Ask HN: Have you seen godaddy's latest dark pattern?

4 points·fouc··7 comments

Right after buying a domain name, it takes you to a page that is the first step in setting up their hosting service. It's not completely obvious that you can skip it, even with the fine print warnings. I think people would fall for it.

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GoDaddy has been doing this kind of nonsense forever. They also sell services at one price and then substantially increase the price without express notification after at renew (and, yes, it is in the T&Cs small print, but it is intentionally buried).

Some of their competitors have made it their mission to differentiate themselves from companies like GoDaddy, emphasizing their straight forward pricing and lack of gotchas.

It's hardly surprising. GoDaddy has been doing shady tactics for years, the first thing I do when I get a client that uses them is to migrate elsewhere.

Likewise (back in a days when i was doing web stuff).

Helping gullible people to get godaddy-free and move to more transparent and cost-efficient service was necessary first step.

Something I did for a client fixed on Godaddy was clone their site to AWS and another local host. Then ran speed tests in front of them.

The difference was huge and they agreed to change.

While its not strictly fair, it offered a clear & tangible difference to the client to help them make that leap.

What are some reliable, fairly priced alternatives to GoDaddy for registrar/webhosting?

Google domains?

I've used NameCheap for 10 years and never had any real problems apart from some API features missing.

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