After six years of wrestling with the fractal upcharge that is GoDaddy, I finally broke yesterday when they said “We charged your card $2,000 for the next five years of hosting.” Um – no.

For the past five years years, I’ve dealt with GoDaddy – oh, you want SSL? That’ll be $149. Oh, you want email? That’ll be $50. Oh, you want a CDN? That’ll be $10. Oh, you want a private domain registration? That’ll be $5. Oh, you want your images to actually get uploaded? That’ll be $30. And my personal favorite – Oh, you don’t want that other domain? That’ll be $80. If I want to keep the domain, it’ll cost $20. If I let it expire, they’ll fine me $80.

Turns out, when I bought five years of hosting in 2020 for $300, one and a half of those five years had already been used up at the low-cost of $100/year. So my $300 5-year contract was neither $300 nor five years long. Silly me.

It took me two days of frustration and GoDaddy support dropping calls in the middle of my conversations – but I finally got a guy who knew what he was doing and didn’t seem to be playing video games while pretending to provide support. So now I’m finally free of GoDaddy. All I can say is – whatever you do – stay away from GoDaddy.