First, I have to say that I’m very happy with GoDaddy’s domain registration services. Inexpensive, easy to manage domains and I think they are the best in their field for that.
Web hosting is a totally different ball game though and GoDaddy’s field is one that I wouldn’t want to play ball in! They have one of the worst web hosting platforms I have ever worked with. It is setup with a Fisher Price interface, obviously for novices to get in and poke around with. I find it restrictive and nowhere near is powerful as cPanel which is provided with traditional Linux web hosting.
Setting up a PHP e-mail script for a simple contact form is a nightmare. No, you cannot simply upload an existing formmail script. GoDaddy is paranoid about third party scripts running on their servers so you they want you to use their scripts (which users have complained that they do not prefer them) or find some type of hack or workaround to make yours work…if you can!
Submitting a trouble ticket has its problems too. It takes a long time for them to get back to you and often times, it is just some generic and idiotic response, as if they didn’t even bother to read and understand your issue. Sometimes their support ticket form does not even submit (probably due to using their own crappy form processor mentioned above) which is very frustrating.
Remember AOL? Many of us referred to them as AO-HELL due to the restrictive and proprietary nature of the Internet experience they provided. Personally, I find GoDaddy’s web hosting to be just as frustrating as AOL ever was. Our company used to work on client’s websites when they which were hosted with GoDaddy. Unfortunately, the time to workaround GoDaddy’s web hosting often costs more than the annual cheap web hosting that GoDaddy provides.
GoDaddy provides cheap web hosting. You get exactly what you paid for. Headaches are free!