GoDaddy Renewal Codes and Why a Distant Domain Club Membership is Not for Me

I almost forgot that it’s that time of the year again to renew my domains. For people out there with self-hosted blogs, you’d know what I meant by that. The privilege of a .com has a price, one that we pay normally on a yearly basis. For my three domains (I used to have more!), I’ve been with GoDaddy (www.godaddy.com) since 2008 because it’s so easy to transact with them and they’re very good at reminding customers about the health of their accounts.

I usually renew my domains a month before expiration. I also use promo codes or discount codes scattered online when renewing my domains so I could save money. I just type in the code during checkout right before paying for my order and that’s it. If before, I could renew my domains at $8.29 each, sometimes even less, now it’s impossible to do that. Recently, GoDaddy has stopped giving out renewal codes and offered discount domain club memberships instead. Why, oh why?

At this point, I don’t think it’s practical for me to get such membership. First, it’s too expensive at $7.50 per month. Why would I pay $7.50 per month (a total of $90 per year) when I only have three domains that cost me less than $35 annually, with or without discounts? Second, I only get domains from GoDaddy and nothing more. I have a different service provider for my hosting. I think this is highly beneficial only for GoDaddy customers who rely on GoDaddy for almost, if not all, of their online needs (e.g. domain, web hosting, SSL, email service, marketing tools, etc.).

I’m still sad, though, that GoDaddy suddenly decided to stop giving out renewal promo codes which were very helpful to me. 🙁