Go Daddy Merchant Services Review

We are currently able to locate three Go Daddy Payment Solutions complaints, but these complaints were filed regarding the company’s previous terms through First Data. There are no complaints related to the service merchants receive through Stripe, PayPal Here, and Dwolla. However, it is difficult to determine exactly how many Go Daddy complaints are related to the company’s merchant services program due to Go Daddy’s size and wide array of services. It it likely that merchants who process payments through Go Daddy will receive customer support through the provider they’ve used rather than from Go Daddy. The quality of customer support varies between these three providers.

Note: We have adjusted this company’s BBB rating according to our own standards. To better understand why we adjust BBB ratings, please see our Rating Criteria.

Go Daddy has been an accredited business of the Better Business Bureau since 2000 and currently shows an overall rating of “A+.” This is a remarkably high score given the fact that the company has had 1,157 complaints filed against it in the last three years. Of these complaints, 599 were due to problems with the product or service, 413 were related to billing or collection issues, 106 had to do with advertising or sales issues, 33 were due to delivery problems, and 6 were guarantee or warranty issues. Go Daddy has successfully resolved 383 of these complaints, while the remaining 774 either were resolved to the dissatisfaction of the complainant or did not receive a final response from the complainant. It is difficult to determine how many of these complaints are related to the company’s merchant services division, but it seems likely that the majority are related to its web hosting services. After taking all of this information into account, we agree with the BBB‘s grade.

Go Daddy’s decision to direct merchants to Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.net means that its pricing will vary depending on the service selected. All three providers offer month-to-month agreements with no early termination fees, but their transaction rates vary. Stripe charges 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction and PayPal charges 2.7% for swiped transactions and 3.5% plus $0.15 for keyed-in transactions.

It’s worth outlining Go Daddy’s contract terms through First Data just in case the company is still selling these services without promoting them. At the time of our last review, Go Daddy’s merchant accounts through First Data were available in three different service packages: “Standard,” “Specialty,” and “International.” The Standard tier, which was intended for U.S.-based, low-risk online businesses, included a one-year, automatically renewing contract through First Data with a $75 early termination fee (ETF), a $59.99 non-refundable application fee, a monthly service fee of $10, no monthly minimum fee, and what appeared to be a fixed per-transaction fee of 2.5% plus $0.30.

The company’s Specialty merchant account, which was intended for high-risk business types (such as adult products or multi-level marketing operations), included a two-year, automatically renewing agreement through FrontStream Payments with a $250 ETF, a $199.99 non-refundable application fee, a $20 monthly service fee, and transaction fees starting at 2.39% plus $0.30.

Go Daddy’s International merchant account, which it marketed to all non-U.S. business, included an automatically renewing two-year agreement through FrontStream with an ETF of $250, a monthly minimum fee of $35, a monthly service fee of $20, transaction fees starting at 4.95% plus $0.40 (2.99% plus $0.24 for Canada), and a whopping $699.99 non-refundable application fee. In addition to this large one-time cost, the company’s small print added that most International accounts would likely be subject to additional fees ranging from $995 to $1,495. This type of account appeared to be intended for offshore, high-risk processing and was likely to be prohibitively expensive for most merchants to set up.

Overall, these prices did not compare favorably to the company’s online competition. There are no complaints filed regarding the company’s partnerships with Stripe, PayPal Here, and Dwolla, and those three providers are known to offer competitive pricing for the products they provide. We will therefore award the company an “A” rating in this category for the time being.

We are not assigning an overall rating to Go Daddy Merchant Services at this time due to the fact that the company appears to no longer actively sell merchant services, instead advising users to integrate Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.net into the Go Daddy shopping cart. These three providers offer fair pricing and low-commitment contracts, and it appears that Go Daddy plays a minor role in the setup and maintenance of these accounts. The company’s previous terms through First Data were not competitive compared to industry standards, but Go Daddy does not appear to sell First Data merchant accounts anymore.