Canceling Your GoDaddy Account

Posted on April 15, 2008 by Matt

no-godaddy.jpgI cannot believe that at one point I was considering moving all my domains over to GoDaddy1. Their management interface is confusing to the point that I believe it's intentionally confusing, so that you have a hard time figuring out exactly what charges you are incurring (there's no single page that shows all of your charges), and when such charges will incur. When you do get one of those annoying $2.95 charges, there's no indication on the bill as to what it was for. Well, no more! I finally bit the bullet, transferred the domains, and began trying to figure out how to cancel my account.

Like I Said, They Don't Make It Easy

I looked and looked, and found no way to cancel my account. Searching their online help system for "cancel account" turned up nothing useful. I resorted to emailing their "tech support" - here's the response I got, which is little more than a map through their convoluted system - hope it helps someone else out!

From GoDaddy:
How to Cancel Your Account

The following is an email I received from GoDaddy, regarding my inquiry to cancel all services:

Unfortunately Go Daddy cannot completely remove a customer account from our system for legal reasons. However, you can use the instructions below to cancel all products or services for this account, remove all payment methods from this account, and turn off all opt-in email notifications. Company policy restricts Go Daddy Customer Support representatives from making changes to customer accounts or services on behalf of the customer. You will need to make this change from within your account.

To cancel all products and services, follow the directions below:

First, log into your customer account:

  1. Go to the GoDaddy Account Login Page
  2. Log in using your account username (which may be the same as your customer number) and password

If you have trouble logging in, our password reset form may help you. You can find this form through the following link: Account Retrieval Page

Once you have logged in to your account, follow the steps below to cancel:

  1. Select 'Payments and Renewing Items' from the 'Renewals & Upgrades' menu.
  2. Check the box next to the item(s) you would like to cancel and click on the 'Cancel Item' button.
  3. Select 'Cancel Now' or 'Cancel at Expiration Date' in the menu that appears to the right.
  4. Click on 'Save Changes'.

* Canceling now will immediately remove the service from your account. If you choose to "Cancel at Expiration Date" the service will remain active until the date specified and will not be renewed.

Please use the below instructions to remove a payment method from our system. Note that there must be no products or services in our system which are currently linked to that payment method before you can remove it.

  1. Select 'Credit Card & Payment Info' from the 'My Account' menu
  2. Select the radio button next to the desired payment method in the list.
  3. Click the 'Deactivate Payment Method' button.
  4. If there are any products or services currently associated with this item you will then be forced to move them to another payment method before you can continue.
  5. After moving any products or services to another payment method, click the 'Save Changes' button.

You can choose not to receive email notices by updating your customer account settings. Follow the directions below:

  1. Select 'Account Settings' from the 'My Account' menu.
  2. Click on the "Email Preference Information" link.
  3. Go through the choices and select your preference for each.
  4. When you are done, click on the green "Save Changes" button.

You can also use the "UNSUBSCRIBE" link found at the bottom of all the notices that we send out.

Footnotes:
1Note that sometimes you want to link to a website, but you don't want that link to count for anything in terms of Search Engine value (as search engines use the total number of inbound links to a website in their ranking algorithms). To still link to a site, but not pass any SEO relevance onto it, or even to have it count as a vote against the website you are linking to, you can use the vote-link and rel-nofollow microformats, as I did with the links to the GoDaddy home page:

<a href="http://godaddy.com" rel="nofollow" rev="vote-against" title="GoDaddy site">GoDaddy</a>

On Comments

Offensive comments will not be posted, and if you can't spell, well then that won't be posted either. Cheers.

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95 Responses to "Canceling Your GoDaddy Account"

  • By Dave January 23, 2012 - 10:13 pm

    Without question, Godaddy has the single most convoluted and horrible interface of any website I’ve ever used in my life.

    It’s definitely tempting to think that it’s intentionally obtuse, since a lot of people would probably rather pay a few dollars than have to deal with all that crap. Though I think it would almost take a genius to create such a complicated bird’s nest consciously and on purpose. More likely, I think it’s just a combination of design being done by programmers rather than designers, miscommunication between many disparate parts of the team, and a seriously unbridled case of feature-creep.

    I’m currently in the process of getting godaddy out of my life for good. Not easy – but this post has helped. Thanks!

  • By soapboxpudding January 18, 2012 - 11:07 am

    Thank you so much for posting these instructions. I was chasing my tail trying to find out how to cancel my account. Much appreciated.

  • By shAD January 14, 2012 - 4:11 pm

    Maraming salamat po. Salamat kaayo. Thank You!

