I had quite a few comments in response to my article about Go Daddy CEO Bob Parsons’ vacation to Zimbabwe where he shot and killed a “problem” elephant. I wrote much of the post below last week, but I opted to post it at a later date since feelings were still very raw, and I wanted to make a point while keeping the elephant situation on the sideline.

On mainstream websites as well as on domain-related websites and blogs, many people have posted comments in reply to Bob Parsons’ video of him shooting a “problem” elephant in Zimbabwe. The vast majority of comments were highly critical of his actions, which I of course don’t condone and don’t wish to comment on in this blog post.

A number of people, both domain industry professionals as well as regular domain name owners, have said they plan to transfer their domain names from Go Daddy as a result of the actions of the company CEO. In fact, a poll on my blog indicated more than 50 people said they moved or will move domain names from Go Daddy because of the video.  In my opinion, this may be a bad business decision.

GoDaddy is the largest domain registrar in the world, and the company has 24/7 US-based customer support. The company employs thousands of people in a few states, and you don’t usually hear bad things about its technical support. Many individuals and small businesses rely on the company’s call centers for small and large domain name and website issues, and another registrar may not be able to provide the support (both in terms of expertise and round the clock care) that Go Daddy offers.

Moving to a new registrar may cause problems for a business, including business continuity issues. Companies may have to re-load websites for hosting, change url forwarding, re-set up and configure email accounts, create/move databases, pay for new privacy services, and work with a new account representative who might not be familiar with the person or business.  This could lead to problems that aren’t really worth making a point about your dislike of Parsons’ actions.

There are some great domain registrars that are as good or better than Go Daddy. For instance Name.com and Dynadot are two companies I’ve only really heard good things about. However, a domain registrar change can be problematic for a business.

I understand the emotional issue with the hunt. I have a dog and don’t like to see or hear about animals being killed pointlessly or for someone else’s pleasure. In fact, it really pisses me off when people do bad things to innocent animals. However, it might not make sense from a business perspective just because you’re angry with the CEO of a company. Think about the ramifications before making an important business decision like this.