Domain name registrar gets one step closer to IPO.
GoDaddy filed an amended S-1 statement with the SEC today that revealed fourth quarter and full year 2014 financials, as well as the company’s planned NYSE stock ticker GDDY.
Fourth quarter revenue at the company grew to $371.7 million, up from $356.9 million in the third quarter and $305.9 million in the same quarter of 2013. The company reported a net loss of ($26.8) million for the quarter, about in line with the third quarter.
For the year, total revenue increased $256.4 million, or 22.7%, to $1.4 billion. The company reported a loss of ($143.3) million for the year. (The company reports an adjusted EBITDA number that is positive.)
Total customers increased 1.1 million on the year to hit 12.7 million.
While the domain name business continues to grow, it makes up a smaller percentage of the company’s business each quarter as the hosting and business application segments grow at a faster clip.
I ran the amended S-1 through Intelligize’s comparison tool. Most of the changes were related to security and compensation.
“While the domain name business continues to grow, it makes up a smaller percentage of the company’s business each quarter as the hosting and business application segments grow at a faster clip.”
What truly amazes me about GoDaddy is that they are growing in hosting and business application segments, in spite of the fact that they have the absolute worst hosting in the universe.
I have a few old hosting accounts for a couple of clients. A client called me once to tell me their system was down. It’s a hosted application on a virtual server. For my client, it’s their central database, so it’s important it runs 9-5, every day.
Anyhow, I was driving at the time, so I called GoDaddy to ask them to check the server and see what was wrong. That’s when I learned exactly how bad their support was. They actually told me they don’t offer phone support for hosting accounts.
I told them I was driving and there was no way for me to go to their portal to submit a ticket. Bottom line, my client remained down all day until I was able to get to a computer later that night.
So my client lost a day of productivity for a staff of 4, and GoDaddy lost any chance of me recommending them to future clients.
Contrast that with RackSpace. If you call them and tell them you have a problem, they fix it. What a concept.
So, let’s look at the GoDaddy scorecard.:
– They are one of the least ethical companies in the world.
– They treat high volume domain investors like dirt.
– They dupe uneducated domain buyers into buying worthless services like SEO tools, search engine visibility and extra TLDs.
– Anyone who has serious hosting requirements will never use them because they refuse to talk to them on the phone.
– They would rather be the company known for publicity stunts and controversy than one known for delivering high quality service.
I don’t want to endorse any company. There are plenty of registrars to choose from, and experiences will differ.
But as a domain portfolio owner myself, I have never been treated like dirt at GoDaddy. Even though my stuff is always scattered between a dozen or more registrars, I have primarily used GoDaddy for years because I’ve had better experiences with support at GoDaddy than with any other registrar.
I guess I’m just venting.
They did a great job when they considered people like me VIPs and gave us a dedicated rep who offered White Glove services, especially just knowing they would contact me whenever they saw unusual activity.
They raised the bar and took me out of the White Glove / VIP program because they no longer think 750 domains is worthy of the program.
Being told you are no longer special sucks, but not as much as what happened as a direct result of losing that critical feature, which led to them taking away 5 domains, without any advanced notice.
So, I’ll add the disclaimer that they treated me and my clients poorly, but likely because they don’t consider people with 750 domains to be domain investors.
The bulk of my comments were mainly about what you wrote about how domains are only a small part of their business and that hosting and business applications were their real focus. This struck me as funny because my experience with their hosting was pretty bad. I had to stop telling clients to use them when I called them because of a stuck virtual server and was told they don’t do server hosting support on the phone. I was driving, and they wouldn’t even submit a support ticket on the phone.
You are treated with respect because of your volume, but they need to remember there are mid-level guys like me out there who may not have as many domains, but we not only have direct accounts with them, but we recommend hosting companies to our clients.
If anything, a lot of independent developers like me take the workload off their support team by fielding most of the calls and we only rely on GoDaddy support when it’s out of our control.
I think if they saw how many mid-level (300-1000) domain owners actually influence their clients hosting decisions they would possibly allow more of us into their White Glove programs.
@couponpages
While I appreciate your opinions, I have to take exception to this: “They treat high volume domain investors like dirt.”
It’s been my personal mission over the past several years within GoDaddy to make sure that domain investors are well taken care of and are provided with the tools needed to make their businesses grow. This devotion to the segment has led us to bring Afternic into the family which provides sales distribution to 9 of the top 10 registrars (18 of top 20) in the world, a complete restructuring of our premier services team that is 100% dedicated to providing white-glove service to large portfolio holders, and even an update to our discount domain club that gets investors an everyday low price of $8.29 on .com (new or renew, no limits) and 40% off the new gTLDs.
Every experience is different and I implore you to reach out to me directly (paul@godaddy) if you feel you’ve been personally offended by an interaction with us, but I truly believe that a blanket statement that we treat investors like dirt is completely false.
-Paul
Hi Paul.
Rather than vent here, I sent you an extensive email. Sorry it’s pretty long, but I wanted you to know that my frustration isn’t because of a single incident.
I think GoDaddy needs to listen more to the community. A lot of domain investors have vented their issues online and some of my opinions are based on those reports.
I’m glad you took the time to read this, so I guess you’ve taken a step in the right direction.
Joe
Joe;
Our mission at GoDaddy is to deliver a great experience every single customer we serve. I can’t speak to the history, but I want to acknowledge your comments and am interested in learning from them.
I’ve been the COO/CFO of the company for the past two years and am personally proud of the experience we provide now from both our Products and our Customer Care experience — while recognizing that we always have room to improve.
You can reach me at [email protected] with any comments or suggestions. I’ll coordinate with Paul too.
I’d humbly ask that you give us a second look — I think you’d like what you find.
The invitation to reach out is open to the entire forum.
Scott
Hi Scott,
Rather than airing any additional problems here in public, I included you in a conversation with Paul via email that outlines some of the problems, including the nature of the bug that led to losing domains without any notification.
After talking about it quite a bit last year, I believe the bug itself has been fixed, but to me the bigger issues is the policies that allow for any domain to be taken from an account without notification. VIP / White Glove program or not, I think EVERY domain owner should always get notification BEFORE a domain is taken away. The only notifications I ever received on the domains in question were a confirmation that I owned them, followed by the cancellation a few weeks later, with no contacts or alerts in between.
With all this talk over the domains being taken, it still bothers me that GoDaddy doesn’t even ALLOW customers to call them to create a support ticket when a Virtual Host server is down. If hosting is going to be an important part of GoDaddy’s future, it needs to at least offer some phone support for hosting. In my case, I was in my car and there was no way to use chat.
Joe:
I manage the hosting team at GoDaddy. To be clear, you can now call customer support 24×7 to get directly to our Advanced Server team for any issue with a VPS or other server / hosting account.
Also, our hosting products are something we’ve invested hugely in over the last two years and we’re very proud of their current performance and capabilities. Please reach out if you’d like to try out the new products.
Jeff at godaddy dot com
Jeff
Hi Jeff,
I’m glad GoDaddy has made changes, especially allowing customers with virtual server and dedicated hosting to call to report a problem.
There are times when you simply can’t get to a computer to report a problem, so being allowed to call is a HUGE improvement.
I am tied up with personal business right now, but I will reach out some time next week.