  • By Ido Schacham January 8, 2012 - 10:56 am

    Thanks for the helpful instructions! GoDaddy changed their UI a little, so some things are not in the same place or have different titles. You might want to update the post accordingly.

  • By Ferdi November 25, 2011 - 2:58 pm

    You can visit http://canadianwebhosting.com for more information.

  • By Ferdi November 25, 2011 - 2:57 pm

    Domain Management – Tucows or Enom
    Hosting Provider – Canadian Web Hosting

    If you subscribe to Canadian Web Hosting, their Account Manager includes easy domain name registrations and transfers at a reasonable cost and a very friendly user-interface.

  • By Sylvain November 10, 2011 - 12:52 pm

    Thanks there….spent already an hour trying to figure out something….indeed not clear…

  • By JUSTINA LAMPTEY November 8, 2011 - 12:35 am

    Hi Everyone.

    I cannot believe there are others like me. I am so angry with this company. I have spoken to 6 different operators, & they all gave different instructions, none of them helped. My problem is that I have a Security Protection on my account…*sigh*, which is the worse case senario, because apparently it means I cannot cancel without going through the Protection Reg Team….my nightmare began before that, because it has taken me 2mths to get to this point :( Now I have sent two documents & a passport photo copy to prove that I am who I say I am, & still that doesnt satisfy them….because they keep writing back to say its the wrong documents….so I wrote back & told them..it has my company name & address plus it says I am registered in Holland. Now we have the issue that the documents are in Dutch & they want me to translate it in English.
    I wrote back & told them, firstly, I dont speak Dutch, & secondly they can translate it, being that they are online.

    I don’t have means to translate this document, it wont allow me since I scanned the documents….!! What do I do, What do I do now???

    I am so so upset, they have tried to bill me twice, but both times the billing failed, because I am trying not to pay them until I can cancel, but they are trying to hold me off until they get paid..which is very unethical since I tried to cancel before the billing date twice.

    PS: As long as you send the right documents even though its in another language, surely there is no court in the world who would say I did not do exactly as asked?

    So they cannot read dutch…get a translator? lol!

    I did exactly what was asked of me!

    Does anybody think differently??

    Please please please help me…..

  • By Ben October 27, 2011 - 8:35 am

    I paid by Paypal and then cancelled the Paypal agreement. Somehow they were still able to charge my card with a monthly renewal. Thanks to your guide I shall now hopefully be free!

  • By tph October 16, 2011 - 3:39 pm

    Thank you!

  • By Bat October 3, 2011 - 3:36 pm

    They nickel and dime you but it 5′s and 10′s instead. 3 of the features said one time charge and then I see they were charging me every month meaning the “promo code” was a bunch of bs…..

  • By kamal September 30, 2011 - 4:02 pm

    Thanks this is a life saver…

  • By jennifer September 28, 2011 - 7:54 am

    thank you! very helpful!

  • By Bl@h August 17, 2011 - 1:04 pm

    Moved from GoDaddy to Namecheap. Luckily all of my domains were with either 123-Reg, or Name/Domainsite >_>.

    No having to wait 20-30 to add sub-domains, update FTP passwords, create databases, etc.

  • By Moncler August 14, 2011 - 10:49 pm

    Being new in Triond, I thought this only happened to me. I am glad I am not alone.

  • By Girish July 21, 2011 - 7:18 pm

    Thank you very much. It was a torture to be with Godaddy. They have been eating my money since some months for no reason. I called them requesting to cancel my account and they told me that I will have to do it online. I cancelled my domain listings but was still being charged, I guess. Thank you very much for this article. I have cancelled the products and services and the direct debit bank details. However I could not cancel the email notifications. Their “save changes” button is not working. However “cancel changes” button is working !!!

  • By Rita July 15, 2011 - 12:54 pm

    thank you!

  • By Alec June 20, 2011 - 10:15 am

    Godaddy is pure trash. I can’t believe I actually picked the worst web host out of so many out there and this is a terrible terrible first time web hosting experience. Thank you so much for your post. My website wont even load most of the time and time out very often. Sigh. Their shared hosting is completely trash.

    My advice is do not ever host with Godaddy. This is a complete nightmare. Registering web name is good with them.

    Thank you.

  • By Florian June 17, 2011 - 7:04 pm

    If you want your domains safe without any upsells, shady renewal policies and hard to cancel products, go Namecheap or Moniker. Both have a clean interface without fuzz.

    Both are rock solid and well known in the industry, offer good service and competitive prices especially for larger domain portfolios and better domain security than GoDaddy.

