Why I Fired Podium But Kept GoDaddy (Yes, Really)

1. GoDaddy: The Unlikely Workhorse

It is fashionable to hate GoDaddy. In the developer world, admitting you use their site builder is like admitting you cook steak in a microwave.

I don't care. I actually like GoDaddy a lot.

The mechanism is simple: Speed. If you need something quick and dirty, their baked-in builder is superb. You are locked into a cookie-cutter template situation, sure, but for a local business, nobody cares about your custom CSS animations. They care if the phone number is clickable.

The Service Layer

I have had websites hacked. I have had DNS propagation fail. And any time I was in a situation where Godaddy was being utilized, their support was bar-none some of the best of any tech company out there. Part of their business model was understanding that there is a market for people who just need that 1:1 guidance. They're smart enough to get to this point, maybe they just need to be pointed in the right direction. Every time I called GoDaddy, the hold time was low, the staff were helpful and friendly, and were almost always competent enough to fix whatever issue I was facing.

If you are on a shoestring budget, however, the costs can start stacking up quickly, forever. But the total package is competent. The "Industrial" verdict: It works.

2. Podium: The $1,500 Math Problem

Podium has always been my favorite tool mechanically.

When I saw the demo years ago, I was sold immediately. It consolidates the chaos. Review replies, social messages, SMS text-ins, automated review requests—it all flows into one feed.

Their product dev team even wrote custom code for me back in the day to track Google Ads conversions. They are a legitimate technical powerhouse. With their new AI features, they are arguably the ultimate marketing communications company.

Then came the bill.

The problem isn't the tech. It’s the unit economics.

The Scale Issue

Podium runs roughly $300 to $500 per month. That sounds fine until you read the fine print: Per location.

If you run a garage door company with 5 Google Business Profiles to cover your service area, look at the math:

5 Locations x $300 = $1,500 / month

For a high-volume business receiving dozens of leads a day, I calculated that it pays for itself. Easy. But for a low-volume shop getting two messages a day? It is overkill. It is a Ferrari for a grocery run.

I loved the tool. I hated the invoice. We stripped it out.

3. CallRail: The Disorganized Genius

CallRail is the frustration of potential.

The data is there. The transcriptions are accurate. The flow into HubSpot is perfect. CallRail + HubSpot is a lethal combination for attribution.

But they seem lost in their own product suite.

The UI Failure

We are moving into the era of AI sentiment analysis. CallRail has this, but the UX is painful. To get a full analysis of a call, I have to:

1. Go into the individual call.
2. Click three different buttons.
3. Wait.

There is no way to quantify that data in bulk. You can't easily export the sentiment trends. It feels like a feature tacked on by a team that doesn't actually use the dashboard.

They need to fix their offline conversion tracking and unify their product management. Right now, it feels like three different companies glued together. But when it works, the data is gold. CallRail + my custom stack is going to be even better.