A few years ago I fell for a cheap ad campaign and registered a domain with godaddy.com I was hosting somewhere else as their hosting deals did and still do not offer much for the price they charge. My website was one of those paid to click websites where people become free members and then surf websites for credits or cash. One day I found that my domain was pointing to a new website and my members (several thousand back then) were no longer able to go to my website. After checking a few things I noticed that the DNS settings had been changed. I first thought someone had hacked my account, but I was unable to change the DNS settings in my godaddy account. When I asked godaddy what happened they told me that the domain was involved in spamming and they had changed the DNS settings. Funny how instead of going to a website that explained that it was going to something that only benefited godaddy. I was asked to pay $100 to get my domain unblocked. After further research on-line I found out that one of my website’s members had in fact posted his referral link to several newsgroups. So OK, that action can be considered spam, but it was not done by myself, the owner and webmaster of the domain. I explained that to godaddy and they insisted on the $100 to unblock the domain. If the $100 was paid, it would be OK to spam.

Needles to say, I agreed to be charged $100, then moved my domain away from then, then disputed the payment with my credit card company. While searching on google to see if I was a single case I stumbled on hundreds if not thousands of other people who had their domain hijacked by godaddy and were asked to pay a ransom to get it back. So if you ever find a website you don’t like, check the whois info. If it’s registered with godaddy, all you have to do to cause the webmaster some trouble is to send or post some spam in the name of that domain. Pretty ridiculous, huh?

So never ever register a domain with godaddy.com and heck, never host your website with them! Sooner or later they will screw you over. Godaddy employees have openely admitted on newsgroups that they shut off websites just because they did not like them. I have no idea if this is still going on, but why take a chance? Better be safe than sorry.

Godaddy’s reseller program is also a rip-off. Think about it! Why pay them $99 year so you can make them more money by reselling domain names? Duh! You don’t have to pay to re-sell something! Go find a better reseller program! Your customers will be thankful!