Today I got a gig to optimize the speed for a clients website which is hosted on Godaddy.  I have 2 domains through them since they are pretty cheap, but have never hosted anything though their hosting accounts and after today, I never will.

When I work on a client’s website, the first thing I do is select all the files in their root domain and archive them into a single zip file that I can download and work on remotely as to not screw anything up on the actual site.  Every client I’ve had and every host they have been on has made this a real easy process.  Not Godaddy!  I don’t know if they don’t think people should have full options in their file manager or if they just want to make it difficult to create a backup of your files so you don’t move move to another hosting company.  Either way Godaddy is proving to be a bit of a headache.

The first thing I tried was to select all the files and folders in the root and create a zip file that I could download.  I did all the necessary steps and…………nothing happened.  I tried again and nothing.  I tried just selecting the WP include folder and nothing.  I then thought maybe the download option doesn’t work and decided to instead create the archive on the server.  After selecting all the options and creating a backup folder for the file to go to I ended up getting an error message that stated “file not found”.  What file wasn’t found?  What is going on over at Godaddy?  Why can’t I make a simple backup?

After doing some research on Google, I came across the most bizarre answer.  You cannot create an archive over 20MB in size on GoDaddy.  20MB?  Are you crazy?  Image folders can easily be over 20MB, let alone an entire WordPress installation!  Madness.

Luckily I was able to login through FTP (after numerous connection issues) and bulk download all the files and folders.  It’s not the worst way to do it, but it’s not the best.  Instead of downloading a single zip file that would have been around 800MB, my FTP program has to download each file and folder individually one at a time which massively increases the amount of time it will take to download everything.

Poking around GoDaddy’s backend is a joke.  Their cpanel  has limited options compared with every other hosting company I’ve dealt with.  As well I’ve heard horror stories about uptime, site speed and hackings.

Godaddy may be one of the most popular web hosting companies on the Internet, but I would strongly advise you not to use them.  So far the only thing they’ve left me with are daddy issues.