A few days ago, I received a somewhat alarming email from GoDaddy. “Billing Failure: Save [Redacted].COM before it’s gone on 2/15/2026.”
The message accomplished its task of grabbing my attention. It wasn’t a billing failure that caused my domain name to expire though. I intentionally turned off the auto-renew functionality on this hand registered domain name.
I don’t think this should be classified as a “billing failure,” but I do think GoDaddy was trying to use an alarming term to get my attention. It annoyed me more than anything else.
I searched “billing failure” in my email, and I didn’t see any other emails from GoDaddy with this subject line. I also searched another line from that email, and I see the company previously used “Final Notice: You’re losing” as the start of the subject line with similar terminology. I have to assume they are testing different subject lines to get attention and hope for a renewal. In this case, there was no actual billing failure as I chose to let this domain name expire.
There have been times where I truly did experience some sort of billing failure at GoDaddy. My credit card didn’t get processed for an unknown reason, and the payment was resubmitted successfully. I don’t think GoDaddy should use an inaccurate but alarmist subject for a renewal notice.
I’ve gotten several of these hysterical emails from GoDaddy as well. The first one definitely caused my pulse to quicken. But then I realized it was just a GoDaddy scam. You’re right, they annoying. They’re also unethical.
TopnotchDomains.com is yours?
TopnotchSites.com is available on Dynadot with bin $99
Just in case
My first thought was that it was a phishing email, but I guess you checked that.
PS: Your contact form labels multiple of my valid email addresses (very short, new gTLD) as invalid.