Okay, I have to say that I’m pretty impressed with not only GoDaddy right now, but also with the awesomeness that is blogging and the internet.

Yesterday I wrote a post where I had issues with major slowness on GoDaddy hosted sites. I’ve been a loyal, vigilant, zealous customer of theirs since they were a “baby” company (over 10 years), and have referred hundreds (if not thousands) of people to them without getting any reward or payment. I’ve just been THAT much in love with them. But recently there were a lot of slowness issues, for both myself and my clients, to the point where even one client switched hosting companies.

Anyway, later on that afternoon I was out of the office for the rest of the day, and I returned this morning to find over a dozen emails from GoDaddy stating that they moved all my sites to a new server to address issues I’d had. WHAT!? I hadn’t said anything to them other than when I had the support guy on the phone that one time. I had only posted this one post on my little ol’ blog, and suddenly I got upgraded? It was like MAGIC!

Okay, not so much magic as it was my post being discovered by a GoDaddy employee who then forwarded it to likely several people, where it wound up in the hands of the VP of Technology, Mike Chadwick. Mike then shot off an email to me asking me if I’d be open to discussing things with him via telephone, and then he apparently put out a call to action to get my problems fixed.

Well I just got off the phone with Mike, and I have to say I’m doubly impressed right now. Not only did they do the migrations for all my sites, but they also checked their database to find my client’s sites and are doing the same for each and every one of them. I’m flabbergasted! They paid that much attention to my concerns, and took the steps necessary to remedy them. Without my having to call up and rant and rave, without my being put on hold for 45 minutes while someone tried to figure out the issue and then tell me it was “on my end”, without my having to write letters and post obnoxious rants time and again. THEY took the initiative to fix the problem for me.

Mike and I had a great discussion, and he told me that they’re working on some new technologies and plans to try to connect with WordPress to work together on making sure that they’re both providing the best service and support to end users. He also confirmed that a dedicated server is likely not the solution for me (or my clients) given that they do require strong knowledge of servers and I just don’t have that knowledge myself. I can hire someone, sure, or I can pay the fees for the service plan (which I totally do NOT have a problem with them charging - it takes people to do the work, and GoDaddy has to pay them) but after Mike analyzed everything, he agreed that it wouldn’t necessarily be a good use of funds right now. He also stated that if I ever did decide to go that route, that all fees already paid on hosting could be credited back/transferred to the cost of the dedicated hosting. AWESOME! The reason why it’s not necessary is because dedicated servers are more for sites experiencing high traffic or using high levels of bandwidth, that also have people with the knowledge to maintain servers. He even mentioned that it’s often necessary for large sites with heavy traffic sometimes need several servers to push out their content. Makes total sense, of course, and it makes sense that neither myself or my clients at this time would need such power or expense.

So to tidy this up a bit:

• GoDaddy not only pays attention, but sincerely cares about their customers. I’m sure that the next time I have a problem, I’m going to get in touch with Mike before posting something about it. To get your concern to “elevated” status is not a difficult thing when you call their support team, and keep track of everyone you talk to. I know that Mike was glad to know the details of my conversation, so that he can take the proper steps to educate that employee on what would’ve been the right move.
• Blogging is QUITE the effective tool. Within hours of my post, something had been done. And no, it’s not that I had to do that before anything would’ve gotten done - it’s just the fact that within hours someone from GoDaddy got wind of it, and the VP of Technology contacted me directly to fix the issues. Given that out of all the blog posts I’ll ever write in my life, few will be major complaints like that, it makes me take notice of the things I say and the power behind them.
• I’m going to continue to use and recommend GoDaddy, plain and simple. Do I still think that Danica Patrick is kind of a male-oriented, slick ad scheme? Sure. But the unfortunate fact is that the demographic for GoDaddy users is largely males, aged 18-55. “It’s a man’s world,” might not be all that appealing to hear as a woman, but sometimes you gotta just roll with it. My being a woman didn’t get me any less attention or service than had I been a man, and that’s what it all boils down to in my opinion. Customer service. Support. And GoDaddy’s got it.

