Great, Now GoDaddy Is Screwing Me!
Readers of the InsideMicrosoft blog will notice that it is no longer responding, delivering up a database error. The reason: GoDaddy is trying to extort more money out of me. Well I say, no thanks!
Last night, I called GoDaddy support about the database going down, figuring it was a simple and fixable error. They told me it was, and that it would be fixed within half an hour. This morning I called three times (getting disconnected twice, before being told, eleven hours after I was told it would be fixed, that I had been notified of an over-usage on my account and told to move up to dedicated hosting. This was a lie.
According to GoDaddy, the InsideMicrosoft blog, my less popular blog by a factor of 3 to 5, is so overusing the MySQL database on the server that it is causing other people problems.
Our Advanced Hosting Support team has examined the hosting blognewschannel.com and found that the database god_wrdp2 on mysql143.secureserver.net was causing heavy CPU over-utilization due to the volume of queries, which was affecting other customer’s accounts. Based on this database usage we recommend migrating the site to a dedicated hosting solution to keep pace with the increasing traffic. For now, we have been force to suspend the database account, though we can create a MySQL dump file for import to another database server if needed.
GoDaddy offers to install WordPress on accounts like mine. As a result, it knows of the database overhead required by a WordPress installation. If GoDaddy is claiming that an account with 1 terabyte of bandwidth is only allowed to use WordPress for a few thousand page views, and anything above that is overusage, then it is selling bandwidth it never intends for me to use.
To explain: I have one terabyte of bandwidth, but GoDaddy is shutting me down using a service it offers to its users, after using it for less than four percent of the bandwidth. If that is the case, then GoDaddy had no intention of hosting a WordPress blog up to the full (or even a reasonable percentage) of the bandwidth sold. I think GoDaddy is just trying to extort me to move up to a more expensive server, costing ten times what I pay now.
Why do I think I am being extorted: GoDaddy is claiming that my less popular blog is using up more than my more popular blog, so much more that it is affecting other customers, and far above typical usage limits, even though it is about 3% of the usage limits I paid for! GoDaddy is basically saying it will not allow me to use the bandwidth I’ve paid for on services they claim work on their servers, even to a reasonably small degree.
I will not allow this to happen. I have a new wife, and no money. I make very little money from this blog and it is my primary source of income. I am just barely scraping by and I don’t have the money to pay them for a dedicated server. How dare they! I will find another host, if I have to, because I will not let GoDaddy bankrupt me.
If you have any suggestion to help me, please offer them, because I’m in a terribly bad situation here.
[…] Original post by Nathan Weinberg and plugin by Elliott Back […]
Pingback by Merchant Accounts » Great, Now GoDaddy Is Screwing Me! | March 8, 2007
Ironically, the way you’re making money with your blog *today* is by selling ads to other hosting providers. I’m seeing ads for tajmahalhosting.com and dedicatedserver.com at the moment.
Comment by drew | March 8, 2007
crystaltech.com
Comment by the head lemur | March 8, 2007
That’s pretty funny, Drew. Any way I can pay the bills, I guess.
I wish people knew how desperate my financial situation it. Man, getting married is not good for the bank account.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | March 8, 2007
I’m sorry I don’t have any suggestions, but I’m confident that you’ll get through it. There’s a lot of people that knows who you are and will probably help. I’d do it if I had money any money
Comment by Pharod | March 8, 2007
[…] Original post by » InsideGoogle » part of the Blog News Channel and software by Elliott Thank you for reading this post. You can now Leave A Comment (0) or Leave A Trackback. […]
Pingback by O2 Bazaar | Great, Now GoDaddy Is Screwing Me! | March 8, 2007
I’m assuming you know how much bandwidth you’ve used based off of some control panel feature on your account. Can you ask for a copy of what they say your using for Bandwidth so that you can try to see where they came up with this magic number?
