Better yet, should they? If you haven’t heard about this lately, there are a number of accounts surfacing where GoDaddy has injected JavaScript code into websites hosted on their platform. Sneaky sneaky… If I pay you to host my website, then I’m sorry, but I’m not authorizing you to collect data in such an obvious manner. Especially as it violates the integrity of the website being served.
But, let’s also consider something… price. How long ago did GoDaddy really become this expensive? I feel like I’ve had my head stuck in a blackhole. I never cared for the earlier competitors to GoDaddy, like 1&1 and Network Solutions. And for some reason Namecheap just didn’t come across my radar as worth looking into.
Until lately. Did you know GoDaddy’s cost to renew a .COM domain is now $17.99 + ICANN fee?! That’s outrageous! When I first registered this domain it was probably $8.99/yr + ICANN. For a long time it was around $13/yr. Then the past couple years it has been inching up. But nearly a $4/yr increase in 2019 alone? And this same hit is being felt by .NET and .ORG domains too.
Now, if you have enough domains then maybe GoDaddy’s Discount Club will make sense. It’s a solid offering, and drops that same .COM down to the $9/yr range. Per GoDaddy themselves (I spoke with them today, actually), the rule of thumb is about 18 domains. Fortunately (unfortunately?… not sure) I am about half a dozen shy of that these days. So, moot point.
Let’s Compare Pricing…
Looking strictly at the renewal fees, let’s see how GoDaddy’s list pricing compares to their Discount Club pricing, compared to Namecheap’s list pricing.
| TLD | GoDaddy List | GoDaddy Club | Namecheap |
| .COM | $17.99 | $8.29 | $10.98 |
| .NET | $19.99 | $10.99 | $12.98 |
| .ORG | $20.99 | $11.99 | $12.98 |
| .US | $19.99 | $7.99 | $8.48 |
| .INFO | $21.99 | $11.99 | $12.88 |
| .CO | $34.99 | $24.99 | $23.98 |
| .ME | $19.99 | $15.99 | $18.99 |
Discount Club beats Namecheap’s annual cost (without apply specials, which I ignored in building that table). But, to be a part of the discount club you need to pay $120/yr. So, do the math first, because the Discount Club really may not win out in the end.
To give you an idea of scale, at work we managed somewhere around 30 .COM domains, half a dozen .COM and .NET domains, and then a whole slew of one-off oddball TLDs (a few of which are very expensive, for sure). And that’s just the account I look at. In doing the math today, even with an account that large, we stood to save $45/year by switching to Namecheap vs. GoDaddy’s Discount Club. Not enough savings to warrant the switch. But, we’re the poster child for the Discount Club. We fit their niche perfectly. And Namecheap is still competitive.
So yeah, what are you doing with you domains these days? Me? I am slowly beginning the transfer off of GoDaddy.