Before anyone jumps into the comments and starts thinking anything odd or making accusations, I hereby attest under penalty of perjury that the statements I’ve made are pure and unintentional. I’m not saying this because of any other reason than I’m supremely pleased with what’s happened. I don’t feel as though I were threatened or anything like that (as I’m sure you may have read on some of the GoDaddy bashing sites out there) - I simply feel that I was treated with concern and respect as a customer, and I can’t say enough how good that makes me feel. It’s pretty damn good.

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Almost everyone knows that GoDaddy has some strange advertising practices. They’ve created commercials for the Super Bowl that have been rejected time and again. They’ve glommed on to Danica Patrick (her face is plastered all over their site). They’ve done some pretty original, amazing things when it comes to their advertising, but could it be that they’re spending their money (too much of it) in the wrong places?

Before I go any further, I’ll say this: I’ve been an avid, loyal customer of GoDaddy’s for over 10 years now. Every single site I’ve built is hosted there, and I’ve convinced about 99% of my customers to switch to them. I’ve had faith, I’ve believed, and now, I’m starting to feel otherwise. This, my friends, is the very reason for this post.

A couple months ago a client of mine came to me complaining that his site was loading terribly slowly, both on the administrative end, and the live end. I checked the site dozens of times and couldn’t find the “slowness”. It was frustrating for both of us, because he had problems I couldn’t replicate.

What ended up happening is that he transferred his site to another host. I was a little disappointed, not because of anything other than the fact that one of my recommendations had failed me in the eyes of a client.

A few days later, my GoDaddy rep had called me to see if there was anything I needed, or if I wanted to update all my registrations to set the same expiry date, and I had to explain this situation my client was having, just to see what he had to say. What I was hit with was kind of surprising. He said that because more than one site is hosted on any given “regular” server setup, that sometimes the servers get overloaded and tend to push stuff out slowly. He said that it’s never consistent, and he also said that it typically gets remedied, but it’s just “something that happens”.

Not being too enthused with his answer, I pushed onward and asked him what a GoDaddy customer could do to make this not happen to their site. To not get “stuck” with a slow server, or one that’s overloaded.

His answer of course, shouldn’t have surprised me. He said for them to buy either a virtual dedicated server or a dedicated server hosting plan. Have you seen the prices on stuff like that? We’re talking anywhere from $600-$1100 a year just for the “virtual” dedicated server, depending on options and possible discount codes! And before you say anything, this price range is pretty standard across the board… regardless of hosting company.

So, here I am, with dozens of clients hosted with GoDaddy, and dozens of my own sites hosted with GoDaddy, and I’m wondering what the hell I could do for everyone that would make things better.

1. Buy my own servers, and host clients myself. I would then be making the money off the hosting, instead of another company. Problem with this: I don’t know much about server maintenance, and would have to hire someone to be available 24/7 in the event there were any problems, as well as to do the regular backup/upgrade/maintenance stuff.

2. Buy into the dedicated server packages, either with GoDaddy or another host. Then, again, host my own and my client sites, saving/making money. Problem with this: Still a lot of work (transferring sites as well as maintenance), I would still be first contact in the event of any problems, and things could be held over MY head rather than a hosting company’s head.

3. Find another company to be loyal to, transfer all my accounts there, and stop recommending GoDaddy to clients. Problems: VERY time consuming, loss of all funds already spent on hosting with GoDaddy (or a large percentage of them), and not currently being able to find any hosting company that hasn’t had a ton of complaints written about them.

What I’d really like to see? GoDaddy taking a look at my account and all the accounts of my clients, and taking the money spent on future hosting arrangements, and applying it to the cost of setting me up with a virtual dedicated server with full support from their end. Do I think it will happen? Probably not. Would it change my mind that maybe they should be buying more servers than advertising? Not so much. But it would show me that they actually give a crap about their customers, especially the long term, devotees like myself.

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