GoDaddy to close both Austin offices and lay off hundreds of workers as pandemic impacts business

The tech company GoDaddy announced Wednesday it would be laying off more than 300 workers, including many in Austin, and closing both of its offices there as well.

The change comes as the company, which offers website-hosting services as well as social media management for businesses, has experienced revenue losses in the latter of the two offerings, formally known as GoDaddy Social. The office closings and layoffs were announced in an email to employees from the company's CEO Aman Bhutani.

Overall, GoDaddy's financial expectations for the second quarter have actually gone up despite the pandemic. This follows a trend seen across many tech companies in recent months, which have been able to maintain a firm economic standing even as other sectors have fallen drastically. Nevertheless, the decline in revenue from GoDaddy Social, which is heavily based in Austin, created the need for steep cuts to that part of the company.

"Even as our overall business continues to perform well and we are updating our revenue guidance for Q2 as evidence of that, we are still facing challenges in U.S. outbound sales, including GoDaddy Social sales," Bhutani said in the email, which was posted to the company's website. "The outbound sales teams have made many creative efforts over the last three months to reverse the impacts of COVID-19, but the results of these improvements are still far below what we need for the operations to be sustainable."

Shortly after announcing the layoffs, the company issued a statement saying its second-quarter revenue would exceed previous expectations by 1%. Purchases of website domains and marketing services led the rise, the company says.

The layoffs also come just a year and a half after GoDaddy purchased Main Street Hub, a social media management company based in Austin, for $125 million.