Hi Jerry
Welcome to Domain Social!
Everyone has their own personal preference as to which domain registrar is 'best'. In many cases, this is just related to the site design and 'control panel'. GoDaddy is a very successful domain registrar and you should be pretty safe with them.
There are some negative aspects. Unless you plan to call them on the phone (and I have heard both positive and negative stories about their phone support), you probably won't get an support question or problem resolved by email. I have sent countless emails asking for support from everything from domains to hosting (a service which you should avoid at GoDaddy for everything but very small sites), and I have never received a response.
Also, there are so questions about the company ethics. Sure.. they are 'cheap', and they are big, but this dosen't mean that they don't have their problems. There has been a lot of discussion in the domain community as to the morals of the company. They seem to make their money where ever they can, and always aim to maximize their profits, even at the stake of a few clients. For instance, when you 'back order' a domain at GoDaddy, you pay about $18 in advance. However, IF Godaddy catches it, the domain does not get passed on to you (as it should, at least from a common sense perspective), but instead goes to a publicly displayed auction, where anyone can bid on the domain (which is supposed to be yours). No matter how many months you've been waiting for the domain to drop, in the end they will give it to the highest bidder.
Also, they are now offering a parking service. This is one of the only parking services on the web that you pay to use! In other words, you give them all traffic to your domain, and you have to PAY them for that, and the profit you make is anything over the initial payment. In other words, you have to pay in order to get paid. Usually when you have to pay to get paid, you are usually taking part of a scam.. in this case, its just their business model.
So to sum it all up, they are fine for domain registrations, and many people use them for this purpose... but if you plan to rely on them for other services I would be more skeptical (at least from an ethical standpoint).
Welcome to Domain Social!
Everyone has their own personal preference as to which domain registrar is 'best'. In many cases, this is just related to the site design and 'control panel'. GoDaddy is a very successful domain registrar and you should be pretty safe with them.
There are some negative aspects. Unless you plan to call them on the phone (and I have heard both positive and negative stories about their phone support), you probably won't get an support question or problem resolved by email. I have sent countless emails asking for support from everything from domains to hosting (a service which you should avoid at GoDaddy for everything but very small sites), and I have never received a response.
Also, there are so questions about the company ethics. Sure.. they are 'cheap', and they are big, but this dosen't mean that they don't have their problems. There has been a lot of discussion in the domain community as to the morals of the company. They seem to make their money where ever they can, and always aim to maximize their profits, even at the stake of a few clients. For instance, when you 'back order' a domain at GoDaddy, you pay about $18 in advance. However, IF Godaddy catches it, the domain does not get passed on to you (as it should, at least from a common sense perspective), but instead goes to a publicly displayed auction, where anyone can bid on the domain (which is supposed to be yours). No matter how many months you've been waiting for the domain to drop, in the end they will give it to the highest bidder.
Also, they are now offering a parking service. This is one of the only parking services on the web that you pay to use! In other words, you give them all traffic to your domain, and you have to PAY them for that, and the profit you make is anything over the initial payment. In other words, you have to pay in order to get paid. Usually when you have to pay to get paid, you are usually taking part of a scam.. in this case, its just their business model.
So to sum it all up, they are fine for domain registrations, and many people use them for this purpose... but if you plan to rely on them for other services I would be more skeptical (at least from an ethical standpoint).
