Heads Up GoDaddy Customers

No service provider is perfect. My business was impacted recently by a policy I was unaware of by a domain registrar I use, GoDaddy. The issue mentioned below is somewhat of a fluke, but may impact a certain percentage of our readers and subscribers here, hence this post. On the whole I’m a fan of GoDaddy as a domain registrar service (I don’t use their hosting services). Once you get by all the upsells and complete the purchase of your domain(s), it is a great service to manage domain acquisitions. However, something happened to me recently that GoDaddy customers should be aware of.

Heads Up GoDaddy Customers

When registering a domain with GoDaddy, you have the option to have GoDaddy automatically renew the domain when the registration period is up. This is very useful if you have many domains, and don’t want to login to your account and renew manually.

Insert Problem

If you have a credit card on file that is no longer valid, or cannot have a charge run on it, and the automatic renewal fails, your domain gets parked. This means any traffic you have coming to a webpage on that domain is taken to a GoDaddy ‘parked domain’ page.

Not good if you have profitable traffic going to that website.

This is part of GoDaddy’s Policy on Expiring Domains.

“On the day after your domain name registration’s expiration date, we attempt to bill you for the domain name renewal. If we cannot renew the domain name (for example, your card on file expired), we notify you of the domain name registration’s expiration and park your domain name. You can manually renew your domain name.”

My Wish for GoDaddy

As I’ve stated above, generally I’m happy with GoDaddy for domain registrations. They have a very robust user interface, DNS propagation (awareness of new domain names to servers across the Internet) is faster there than other registrars I use, and when I call them with questions or support needs, I’m on the phone with someone usually within 60 seconds.

If I had a wish, however, it would be that they would revisit their expiring domain policy, perhaps even clarify the implications (parked domains) in the product expiration notice. Here’s a partial screenshot of the email notification GoDaddy sent (domain names were removed for privacy).

The email contains no information about the implications of this expiration. Loading up the domain in the browser (to my shock) took me to a “parked domain page” at GoDaddy.

A better idea: Given the amount people like myself spend with GoDaddy, it would be great if they delayed parking domains for 3-5 business days, sending an email indicating as such, giving customers a chance to renew the domain with a working credit card. Perhaps offer this as another incentive for domain club members?

What are your thoughts? Chime in with ideas, feedback and suggestions below.