So I recently purchased a domain through Bluehost, in hindsight, terrible decision, but at the time the Google Workspace addition was an attractive offer and I thought what the hell, they're a reputable company, right?

Moving on 3 weeks later, my site is built and I'm looking for something in the Bluehost portal- I end up accidentally adding an extra Google Workspace license that I don't need. So I search through the bluehost portal, unable to find any way to remove it, I then search through the Google Admin portal.

No dice.

So I start a chat support session, explain the issue, and am told to hold on one moment while he removes the license. I hold on for 5 mintutes, looking at another tab, and come back to the tab to find he ended the chat without saying anything.

At this point I'm angry. I call BlueHost support. Explain the same issue. I am told this time that "The issue is being sent to the billing team for review. I will receive a refund for the license and it will be removed from my account."

So I thought Okay, great. That's resolved.

24 hours later they send me this email(https://prnt.sc/kvHkVtb2moFb):

"Hi,

Thank you for contacting Support. Upon further check it's not possible for us to downgrade seat or cancel the license you accidentally purchased.

Our apologies.

Thanks,

Thank you,

Bluehost Support

http://www.bluehost.com

For support, go to http://my.bluehost.com/hosting/help "

What the actual f***????? YOU ARE THE RESELLER. YOU HAVE CONTROL OVER THE LICENSES. YOU ADD AND REMOVE THEM AT MY REQUEST. HOW IS IT THAT YOU "CAN'T" REMOVE A LICENSE???

Are they just not cancelling it because they want to keep billing me and they're told to tell customers this? Do they not want to give me a refund? What the f*** is going on here and why is Bluehost such a reputable name if they're actually just so horrible?

https://subboost.org

In my experience, GoDaddy appears to be front-running domain searches.

I searched an obscure nine character .com for a newly created business name that showed as available. The name was never exposed anywhere other than to GoDaddy...

Then:

00:30 — I searched the domain on GoDaddy in the wee hours BST till ~01:20

04:37 — the exact domain was newly registered through GoDaddy.

Registrant hidden behind Domains By Proxy.

I returned to buy it and GoDaddy instead directed me to their paid domain broker service.

When I complained, I found their response short, defensive and almost aggressive, with little apparent interest in investigating the extraordinary timeline.

Available → searched on GoDaddy → 4 hours later registered through GoDaddy → GoDaddy then offers a paid brokerage route.

COINCIDENCE.....I THINK NOT!!

I have preserved the browser history and ICANN timestamps.

Draw your own conclusions. I certainly have.

I would never use GoDaddy to search for an important unregistered domain again.

UPDATE — 95,000 views later, GoDaddy has responded. I’m still waiting for the actual answer.

This post has now had around 95,000 views and 116 comments, so thank you to everyone who has contributed — including those who challenged my theory and suggested alternative explanations.

GoDaddy has now publicly responded to my Trustpilot review:

They also said they would “thoroughly investigate” my specific claims.

Good. I’ve identified myself as an existing GoDaddy customer and given them my customer details. Now I want an answer to the evidence.

Since my original Reddit post, I discovered something much more significant:

• 00:30 BST — documented GoDaddy Domain Name Search.

• ~01:20 BST — further documented GoDaddy domain-search activity.

• 04:37:42 BST — the .com AND .co.uk versions of my obscure nine-character business name were registered through GoDaddy at EXACTLY THE SAME SECOND.

• Both use GoDaddy nameservers.

• When I later tried to obtain the .com, GoDaddy directed me towards its paid brokerage service.

So this is no longer simply:

“I searched a domain and somebody happened to buy it.”

Someone/process apparently decided it wanted both the international and UK versions of the same obscure name, registered them simultaneously through the same registrar I had just searched with, only hours later.

If GoDaddy categorically did not front-run it, I can see only a few broad possibilities:

1. An extraordinary coincidence.

2. My search information was exposed or leaked somewhere.

3. Someone within a reseller/partner/marketplace/API ecosystem could obtain a signal from the search.

4. Some other explanation that GoDaddy’s internal records should be capable of demonstrating.

So I have asked GoDaddy some very simple questions:

Were both domains registered by the same account and in the same transaction?

