one of the first registrars to offer domains around the $10 price point right after NS's monopoly was removed. They've basically just ridden that wave since then and have tried to capitalize on the brand recognition when the only thing a small business owner knows is that you have to use GoDaddy to get a website.
Well it was the registrar I heard of first, and if their ads had been less offensive, I probably would have gone with them. As it was though, I just went with the second registrar I heard of, http://Domain.com/ I had a coupon code from the Hak5 podcast, but I don't really know if it was cheaper than other registrars.
I signed up with them something like 12 years ago when they were a refreshing alternative to Network Solutions. Long before the Super Bowl ads and other nonsense.
The first webhost/registrar I used closed down my site (that I had paid yearly for) and made it annoying to move my domain away because I was hosting videos (of myself and friends) on the website. Apparently there was a clause in their terms that I couldn't host any type of video file on there. This was back in 2003; youtube didn't exist yet. Anyway, I moved the domain to godaddy and the website to somewhere else and had no issues for years.
- Commercials
- And it's shady ability to add $60 worth of crap to your cart when you want to buy a $9 domain.
I found Namecheap and never found anything simpler and less sketch. Even looking for domains on Namecheap 3-4 years ago was much simpler.
Was it just the registrar you had heard of first?