Are you a business owner or IT manager struggling to migrate your Microsoft 365 account away from GoDaddy?This guide offers a step-by-step solution for defederating your GoDaddy Office 365 tenantand achieving full control.Defederation eliminates the need for GoDaddy support involvement,preserves user accounts,and minimizes downtime during the process.
GoDaddy's Microsoft 365 solution is a stripped-down version GoDaddy provides by default with a custom admin console. Because it is not a standard tenant as you would get directly from Microsoft, there are some limitations.
We can see the default option is far from ideal. Defederation eliminates these issues and gives us full control of our Microsoft 365 tenant.
A migration is not required
GoDaddy Support does not need to be involved
User accounts are preserved
There is no downtime
Key Steps to Defederate GoDaddy Office 365:
Prepare Your End Users
Acquire Tenant Admin Access in GoDaddy (this must be the very first account created)
Eliminate GoDaddy Federation
Reset User Passwords
Add a CSP/NCE Provider like LeewardCloud.io
Integrate Licensing into the Account
Revoke GoDaddy's Delegated Admin Status
Terminate GoDaddy Subscription (DO NOT DO THIS UNTIL YOU'VE REMOVED ALL GODADDY ACCESS)
Prepare Your End Users
Defederation necessitates password resets for users to access their accounts. Consider creating a password list to distribute or collecting passwords beforehand. Alternatively, set temporary passwords after defederation for users to change later.
Establish a defederation date and time, ideally during non-business hours to minimize disruptions. Inform end users accordingly.
Prepare documentation to assist users with activation prompts in Office apps and Outlook during the license transition to CSP.
For Office apps: File > Account > Sign Out > Sign In
In Outlook, users will be prompted to re-enter their new password after it has been changed.
Become a Tenant Admin in GoDaddy
To defederate the tenant, you must gain access to the true Global Admin, as the initial admin user is redirected to the GoDaddy portal when attempting to access the admin tab on Office.com.
Sign in to Portal.Azure.com with the admin user created during account setup
Click the three lines in the top left corner
Select Azure Active Directory and then Users
Locate a user labeled with admin@leewardcloud.onmicrosoft.com (e.g., admin@leewardcloud.onmicrosoft.com)
Click on the user and reset their password (skip this step if you already have access)
After obtaining the temporary password, follow these steps:
Open an incognito window in your browser and visit office.com
Sign in using the username and temporary password
Set a new password
Now you have a user capable of running the necessary PowerShell commands in subsequent steps.
Caution
Before proceeding with this next step, ensure all users have the new passwords, as they won't be able to log in without them.
Remove Federation with GoDaddy
All domains within the tenant must be defederated from GoDaddy.
Write-Host "Checking for MSOnline module..." $Module = Get-Module -Name "MSOnline" -ListAvailableif ($Module -eq $null) {Write-Host "MSOnline module not found, installing MSOnline"Install-Module -name MSOnline}Connect-MsolService#Enter the Admin credentials from "Become a tenant Admin in GoDaddy"Get-MsolDomain#See that the domain is “federated”#Set-MsolDomainAuthentication -DomainName "" -Authentication Managed#After this is complete you will get a new commandline. You can run Get-MsolDomain and the domain is now “managed”.#Resources:
Reset User Passwords
You can reset passwords manually for each user or use a PowerShell script to bulk update passwords from a CSV file. If you prefer to reset them manually, follow these steps:
Log in to office.com as the admin obtained in Section B
Now that the tenant is defederated, you can access the Admin tile and navigate to the Users section as usual
Add a NCE/CSP Microsoft 365 licensing partner like LeewardCloud.io
LeewardCloud and most Microsoft 365 licensing partners will likely take care of these steps on your behalf. Once the tenant is defederated, follow these steps to add an NCE/CSP provider and provision licensing:
Use the delegated admin link provided by the CSP provider to establish a relationship. If not already logged in, sign in with the Global Admin credentials and accept the relationship.
Refresh the page to view the new CSP listing.
Managing Licenses
If not changing the subscription, simply provision the same number of seats as before, remove the delegated admin, and cancel with GoDaddy. No other action is needed, and there will be no downtime for users.
If changing user subscriptions (e.g., from Business Standard to Business Premium), perform the following steps:
Order licensing from the CSP
View the provisioned licensing in the customer's 365 Tenant under Billing > Your Products
Go to Users > Active Users and bulk assign the new CSP licensing, unassign the GoDaddy licensing
Remove GoDaddy as the Delegated Admin
Cancel the GoDaddy subscription in the GoDaddy admin portal (WARNING: DO NOT CANCEL YOUR GODADDY SUBSCRIPTIONS UNTIL YOU'VE REMOVED THEIR ACCESS TO YOUR TENANT)
By following these steps,you can successfully defederate your GoDaddy Office 365 tenant and achieve full control over your Microsoft 365 environment.Now you're free to migrate your data to a new tenant with minimal disruptions and complete ownership.Partnering with a Cloud Solution Provider like LeewardCloud.io can simplify the process and ensure a smooth transition.
