stockrowWhat it does
GoDaddy helps small businesses, individuals and other organizations establish an identity online, reach customers and sell products or services. It sells domain names, website-building and hosting services, email, marketing tools, security and payment products. Its headquarters are in Tempe, Arizona, and Amanpal Bhutani is its chief executive officer.
A customer might start by registering a domain name, then use GoDaddy to create a website and a domain-specific email address. The company also offers tools for promoting a business, accepting payments online or in person, and managing orders and inventory. Its customers include website designers and developers who build sites for others, as well as domain investors and companies that manage domain portfolios.
GoDaddy Airo uses AI to help with tasks such as finding a domain name, creating a logo and building a website. GoDaddy made Airo its flagship website product in 2026, replacing Websites + Marketing for most new customers. Websites + Marketing remains in use by existing customers.
The company also operates a domain aftermarket, where buyers and sellers can transact in previously registered names, and provides registry technology to organizations that run domain extensions. Its Agent Name Service is designed to help identify and verify AI-powered agents. GoDaddy Guides provide customer assistance by phone and through digital channels.
How it makes money
GoDaddy generates most of its revenue from product subscriptions. Terms range from monthly to multi-annual contracts of up to ten years, depending on the product. It typically collects payment when a contract begins and recognizes revenue over the contract term. Revenue is recorded net of refunds.
Total revenue: $4,951.1 million in FY2025; $1.3 billion in Q3 2026.
Core Platform includes domain registrations and renewals, aftermarket domain sales, domain protection, hosting and security products when they are not bundled with proprietary software. Domain customers can renew registrations and buy additional protection. The company also operates an aftermarket for previously registered domains and provides registry services behind domain extensions.
Applications and Commerce, or A&C, includes website-building products, GoDaddy’s commerce software, third-party email and productivity solutions, and certain products sold in bundles. Website plans are priced according to their features. GoDaddy Payments enables merchants in the U.S. and Canada to accept payments, while point-of-sale devices and online-store tools support in-person and online selling.
Airo customers can purchase subscriptions and additional credit packs. Customers can also upgrade to a higher subscription tier that includes access to more credits. GoDaddy said that Airo bookings in Q3 2026 more than offset the effect of migrations from its legacy website products; almost all of that incremental contribution came from existing customer migrations.
In FY2025, A&C revenue rose $236.0 million, or 14.3%, driven by adoption of subscription products. Core revenue rose $141.9 million, or 4.9%, helped by domain registration, add-on and aftermarket revenue.
| Segment | Revenue, FY2025 | Share | Change on the year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core platform | $3.1 billion | 61.8% | 4.86% |
| A&C | $1.9 billion | 38.2% | 14.3% |
Customers and how it sells
GoDaddy serves 20.4 million customers. Its largest customer group consists mostly of microbusinesses and non-commercial ventures. Most of these independent customers have fewer than five employees, and most identify themselves as having little or no technology or design skills.
Its second-largest group, WebPros, includes freelance designers, developers and agency teams that build and manage websites for others. Domain investors buy and sell portfolios of registered names. GoDaddy also serves other registrars, registry operators and corporate domain portfolio owners.
Customers can buy directly from GoDaddy, while resellers also distribute its products. The company provides domain registry technology to registrars and registry operators, giving those customers a wholesale or back-end service rather than only an end-customer product.
In FY2025, U.S. revenue was $3.3 billion, or 67.1% of revenue, while international revenue was $1.6 billion, or 32.9%. GoDaddy offers country-code domain extensions for customers who want names associated with a particular geographic market.
More than half of customers had at least 2 paid products in Q3 2026, and GoDaddy said retention remained above 85%. For FY2025, greater than 89% of revenue came from customers who were also customers in the prior year.
| Region | Revenue, FY2025 | Share | Change on the year |
|---|---|---|---|
| U.S. | $3.3 billion | 67.1% | 6.77% |
| International | $1.6 billion | 32.9% | 11.4% |
Suppliers and costs
GoDaddy’s direct costs include domain registration fees, fees for third-party productivity applications, commissions and payment processing fees. Registry agreements establish domain costs, which can vary by domain extension. GoDaddy pays domain costs at purchase for the life of a subscription and recognizes those costs over the customer contract.
The company resells Microsoft 365 email and productivity products and offers other email plans through partnerships with Titan and Open Xchange. It operates shared hosting in owned data centers and leased co-located facilities. Technology and development spending includes employee costs and the operation of data centers and systems infrastructure; marketing includes third-party campaigns, employees and affiliate commissions. Customer care costs primarily consist of personnel costs.
GoDaddy has been migrating toward cloud-based infrastructure and reduced some data-center, systems, rent and utility costs in 2025. It said Airo has a lower gross margin than internally developed products such as Websites + Marketing. Airo’s AI inference costs are tied to token usage, while subscription revenue is recognized over time. GoDaddy is testing open-weight AI models in its own data centers and has built Airo to switch between models.
