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Comment by gst | Hacker News Reader

Could someone explain to me why the majority of startups seems to use GoDaddy? Their user-interface is unintuitive and ugly and there are plenty of other good alternatives. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't use GoDaddy, but why does a mediocre-at-best service have such a high market-share?

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It's tough to remember now, but at one point GoDaddy was the small nimble competitor to Network Solutions. They were much cheaper and seemed more 'with it'.

I've collected so many domains from various consulting jobs, weekend projects, favors for family, etc, etc over the years that are on Godaddy simply because they were the one I started with, it's a pain to maintain domains on multiple services and I've got freaking muscle memory for doing whatever it is I have to do with GoDaddy at this point.

TL;DR Inertia.

Doubt that a majority of startups are using GoDaddy. GoDaddy made themselves well-known and bought Super Bowl ads. That's the first company many people think of at one point of time when they think of domain names.

After SOPA (or whatever that was called), ignorance is their only defense. Or that they are smitten by Danica Patrick.

Price.

Does it really matter for a startup if they save a few dollar a year compared to any other solution? GoDaddy charges $13 per year for a .com. My current (random) German registrar charges around $16.5 per year incl. German VAT. Unless you plan to buy thousands of domains price shouldn't make a considerable difference.

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