    GoDaddy is a nightmare, their customer service sucks and so does the attitude of their CEO. It’s the only registrar that “lost” one of my domains without being able to get it back.

  • By Kei May 25, 2011 - 2:00 am

    They didn’t even warn me to tell me that they will renew my account, they just did it and only called me after with a recording saying thank you for the renewal blah blah blah, THE NERVE. At least iPage gave me a warning before they renewed, so that way I could cancel it before they even charge my account. Now I’m out $12, highly doubt I would get this back? They renewed a few days ago, and I just canceled the account and did everything you said.

    THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!

  • By My GoDaddy Gripes - Ryan Boswell May 24, 2011 - 10:45 pm

    [...] an hour looking for it somewhere in my account settings. A quick Google search revealed that it is impossible to cancel a GoDaddy account completely, but there are steps you can take to more or less strip it of most of the important [...]

  • By rick May 9, 2011 - 11:54 am

    Has anyone had issues with collections after canceling an account?

    My HOA did and we’re still hounded by Certegy Payment Recovery Services. Both Certegy and GoDaddy send us to each other saying it’s not their issue (Certegy says godaddy has to verify the account was closed, GoDaddy says thay can’t and that Certegy wil have to verify and stop mailing us, etc). Go Daddy can’t verify that our account was closed? Ridiculous

    This is unacceptable and I can’t believe some of you are saying what a great company this is. Totally amateurish, and it’s all over a 30 dollar renewal fee.

  • By Steve W May 9, 2011 - 11:48 am

    Thanks Mate. This helped alot

  • By Sarah April 4, 2011 - 1:13 am

    Here are a few “Bye Daddy” badges to display on your websites/blogs! I love how the star in the GoDaddy logo looks like a gunshot to the elephants head.

    http://tinyurl.com/4xmhxup

    Spread the word. Have fun.

  • By Tiago S. April 3, 2011 - 7:59 pm

    Thank you. I did what you suggested plus changed my personal details to some gibberish.

    They can go to hell for killing elephants. I also moved to namecheap.

  • By Catherine April 2, 2011 - 6:26 pm

    Thanks! I also just transferred all my domain names from Godaddy after Bob Parsons shot that elephant. I do not want to be associated with that company. Namecheap are also running an offer if you use the promo byebyegd and donating $1 per transfer to save the elephants.

  • By amygo April 2, 2011 - 4:55 pm

    Thank you SO much for these directions. I’ve been desperately trying to find an alternative for so long. (I decided to go with FatCow.com -they’re cheap & they’re 100% wind-powered!)

    And, finally, with your help, I no longer support this awful company!

    For others like me: If you need to transfer your domain, luckily, GoDaddy has a tutorial for that:
    http://help.godaddy.com/article/3560

    Phew.

  • By a place to mend the hearts of everyone who feels alone April 1, 2011 - 3:15 am

    [...] See Also: How to cancel your GoDaddy account. [...]

  • By Jincy March 31, 2011 - 11:17 am

    After what Bob Parsons did to that elephant in Zimbabwe, i just shifted my domains to http://www.bigrock.com , they are running a special for shifting domain away from Godaddy. With the Coupon Code JUMBOSAVE , you can get the transfer price of $4.95

    How can anyone feel proud of killing an endangered species

    Jincy

  • By This Is All Kinds Of Wrong of the Day: Bob Parsons’ Elephant Problem - The Daily What March 31, 2011 - 10:06 am

    [...] Also: How to cancel your GoDaddy account. Incorrect source or offensive?All Kinds Of WrongBob ParsonsGoDaddyProblem [...]

  • By Tuyen Nguyen March 14, 2011 - 8:04 am

    Thank you!

  • By Steve February 2, 2011 - 8:59 pm

    Wow. I selected the protected domain back when. Big mistake. Now I have to go through hoops to unprotect the domain just so I can delete it.

    Then I just want to yank the card info. Nope… Must have new card before forgetting old card.

    Good grief. I will just call the bank and get a new card.

  • By Jeff Bright January 31, 2011 - 9:48 pm

    godaddy blows…i can make websites all day long, and when i signed up for a website (thinking i would get more than one page, or at least be able to create it myself and have any amount i want) i found out that it only comes with one page!!!!! Much to my outrage…im sitting here thinking what the hell? how am i supposed to run anything on one page? so i tried getting more pages and the charge came to $97 dollars!!!!! what the ****!!!.. and this is only ten minutes after buying the damn website….i’m so glad you posted this…

  • By Richard Taylor January 13, 2011 - 11:24 am

    Thanks for the info! My experiences with GoDaddy have NEVER been pleasant, EVER. Don’t even try to call in… how rude. Anyways, great help and advice, and top of Google search! Thanks!

