Krystal vs GoDaddy

GoDaddy - a quick history

GoDaddy have been around a long time and built a reputation for themselves by fielding scantily clad women on Superbowl adverts.

In 2007 public sentiment against GoDaddy was so strong that a concerned Internet citizen created a dedicated website to showcase its inadequacies: NoDaddy.com. Unsurprisingly, it was shut down.

In 2011 their Founder & CEO, Bob Parsons, killed an elephant! The board moved him out of the business and have subsequently tried to clear up their image but over the years they've continued to make headlines for less than positive reasons. Whether that's investor-led mass redundancies in the name of profit maximisation, security issues, mass client data exposures or failing to notice they'd been hacked for years GoDaddy have a less than perfect past.

Why choose Krystal over GoDaddy?

Ethics

We have many issues with the way GoDaddy operates but our top pick would be what psychologists call “dark patterns”. These are "Tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you didn't mean to” or potentially wouldn't if you had all the facts to hand. We believe this behaviour isn't fair to consumers and we'd like to see GoDaddy stop the practice. Learn more about dark patterns and then try using GoDaddy's website to see how many you can spot!

“Visual Interference” is one dark pattern employed by GoDaddy through the use of disclaimers. There are 6 symbols which reference disclaimers on the web hosting page alone ("1, 3, ♦, **, ^, 2"). Conversely, you won't find a single disclaimer on the Krystal site, we put our information up front and easy to read.

Renewal shock

Their 3-year introductory price is similar to our annual price but balloons by as much as 250% on renewal! That's £100 this time turning into £250 next time! We believe this makes them incredibly POOR value for money over time. The lowest prices are available on the longest terms and many people will have forgotten about the price increase come renewal. People are often too busy to move their hosting on a short deadline when their renewal comes up and have trouble getting a refund on an automatic card transaction. We don't offer introductory pricing.

Technology

At Krystal we never compromise on our technology (or ethics!). We've built our own platform and operate our own servers, network and security. This means we control the quality of our service from top to bottom. In contrast, GoDaddy outsourced its hosting infrastructure to a 3rd party in 2018 - a decision that we believe makes it a hosting company that doesn’t actually trust itself to do your hosting (aka a marketing company - which could explain the sky-high renewal prices as somebody has to pay for all that advertising!)

Features

We understand what features a hosting plan needs and think these should be included in the price you see on the website. GoDaddy likes to offer many of what we would deem essential features as 'extras' or 'addons', presumably to maximise profit. It doesn't offer free SSL certificates on all plans and where it does they're often only for the 1st year of a 3-year term. So you end up paying for years 2 and 3. Sneaky!

Environment

Does GoDaddy actually have any environmental commitments? We can't seem to find any! We're very confident though that as the world wakes up to just how damaging web hosting can be and how “fashionable” the topic is that GoDaddy will suddenly start to talk more about how important the issue is and, sincerely hope, they improve these commitments.

Brands

GoDaddy has gotten to its position by spending investors' money on expensive marketing campaigns and acquiring all of the competition. GoDaddy has been VERY slow to bring brands under the GoDaddy umbrella, often keeping the acquired companies trading under the same name and legal entity. We believe this information is deliberately kept from potential clients.

For example, UK darling TSOHost was acquired by HostEuropeGroup (HEG) which was subsequently acquired by GoDaddy in 2016. 7 years on, and still no mention of GoDaddy on TSO's “About us” page though! How are clients meant to know where their money is going?

Investors will always seek a return and in GoDaddy's case that's being provided by clients. Krystal has no investors, is family run and has never paid a dividend, so we can reinvest profits into the service.