We recommend against hosting websites at GoDaddy. We also recommend against hosting your website where your domain name is registered and its DNS is managed.
We just experienced a good example of why we make those recommendations. Here’s what happened.
A new home care client came to us and asked that we re-design their website and take over the management and hosting of that website.
- Before they came to us, they had their domain name registered at GoDaddy and their website hosted with GoDaddy.
- We copied the client’s website files over to the hosting service that we use (WPEngine) and then we updated the domain’s A record on GoDaddy’s DNS service to point to the IP address of the new location of the website.
- The client then cancelled the GoDaddy hosting service.
- GoDaddy then marked the domain as being “parked” by adding a new “A” record in the DNS indicated that the domain was parked.
- The result of GoDaddy’s action was that there were now two A records for the IP address for the website, so the IP address for the domain was “split” around the world between the correct address on WPEngine and two GoDaddy domain parking IP Addresses where they sell advertising.
Was this an accident on GoDaddy’s part? Was it intentional? We’d like to think it was not. However, this is good example of why we make the two recommendations we mentioned at the top of this article:
- Don’t use the same vendor for your website hosting and your domain registration.
- Don’t use GoDaddy for website hosting.
