Terrible.

When I said 'a word', I really meant it, lol.

To be more detailed:

I recently took over webmaster duties for the company I work for (I can submit the domain to mods, I'd rather not publically post it), and it's been a nightmare.

The site itself runs on Joomla and is relatively slow loading, I really didn't realize the extent of the issues until I got in to Joomla's back-end and started trying to do stuff. Even simple functions like saving articles, settings changes, heck basically anything, takes upwards of a minute...if it works at all. About 25% of the time, any attempt to save a change is met with a 500 Internal Server error after a minute or so of waiting. I tried installing two plugins, a nicer WSYWIG editor (I despise TinyMCE as it strips code like there's no tomorrow) and a Wordpress bridge (which I'll touch on momentarily) and was unable to activate either - continual 500 Internal Server Errors.

As for Wordpress, it's been nothing short of total failure. I first tried to manually install WP 3.0.1 (via FTP)..that was a mistake. 500 errors. So I installed it via GoDaddy's impossibly annoying Control Panel (I'm a cPanel guy) and after waiting about a half hour after it supposedly installed, it finally was accessible via http and ftp.

I'm pretty proficient with Wordpress. I have a pretty set regimen of 'default' plugins I place on every Wordpress install I do. No dice with GoDaddy. I was unable to install any of them via Wordpress' internal plugin system and after manually FTPing the files to the server, was unable to activate the vast majority of them - again 500 errors.

Even attempting to log in to Wordpress admin or simply view the site, that is nothing more than a WooThemes-designed placeholder theme currently, often results in 500 errors.

I did some Googling on the topic (specifically GoDaddy Windows hosting and Wordpress) and it seems that many people have similar issues - in fact I saw on one wordpress.org topic where a GoDaddy rep basically came out and said that Wordpress and their Windows platform simply do not get along.

My options at this point are to 'flip the switch' on the GoDaddy account to Linux (I have no idea why the previous Webmaster chose Windows hosting to begin with, the company has no need for it) or to move the site to a more reliable Linux host of my choosing that I'm more comfortable with and confident in. I'm probably going to choose to do the latter which will unfortunately mean that my company will be out around $150 (they signed up for a 3 year deal in the fall of 2009) but our main IT guy has basically given me the go-ahead to do it.

To summarize - if you're planning on running mission-critical Wordpress or PHP-reliant software on GoDaddy Windows hosting, I'd suggest exhaustively researching other options beforehand.

Dave

Maybe have a talk with the GoDaddy (tech/sales) reps?
It might be the current server just have too much users, and they perhaps could transfer you to a different server.

Yeah, I talked to them last week. I will say that they responded in a timely fashion (about 2 and a half hours..) and were polite and helpful. We decided the issue is GoDaddy's support (or lack thereof) for Microsoft's URL Rewrite module. I don't have the time (or patience) to research and learn about workarounds (although they do apparently exist). I would expect them to support what seems to be a pretty common module 'out of the box'. This, compounded by the overall sluggish performance of the site in general...seems like a good reason to pack up and move on.

Godaddy is a worthless host, regardless of platform.
Anything that could be crappy -- is.

I'm fairly aware of that, thus why I'm likely going to move elsewhere. I just wish we didn't have to eat the $$ for the remainder of the 3 year (*facepalm*) pre-payment.

GoDaddy's impossibly annoying Control Panel (I'm a cPanel guy)Even their butchered/raped version of cPanel is horrible to work with. I understand your pain.

I'd mention that Windows IIS7 + WordPress works very well.
Any Windows issues you ran into were of Godaddy's own incompetence -- not MS.

We signed up with HawkHost today and are in the process of moving everything from GoDaddy. I wish I could say I was optimistic about this, and I am about the actual getting away part, but I have a feeling the actual transfer is going to be a pain.

As a last-ditch shts and giggles effort, I switched the account over to Linux from Windows, hoping that maybe I would be presented with some more options, control panel-wise, to make the move easier. Of course I was wrong.

GoDaddy's Linux panel is just as barren and useless as the Windows one aside from phpMyAdmin which almost caused my mouth to hit the floor when I saw it. God forbid they actually put something useful on there.

