Every crazy, risky undertaking we watch someone take typically starts with the phrase “Don’t try this at
home!” Talking about the GoDaddy version of Microsoft is no different. Marketing is key in our world
today and GoDaddy does an amazing job of enticing their domain consumers with a “light” version of
Microsoft’s M365 with a staggering low introductory rate and a quick click setup. The GoDaddy M365
product is sufficient for about 10 employees, with a hard limit of 300.
While this seems like an amazing idea at a quick glance using GoDaddy’s M365 instead of the actual
Microsoft version of M365 is a crucial error and one that can be very costly to come back from. The
introductory price of the GoDaddy product lasts for 12 months. Once those 12 months are up, the price
rises to well over the cost of the complimentary version of M365 from Microsoft. Not only does this
cost start to accrue after your 12 months, but so can your tech support bills.
This surface level version of M365 often causes sharing issues in Sharepoint and OneDrive. If users are
utilizing sharing and backup apps you will also need to account for the amount of information that is
being housed in these apps to be migrated at a later date should your company move to the Microsoft
version of M365.
The GoDaddy M365 also lacks security. Within this version two-factor authentication is not offered.
Password resets are the only form of security in this version. This lack of security can often open your
company up to phishing and cyber attacks. I personally have seen these attacks happen. They take a
while to catch. They are easy to clean up, but there is nothing that you can do to the security of the
account to prevent it from happening again.
As your company grows your needs will likely change. It is likely that at some point that you or an
employee will require one of the Microsoft Add-Ons, like Power BI or Microsoft Project, in order to
complete your tasks more effectively. With the GoDaddy version of M365 no Add-Ons are available.
The business standard version of M365 that is offered by GoDaddy offers you the five (5) basic office
apps, but this is as far as you can go since this version of M365 is not hosted or managed by Microsoft.
If you have already signed up for M365 through GoDaddy and you now need access to the Add-Ons you
will need to migrate to a full fledged M365 account that you purchase through Microsoft or through a
Microsoft Partner, like KHIT Consulting. Additionally, once you have purchased the new licensing you
will need a technology professional to get involved in performing IMAP migrations for the mailbox data
(your email) as well as verifying your domain in the real M365 and removing it from the GoDaddy
version. When one attempts to do this on their own, or to do any technical customization on their own
it is typically very hard to do. GoDaddy support typically does not have a deep insight to this and it is
also very hard to find the Admin Control Panel if you are able to locate access to it at all.
Is GoDaddy 365 worth the cheap first year and the do it yourself mentality? Absolutely not! In the end
the migration to a more useful and effective tool is going to be more costly than setting it up correctly in
the first place.
