Should I transfer domain AND hosting away from GoDaddy?

I and someone else I know had a terrible experience with 1&1. Basically, we wanted to change host and 1&1 made it impossible to change the nameservers.

Whether or not you agree with Bob Parsons' ethics and belief systems, GoDaddy is the only hosting provider I know of that gets complaints about their draconian policies. I advise people to stay away because their actions often seem quite random. Also, their own site is designed to be very confusing in order to get people to call their 800 support line -- and their support people are paid in part based on the number of upsells they make from these calls. Like, someone I heard about recently called in with what was basically a DNS forwarding question and ended up getting talked into upgrading to VPS hosting as a way to solve her DNS problem; the two are unrelated.

I use NameCheap for my domains, and HostGator for my hosting.

Neither of them has a history of shutting down users except in abusive situations that are warranted. And their sites are far less confusing than anything GD offers.

I've also heard many accounts of people having great difficulty transferring domain names away from 1&1.

I have few domains at godaddy and I host at Hostgator. Let the domains be at godaddy and changed the server name to Hostgator. Hostgator is very good and cheap web hosting. It cost only $9.95/month for baby plan and you can host unlimited domains.

Separate Registration from Hosting.

I use Godaddy & hostgator for hosting.

A mentor I used got scammed a short while ago and was able to call GoDaddy and in 24 hours they had him fixed up. I forget the details, but he was EXTREMELY happy with GoDaddy's service.

visit: NoDaddy.Com - Exposing the Many Reasons Not to Trust GoDaddy with Your Domain Names

This site should answer your question.


Chris

I'm not going to get involved with the registrar debate, but I can tell you on the hosting side of the house that Media Temple (MediaTemple.net) is the best host I have ever used.

About a year ago I had a Site5 account that went down in the middle of the night before a product launch, and was forced to desperately switch to Media Temple in the final hour! I'm actually really glad I ended up doing this, as I have never worried about hosting since then.

While just about every host will claim 99.9999999% uptime, the reality is actually a bit different. Since switching everything over to MediaTemple (mt) I haven't seen my sites down at all. Ever! The main thing that sets them apart is that they use a Grid Server system to spread out bandwidth over multiple servers. If you get a huge traffic spike (Warrior Forum wet dream), your site won't crash, the bandwidth will just get picked up flawlessly. Another perk is that they have 1-click WordPress installs, which has saved me countless hours.

The downside with (mt) is that hosting starts at $20 per month, and they are not unlimited bandwidth. But, for something as important as a hosting plan, I tell everyone that will listen to me to switch to Media Temple ASAP (I even recommended it on a blog of mine despite Media Temple having no affiliate program!). Feel free to save $15 per month and get a crappy host, but don't get mad when I said "I told you so..."