GoDaddy Office 365 Reviews

As an Outlook Expert, Exchange Migration Specialist and Office 365 Consultant, I get calls in often from clients who either want to use GoDaddy for Office 365, have already used them, or want to get out of a nightmare situation with them.

This blog was brought to life after I helped a client with quick 1 hour request. Her team needed a shared mailbox so everyone could use it for the conference room via computer, phone or tablet. Adding a mailbox seemed like a nifty little answer for this team of 12 (as you might not know, a shared public calendar cannot be viewed on a phone or tablet).

So all she needed was just one mailbox….I told her to call GoDaddy and get one more added to their account. The sales guy pushed Office 365 as they are trained to do, she refused and just asked for another mailbox. We waited an hour and the mailbox would not allow us to create it. I told client that the sales guy was probably upset that she wouldn’t go with Office 365 and didn’t do the request. I was right…she called back and not only did the person on the phone find he didn’t do it, but he DOWNGRADED her account! So that tech had to do a hustle and transfer my client to someone else to get their current mailboxes fixed!

I will review my experiences as a paid technician who calls GoDaddy for support since I started out in 2007.

Phone queue

Horrible mess when you call in. Music that can be stopped, but if you stop it….a lady comes on and talks every 30 seconds. So if you are in a conference call with a client, forget trying to talk to them…you can’t override the lady upselling you on making a statement on the web.

Outstanding first level support? Or not.

From my many years of supporting email, I have found the first level “sales people” at GoDaddy are somewhat technical, but are built more for sales. They do have basic tech training and some actually have more advanced skills to help, but finding those techs is very difficult. They are outstanding at upselling, but not supporting. Let’s say you call in with an IMAP mailbox that is not synching….they will have you log in the website browser and of course it syncs there, so they can’t help you anymore. If it works on the online browser, that is as far as they will go. Unless you beg and plead….and if you do it right, the tech might get a bit more technical. I have had to push these techs to put in a request for a mailbox refresh so the IMAP mailbox straightens itself out. This can be done, but you have to pretend you know what you are doing and just muscle your way past the first tech. The techs always have an upsell of some sort. The new one is “Office 365” and we will discuss that a bit later in this blog.

 

Second Level Assistance

They don’t have “second level support,” or a supervisor for that matter, that you can ask for.  If you are not happy with the tech and their answers, you are better off hanging up and calling back and hope the next tech knows more than the first one or will at least help you get to the “secret” second level that is there…but again, not very helpful.

Office 365 and Control Panel

Not many of the first level techs know Office 365 very well and if you do buy Office 365 from GoDaddy, be prepared for a standard response if you have an Exchange issue, “You will need to call Microsoft for that.” I am hoping their first level techs know more by now, but the last time I called in for a client, it was a mess. Calling Microsoft is not a great solution when you are paying a company to manage and support your Office 365. Keep in mind that most techs like me, bill per hour….so If I have to call Microsoft for you, this could be a 4 hour call with many transfers to the right department and then again, HOPE you get a tech that can fix the issue. (This is why I have my clients use a top ranked Microsoft vendor for exchange!)

Another beef-aroo with GoDaddy is if you get Office 365 with them, you do not get access to the regular Office 365 control panel. You get some hi-jacked version that will make any IT administrator cry. It’s really an “Office 365 for Dummies” version. They don’t show you the exchange control panel, but you can get there by putting /ecp after your Office 365 login in the URL. I mean, is the control panel that scary they have to hide it from people?

But be assured, they are fast to sell you on Office 365 with their “credits” they will entice you with and half off the first year…no worries there folks! That half off deal could cause you hours and hours of headaches…especially if your email is on POP and you have a lot of iCloud/Gmail going on. You could choose to use a different vendor and then get a REFUND from GoDaddy on what you haven’t used since you paid. I think they still refund, yep.

Migration Assistant

Also, just a few more things…they will assist you with the migration of your data from your old email server (theirs) to the new Office 365 Exchange, but they will not do the aftercare, fine tuning of your Outlook, importing in your iCloud contacts and your Gmail calendar….and won’t offer much for assistance.

Now, maybe I am wrong with this article, maybe I’m right. Some might argue that GoDaddy is the best in the world. I used to think that too back in the day….way before the tears were falling from bad tech support calls I had to make for clients. Before I learned they didn’t have great 2nd level support and worse off, getting them to do anything outside of their basic knowledge-base.

If you are unsure of your product vendors for Office 365, my vendor has a 30 day trial, so if you’re unhappy or not satisfied…you don’t have an invoice until 30 days later. Call me to discuss your Office 365 needs, I have a no cost consultation.

Here are a few more blogs you might enjoy reading, especially if you are a technician

https://callthatgirl.biz/godaddy-office-365-problems

https://callthatgirl.biz/godaddy-sharepoint-desktop-syncing-problems

https://callthatgirl.biz/how-to-migrate-godaddy-office-365-to-csp-or-another-vendor