Hello readers! Today I am going to give a review on GoDaddy's hosting services with a twist; a review from the point of view of a fresh newcomer who had never had any hosting service before. When I started my own website @
Empty Talks, I have totally zero experience on anything and certainly, I have no idea how hosting plans work. Did a few scouting and as a newbie, I always believe that we should go with the market leaders. After few days of searching, found GoDaddy and thought, "Hey, this sounds good! Let's give it a try for 2 months."
First impression for setup was easy and simple. No issues with setting up the site and hosting as I believe GoDaddy would want to close the sale with me. After some configuration and assistance with the support staffs, my site was up and running on WordPress platform. Before long, I decided to change to Joomla and that is when all the 'fun' started with GoDaddy. For the record, yes I read everythnig about Joomla publishing platform and was certainly up for some challenge. What I didn't know is that I was not ready for bigger challenges.
Setting up was easy after going through GoDaddy's Help/Guides provided at the site. Easy to say, hard to do! Site was up in due cost and then I realized my site was actually very slow. Contacted GoDaddy's support team and was told they will look into the matter. To my dismay, they replied that there was no issue on their end and they believe the problem came from myside (pointing at my Internet service providers). Well, here's the issue that I told them. I tested via Unifi, Streamyx and even Time lines and basically, it is enar impossible for any problem as I have no issue going other sites.
Again, they said it could well be a problem n my end (again) and said they can't do much. So, what should I do to solve the problem? Seems like I have my hands tied. I focused on finding alternatives and found CloudFlare. Well, afetr diverting the name servers etc, it works again and this certainly prove it is GoDaddy's issue. However, my issue didn't stopped there. I experienced the same hosting issue again within days and this time, I was told by GoDaddy that it is CloudFlare issue.
I personally told GoDaddy's support staff that I would need them to change for me (name servers) and I am not going to do it myself. They did it and my site still isn't up. Waited for 48 hours and finally, send another ticket to them. Now, they said the name servers were actually pointed at the wrong place! Well, think again. Their staffs did it for me and the problem should be from their end right?
As for the record, all these issues I faced during GoDaddy did thought me on some basic knowledge when it comes to hosting. I am glad to say that I have finally able to run my site without issue while pointing my site to CloudFlare after some trial and error runs. Personally, I wouldn't say GoDaddy is bad in service and they certainly do respond back within the time limit.
What I believe they can improve is to be more helpful and try solving the issue instead of finding whose fault that is. I certainly believe GoDaddy can improve itself and do hope for more future improvements to attract more customers. As for me, I am certainly heading over to other hosting companies...at least for now. Do you experienced any issue like this before when you are still new?
