godaddy.com

[dvtimes]

Why is godaddy.com so big?

Is it because they were one of the first firms?

I see lots of firms doing hosting and stuff, but I do not think they could afford to advertise at the superbowl.

[slaxxx]

Because they undercut competitors and were the first popular "discount registrar"

[viki]

The prices are extremely cheap so they got very well known. Their whole program is based on upsells. I have a dedicated server with them and it works well but some of their marketing tactics and such are worth getting pissed about.

Example: I just got this server a month ago and since I've heard bad things about them, I didn't set it to auto-renew. The subscriptions was set to expire on the 22nd so I renewed it manually on the 17th. Now my new expiration date is on January 17th instead of the 22nd.

They make their money from stupid things like that combined with the fact that you have to go through a bunch of screens of special features that they offer you when doing just about anything. So, they seem cheap, but sometimes you end up paying more... and they obviously get a ton of business because the initial prices or really low.

[-HF]

i never quite get where the myth of godaddy being cheap is coming from. Namecheap offers .com for 8.88 incl. WHOIS protection, something i'd always use on any domain not used for B2B deals. godaddy only introduced the free WHOIS guard recently, and you need to buy at least 3 eligible domains at once and it costs 8.95 unless you buy more than 50 domains in bulk. same goes for .net.

.info is 2.88 at Namecheap vs. 5.95 at godaddy, no matter how many you buy.

granted godaddy undercuts when it comes to transfering domains to them. but how many move domains there rather than away? :D

godaddy also slaps on some 25 cents per domain name registration year, supposedly some ICANN fee that is obviously included in the prices of other domain brokers.

[slaxxx]

GoDaddy were the first popular discount registrar...they were cheap before enom resellers like namecheap/registerfly/etc. took off. Lots of popularity and branding before other competition came along- they're of course not still the cheapest by any means, but they've got plenty of already existing loyalty.