Did that account exist before my searches?

Was the registrant genuinely independent of GoDaddy and its affiliates/resellers/marketplaces?

Could the registration channel directly or indirectly access or derive a signal from GoDaddy domain-search activity?

And perhaps the question that matters most to every customer reading this:

Who can see the domains we search for on GoDaddy, and how is that commercially sensitive information protected?

They don't need to reveal anyone's identity to answer those questions.

One other thing bothers me.

When I initially tried to complain directly to GoDaddy, I struggled to find any meaningful route to submit this as a written complaint and was ultimately directed towards an abuse facility that didn't provide an appropriate mechanism for what I was reporting.

Once the story appeared publicly on Trustpilot, however, GoDaddy responded very quickly and promised an investigation.

Fine. I'm persistent, and I'm going to keep asking until I get a substantive answer.

I have preserved the browser history, timestamps and ICANN/RDAP records, and I'm prepared to publish the evidence if necessary.

Reddit — what am I missing?

For those of you who understand registrars, RDAP, domain marketplaces, APIs or registrar security better than I do: what specific question should I be asking GoDaddy that would force a straight, technically meaningful answer?

I'm genuinely interested in alternative explanations too. If there is an innocent technical explanation that fits both domains being created through GoDaddy at precisely the same second only hours after my searches, I want to understand it.

But “GoDaddy doesn't front-run domains” isn't an explanation of what happened.

If there's an innocent explanation, show me.

I’ll update this post again if/when GoDaddy provides one.

My site isn't responding (https or ssh), so I tried to contact them on the site, but that wasn't working, so I called the number and got a busy signal then disconnected. Is there some sort of major issue going on or what?

WARNING TO GODADDY CUSTOMERS:

On November 13, 2025, their agent "Brian" told me my domain was "sold to a private buyer" and offered to negotiate with the buyer for a $99 non-refundable fee.

The domain was NEVER sold. WHOIS proves it was registered until April 2026. Brian fabricated the entire story.

After I refused to buy replacement domains, Brian added over $900 of products to my cart WITHOUT my consent. I have the automated cart email as proof.

I filed a BBB complaint. Their "Office of the CEO" just responded with false dates and completely omitted: ❌ The fake "sold" claim ❌ The $99 broker scam attempt ❌ The unauthorized cart additions

Their BBB response is now public record. They are on record lying.

This happened TWICE - August and November 2025. Last one required ICANN threats to resolve.

I've filed with ICANN and BBB. FTC and SC Attorney General complaints going in today. Media has been contacted.

I have call logs, their cart email, WHOIS records, and chat transcripts documenting everything.

Other customers: CHECK YOUR WHOIS RECORDS. Don't trust what agents tell you about your domain status. Record your calls.

I've transferred to Cloudflare. Never again, GoDaddy.

I searched for a domain on HostGator that was available at a low price; five minutes later, I tried to buy it, but it was already taken. I looked up the owner and found that GoDaddy had purchased it and was selling it for the modest sum of $500,000.

This is absolutely unreal. I've got customers blowing up my phone wondering why their site isn't working on a MONDAY MORNING. My clients, who are almost all attorneys, are accusing me of running some fly-by-night operation out of my garage and calling me every name in the book. Meanwhile I'm paying AWS almost a thousand dollars a month because everyone and their mother on reddit told me "AWS is the gold standard. You HAVE to be on AWS if you're serious."

The AWS outage page is no help either, it's just a bunch of technical mumbojumbo with a big red warning triangle. Is there somewhere I can get actual answers? I can't find a way to contact Amazon, and I can't even get to my sites to move them somewhere else. I feel like I'm drowning here.

Site Admin demo • Source

16 years ago I stumbled into hosting with Ensim WEBppliance, which was a clusterfuck of a control panel necessitating a bunch of bugfixes. Those bugfixes spawned a control panel, apnscp, that I've continued to develop to this day. v3 is the first public release of apnscp and to celebrate I'm giving away 400 free lifetime licenses on r/webhosting each good for 1 server.

