I’ve been using godaddy.com for registering domain names for like 10 years, and during that time their account management pages have become slower and slower, and overfilled with commercials and special offers to the point where the task of logging in to change DNS stuff became unbearable. I decided to move, expecting to pay more (which I was more than willing to do for a less cluttered management interface), but I found out it was actually cheaper at the new place.
Today I transferred most of my domains (16) from godaddy to one of the best alternatives I could find: Dynadot.com
Price
Here are the prices for renewals for the domain types I have, and dynadot does very favorable. Their prices are also easy to find, and they don’t have tons of weird sales or try to sell you all kinds of CRAP when dealing with them..
| Godaddy | Dynadot | |
| .com | 10.87$ | 9.25$ |
| .org | 15.17$ | 9.25$ |
| .net | 13.17$ | 9.25$ |
| .info | 8.17$* | 9.25$ |
| .me | 19.99$ | 19.99$ |
* there is a sale on .info domains at godaddy, regular price is 10.87$
These prices where collected from their websites May 20th 2010.
NOTE: I think if you have MANY domains, godaddy might be a little bit cheaper than Dynadot.
So all in all I’m saving around 15-20$ a year by moving to Dynadot, but I would gladly pay that amount extra just to get away from the horrible godaddy management pages which sucks.
Domain management interface
Here are some side by side comparisons of Godaddy.com (left) and Dynadot.com (right):
Main account page
Domain page
The Dynadot pages are a LOT less cluttered, does not use lots of popups/dialog boxes and is much more faster and responsive than godaddy’s interface.
So if you have a bunch of domains at godaddy and have gotten tired of the constant cluttering, special offers and crap they push on you, Just go somewhere else 
The Transfer process
Transferring from godaddy.com to dynadot.com also went extremely smooth and fast with no downtime:
- Unlock the domain(s) at the godaddy domain manager, and click the button to send transfer code by email
- You now get an email for every domain you have, with a transfer code
- Enter the domain name(s) and transfer code(s) at dynadot, then pay and proceed to checkout.
- You now get a confirmation email from dynadot for each domain, with a link to a page where you just click “confirm transfer”
- After about 15-30 minutes you get an email from godaddy asking you to accept or cancel the transfer.
- When that email has arrived, log in and go to the domain manager, scroll over the “domains” menu and select “pending transfers”, then just mark of the domains you’ve selected for transfer and click “accept”
- After that the domain should disappear from your godaddy domain manager and show up at dynadot instead within the hour.
Renewing a domain, Godaddy VS Dynadot
This is what one has to go trough in order to renew a domain name, it pretty much explains why I stopped being a godaddy customer
Dynadot
Godaddy
Tags: account, account management, com, commercials, DNS, domain, domain name, domain renewal, downtime, dynadot, godaddy, info, info domains, management interface, price, registering domain names, special offers, transfer, Transferring, website