I use GoDaddy personally very minimally (a handful of domain names and two hosting plans), but I have a number of clients who use GoDaddy for hosting. In the past few months, I’ve been saying more whoa Daddy’s than GoDaddy’s, because the web host giant has simply been over-promising and under-delivering.

GoDaddy Woes – the cons that are getting louder

Here are some of the things I’ve noticed. I point these out specifically, because they are things that I never experience with any other web host – especially not the use who use cPanel:

• Slow page load times. GoDaddy hosted sites seem to have incredibly slow load times. Likely culprit – over-crowded servers. If you have shared hosting, which means your website sits on a server with several other people’s websites, thus giving you cheaper hosting, you’ll notice that the more crowded your server becomes, the longer it takes your page to load.
• Slow installation of databases. Normally, I can create a MySql database in a matter of seconds – no kidding. With GoDaddy – and this is happening as I write – I am STILL waiting for a database to be created and it’s been over 30 minutes. In my opinion, that’s unbelievable. I’m still a bit in shock and awe.
• Broken installations of Wordpress. This is the biggest issue I’ve seen. It’s a little bit like Twilight Zone. No one knows how or why, but “things” just happen. Like passwords that get “reset” and never come back, and you aren’t able to re-set using Wordpress – so GoDaddy tech support (God bless them) must do it for you. Or, the most recent one, bum database installations that occur during GoDaddy’s auto-install of Wordpress. These are the most perplexing and equally as difficult to resolve.
• Slow set up of hosting. It should not take longer than one hour to get your new website up and running. With GoDaddy, it can sometimes take half a day to an entire day for them to complete the domain registration and hosting.
• Lengthy e-mail set up process. There’s always some configuration when setting up e-mail accounts on your new website, but GoDaddy makes it like a maze. Too confusing.
• Lengthy FTP user set up process. Again, there’s a recurring theme. I don’t know if making changes in GoDaddy simply requires so much time, or if they’ve bogged down the process with too many checks or what, but it shouldn’t take that long. I’ve had to wait over 2 hours for a new FTP user to be added to an account with GoDaddy. With Siteground, it takes less than a minute.

What the experience should be like

This post is not meant to be a plug for the web hosting company that I use, Siteground, but I do want to point out some major differences and why I think Siteground is better than GoDaddy. Note, I also believe that Lunarpages, Eukhost.com and West Host are also better than GoDaddy. I’ve used the latter three in business and I must say that I strongly encourage past and present clients to consider a variety of options before jumping onto mass products like GoDaddy.

Hosting should be semi-automatic. I love Siteground because I can go on the site, sign up for a domain and hosting, and literally – right away – go in, upload my site and be good to go. I can do all of this within 30 minutes. It’s fantastic.

Setting up e-mail or a database shouldn’t require a call to customer service. It should be simple – easy to find and easy to change.

Great customer service…but you have to use it too often

GoDaddy is notorious for excellent customer service. The only problem is that you actually have to use it. A lot. I’ve never had to use customer service as often with any other hosting company – ever.

Siteground doesn’t have great customer service. You can’t call them on a phone. They don’t have a chat feature. You have to submit a help desk ticket. It’s very old school.

But guess what? You never need them. Ever. It’s literally an auto-pilot hosting solution. The same goes for LunarPages, which is even better than Siteground in terms of dollar for dollar value. These companies offer something that’s the most valuable – a good product.

You can dress up a product all you want. Put a pretty face on it. Set up fancy customer service lines and offer a ton of variety. You can price it just right, too. But at the end of the day, if your product is broken, all of the marketing in the world cannot make up for it.

If you’re looking for alternatives to GoDaddy, I strongly suggest:

• Siteground (www.siteground.com)
• LunarPages (www.lunarpages.com)
• West Host (www.westhost.com)
• Eukhost (www.eukhost.com) if you are located in the UK

— Tia Peterson

Although I haven’t been blogging as often as I should (thanks to my new political blog which is taking up a lot of time), I have actually been busy working. In addition to my new full-time job outside of the home, I’ve been working on a number of projects for new and existing clients.

Beth Lane

Last year, I designed and developed a website for Beth Lane, a certified coach specializing in sales. Her website – Peaceful Selling – was great, but she wanted to be able to manage simple changes to text and images herself. My solution? Wordpress, of course! It was so easy to simply conver the existing html and php framework to a Wordpress site (ask me if you’d like this done for you, too). We didn’t need to find a whole new look and feel – I just put the existing design into Wordpress and voila. It’s perfect, because now she also has an integrated blog that looks exactly the same as her website, creating the ultimate streamlined integration.

Kenn Darling

I started working with Kenn last year, just doing some edits on one of his online jewelry store sites. He later came back and asked me to create an entire new gift site template for him – GiftArray – which was a really fun project. He’s still in the process of getting all of the data together, but the template and foundation is there. I also created the logo and six others for him.

Matthew Watson

Matt Watson is creator of the FPSystem Automated Betting Bot (UK horse racing). Matt and I go back awhile as well, but recently I’ve been setting up three blogs and making a ton of changes to his current site. I also created a great squeeze page for him for another product – ProLayingProfits.

He’s trying to streamline everything (shopping cart, affiliate site, blog and website) for easier management. Working with Matt is fantastic and even though we’re separated by an ocean, I’ve had one of the simplest and best working relationships of all time with him.

Joe Hage

Joe Hage wanted a whole new look and feel for his site, so he asked me to work with him to install a blog framework – Wordpress – with a Woo theme – to create a blogsite that works perfectly for him. We made minimal customizations to the fabulous theme (one of many that Woo has) in order to create a custom look for Joe’s site. We also worked with Bruce of Bruce Colhart Creative to customize the site even further, adding color and a great header to finish the look.

Karrie Kohlhaas

Karrie is my new favorite friend. We had some great discussions early on about fixing some rather annoying problems she was encountering with her Wordpress site (ever have those?). She was able to get her site so far on her own, but like many blog owners, there were a few issues she needed extra help with to tackle. I spent just two hours and her site was almost transformed. We fixed a sidebar issue, added some plugins for social bookmarking and other great functionality, updated the permalinks, added a great background color, fixed formatting issues and updated her blog to Wordpress 2.7. She’ll eventually update her entire site, but for now, it’s made a world of difference!

Kate Phillips

I met Kate through Biznik (along with Joe and Karrie, above). She needed a few changes made to her blogsite – Garden of Plenty. We morphed her site from a  traditional blog which was hosted at Wordpress.com to a full blog blogsite so that she could have more sophisticated functionality, such as a newsletter signup form (which you can’t have at Wordpress.com). To accomplish a streamlined integration, we used a static front page from her blog and re-directed her main URL to it. The result is great – Total Wealth Coaching links to her main front page, while Garden of Plenty links to the blog on her site – two “websites” using the same content and hosting. It’s a great technique!

— Tia Peterson