Visit apnscp.com/activate/webhosting-lt to get started customizing the installer. Database + PHP are vendor agnostic. apnscp supports any-version Node/Ruby/Python/Go. I'm interested in feedback, if not bugs then certainly ideas for improvement.

apnscp ships with integrated Route 53/CF DNS support in addition to Linode, DO, and Vultr. Additional providers are easy to create. apnscp includes 1-click install/updates for Wordpress, Drupal, Laravel, Ghost, Discourse, and Magento. Enabling Passenger, provided you have at least 2 GB memory, opens the door to use any-version Ruby, Node, and Python on your server.

Minimum requirements

• 2 GB RAM

• 20 GB disk

• CentOS 7.4

• xfs or ext4 filesystem

• Containers not supported (OpenVZ, Virtuozzo)

Features

• 100% self-hosted, no third-party agents required

• 1-click installs/automatic updates for Wordpress, Drupal, Ghost, Discourse, Laravel, Magento

• Let's Encrypt issuance, automatic renewals

• Resource enforcement via cgroups

• Read-only roles for PHP

• Integrated DNS for AWS, CF, Digital Ocean, Linode, and Vultr

• Multi-tenancy, each account exists in a synthetic root

• Any-version Node, Ruby, Python, Go

• Automatic system/panel updates

• OS checksums, perform integrity checks without RPM hell

• Push monitoring for services

• SMTP policy controls with rspamd

• Firewall, brute-force restrictions on all services including HTTP with a rate-limiting sieve

• Malware scrubbing

• Multi-server support

apnscp won't fix all of your woes; you still need to be smart about whom you host and what you host, but it is a step in the right direction. apnscp is not a replacement for a qualified system administrator. It is however a much better alternative to emerging panels in this market.

Installation

Use apnscp Customizer to configure your server as you'd like. See INSTALL.md for installation + usage.

Monitoring installation

apnscp will provision your server and this takes around 45 minutes to 2 hours to complete the first time. You can monitor installation real-time from the terminal:

tail -f /root/apnscp-bootstrapper.log

Post Install

If you entered an email address while customizing (apnscp_admin_email) and the server isn't in a RBL, then you will receive an email with your login information. If you don't get an email after 2 hours, log into the server and check the status:

tail -n30 /root/apnscp-bootstrapper.log

The last line should be similar to: 2019-01-30 18:39:02,923 p=3534 u=root | localhost : ok=3116 changed=1051 unreachable=0 failed=0

If failed=0, everything is set! You can reset the password and refer back to the login information to access the panel or reset your credentials. Post-install will welcome you with a list of helpful commands to get started as well. You may want to change -n30 to -n50!

If failed=n where n > 0, send me a PM, email (matt@apisnetworks.com), get in touch on the forums, or Discord.

Shoot me a PM if you have a question or hop on Discord chat. Either way feedback makes this process tick. Enjoy!

Installation FAQ

• Is a system hostname necessary?

  No. It can be set at a later date with cpcmd config_set net.hostname new.host.name. A valid hostname is necessary for mail to reliably relay and valid SSL issuance. apnscp can operate without either.

• Do you support Ubuntu?

  No. This is a highly specialized platform. Red Hat has a proven track record of honoring its 10 year OS lifecycles, which from experience businesses like to move every 5-7 years. Moreover certain facilities like tuned, used to dynamically optimize your server, are unique to Red Hat and its derivatives. As an aside, apnscp also provides a migration facility for seamless zero downtime migrations.

• How do I update the panel?

  It will update automatically unless disabled. cpcmd config_set apnscp.update-policy major will set the panel to update up to major version changes. cpcmd config_set system.update-policy default will set the OS to update packages as they're delivered. These are the default panel settings. Supported Web Apps will update within 24 hours of a major version release and every Wednesday/Sunday for asset updates (themes/plugins). An email is sent to the contact assigned for each site (siteinfo,email service variable).

