Auto-renewal practices and surprise charges
BBB filings consistently report GoDaddy auto-renewing domains and hosting at significant markups, with cancellation flows that require navigating multiple confirmation screens.
Web Hosting & Domains · Risk Score 71 · High Risk
Is GoDaddy a Scam or Legit? Here's What the Record Shows.
Dominant domain registrar with a notorious upsell pattern
Short answer: Not technically — but it's complicated.
Our read
GoDaddy isn't a "scam" in the criminal sense — it's a real company with real software — but the complaint record raises serious questions about its sales practices, billing, and the gap between what's advertised and what's delivered.
The strongest "this feels like a scam" signals tend to come from one of two places: marketing claims that don't match reality, or billing practices that make leaving harder than joining. Below are the 2 flags in those two categories we've documented for GoDaddy.
Marketing & billing complaints
Checkout upsell flow described as deceptive
Reviewers describe the checkout flow as adding multiple pre-selected add-ons (privacy, security, email) that customers don't realize they're buying.
Our AI scanner searches Reddit, Trustpilot, BBB, and news sources for fresh complaints from the past year, paraphrases what it finds, and adds anything new to this page. Takes up to 90 seconds.
Everything else worth knowing
For the full record — lawsuits, churn signals, support failures, and BBB filings — see the complete complaints page.