Every year I would come back to renew and it was getting more and more difficult. Eventually, it became ridiculous. The checkout process was finding the "No I don't want this shit" link (yes, link), listing through five pages of "GoDaddy girl" and special offers.
Speaking of the GoDaddy girl. That's how I knew they completely lost touch with their business. I remember their newsletters (were they newsletters?) about "seeing the GoDaddy girl in the shower" or something. I mean, wtf?
I still have a couple of domains there, for complicated reasons, but all others, I've transfered out of there long ago, new business goes to Namecheap.
Personally, I wouldn't be sad if GoDaddy went bankrupt tomorrow. I recently had to deal with their latest scam: sending notifications that suggest your domain name is up for auction. Having seen people lose domains before due to missing a renewal and/or outright thievery, my blood pressure went through the roof. It's a marketing lie, of course, to get you to sign up for get more crap.
Learning about it has definitely changed some of my behaviors. E.g., in restaurants I use to try to maximize by picking the very best item. Which made me kinda crazy, as there was never sufficient information to know. Now I take the satisficer approach and pick the first thing that looks good. Which is maximizing a different variable, so my nerdy side still approves.
Also, there is definitely a momentum effect -- it was the first registrar many people heard about and just kept using them, because that was the path of least resistance.
- Commercials
- And it's shady ability to add $60 worth of crap to your cart when you want to buy a $9 domain.
I found Namecheap and never found anything simpler and less sketch. Even looking for domains on Namecheap 3-4 years ago was much simpler.
Was it just the registrar you had heard of first?