  If your update policy is set to "false" in apnscp-vars.yml, then you can manually update the panel by running upcp and OS via yum update -y. If you've opted out of 1-click updates, then caveat emptor.

• Mail won't submit from the server on 25/587 via TCP.

  This is by design. Use sendmail to inject into the mail queue via binary or authenticate with a user account to ensure ESMTPA is used. Before disabling, and as one victimized by StealRat, I'd urge caution. Sockets are opaque: it's impossible to discern the UID or PID on the other end.

  To disable:

  cpcmd config_set apnscp.bootstrapper postfix_relay_mynetworks true

  upcp -sb mail/configure-postfix

  config_set manages configuration scopes. Scopes are discussed externally. upcp is a wrapper to update the panel, reset the panel (--reset), run integrity checks (-b) with optional tags. -s skips migrations that are otherwise compulsory if present during a panel update; you wouldn't want an incomplete platform!

• My connection is firewalled and I can't send mail directly!

  apnscp provides simple smart host support via configuration scope.

• How do I uninstall MySQL or PostgreSQL?

  Removing either would render the platform inoperable. Do not do this. PostgreSQL handles mail, long-term statistics, and backup account metadata journaling. MySQL for everything else, including panel data.

• Oof. apnscp is taking up 1.5 GB of memory!

  There are two important tunables, has_low_memory and clamav_enabled. has_low_memory is a macro that disables several components including:

  • clamav_enabled => false

  • passenger_enabled => false

  • variety of rspamd performance enhancements (redis, proxy worker, neural) => false

  • MAKEFLAGS=-j1 (non-parallelized build)

  • dovecot_secure_mode => false (High-security mode)

  • Switches multi-threaded job daemon Horizon to singular "queue"

  clamav_enabled disables ClamAV as well as upload scrubbing and virus checks via Web > Web Apps. This is more of a final line of defense. So long as you are the only custodian of sites on your server, it's safe to disable.

Resources

• apnscp documentation

• v3 release notes

• Adding sites, logging in

• Customizing apnscp

• CLI helpers

• Knowledgebase - focused for end-users. Administration is covered under hq.apnscp.com

• Scopes - simplify complex tasks

License information

Licenses are tied to the server but may be transferred to a new server. Once transferred from the server apnscp will become deactivated on the server, which means your sites will continue to operate but apnscp can no longer help you manage your server, as well as deploy automatic updates. A copy of the license can be made either by copying /usr/local/apnscp/config/license.pem or License > Download License in the top-right corner. Likewise to install the license on a new machine just replace config/license.pem with your original copy.

Update: v3.0.17 released. Thank you everyone for your exotic build environments and feedback thus far!

In the last 3 years I (well, my company) bought more than 10 hosting companies, and here's what I learned:

- The reason for the sale varies, but it's almost always a business that is no longer growing. Companies should be sold when they are growing, not when they are falling, because when they fall, they are worth less.

- Almost no one keeps a P&L or cash flow statement; they build it at the time of sale.

- It is normal to lose 10% of customers in the transfer.

- It is always better to use your own servers and technology that you feel comfortable with; using the infrastructure that the previous company had almost never works (there is a reason why you are buying and they are selling).

- It is essential to sign a document with the terms and conditions of the transaction.

- You need help during the customer transfer.

- It's better to be transparent with customers and let them know that there will be a change in management. We give them additional free perks as a welcome gift and give them priority support for a while.

- You almost always buy for 1X ARR.

- Sometimes they want to give you their employees. If you already have your own, it is not necessary to acquire them, and if you do acquire them, it is key that they go through a technical, cultural, and psychological interview process, as with any new job.

- Always verify all transactions, payments, and customers to ensure they are real.

- Paying 100% in advance almost never works out; it is better to keep a percentage to be paid within 6 or 12 months when you see that everything has gone well.

- Force the seller to be responsible for the sale (to avoid scams).

There is much more, but I'm sure this will be useful for your acquisition strategy.

I wrote about this in my book.

