I’ve been a GoDaddy VPS (Virtual Private Server AKA Virtual Dedicated Server) user since the EsecureData dedicated server issues in 2011 (it’s November 2019 as I update this GoDaddy review: also see GoDaddy VPS Review).

I originally chose GoDaddy virtual dedicated servers as a temporary stop gap before finding another dedicated server company to rent a high end server from.

In a 5ish year period (2006-2011) I’d gone through 4 dedicated server companies due to support issues and you don’t choose a new dedicated server company without extensive online research, reading loads of customer reviews etc…

GoDaddy Virtual Private Server Review

GoDaddy Unmanaged Virtual Private Server Review
GoDaddy Unmanaged Virtual Private Server Review

Before paying several thousand dollars a year on a dedicated server I quickly bought a couple of cheap Godaddy VPS hosting servers (paying monthly) so my network of sites (over 100 domains) had a home while I found a new dedicated server.

I’d been registering domains with GoDaddy for over a decade (almost 20yrs now as I update this article), so very familiar with GoDaddy support: it’s not perfect, it’s OK.

Well it’s 2014 (update: make that 2019) and I’m still on the virtual dedicated servers (three GoDaddy VPS now) and though there’s been the odd issue (one big one which I’ll detail below) it’s been an acceptable home for my network of sites (around 130 domain in 2014).

What’s a Virtual Dedicated Server?

GoDaddy VPS Hosting
GoDaddy VPS Hosting

A Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS) or Virtual Private Server (VPS) is different to a true dedicated server in that a dedicated server is a single server (basically a computer designed for websites etc…) that only you have use of, whilst a virtual server is a single server that’s shared with multiple users in a way that only you have access to PART of the server resources (hence virtual).

If a server has 8GB of memory and 2TBs of HDs for example and it’s shared between 4 users, each user will have use of 2GB of memory and 500MBs of HD space: so that would be a 2GB, 500MB HD VPS. It’s called a virtual dedicated server because each user can use their part of the server like a dedicated server.

For example on my GoDaddy VPS servers I install the control panel Webmin/Virtualmin (it’s free and well supported), whilst other users on the same server might use Plesk, cPanel, DirectAdmin or any number of server control panel software.

There are benefits and disadvantages to using a VPS vs a dedicated server, they tend to be cheaper so you can in principal get more for your money and the server company is responsible for maintaining a server that might have half a dozen users, so if hardware breaks they’ll have all the users complaining to support not just you :-)

GoDaddy Virtual Private Server Support

I’ve noticed with my GoDaddy VPS servers not a great deal goes wrong or if it does it’s sorted before I’m fully aware of the issue. With unmanaged dedicated servers from other companies, generally the companies wouldn’t care if my websites were down for ever as long as they can say root access works. With a dedicated server you really need to be on the ball 24/7 because no one else cares.

So I’ve not had a great deal of issues that required GoDaddy support to step in. I did have one major incident that wasn’t even a server issue per se, it was a dumb ass GoDaddy policy issue.

GoDaddy Review

Web Hosting Support Disaster Management
Web Hosting Support Disaster Management

One of the Godaddy VPS servers had 60 domains running on it. One day with no warning it was taken offline by Godaddy for a copyright infringement issue! All I got was an email subject: “Copyright Dispute for your Virtual Dedicated Server (resolving to IP address xxx.xxx.xx.xx) – [Incident ID: 00000000]” AFTER the server was offline.

I had to phone GoDaddy support and jump through a bunch of hoops to get the VPS back online to fix a single page that was apparently infringing copyright: I’d added an article from Articlebase (popular article directory) and it would appear someone had used copyright material within the article. So my mistake was inadvertently using an article that infringed the copyright of another! So I didn’t do anything wrong deliberately, it was the person who created and added the article to Articlebase at fault.

I had no issue with taking the article offline, but this was not the way to deal with this sort issue: guilty until proven innocent.

Godaddy Current Hosting Account Status Suspended
Godaddy Current Hosting Account Status Suspended

I had no warning, not a single email stating you might have infringed another’s copyright, this is the URL, you have 7 days to respond sort of thing (you know, reasonable behavior)… Nope, the entire VPS with ~60 domains and tens of thousands of webpages that weren’t infringing copyright were taken offline without warning!!!

Could you imagine the damage that could do if I sold hosting on a VPS server, that could seriously damage a hosting business!!! Cost me money since my sites aren’t earning advertising revenue while they are down and Google reduces the rankings of sites that are down a lot.

I almost dropped GoDaddy for their retarded copyright policy, but don’t have an alternative (better VPS or dedicated server company) to move to.

David Law

Dedicated Server Reviews

Used a number of companies for dedicated servers between 2005 and 2019, here they are in chronological order. The last link is the review of the company I’m using in 2019.

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David Law : Technical SEO Expert with 20+ years Online Business, SEO, Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing experience... Creator of multiple WordPress SEO Themes and SEO Plugins. Interests: wildlife, walking, environmental issues, politics, economics, journalism, consumer rights.

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