GoDaddy is a great registrar. I don't use them for hosting since I have my own servers that are much faster. I can say that If I register a domain and change the DNS servers to point to my new site I'm usually up and running in 10 minutes. Although one of many websites once took a whole hour to point to the new server, it was enough to throw me into a deep depression I barely escaped from LOL. In all honesty as a registrar they are the best, they offer the best customer account info in terms of accessing the back end, and they are cheap.
I can recommend godaddy. I know some people have problems but Godaddy is huge so they can't please everyone. Their customer support is great. They are the least expensive registrar. Their control panel is bulky but good. For domains you will be safe with godaddy.
I only use godaddy to buy names. With all the coupons out there, they are pretty cheap. I've never had a problem with the domain name part. I will NOT use them for hosting though. I used to have my hosting through them and I had a lot of problems with hosting certain web sites. I had the same web site that was horribley slow with them run great on a different host once I switched it.
I used GoDaddy to buy and host a domain name. It was a steep learning curve, but I eventually figured out how to do everything. I liked the tools they gave me for managing domains, but I did NOT like their hosting. Their hosting seemed cheap, but they nickel and dimed me to death. It seemed everything I wanted to do on the hosting side cost an extra $1 or $2 per month. However, if I were in the business of buying and selling domains I would certainly use them. Heck, I'd even recommend them if you were buying domains and then parking them at WhyPark, but if you're looking at actually developing a site for long term use, I'd recommend someone else.
Couple years ago godaddy was $6.99. Now look. $14.99. What's wrong with the picture here?? Domainsite is still $6.99 and you get nearly instant support.
4 years ago Go Daddy was a terrible company to deal with. The customer service reps were dishonest and misleading. About a year ago i gave Go Daddy another chance and now i have close to 300 domain names registered with them. Go Daddy customer service improved immensely ever since Go Daddy started this thing with emailing out customer surveys after each phone call. In the past year I can think of maybe only one lousy rep I have had on the phone but other then that the customer service reps have gone above and beyond to make me a satisfied Go Daddy customer. A lousy registrar in my opinion is 1&1 their website is www.1and1.com Their reps don't speak a word of English and each rep tells you a different story and I believe if you sell a domain name and you want to push the domain name from one 1and1 account to another, they have the audacity to charge you a transfer on top of a renewal fee. Shitty company in my opinion. I used to own MANY domain names with them but i got those domain names transferred out of there as fast as possible and I moved them all to Go Daddy. Take a lQQk here at 1and1's transfer of one 1and1 account to another 1and1 account. http://faq.1and1.com/domains/moving_domains_from_one_package_to_another_/2.html I hope this info helped.
You'll take the time to read their faq to find some silly charge, but you won't take the time to read the faqs to find the right answer? http://faq.1and1.com/domains/domain_transfers/21.html It costs nothing to transfer away from 1&1. And like I said above, if you are looking for long term site development and aren't planning on flinging 300 hundred domain names around willy-nilly, they are a good host...lots of space for very cheap with additional features freely included that GoDaddy charges extra for. However, if you are in the business of domain speculation, GoDaddy is a much better choice than 1&1.
I like them for their Domain Registration abilities. But DO NOT HOST WITH THEM. I use their shared hosting when I first start new sites to see if they take off, but if you are getting 10 second load times and put in a ticket they will actually say "No you're not it's only 5 seconds" which is still HORRENDOUS, and they basically tell you you're lying. Also, one shared server I was on had 2,012 websites hosted on it. Think about that for a moment, even if every one of those sites only gets 100 visitors a day that's 201200 people accessing server resources, if each visitor hits 2 pages you're at over 400,000 page views, then lets say one of those sites gets a big Digg and 30,000 people come across now you're creeping upwards of 500,000 visitors and the server has to process each page at the same time for all the sites. its SLOW Try HostGator, they average 212 sites at last check rather than 2000, they are also much more responsive. But I do recommend GoDaddy's Domain services.