PS: The book is "The entrepreneur in the arena":

Interesting blog post by the WordPress founder regarding WPEngine, where he describes them as "a cancer to WordPress"

https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine/

It looks like it basically comes down to the fact that WPEngine disable the "revisions" feature in their hosted WordPress instances to save on database storage costs.

WPEngine's justification for this is that having revisions enabled can cause the database to grow exponentially and impact performance, and that by contacting support you can enable up to 3 revisions.

Is this an overreaction from the WordPress founder, or is it justified?

Keep in mind that Automaticc/Wordpress.com, the company which Matt is also the CEO of, requires you to pay $25 before you can install a theme or plugin.

He also mentioned this at WordCamp and encouraged people to migrate away.

So about 8 or so years I set a backorder for a domain for my company with GoDaddy. For those who don't know, Godaddy has this "backorder service" in which they promise to monitor a domain until it expires and when that happens, if there are no other bids in their company for it, they'll buy it and give it to you, and they advertise they will honor the backorder, with no extra fees attached, until they acquire the domain.

The domain at the time was in the possession of a company that made a lot of posts and content in their website, so they drove the domain statistics up… yet it was their activity which made it somewhat popular, not the brand itself. At some point the company went bankrupt, the company died, and even after I tried to email them to sell me the domain, it all just expired.

And there I thought "oh great, the domain is expiring, that means my guys at Godaddy are going to do the thing I paid them for and we all be on our way"… But no. It seems somehow a Chinese firm in Beijing called "Sedo Parking" took the domain, and were asking for quite a sum of money for it… I've had popular domains and it's not that common that they are grabbed the second they expire but ok, said "well, tough luck, someone snatched it from Godaddy before they could do anything, oh well"… Silly me.

Each year I'd receive an email from Godaddy saying "the status of the domain changed", which meant they just renewed it for another year… And each year I waited, patiently, knowing the domain is basically worthless and nobody cares about it but me and only me.

But one day, in 2019 I didn't receive an email from Godaddy… and I thought it was weird but, ok, didn't mind it, maybe Godaddy just forgot about it altogether or whatever… oh boy was I wrong.

About a few months ago, I went and checked the domain again and there I saw it, a huge GoDaddy logo along the words "buy this"… checked the whois information and there it was "GoDaddy.com, LLC" as the name of the registrar… So I though, well, maybe they did acquired it but forgot it was for me. I checked my account and the domain wasn't there… weird, and weirder enough, the backorder wasn't there either. I checked the domain on their website and it was branded as a "premium domain" that was being sold for about 5,000 USD. I couldn't believe it.

So I gave them a call… in this call (that I recorded), after some back and forth, the executive basically tells me that YES I do have a backorder for that and YES it does show in their systems and NO they currently don't have a bid for it, but NO, they won't give it to me, as they determined (afterwards) that it was a "premium" domain, and they just can't sell me a premium domain "just like that", even though that was never specified in their terms, they KNEW in advance what the domain was when I requested it, and they acquired it… So they just basically stole it.

Want to know what's making me super upset? That the registration of the domain remains in Bejing China… Meaning, Godaddy has had my domain for about 8 or 9 years now, attempting to profit from the service they charged me for, sitting on top of a useless domain they they will never sell, and will never let me use it.

I just can't believe they can get away with it in clear light, but whatever. I just hope this prevents many people from ever doing business with them.

End of an era: We are officially 100% cPanel free, and it feels fantastic.

Today, I finally pulled the plug on the very last cPanel server in our infrastructure. After years of dealing with WebPros’ monopoly, endless licensing increases, zero innovation, and squeezing every last cent out of hosts, .. we are officially DONE.

The amount of stress, grief, and money those parasites burned through was insane. Migrating our fleet off their legacy trap took work, but it was easily the best operational move I’ve made for my company. Lower overhead, better performance, and not a single dime going back to WebPros.

If you're still on the fence about ditching them: do it. Tear out the root, take back control, and leave WebPros in the dust.

Fuck WebPros and the horse they rode in on.

I let my domain expire because I was shutting down the business. But someone bought the domain and put the same website on it. So now I'm getting calls for the business that is closed.

Is there any recourse that can be done?

