Seems like the folks over at GoDaddy are charging their email marketing customers if they get spam complaints. Deliverability.combroke the news when they got an email with this information sent to them from a GoDaddy customer. GoDaddy will now charge customers $200 to “manage” their complaints. Even worse is that if the customer wants to then leave them and transfer their domains to another registrar they can’t do it until they pay GoDaddy $75!

To cover all of their bases, it appears that if one of their customers uses an Email Service Provider outside of GoDaddy to advertise their GoDaddy-hosted site and they get complaints from one of their customer’s recipients, they could be hit with a fine or other action.

Wow. Serious Email Service Providers (ESPs) like VerticalResponse usually do this as a service to customers and won’t allow spammers to use their services. But let’s face it, everyone gets a complaint now and then, even customers with best intentions. The difference is that serious ESPs want to help their customers learn best practices about email marketing and not turn complaints into a new revenue stream.

If you use GoDaddy to host your website be careful. And any time you’re looking for a serious ESP, make sure you ask if they have a deliverability and abuse department – most serious ESPs do, looks like GoDaddy might not.

IMO, GoDaddy should stick to what they’re good at, being a registrar. Leave the email marketing heavy-lifting to those who “want” to do it and help businesses grow.

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