Canvas Dreams gets a piece of the GoDaddy exodus
By Christina Williams
Editor, Sustainable Business Oregon
A media firestorm erupted this month as news that the CEO of GoDaddy.com Inc., a well-known Web-hosting service, was unapologetic as a video of him shooting an elephant in Zimbabwe made the rounds online, raising the hackles of both conservationists and animal lovers.
It also opened the door for competing businesses to lure away customers, an opportunity not lost on Portland-based Canvas Dreams LLC.
The certified Benefit Corporation, which advertises its use of wind power to keep its servers running, offered a coupon code to potential customers offering to transfer Web domains from Arizona-based GoDaddy — the first one at no cost.
Several hundred domain names have come over to Canvas Dreams as a result with more change requests coming in every day, said David Anderson, principal of Canvas Dreams.
"We had no idea the response would be what it was," Anderson said. "It has taken on a life of its own."
Anderson called GoDaddy's handling of the elephant incident a "corporate social responsibility nightmare."
Canvas Dreams acquired Portland-based Taproot Hosting at the end of last year.
Canvas Dreams isn't the biggest beneficiary of the GoDaddy exodus. Namecheap, another domain service, said it acquired more than 20,000 new customer domains as a result of the scandal.
As one Twitter user put it in a thank-you note to Canvas Dreams: "It was the elephant in the room that made me switch."
christinawilliams@bizjournals.com | 503.219.3438
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