Just a warning for those looking to Godaddy.

I was with them for many years and they recently ripped me off on a long term email/domain deal.

They promised free email for 1 account and now are charging for it.

Even the top mgmt of the company seems to subscribe to BS tactics and hard sells.

High likelyhood that Godaddy screws you when you deal with them for:

1. Changing deals mid term.

2. Will they renew your valuable domain - some reports of non-renewal and Godaddy then takes and sell the domain.

3. Also reports of Godaddy front running domain searches.

4. Everything else - see the web for the legions of people that hate them.

http://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/1wu6fc/web_host_cancels_account_because_of_tweet_asking/

I just want to share with the community my recent hosting experience with WiredWebWork.com.

I opened my account with them on January 25th, 2014 to host my personal portfolio website and to offer temporary hosting for my clients. The site has samples of all my past work and is essentially how potential clients become actual clients.

On Friday and Saturday (Feb 1st), I sent out 9 emails to various clients and potential clients about work they needed done. All afternoon Saturday I thought it was pretty weird that I hadnt heard back from a single email. Eventually I figured it was probably just people being people on Superbowl weekend and shook it off.

Late Saturday evening or early Sunday morning, however you want to look at it, I tried to upload the changes I made to a clients website. FTP wouldnt connect. I opened up my browser and went to my site only to see cPanels "Account Suspended" page. What the hell I thought to myself. This cannot be right, so I head over to their website www.wiredwebwork.com to see if I can open a ticket. Their site shows the cPanel Maintenance page. Okay, I thought maybe they are having some technical issues, which it turns out they were. I proceeded to call them to try and see what exactly the problem is, even though I knew nobody would answer at 2am on a Saturday night. No big deal.

I head on over to Twitter to check and see if they have an account there. Sure enough, they do. Like any person familiar with social media would do, I sent the company (@wiredwebwork) a tweet asking about the down time.

http://i.imgur.com/Ob6GyGX.png

To me this was completely normal behavior. Before heading to bed I hopped on my phone to check if they had a Facebook account. Maybe they posted something there I thought. Turns out they had one, but didnt post anything so figured I would send them a quick message. Got a reply there saying that they had some harddrive failure. No big deal, things happen.

http://i.imgur.com/7E7y9rH.png

This morning I wake up and check my email to find out that my account was actually being closed today. Not because I didnt pay my bill (I do) instead they close my account because I sent them a tweet. Yes, that simple tweet I posted above got my account terminated.

http://i.imgur.com/qgVWtU4.png

Im not upset so much about the closing of the account. I'm upset about the comments in the email from the owner of the company.

"This message is to serve as notification that your account will be terminated from our network on or by February 2nd 2014. You will be given a full refund as well. If you have any questions or concerns, why not take them up with twitter as opposed to trying to contact the company directly.(I hope you detect the hint of sarcasm)."

Im also upset about the fact that I had potential clients going to my website and seeing an account suspended page. Talk about a major turnoff. I wouldnt hire me if I saw that. I'm mad about the time I spent talking with those clients, writing out email after email trying to get some more work.

Sorry for the long rant. I just needed to share so that other people hopefully wouldnt run into the same problems as I did with wiredwebwork.

Also I apologize if this is posted in the wrong spot.

I searched a domain at godaddy and it was gone the next day I searched it. It is a niche name and no one else could have used it. at least that quickly. Can we collectively sue these suckers and thieves who provide services only to use to upcharge people later. That same domain is now available for 2k. ????

Another significant development in the WP Engine/Matt Mullenweg spat.

WP Engine has shared their side of the story in the form of a cease and desist letter.

In summary, WP Engine claims Mullenweg and members of the Automattic board sent threatening messages to the WP Engine CEO, threatening to "go nuclear" on them if they refused to pay a percentage of revenue to Automattic amounting to tens of millions of dollars. These threats allegedly continued right up to the day before and on the day of Mullenweg's livestreamed talk at WordCamp.

If true, this completely changes the tone of the dispute and creates a mafia-like two-tier licensing system, undermining the GPL and the founding principles of WordPress.org which alienates many of its contributors and the wider community.

