Go Daddy 2015 Annual Report Download - page 16

Table of Contents
Domain Name Add-Ons . Domain name add-ons are features a customer can add to a domain name registration. Our domain name privacy product allows our
customers to register a domain name on an "unlisted" basis. This product helps prevent privacy intrusions, helps deter domain related spam and allows our
customers to confidentially secure a domain for an unannounced product, service or idea. Domain name add-ons are typically purchased concurrently with domain
name registrations and have minimal costs associated with their delivery.
A ftermarket . We operate the world’s largest domain aftermarket which processes aftermarket, or secondary, domain name sales. Our aftermarket platform,
which we substantially supplemented through our acquisition of Afternic in 2013, is designed to enable the seamless purchase and sale of an already registered
domain name through an online auction, an offer and counter-offer transaction or a "buy now" transaction. In 2015 , we acquired approximately 278,000 premium
domain names to increase the inventory available to our customers. In January 2016, we launched the GoDaddy Investor mobile application to help investors watch
and bid on domains at auction and stay on top of their current bids, all from their mobile device. We operate a cross-registrar network that automates transaction
execution across registrars thereby reducing the time required to complete a transaction. We receive a percentage of the sales price for each domain sold.
Hosting and Presence
We offer a variety of hosting and presence products enabling our customers to create and manage their digital identity, or in the case of Web Pros, the digital
identities of their end-customers. As of December 31, 2015 , we hosted approximately 10 million websites. In 2015 , 2014 and 2013 , we derived approximately
37% , 37% and 34% of our total revenue, respectively, from sales of our hosting and presence products.
Our primary hosting products are:
Shared Website Hosting . The term "shared hosting" refers to the housing of multiple websites on the same server and is our most popular hosting product.
We operate, maintain and support shared website hosting in our owned and operated data center and our leased co-located data center facilities using either Linux
or Windows operating systems. We currently offer three tiers of shared website hosting plans to suit the needs and resources of our customers, all of which use
industry standard cPanel or Parallels Plesk control panels. We also bundle our hosting plans with a variety of applications and products such as web analytics and
SSL certificates.
Website Hosting on Virtual Dedicated Servers and Dedicated Servers . Our virtual dedicated and dedicated servers provide customers with greater control
and higher performance than our shared hosting plans. Our virtual dedicated hosting offering utilizes software to partition a single physical server allowing it to
function as multiple servers. Our dedicated server offering provides customers with a server reserved exclusively for their use. Both of these products are designed
to meet the requirements of customers with more advanced technical capabilities and needs by providing the customer with full control of and electronic access to
their server. We offer customers the ability to tailor their plan based on a range of hardware, performance, storage, bandwidth, operating system and control
features.
Managed Hosting . With our managed hosting product, we set up, monitor, maintain, secure and patch the dedicated server for the customer so our managed
hosting customers get the benefits of a dedicated server without the responsibility of actually running the server. We can also install and maintain a variety of web
applications such as WordPress, Joomla, Magento and Gallery on behalf of our customers upon request. We offer a variety of managed hosting plans tailored to
our customers’ needs as well as our Expert Hands offering, which provides additional custom support services at an hourly rate.
Security . Our security products include SSL certificates and malware scanners. According to Netcraft, we are the world’s third largest provider of SSL
certificates. An SSL certificate validates a customer’s website identity and encrypts online transactional information, such as credit card information, and
communications sent to or by the website. We offer a variety of SSL certificates all of which provide high-grade, 256-bit encryption. Our SSL certificate offerings
include multiple domain SSLs and "wildcard" SSL certificates, which secure a singular website URL as well as subdomains on that URL (e.g.
protectmyvisitors.com and cart.protectmyvisitors.com). We also offer "code signing certificates" designed to prove the identity of software authors and validate
that the software has not been tampered with since its original distribution.
Cloud Services and Cloud Applications . Our cloud servers are a non-managed cloud product built on our OpenStack platform. Cloud servers allow our
customers to easily create and manage servers on their own and pay for only the resources they
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