GoDaddy isn't as pretty as you thought | Hacker News Reader

GoDaddy isn't as pretty as you thought

networkworld.com

46 pointsfbea48 comments

Did any of you think you were going to get real tech support for a GoDaddy shared hosting account? Well, uh, now you know.

Seriously, as soon as he said he was hosting his code there I thought "Well we found the problem, end of post".

The only thing worse than this is imagining a world in which el-cheapo shared hosts did try to fix your webapps.

The title is flat wrong, my opinion of GoDaddy actually improved from reading his rant.

What I don't understand is how someone with a modicum of technical skill could expect anything from a GoDaddy shared hosting account.

I know two people who work for GoDaddy. In their training for Tech Support they stress the upsell. This is why the web page control panel for their shared hosting is so horrible from a usability perspective. So that people will become confused, have to call in and then GoDaddy has an opportunity to upsell them. This is why I always advise "anyone but GoDaddy", even though my friends could get commision from my referral.

Seconded. GoDaddy might be ok for domains or SSL, but that's about it.

Yep, I know. I remember reading Bob Parsons' writings about it.

Not just GoDaddy--I've had similar experiences with half a dozen other shared hosting companies.

GoDaddy is one of the few that actually has free phone support, which is a lot nicer than an automated email and a response 48 hours later.

With both HostGator and ASmallOrange I've generally found an automated email and a reply within 6 hours.

Actually, with ASO I usually have a reply from a human being within 15 minutes to an hour, and I don't think I've seen any counterexamples.

    So here's the bottom line, guys.  GoDaddy has some of the worst support in the business. [...]

So here's the bottom line, guy. You get what you pay for.

So here's the bottom line, guy. You get what you pay for.

And the same ppl who tell you that will then say that you shouldn't use the MS stack, and only use free tools :-)

Free (as in beer) software isn't actually free, it's just that you don't have to be the one paying for it. Check out the percentage of the kernel written by paid kernel hackers sometime.

Well, not with money, anyway.

I got the same runaround with their VPS service. I started seeing really high disk latency - on the order of tens of seconds to create a file. I emailed them, along with the results of a script that measured how long it took to create a new file over time.

First they told me that they checked and everything was OK, maybe I should contact someone who knows about systems administration. Then they said the performance I was seeing was within their acceptable standards.

I asked them for their standards, they said they didn't have any published standards.

Thank goodness I found Linode.

I started seeing really high disk latency - on the order of tens of seconds to create a file.

That's not disk latency. That's filesystem latency.

It's entirely possible that the disk latency was high, but you really should have measured it directly to rule out filesystem problems.

I would have loved to do more in depth measurement, but I couldn't get to any disk stats under /proc. Even iostat was crippled.

I'm also not sure the distinction was that important in that case. With their VPS implementation there were no knobs I could turn. The root cause of the problem had to be on their side of the fence. "Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with axe"

Well, one common issue is filesystems slowing down if data structures (e.g. directories) get big. Creating a single file doesn't take a constant number of disk operations.

Every time you host a website on GoDaddy or NetworkSolutions, God kills a kitten.

Is the TL;DR of this "Boo hoo my super cheap shared hosting stopped working and they didn't give me platinum level support"?

iWeb has the same sort of super-cheap hosting, but they fix your stuff on a "best case" basis. I don't blame them. Spend a few hours on a customer problem and you're losing a ton of cash when it's a $3/mo. plan.

If I pay for it, it should at least function. If you can't keep it functional at a certain price point, don't offer that price point.

Clearly it just works for a lot of people. I really tire of the "if it doesn't work for me it shouldn't work for anyone" attitude.

These sorts of complaints are ridiculous. It's one thing to host some little family site on GoDaddy shared hosting, but for anything real...come on. You get what you pay for.

Clearly it just works for a lot of people

Why do you say that? Do you have data? It seems just as likely that it doesn't work for a lot of people, but they can survive on the churn from new customers (and subscriptions) -- or convincing people to provide a poorer service.

It's a reasonable inference that it was working for enough people. Either that or this guy is the only person on GoDaddy Shared, or everybody who uses it is too dumb to know working from not working. Either way the moral seems to be: Not enough people complained to warrant a real investigation.

Who is supposed to investigate? The way a lot of these companies work, like DirecTV, is that they know what the practice is, but as an individual you have little power to stop them.

It doesn't have to work for anyone for this to be succesful for GoDaddy. They just have to be able to collect on enough people, with decent churn for new blood.

What are you talking about? Clearly it has to 'work' in the sense that when you upload your code and go to look at it you get a result back for the initial people. This guys app did not work at all. Are you saying GoDaddy has a product they sell that doesn't work even in the slightest? If this one guy noticed something broke it is not unreasonable to think that if it is across the entire product that more people would complain and it would escalate. It may not be true but it's not unreasonable. But this discussion is almost full retard.

Clearly you don't know WTF you're talking about. But lets end this full retard discussion. Done.

I'm not sure that I'd consider keeping your web server properly configured to be "platinum level support"...

Using godaddy for shared hosting is bad, their dns/domain hosting and dedicated hosting is good. Basically shared hosting is bad just about everywhere, especially with .NET because it is so tied to the OS.

Crappy shared hosting is a big reason that PHP is still as big as it is as you need a specialized provider or server control when you want to run python, ruby, .net, java.

Just buy a dedicated server or slices next time that are either virtual or dedicated servers that you can configure yourself.

After a recent HN thread discussion on HN, I migrated all of my DNS names registered on GoDaddy to Name.com.

GoDaddy's commercials are moronic, and that was the principal reason. Their horrible domain management web console also played a big part.

I question the intelligence of anyone who's used their web interface, who's then decided to host servers with GoDaddy.

Avoiding even one incident like this is worth whatever extra I'd pay with a decent hoster.

I've been using DomainSite.com for a decade (at least) now. I don't know when Name.com bought them, or what happened there, or if they were always Name.com. Either way, I just always go back. The UI is simple, it's fast, doesn't get in your way. It just works.

I feel the same way about Network Solutions, they deliberately delete my PHP Conifg files and host me on servers without enough memory. Whenever I call tech support, they just say that they're relocating my files but "cant tell me when it will be done". I can't even get a basic install of Drupal to work reliably on their Unix hosting accounts because the servers time out after one hit, and its not because of my skills. My google analytics figures are horrible because the hosting is down 45% of the time. Its also amazing how horrible their admin account interfaces are with booby traps to try to get you to "opt in" to services as well. And mysteriously, the "Auto Renew" option selected itself just this year when I've always had it off since I started the account years ago. It charged my credit card, not even worth trying to get that undone... The concept of Ethics is lost on the web hosting industry. sigh

Sometimes it's worth either paying someone for the convenience (ie. paying a decent provider) or doing it yourself.

55% uptime is horrible, but I'd suggest that instead of complaining you either shell out some more & move away (Drupal doesn't require anything special) or set up a VPS with a decent provider like Slicehost or Linode and go from there.

I don't mean to preach, but I read so many 'hosting horror stories' where the end-user just doesn't seem to want to do anything about it.

GoDaddy has an "Office of The President" and this is where I have gotten results in the past when I had shared and dedicated servers there. When the front-line tech were really giving me the run-a-round and Managers were not listening I simply call that office. They have people there that take the information and start making phone calls to Managers to figure it out and get you back to where you need to be. I hated having to call there but when you are paying $175/month and your site has been down 2 weeks you start to get a little pissed off.

If I'm paying $175/month and their front-line support can't be bothered to help me, I'll take my business elsewhere. No second chances.

I don't do any hosting with godaddy, and I would NEVER recommend their hosting services for anything other than the MOST basic of site.

Having said that, for domains and DNS, nobody does it better. If I ever have any problems with the services I purchase from them I can very easily get a tech on the phone.

Godaddy hosts websites? I kid, but it's so clearly not their core business. Their advertisements have one single message: register your domain at GoDaddy. And they do that great. Now that you have your domain name, go find a business whose core business is hosting! Wow.

The domain reg is a 'loss' leader for the shared hosting packages. The whole business model is based on the idea that all 95% of people need to do is get Registration + DNS + POP3 + host some static HTML. The pricing is inline with that. GoDaddy keeps the 95% of people who can be served on that model. The other 5% should know well enough that they won't be served well by that.

I use GD's DNS and domain management. I would _never_ consider hosting a site with them.

Bad support is one huge issue for sure. Consumerist says they do not outsource tech support. Maybe they should.

Has anyone else noticed how much is going on within the frames? They've privatized almost every aspect of building a website. A single dropdown has enough links to comprise an entire site.

I can imagine this has implications on their support centers in that they can never train one agent to throughly understand the complexities of a single issue. Instead, they must teach them a little about everything.

You can get a VPS really cheap these days. Less than 200 bucks a year. I highly recommend it. It costs more than shared hosting, but the complete control makes up for it. I've been using Linode since Oct and have been very happy.

For cheap shared hosting, I've had great luck with nearlyfreespeech.net.

I pay Slicehost USD$20/m for a 256MB VPS + DNS hosting, and I've never had unexpected downtime. Yes, this means I'm doing the sys-admin work myself - but for hosting my own site & static media, it's pretty straightforward.

The best part? I emailed them at ~2AM with a support request and got a reply about 9 minutes later. And they gave me the right answer to fix my problem.

Less than 200 bucks a year.

Indeed, less than 30 bucks a year [1], with unmetered bandwidth (if slow). I thought it had to be a scam, but I tried it out of curiosity... and it works!

[1] For example, http://rubyringtech.com/vps-solutions/linux-vps/

I'd hate to put that "unmetered" thing to the test with a suddenly popular website.

The value of ones time comes to play here. If you are spending hours to resolve an issue with a $5/mo account it just isn't worth it. He should have just cut bait and gone elsewhere the second the marginal savings in hosting was expended. I believe the technical term is "Penny wise, pound foolish".

boo hoo and 2 second google search:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/475318/how-do-i-get-httph...

Why would you host your website with a company whose core competancy is DNS? It's like getting your car serviced at a carwash.

of several experiences with godaddy, there are none i can classify as "pleasant"

It's 2011, I am in shock that I'm still reading articles like this.

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