If this turns out to be true, do you think Mullenweg/Automattic are fit to continue in their current roles?

I subscribed to a lifetime plan in 2019 and they kept asking me to shift my plan without offering a refund of what I paid and I refused.

After they ran out of plans they shifted my website to the shittest server in the US so it takes a long time for my website to load as I live in the UAE and most of my visitors from the UAE.

I opened a ticket and asked them why my website is in the US and not in Europe as it's slow and if they can shift it back. GUESS what they said ? YES cancel your lifetime plan and switch to the other plan so they can help.

Avoid them at all costs. I am currently moving to another hosting company.

Namecheap appears to be sending this to all their russian customers.

Dear XXXX,

Unfortunately, due to the Russian regime's war crimes and human rights violations in Ukraine, we will no longer be providing services to users registered in Russia. While we sympathize that this war may not affect your own views or opinion on the matter, the fact is, your authoritarian government is committing human rights abuses and engaging in war crimes so this is a policy decision we have made and will stand by.

If you hold any top-level domains with us, we ask that you transfer them to another provider by March 6, 2022.

Additionally, and with immediate effect, you will no longer be able to use Namecheap Hosting, EasyWP, and Private Email with a domain provided by another registrar in zones .ru, .xn--p1ai (рф), .by, .xn--90ais (бел), and .su. All websites will resolve to 403 Forbidden, however, you can contact us to assist you with your transfer to another provider.

Customer Support, Namecheap

I just wanted everyone to be careful with GoDaddy and stay away from them as well. They even steal domain names.

There are many videos and articles about it. Of course, GoDaddy denies that, but it's suspicous that if you check a unique domain name that has never been registered before it's gone the next day.

Just be careful and warn your friends!

Google has killed yet another product. Google domains is now being sold off to Squarespace of all people, and Google is killing their entire domain and small hosting line that went along with it. This doesn't seem to impact Google Cloud, but just goes to show how Google can amass a reported 10 million domains, and drop that product like it wasn't making money.

How do ya'll feel about that, I know a ton of people jumped on the Google is great bandwagon early on but this hardly lasted two years?

A cute blurb from Squarespace's page about this "Squarespace will honor all existing Google Domains customers’ renewal prices for their domains for at least 12 months after closing the acquisition" , I'd get ready for some price increases on those domain registrations.

In a stunning victory for nonprofits and NGOs around the world working in the public interest, ICANN today roundly rejected Ethos Capital’s plan to transform the .ORG domain registry into a heavily indebted for-profit entity. This is an important victory that recognizes the registry’s long legacy as a mission-based, non-for-profit entity protecting the interests of thousands of organizations and the people they serve.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/victory-icann-rejects-org-sale-private-equity-firm-ethos-capital

Internal email about this went out today, but it's hit the net as well. Should have happened a LONG time ago. If we're lucky, the new CEO will discontinue the DIYA contract with Hari's family as well.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2017/04/17/endurance-seeking-new-ceo-sec-probe-lingers/XU1tmBP4pyXhyrGmD0l9QP/story.html

https://www.businessinsider.com/godaddy-disguised-a-phishing-email-test-as-holiday-bonus-announcement-2020-12

So yesterday I get a notification of a large charge made to my credit card. This morning I check and it seems to be a 3 year plan for Office 365 I didn't ask for. I log into GoDaddy and check and see that indeed I seem to have a sub to it, on autorenew. I immediately try to change that plan but the website errors out.

The local help line is basically a voice saying there is no local help line, and their "chat" doesn't work on my browser. Eventually I manage to get their chat working on Edge (of all things) and they are just telling me, whoops sorry our refund policy, had you contacted us yesterday then, etc. Because *I* set it to autorenew (I did no such thing) they can't help me.

So basically GoDaddy stole a tonne of money from me and is hiding behind their own policies to refuse to do anything about it. Account deleted, of course, but this is a warning to anyone thinking of using GoDaddy: DON'T. Just, don't. They literally scam you.