I Am A Forgiving Person
It takes a lot to get me riled up and to upset me. I can roll with the punches and I am usually pretty flexible. The problem is that I have had to put up with so much from Godaddy, that I am close to blowing my top. Let’s say you have a website that you have built from the ground up. This website is where you can go to express your creativity and share your knowledge with other designs. You’ve installed a WordPress site, customized it and have built up a decent amount of traffic. That site is your place to go to connect with other designers, and it is really taking off. You’ve had your hosting company for your portfolio site for a couple of years and it was fine, but your WordPress site inexplicably goes down. For no apparent reason, you get a database error or a 500 Internal Server Error. I have been experiencing this for a while. This is my Godaddy hosting nightmare. The reasons I mentioned above, and a few others are why I hate Godaddy as a hosting company.
1. Godaddy is Apathetic to Your Concerns
I have gotten a couple of good customer service reps in the past there, but lately I have gotten the most uncaring, idiotic people that you have ever met. They could care less if my site is down, and they aren’t afraid for you to find that out. The fact that I have had to call customer service so much in the first place to get my site back up and running is your 1st clue. Why is it down in the first place? You never end up getting a straight answer, you just get a robotic blanket statement as an answer.
2. Just Plain Bad Customer Service
I don’t know much about customer service, but I can tell when someone is just tossing a blanket statement my way, because that is what they are supposed to say. I have also had an experience where a customer service agent even said ” I can’t help you.” Really? Then please point me to someone who can. It seems like lately that every time I call, the answers are “I’m not sure what happened” or ” Our servers are experiencing a little trouble or slowness.” I don’t want to hear your excuses, I just want my site back up. I pay Godaddy to host my website, so keep it up consistently. Also, when it goes down, I want something for free, because you sure aren’t doing what I pay you for. When my site is down, I look bad, because I am a web designer and people get the impression that I don’t know what I am doing. I do, it’s just that my hosting company is terrible.
3. No Consistency and Everyone Just BS’s You
For the longest time, I have had a deluxe hosting account with Godaddy. I can host unlimited html sites and can run 25 MySQL databases, meaning 25 separate WordPress installs. I figured that was plenty. My site kept going down, and I kept having to call Godaddy to get it going again, because of their systems. I asked a customer service rep if it was because of a traffic spike that my site was down. I was specifically told that this wasn’t the case. I was told that with my hosting account, that if there is a traffic spike, that back up servers are standing by to carry the extra load. My site kept going down and kept going down on days that seemed like I was having the best traffic ever. One day I was talking to another rep and reiterated what I was told previously. Besides almost being laughed at, I was told that this wasn’t the case and that this was for dedicated hosting(Which I knew). However, I thought that Godaddy may have integrated their own special servers just to make sure that no ones site went down, as an added service, but this just wasn’t true. The customer service rep from before had lied to me.
The part I can’t stand is that every time I call Godaddy, I get a different answer. I am not sure that anyone knows what is going on over there. Is anyone actually being trained? I am beginning to wonder.
4. Godaddy Can’t Handle Anything Simple
My site is a simple WordPress install, with a few regular plugins. I don’t regularly add plugins, because I use a few and stick to them consistently because I know they work. I would like customer service to stop asking me if I have made any changes to the site. Don’t you think I have thought of that? Don’t you think I would try the latest plugin I installed before I call? 500 Internal Server Error has nothing to do with anything I have done. It means your server has broken down and you haven’t implemented a backup just in case.
5. Godaddy Knows That They’re Not Providing Quality
One of the biggest problems that I have with Godaddy is that they are aware that they aren’t providing quality products and services. They are aware of the problems, but they aren’t changing. Most companies would jump at the chance to improve their products and services, but everything seems to change. They are constantly hacked, they make excuses, and they don’t seem to care anymore. I think the reason that they have retained any of their business is because people are like me and afraid of switching. They also may not want to go through the hassle and simply put up with bad service.
6. Godaddy Holds Back
They know that I am unhappy and I have told them that I will be switching hosting services. You would expect some sort of reaction, a special offer, or something. Instead I am met with “I understand” and they try to finish out the phone call and get me to go away. The odd thing is that when I called yesterday about my site being inexplicably down, they reminded me that one of my domains is expiring in 3 weeks. Then, the customer service rep told me that they have a few discounts available for me, since they had experienced problems with down time. Why didn’t they offer this to me when I informed them that I was leaving? I may keep my domains with them, but my hosting is going elsewhere. They are aware that my site was down, that it was their fault, and they are holding back incentives for customers to stay, so that they can offer it to them when their products expire. That doesn’t even make sense! What does it matter if my products are expiring if I am no longer a customer?
Conclusion
I will be switching hosting at the first of the year. My top 3 choices are WP Engine, Hostgator , and Blue Host. I have heard stellar things about them. A couple of them guarantee 99.9% up time, which is key. This is especially true when you are paying for operational costs through ads. 100 missed visitors could mean 1 missed sale, or 25 newsletter signups, which could eventually lead to more sales. The whole reason I wrote this is to steer those who are thinking of a lifetime sentence with Godaddy into reconsidering. I am nervous about switching, because I have honestly never switched a site’s hosting before, but I am willing to take the risk and venture out, so that my site might actually grow like it should and like I intended it to. Below is a poll: tell me which hosting company I should sign up with. Also, if you have had a bad experience, tell us about it in the comments section below.
[polldaddy poll=”6745372″]
