Go Daddy's $0.99 .com Domain Deal

A lot of people are talking about Go Daddy's $0.99 domain registration offer (plus $0.18 ICAAN fee) for registrations of new .com domains or transferring in existing domains.  The deal applies to one domain only and for a period of only one year.  Additional years of registration cost $9.99.  You must be a new Go Daddy customer to qualify for the special price.  But is it really that good of a deal?

First off, if you go directly to the Go Daddy website, you will not get the deal if you attempt to register a .com domain name or transfer in.  There are some coupon codes floating around that will purportedly give you the deal.  But if you want that $0.99 price, search a search engine such as Yahoo for the deal and click through on the Go Daddy advertisement that appears at the top.

Or you can click here:

Go Daddy $0.99 Domain Names For New Customers

So now you have the $0.99 offer to register a .com domain name for one year--for new customers only.  Let's see just how good of a deal it is.

If you want privacy protection to keep your personal details such as your name, address, email address, and phone number hidden from view on whois searches, you will have to pay an additional $7.99 for privacy protection.  Add it up.

$0.99 - Domain registration for 1 year
+ $0.18 - ICANN Fee
+ $7.99 - Privacy protection
$9.16 - Cost for 1 year

That $7.99 privacy protection price seems standard as I have tested it.  Is it possible to find a discount code that you can use along with the cheap domain name to lower the cost of privacy protection?  Well, if there is, I did not find it.  And I looked through a maze of different coupon codes.  Whenever I applied a coupon code to attempt to lower the overall cost, the $0.99 domain name price disappeared, reverting to the normal $12.99 price.

Could I find another coupon code to go back to the $0.99 price?  Could I find some other coupon code to lower the price of privacy protection for future years when the domain renews at full price?

How much time are you willing to waste? 

Namecheap's price

$10.69 - Domain registration for 1 year
+ $0.18 - ICANN fee
- $1.08 - Savings using coupon code THX2U (code for November 2013)
$0.00 - Privacy protection - free for first year 
$9.79

Registering for one year, you save only $0.63 over Namecheap using Go Daddy's special promotion.  Is it worth the effort to save such a small amount of money?

The real savings will depend on whether or not you register the domain name for multiple years and whether or not you can find a coupon to lower Go Daddy's high privacy protection price for future years.  With Namecheap, they almost never have coupons for renewals.  I don't know about Go Daddy's policy for renewals.  I cannot find any Go Daddy privacy protection coupons, but a coupon to save a percentage on an entire order may or may not work on orders that are not already using a promotion such as we were with the $0.99 Go Daddy registration deal.

So while Namecheap does not offer renewal coupon codes, their privacy protection is cheap.  With Namecheap's coupon code WGSPECIAL you can get multiple years of privacy protection for only $0.99 per year, which is steeply discounted from the regular price of $2.88.  What coupon codes can we find to lower Go Daddy's high price of $7.99 for privacy protection?  Can we lower the price so it is cheaper than Namecheap including domain registration costs? 

Who knows.  And is it really worth the effort to search to save a few pennies?  If you don't need privacy protection, this entire discussion is pretty much meaningless anyway.

I have used both Go Daddy and Namecheap to register domain names and I vastly prefer Namecheap.  I transferred my domains out of Go Daddy in 2007 when I learned of their practice of confiscating domain names for allegations of spamming.  Something as innocent as sending an email to another webmaster requesting a link exchange has gotten domain names confiscated.  I've also read about domain names being confiscated because the holder of the name hired a third party to engage in SEO and the SEO person spammed links.

The winner is: Namecheap.