Go (away) Daddy

Some time ago, I needed to terminate my relationship with a web host. That happens sometimes; things just go sour for one reason or another. Migrating to another host can be rather a sticky wicket, however; various arrangements and terms of service, easy to overlook when the going is good, can make it very difficult to pull away when the time comes. Also, plain old ignorance on the user’s part doesn’t exactly help. Because I didn’t know better back in the day, I allowed my host to handle my domain registration; the host, in turn, passed my domain names into the hands of a registrar of which I knew little, and whose terms for leaving put one in mind of a Rube Goldberg contraption, only considerably less charming.

The short story of all that is that I got away clean (thanks) and now enjoy a much better hosting relationship with Steadfast Networks (yay). As for a new domain registrar, I gathered some info from learned folk and chose registration and hosting behemoth GoDaddy. The prices seemed reasonable – no small consideration – and the control panels promised direct access to and control of my domain information. This was something unheard of at my previous registrar; I decided that my situation was now well and truly settled.

It didn’t take long, however, before I realized that there were other aspects of my new registrar that were somewhat unsettling. I can only blame myself for thinking so narrowly about my registration needs that I had dismissed those attributes which made GoDaddy rather infamous. That is:

And:

And:

Ah, yes. That GoDaddy.

I appreciate prurience in advertising as much as anyone, and perhaps more than some. I don’t begrudge race car person Danica Patrick her role as a GoDaddy Girl™ any more than I disapprove of her roles as Peak antifreeze pitchwoman or Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. The overall tawdriness of the GoDaddy advertising model, on the other hand, was all just a bit too much. Surely, doing business with such a firm amounted to tacit approval of its marketing.

And yet…changing registrars is such a pain. I’d amassed several domains in my time with GoDaddy, for various purposes; the idea of pulling up stakes and moving again gave me a headache. I tried adopting an above-the-fray, laissez-faire attitude about it all – quite literally, ‘let them get on with it’ – but was certainly not fooling myself. Each time I ran across an ad for GoDaddy, the little voice inside spoke with scorn: Really, Phil Barron?

And then I saw an episode of Ace of Cakes on Food Network. It was the episode in which Bob Parsons, the flamboyant, needs-no-introductions GoDaddy CEO, approached Charm City Cakes for something special for his impending wedding to fiancee Renee. You know, the usual: a ten-tier bride’s cake (!) and a motorcycle. A life-sized Ducati motorcycle. Made of cake, of course.

The motorcycle cake: awesome. (Props to the Charm City Cakes crew, huge props to Ben in particular.) The wedded couple: smiling and happy. (And good luck to them.) The entire thing: a monument to wretched, wretched excess. And something about that excess just pushed me over the edge.

So this week I began moving all of my domains away from GoDaddy. The process is ongoing even as I type this; by next week they should all be safely ensconced at Dynadot, a registrar that somehow gets by without titillating ads or general over-the-top-itude.

Interestingly, this makes me one fewer customer for an Arizona-based business. Apparently, I’m not alone in this.