  • By Matt January 8, 2011 - 2:03 pm

    @Paul – hosted by proxy doesn’t tell me much – what’s the domain? It doesn’t necessarily mean GD is hosting the site. Anyways, if you just want to kill the site, just login to GD and change the nameservers to something else. If the site isn’t hosted by GD, than there’s probably an option for “restore to defaults” or something, which will replace your site with a standard GD page.

  • By Paul January 8, 2011 - 12:23 pm

    Here is my question: I am trying to cancel a site with a godaddy domain name which is hosted by proxy?? The guy that set the site up has my proprietary information on the site and now has abandoned it. Message board is being spammed, online store is not accepting payments. Total mess as it is now damaging my reputation.
    How do I get this website terminated since I cannot locate the so called webmaster. GoDaddy is a total waste of time. They have no interest in assisting. Suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

    Thanks,

    Paul

  • By asif December 13, 2010 - 8:15 am

    thanks indeed.. I was also struggling to cancel it and the best part is they don’t give any refund even if you cancle your order next day after having any services from godaddy.
    :-(

  • By David Seymour November 29, 2010 - 8:54 am

    Hey,thanks a million! Yeah, although almost everybody like Yahoo! are just as rotten when it comes to figuring out how to cancel services that suck (or you wouldn’t be killing them anyway, right?!?) It’s helpful posts like yours that make it easy for the rest of us to figure it out. Thanks so much for reporting your helpful tips! I really appreciate it. Your place in line for good afterlife Kharma is secured! :)

  • By Sean November 25, 2010 - 10:16 am

    Thanks a million!!! You are absolutely right about them intentionally making it difficult to cancel an account. I am so happy to be free of their grip. Thanks again.

  • By godaddysucketh November 23, 2010 - 11:07 am

    THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! You are wonderful to have posted this for us! I just got off the phone trying to cancel my acct (after they charged my credit card UNAUTHORIZED, and this after repeated emails to NOT autorenew even after I delected autorenew immediately after opening my account last year) – they pretty much suck as customer service once they have your dough. I should have paid attention from the beginning when I signed up for a single domain plus privacy for less than $12, but was charged $60! The checkout process has conveniently pre-selected items rather than the customer choosing what to buy AND there was no Confirmation Page to review before submitting.
    When I spoke with Mike today, he told he same stuff “can’t cancel – customer has to do that by following the instructions in the email.” Uh, the email has NO instructions, so I Googled and found you, thank god!!
    Also interesting, is that my “renew” bill was almost twice what the original bill was…

    Bad godaddy.

  • By ramakant November 14, 2010 - 11:25 am

    Thanks a lot for this information. Bye Bye Go Daddy.

  • By ubenthere November 5, 2010 - 2:17 pm

    I’ve spent a week trying to back off an “automatic” charge for renewal for a domain I don’t want. I got a series of stock emails from “Peggy” that simply rehashed the site navigation as posted above. The real problem I have is that they have all my personal and financial information which they refuse to delete. Simply cancelling your items and removing the payment method from appearing on their site does not delete anything from their records. Their entire business model is a borderline scam: Trust me, give me all your information, we’ll charge you what we want when we want without any prior notice. Seems they have been getting away with this for a long time. All those who are happy with their service will one day have their trust betrayed. Why else would they refuse to honor a customer’s wishes to delete all personal and financial information??

  • By TashaK October 22, 2010 - 9:43 pm

    OMG!!! thank god for this piece of information!!!! I created an account so I could EASILY set up my own ecommerce website…. it is HELL! the website is SOOO slow, like you said Adilshah.. and it’s just awful.. so complicated, you never know what is what, what you should do… No help, no refunds… I chose godaddy as it is such a prominent domain hoster, but MY GOD, they are probably so big by ripping people off!!!!!!!!! Im so mad i cant get my 14 euros back. what a waste of time and money these people have caused!!!! If you want to set up your own website in matter of hours or even minutes, go to >>> http://www.moonfruit.com people!!!!!!!!!! They have the BEST user friendly interface there is on the net. Not many features yet, which is why i ”tried” elsewhere, but no, i always go back to moonfruit.. Thanks for the info on how to cancel this horrible account again! x T

  • By Internet Casino October 13, 2010 - 8:01 am

    excellent points and the details are more specific than elsewhere, thanks.

    - Thomas

  • By odzie? dla kobiet October 10, 2010 - 9:59 am

    I don’t usually reply to posts but I will in this case, great info…I will bookmark your site. Keep up the good work!

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