A bit unrelated, but I'm curious how GoDaddy is so big. All their products are overpriced and they don't sell anything you can't get somewhere else at a better price. Their tools are just as user-friendly as any other service as well.
- Initially low prices that go up at renewal time
- Cross sell and upsell
- Stickiness. Like the (since removed) 60 day lock on domains if you changed the whois info...even if it was removing privacy so you could transfer it.
- Affiliate (kickback) programs
- Advertising
1. They handle a lot of mom-and-pop business with actual live people on the phones and web chat.
2. For the "you're a computer guy, right?" relatives of those mom-and-pop business owners GoDaddy is large enough that most hosting sites have instructions for it directly.
3. Changing registrars is a pain. I know that GoDaddy is going to stay around. I can't be so sure for smaller dedicated registrars or that Google won't decide to discontinue their registration service and force me to change down the line. My time is limited and the peace of mind that I won't have to change is worth a few dollars a year.
Sources: http://www.registrarowl.com/report_registrar_total_domains.p... https://www.verisign.com/en_US/channel-resources/domain-regi...