Godaddy The WORST web hosting site I've ever used Internet

Here are some reasons why I recommend you choose a web hosting service other than Godaddy, in the order that I discovered them through my own experience.

1) It's NOT easy to use. Even though I was an experienced web master who'd successfully managed my own site with three previous web hosting services just following the basic directions given me by my hosts, I had to recruit a more tech-savvy friend who spent a considerable amount of time online with Godaddy tech support in order to get my site uploaded and on line.

2) I hadn't realized until I signed on that Godaddy had such a sleazy reputation, in large part because of its tasteless and exploitative ad campaigns. It really wasn't something I wanted my site to be associated with but after all the trouble I and my helpful friend had gone to to get my site running there I thought I'd just leave it and that no one would know unless they looked it up in Whois.

3) Godaddy reels you in with a cheap up-front price but then tempts you with add-on offers. I signed up for their SEO service, which not only didn't help my search engine rankings but was far less user-friendly and had far less useful features than the free webmaster tools offered by the major search engines themselves.

4) During all my times with previous web hosts, my site always came up on the front page of all search engines when you did a search on the main relevant key words for it. During my time at Godaddy this advantage vanished. I don't know what it was--maybe the search engines didn't like Godaddy, or the fact that I was using their SEO tools, or that being with Godaddy exposed me to malware and hackers in a way I hadn't been vulnerable before. More on that in a moment.

5) I noticed that when I went to check on my site, especially in the afternoon, it seemed to be down an alarming amount of the time. When I tested it on DNS propagation checkers it was always down somehwere in the world. Again, this has NEVER happened to me with any other web host.

6) I first noticed through Google Analytics that my site was being regularly planted with all sorts of redirects. At first I didn't know what all those weird page URLs were that were showing up in my statistics (the fact that Google Analytics didn't explain and just suggested I filter them out didn't help.) Finally I got a messaage from Google that my site was banned because of prohibited content. That's right, someone had redirected my site to porn. I had to delete all my files on Godaddy and upload fresh ones, then resubmit my site, which to this day hasn't recovered even the dismal rankings it had before. I got in the habit of checking Analytics every morning to see if new malware had been planted, and sure enough, every couple of days I found a new redirect and had to delete and replace all my files on the Godaddy server, increasing my site's down time even more.

7) Recently Godaddy announced it had "partnered" with Sitelock to offer a new layer of security, again for an additional fee (about the same as I was paying for web hosting itself.) I bit. And wouldn't you know it, the amount of malware on my site INCREASED while Sitelock was supposedly scanning my site and automatically deleting all malware while protecting it from new hacks, all the time happily telling me on my Sitelock dashboard that all was well and no problems had been encountered.

When I tell you that I stayed with Godaddy for SEVEN YEARS, you will probably gasp and tell me I'm crazy. I know. I don't know what caused my inertia except that I was busy with other things and I guess I was just waiting until I heard of a better web hosting service before I jumped ship. I'm not sure whether or not my current host is an improvement, other than the fact that I was able to successfully transfer my site within about ten minutes after reading a few basic instructions, just like old times. Also that last time I looked it was propagating all over the world with no glitches or down time.

Maybe Godaddy's too big to live up to its responsibility to keep its clients' websites safe and fully functional, or it's become too big a target to fight off all the hackers. My advice is to do your research and pick a web hosting service with a good reputation for customer service, user-friendly interfaces and a serious attitude towards keeping up with the challenges of online safety.