Antitrust: GoDaddy under fire for banning DNS automation tool in favor of its own

Updated GoDaddy is facing an antitrust lawsuit over claims it unfairly and underhandedly blackballed a smaller outfit's DNS automation tool in favor of its own apparently inferior product. 

Entri, which offers a tool for automatically connecting SaaS applications to custom domains via DNS configurations, said [PDF] in a lawsuit, filed in federal court in Virginia, USA, that GoDaddy initially embraced the success of Entri Connect before abruptly reversing course in favor of forcing folks to use GoDaddy's own DNS record update tool Domain Connect.

"Shortly after Entri Connect's launch, GoDaddy saw the value of Entri Connect and the two companies entered a partnership together," Entri's lawyers said in the complaint, submitted this month. "But as Entri grew in popularity, GoDaddy saw an opportunity to use its tremendous size to its advantage."

Entri alleges that GoDaddy changed its stance on the partnership late last year, first telling customers that Entri Connect could no longer be used to update GoDaddy-registered domains, and then updating its terms of use to block Entri from updating DNS settings. 

GoDaddy also "implemented a series of technological measures designed to cause Entri Connect to malfunction when used by GoDaddy customers," the suit alleges. 

In place of Entri Connect, GoDaddy pushed its own Domain Connect, which Entri alleges is far less sophisticated and easy to use than its own tool. 

Domain Connect was created by GoDaddy in 2016 and is now billed as an open standard for anyone to implement into their applications. Far from being a full-fledged automation tool, Entri alleges Domain Connect is "just a protocol" that has far less reach than Entri Connect. 

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"While the Domain Connect protocol may currently be used to update DNS records with only four DNS providers actively using the protocol, Entri Connect may be used with more than forty," Entri said in the suit. The company also alleged that a GoDaddy representative admitted that "third-party software applications preferred to offer their end users Entri Connect over Domain Connect 80 percent of the time." 

Entri began life in 2021 - well after Domain Connect was initiated by GoDaddy. 

All of those allegations, says Entri, add up to GoDaddy abusing its market power to disadvantage a competitor, which it says is a violation of America's Sherman Antitrust Act. 

"Customers of GoDaddy's domain registration services are being improperly denied access to the full suite of choices when it comes to automated domain configuration," Entri argued, adding that it has lost sales, configuration volume, and revenue as a result of GoDaddy's move. 

Entri further alleges that GoDaddy has accused it of breaking the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by accessing the registrar's systems, violated GoDaddy's API terms of use, and committed a violation of US trademark law. Along with standard requests for injunctive and monetary relief, Entri is asking a jury to declare it hasn't committed any of that wrongdoing. 

GoDaddy told us it doesn't comment on pending litigation, and we haven't heard back from Entri. ®

Updated at 1211 UTC on July 17, 2024, to add

A spokesperson at Entri sent us the following statement: