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Leaving GoDaddy Managed WordPress
GoDaddy Managed WordPress is the host most small businesses end up on by default — usually because GoDaddy already had their domain. The intro price is friendly. The renewal price isn't.
10-year cost projection
What GoDaddy Managed WordPress actually is
Mass-market managed WordPress with aggressive intro pricing.
Pricing: Intro pricing around $7–10/mo. Renewal pricing typically $15–25/mo. Most users discover the renewal price 11 months in.
The classic GoDaddy story: $9/month for the first year, $24/month thereafter. Plus the upsells: SiteLock, daily backups, premium SSL (the SSL is free everywhere else). The bill creeps up while the site does nothing.
Migration off GoDaddy is among the most-rewarded moves we do. The sticker shock of the renewal is what drives most people to look for an alternative; the hosting bill on the other side is zero.
What they do well
- Cheap intro pricing
- Bundled domain registration
- Familiar interface for non-technical users
Why people leave
- Renewal price
- Upsell fatigue
- Slow performance
- The realization that a brochure site shouldn't cost $300/year
What you keep when leaving
- Every URL
- All content
- Domain (transfer DNS to Cloudflare; you keep ownership)
What you lose leaving
- wp-admin (you can't remember the password anyway)
- GoDaddy's bundled add-ons (you didn't need them)
Our take
GoDaddy is excellent at customer acquisition and indifferent to long-term retention. Once you notice the renewal price, the math for one-time migration becomes obvious.
Questions
What about my domain — is it stuck at GoDaddy?
No. You can transfer the domain registration to any registrar (we recommend Cloudflare Registrar — at-cost). Or keep it at GoDaddy and just change the nameservers to Cloudflare. Either way, you control the domain.
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