Comment by Colin C. | March 8, 2007
I’ve had nothing but success with dreamhost.com, both at work for a web design company and my personal sites. They would be my recommendation for affordable hosting. They have massive bandwidth, diskspace, wordpress installs, no cpu usage limits, and good transparent support.
Plus, they have a referral program where you can get like $100 for signing other people up. Cool thing is I can make promo codes to share some of that with a person who uses the promo code. I can give up to like $97 worth of stuff away. Shoot me an email and I can make you a promo code if you want that could give you:
up to 100% more disk space OR
up to 100% more bandwidth OR
up to 5 free domain registrations OR
up to 3 unique IPs OR
up to $97 off of the purchase OR
a combo.
I love your blogs and would be happy to help by passing all my referral bonus on to you as savings. Just let me know. Dreamhost truly is a great host (I had to deal with the hell of godaddy as well, my advice is get far away from them.)
Comment by Cody | March 8, 2007
I am building a new server that I am planning to co-locate. I’ll host your blog for free. Please contact me by email which I assume you have access too…
Comment by Bill Whited | March 8, 2007
Nathan, your email address is bouncing back emails. Send me an email when you see this comment, I’d like to help.
Comment by Tim | March 8, 2007
Colin, I’ve used 86 gigabytes so far this month, out of the 1 terabyte I paid for. So I’m not even using up a decent percentage of the bandwidth!
They are not complaining about the bandwidth, but the server load. Considering that I am only using WordPress, they are basically saying their servers cannot handle even moderately popular WordPress blogs, which is, to be frank, a crock of shit.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | March 8, 2007
Get a VPS. I would recommend Knownhost. They’re a great company and I can only say positive things.
However, since your blog is running Wordpress, you could install WP-Cache to stop it from constantly making SQL queries. I’d recommend it, and GoDaddy might thank you. But even if things settle down with them, I’d look for alternative hosts. GoDaddy might be a reliable domain registrar (though that’s questionable as well), but they’re certainly lacking in hosting compared to other much more competent companies.
Comment by Tamar Weinberg | March 8, 2007
That’s the last time I follow you to a new host. Though I’ve had no problems lately with GoDaddy.
Comment by Jason Schramm | March 9, 2007
[…] If you can read this, then you, you can see that InsideMicrosoft is back online. It took a little over a day, and a lot of emails and phone calls, but GoDaddy got it done. I got off the phone with Noah Plumb, who does PR in the office of the President of GoDaddy, and he was very accomodating. He mentioned my blog post, my many emails to support, and other complaints, and obviously was pretty up on the situation. […]
Pingback by » InsideMicrosoft Returns From Exile » InsideMicrosoft - part of the Blog News Channel | March 9, 2007
“heavy CPU over-utilization” /= bandwidth….
Comment by Matt | May 17, 2007
I’m having exactly the same issue with GoDaddy. What throws me off is that they took my WordPress website down without any warning and to make matters worse, after I contacted them, they emailed me saying that they want me to resolve the issue just by using FTP. I could not access WordPress admin section to see if there was any spam attack nor I couldn’t even get into MySQL interface.
So I called GoDaddy tech support asking them to resolve the issue, but all they can do is “escalate” the issue. My website has been down for the whole day without any solution.
This is just not acceptable them taking down my website without any warning and leaving me hanging for a long time. Once it’s up and running, I’m going to backup my blog and moving to a different hosting service. I’m done with GoDaddy.
Comment by vbNullString | February 1, 2008
[…] Inside Google - “Great, Now GoDaddy is Screwing Me!“ […]
Pingback by Never Fear, Hosting Hero is Here! | Blogging Startup | February 13, 2008
I’ve success with hosting3i.com, both at work for a web design company and my personal blogs. They would be my recommendation for affordable hosting for your Wordpress. They have massive bandwidth, diskspace, wordpress installs, no cpu usage limits, and good 24×7 phone support.
Comment by Jen | March 28, 2008