Are You Stuck with GoDaddy 365?
Frustrated with GoDaddy?
Frank Johnson, Sr.
GoDaddy is one of the most popular sites to sign up for a new domain for a website and email address.
When you sign up for a domain with GoDaddy, you’ll get asked if you want several other services, like web and email hosting or SSL security. You may also get asked if you want Microsoft 365 (formerly called Office 365).
This can look like a great deal, especially if you compare GoDaddy’s price to the per user signup price at Microsoft’s website. GoDaddy often gives great deals up front, but you may find out later that a deal isn’t all that it seemed to be.
This is especially true with a Microsoft 365 subscription. See, the price may seem lower for the same thing, but you’re not actually getting the same exact product as you would from Microsoft. There are several differences, that if you have more than a couple employees, could end up causing you major problems down the road.
Here are some of the reasons why you don’t want to get a Microsoft 365 account through GoDaddy.
Limited Features
The account you sign up for with GoDaddy is designed for very small businesses (less than 10 employees) or individuals. So, it gives you the basics, but not more advanced features that a small business might need as they grow. You’re connecting to the apps through a GoDaddy user interface (UI), which restricts what you can do and the integration of other apps.
For example, if you try to purchase an add-in, such as an Outlook plugin or an add-in for Power Bi, you’ll get redirected to the GoDaddy Interface and get blocked.
Weird Billing
Billing with GoDaddy can be complicated and confusing. If you’re getting your domain, web and email hosting, and Microsoft 365 through the service, you can get separate invoices for different things.
There are optional add-ons for advanced email security and email archiving that make billing even more complicated.
People also often find that the attractive introductory price ends up being much more when their recurring billing hits.
Lack of Scalability
If you have more than 10 employees, you have to specifically contact GoDaddy for a quote from “one of our Microsoft 365 experts.”
Signing up through their service severely limits your ability to grow and can mean a major pain if you need to add on that 11th user and then find out you have to cancel your current account and try to migrate to a new one.
There are multiple horror stories on Reddit related to problems trying to migrate off GoDaddy’s version of Microsoft 365 onto a standard version. You’re pretty much setting yourself up for headaches when you need to scale up by having the GoDaddy version of the platform.
Sign-in Problems
Because GoDaddy’s Microsoft 365 version is nested inside a GoDaddy UI, it causes problems with things like single sign-on (SSO) and other token-based authentication clients and cross sign-ins with other Microsoft services.
