Bidding Goodbye to GoDaddy

After having been buying domain names from GoDaddy since, I think, 2004, I’m now finally beginning to move on to try out some other domain registrar. I haven’t had any real trouble with GoDaddy before, at least not with domain name purchases (I did have some annoyances buying SSL certificates from them). So, if I’m not having problems with GoDaddy, why am I transferring out?

Well, there are a few little things that I don’t really like about GoDaddy. Truthfully, they are really minor things that don’t quite amount to be legitimate push reasons for me to want to get out. I guess the real reason is that I just want to try out some other registrar. That other registrar I want to go to has some small little pull factors.

What are the minor little problems that I don’t like about GoDaddy?

• The website is far too cluttered. I know, I only need to visit their website once in a long while. But the website is cluttered enough that these once in a long while visits are bad enough for me to hate visiting their website. It’s actually difficult to get what I want done quickly because I cannot easily figure out where things are.
• The website is very persistent about selling you extra things you don’t want. I know, I can skip through them. But it reminds me of persistent sales people who won’t give up when you tell them “no”.
• The website is slow. I suppose there isn’t plentiful bandwidth between me and them. It doesn’t help that their superbly cluttered website makes each page take far longer to load than necessary.
• The price of domain registrations/renewals have been slowly increasing over the years. Even though the difference is small, there are now many registrars that cost less than them.

None of these, either individually or even as a whole, are really sufficient push factors. I’m mainly just keen to try out some other registrar.

The new one I’m going to is Namecheap. They are cheaper and have a simple easy to navigate website. I know because I’ve been buying SSL certificates from them for many years.

It’s not totally goodbye to GoDaddy yet. I still have a bunch of domains registered with them. If Namecheap doesn’t disappoint me, I guess the remaining domains will get transferred when it comes time for renewal.