So, in the past when I've switched web hosts and, just as a general rule of thumb, I occasionally like to make backups. That's not happening at GoDaddy. The only way to make a backup is to literally FTP in and download all your files. If you have MySQL databases, you can export them in phpMyAdmin or use GoDaddy's somewhat sketchy DB backup tool which just dumps your DB in to an FTP folder. Somewhat annoying on all counts.

One other thing that I absolutely couldn't believe - creating MySQL databases. I was trying to create one so I could install a URL shortener I needed for a project at work (in the end, their server wasn't compatible, but anyway..).. So I go in to the databases section and typing in the DB information is easy enough. I get all my stuff in and hit 'ok' and I see 'pending' next to my new DB name. So I go and search help, turns out it can take up to an hour to create a MySQL DB on the server. Not only that but I can't have the same DB name as anyone else that's a GoDaddy customer. Unbelievable.

All-in-all, there's really nothing worthwhile in the Linux control panel either. I'd say it would be nice if you were a super hosting novice..but even then, eventually you're going to run in to things that you simply can't do. This means, inevitably, relying on support. While they're faster than some of the 'big name, hands-off' hosts (I get an response in about 3 hours on average), they still aren't very helpful and the usual answer I've gotten used to receiving is "you can't do that with your account."

I've only had about a month's worth of experience with GoDaddy and everything from the technical side of things (the part that actually matters) has been terrible. The aforementioned 500 errors and timeouts, awful control panel, extremely limited ability to control your account and on and on. One thing I will say they are excellent at, is selling you stuff. Even the control panel is chock full of 'extra add-on' options that they make sound great but I'm sure they are just as lackluster as everything else they offer.

I honestly don't know why anyone would choose them as a webhost. Cross your fingers for us that we get away relatively unscathed.

Dave

Tip for you: phpMyAdmin is garbage. Seriously.
If you want a good MySQL, install SQLyog on your local computer. You'll never use phpMyAdmin again.

So I go in to the databases section and typing in the DB information is easy enough. I get all my stuff in and hit 'ok' and I see 'pending' next to my new DB name. So I go and search help, turns out it can take up to an hour to create a MySQL DB on the server. Not only that but I can't have the same DB name as anyone else that's a GoDaddy customer. Unbelievable.You have just found my #1 complain on why Godaddy is the worst host ever. You pay for a service that you can't actually use, and you're treated like an idiot child over something as basic as creating an empty database. Absolutely f'ing unbelievable, isn't it? They want to hold your hand to create a blank db, and for no viable reason. I have never seen this done at any other host.

My description of Godaddy is mostly a string of non-stop expletives, for reasons like this.

So I go in to the databases section and typing in the DB information is easy enough. I get all my stuff in and hit 'ok' and I see 'pending' next to my new DB name. So I go and search help, turns out it can take up to an hour to create a MySQL DB on the server.

Must be limitation of Godaddy server system where create database task is not executed immediately but added into queue.

I think your right, specifically I believe Go Daddy's cron job is set to every 60 minutes (yes its queued). I hear that each customer is not allowed more than 15 minutes of processor time per job, so of course if you making a large DB that takes more than 15 minutes it will take 1 hour + amount of time to make the DB.

Thats not unusual, every shared host queues jobs, it just becomes a problem when people stuff too many accounts onto one server.

You get what you pay for.


Must be limitation of Godaddy server system where create database task is not executed immediately but added into queue.

About stuffing too many on one server, a reverse DNS on my client's GoDaddy IP revealed 5556 others hosted on the same machine. After seeing that, I was not surprised at all the PHP timeout errors.

The thing that annoys me is the culture of denial at GoDaddy that there's any problem at all. Granted my client is on the Windows (for bloody ASP) economy plan, but they don't seem to understand that customers are willing to pay more for better service (including honesty and real help).

we have experienced worst night mare than that you just posted.
we had a dedicated server there, in which the frequency and number of shutdowns started to increase month after month, whenever i ask about this to their support, their only answer is
"purchase our premium support"
Thats the worst and awful plan to develop a business by walking over the graves of its customers.
godaddy such a bad one to host with.

Do you know the reason of server shutdown/restart? Is it because of server error itself or power outage?
If you run Windows OS and have auto-update active, Windows automatically restart server after installing updates that require restart.