- Revenue$5.0B
- Cost of revenue−$1.8B
- Research and development−$841.5M
- Selling, general and administrative−$764.0M
- Other operating costs−$416.8M
- Operating income$1.1B
Competitive position
GoDaddy competes in a fragmented market for domains, websites, commerce and related services. Shopify, Block and Stripe compete with its Applications and Commerce products. Namecheap, Cloudflare and Hostinger compete with Core Platform products. Wix, Squarespace, Google, Amazon and Microsoft compete across both areas; GoDaddy also partners commercially with some companies with which it competes.
GoDaddy managed approximately 81 million domains as of December 31, 2025. The company stated that this represented approximately 21% of the approximately 387 million domain names registered worldwide at that date. Approximately 94% of its customers had purchased a domain from it as of that date.
Our reading: Domain scale and customer relationships are meaningful advantages: a domain can bring a customer into GoDaddy’s product range, and its aftermarket connects buyers and sellers. The evidence does not make those advantages exclusive, given the number of named domain competitors.
Our reading: The combination of multiple products and customer support can support retention. GoDaddy says customers with more of its products retain at higher rates, but competitors also offer overlapping services and customers can choose individual alternatives.
GoDaddy expects more competition from traditional and non-traditional companies as AI technology evolves. It has also observed sharper industry discounting on domains and free offers for hosting.
| Competitor | Where they compete | Threat (our reading) |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify | Applications and commerce | High |
| Block | Applications and commerce | Medium |
| Stripe | Applications and commerce | Medium |
| Namecheap | Core Platform products and services | Medium |
| Cloudflare | Core Platform products and services | Medium |
| Hostinger | Core Platform products and services | Medium |
| Wix | Core Platform and Applications and Commerce | High |
| Squarespace | Core Platform and Applications and Commerce | High |
Growth opportunities
GoDaddy’s growth initiatives include selling more products to existing customers, improving renewal and conversion, developing AI-enabled tools, and expanding commerce. The company says its addressable market includes small businesses as well as individuals and organizations such as universities, charities and hobbyists.
Airo is central to the current product transition. Its annualized bookings run rate more than doubled to over $100 million in Q3 2026. Airo became the default option in the domains purchase path late in that quarter, and GoDaddy is shifting marketing spending and adding brand-awareness investment. The company says it intends to add more marketing and commerce capabilities to Airo.
GoDaddy has also expanded agent-friendly application programming interfaces, or APIs, across domains, hosting, professional email and commerce. These allow developers and AI agents to work with services through software. GoDaddy plans to test new bundles as customers increasingly use coding assistants and agent interfaces to find and buy products.
In commerce, GoDaddy offers online stores, payment acceptance and point-of-sale devices. It also introduced GoDaddy Capital and Instant Payouts in 2025. Its Agent Name Service provides a way to register and verify AI agents; GoDaddy says it may eventually support additional services and partnerships around agent identity and management.
For 2026, GoDaddy expects revenue toward the higher end of its $5.215 billion to $5.255 billion range, with approximately 10% A&C revenue growth and approximately 4% Core Platform revenue growth.
- $3.8BFY2021
- $4.1BFY2022
- $4.3BFY2023
- $4.6BFY2024
- $5.0BFY2025
- $5.2BFY2026 guidance
Structural risks
- Customer demand and renewals: GoDaddy’s results depend on increasing sales to new and existing customers. Changes in small-business conditions, subscription renewal rates, product satisfaction or the perceived value of its offerings can affect results.
- Competition and AI: The market is competitive, and GoDaddy expects additional competition as AI and large language models evolve. The company has observed sharper domain discounting and free hosting offers. Airo also has a lower gross margin than some of its internally developed software products.
- Systems and security: GoDaddy is exposed to system failures and capacity constraints. Product defects, errors or failures can affect customers’ ability to use its services.
- Domain and regulatory requirements: Domain registration depends on maintaining accreditation and relationships with ICANN and country-code authorities. Privacy, consumer protection, payments and AI rules also apply or are evolving, and GoDaddy expects privacy compliance to become more burdensome and costly.
- International operations: Foreign operations bring risks from different laws, accreditation requirements, currency movements, language and customer-care needs, tax regimes and political or economic conditions.
Bottom line
Our reading
Our reading: GoDaddy is a subscription-led business built around domain relationships, with opportunities to sell website, email and commerce services to the same customers. Its retention and prior-customer revenue support that model, while the breadth of competing offerings limits exclusivity. [item1] [item7]
Our reading: Airo extends the product range but also changes its economics: early bookings are growing as customers migrate, while AI inference costs and lower gross margins add pressure during the transition. [call_prepared]