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Alternative Registrars to GoDaddy?
Futurepower(R) wrote in to ask for your suggestions about reliable domain name registrars. With GoDaddy, the one-time favorite registrar, suspending domains based on the wishes of the Irish High Court, and 'requests' from MySpace, is it any wonder that people are starting to lose faith in it? A word of warning from the last article linked in the last sentence: "(GoDaddy) reserves the right to terminate your access to the services at any time, without notice, for any reason whatsoever." Chilling words from a domain name registrar. So what registrars would you recommend for people looking to replace GoDaddy, and how would you suggest they go about transferring their domains in a hassle-free manner?
http://gomommy.com/
Daddy abducted Mommy.
Well, there's a small annoyance, that if you get a domain, they default-direct it to one of those generic squat pages until the first change perks down, and it has an expire time of about a week. So rotate your dns servers in that case.
Any rate, I bought from them through a reseller, who a friend of mine was using (I covered his domain renewal, then bought a domain of my own), other than this, seems to be not bad, not much trickier than the dyndns way and a lot cheaper than buying a domain through them or through my ISP, the $9.96 I paid was prolly comparable to GoDaddy...or not much more...
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
I was having some issues with GoDaddy and have been slowly migrating my domains to DynDNS.com. I'd used them in the past for dynamic DNS stuff (heck, what Linux user didn't at some point?), but didn't realize until recently that they were a full blown registrar. Their website is easy to use, their technical staff are knowledgeable, helpful and polite, and I've had an excellent experience with them so far. They're more expensive than GoDaddy ($15/year for most domains), but I think the extra service and attention to detail is worth it. I'd rather pay a little extra and support a good company.
http://www.1and1.com/ And their hosting plans aren't bad either
I'm still paying the unbelievable price of $35/year with NetSol, and was just about to effect a mass transfer to GoDaddy last week; certain events have gotten me to stop and think: NetSol is highway-robbery, but they're stable as hell.
...something about networks. Hm. Network Solutions, I think. Check it out, netsol.com.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
Just use your ip address! It's like a phone number, and people memorize those all the time.
I used their free dynamic services, and now they've earned my business long-term. Great registrar, no gimmicks, no games. Even if it's a few dollars a year above some of the other places, it's absolutely worth it.
I've been extremely happy with joker.com. They're not the cheapest (if/when the US dollar makes gains on the Euro it might work out better), but they're reliable. I don't know what else to say, as I've been using them so long, and been so happy, that I haven't bothered to look elsewhere.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
I am affiliated with enom... because I have had good experiences with them, you might too
It depends on what you are doing. If you don't own any domains someone might accuse you of squatting on, GoDaddy is quite stable. I have a number of domains registered through them and have never had any issues. Even if that might be an issue I'm not sure GoDaddy is quite so complacent as is made out.
They make it a little more cumbersome to order a domain than you might like, but once you have the domain I think the managemnet tools are OK - though I've never used other registrars very heavily before I moved to GoDaddy.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
For what it's worth, a group of us on Web Hosting Talk were chatting about the Godaddy problems, and someone from Dynadot came by to support Godaddy and state that they do the same. You can see the start of that here:
9 379#post4265087
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=56
So if you're leaving Godaddy for their interference with domain names, then you surely want to also avoid Dynadot.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
You REALLY have to ask alternatives for GoDaddy? That's some hell of a marketing.
Hell, personally, i wouldn't touch GoDaddy with a long pole even! And always thought that way.
Reason is obvious: They don't convey trust and technological excellency.
But what they have apparently got right is marketing, wouldn't have thought one would need to EVEN ask for alternatives to
GoDaddy and yet know what registrar stands for.
And no, i am not trolling or trying to be flamebait.
As for alternative places to register domains, some are:
- Enom
- Joker
- Mydomain
- DirectI
- RegisterFly
and huge amount of big players i can't remember right now
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
...cheap enough, stable enough.
www.stargateinc.com (I don't work for them...)
-sid
I have so far had good luck with register4less, http://uf.r4l.com/. I mainly started using them as a way to support User Friendly.
I had an interesting problem with GoDaddy. I had a number of domains registered with Domain Direct, and had good luck with them, though I started to find them expensive, so I started registering domains through GoDaddy. I had a domain expire that was originally on GoDaddy, but didn't really care about it, then about 8 months later I wanted a domain to do some testing, and figured I'd re-new my old domain. When I tried to renew through GoDaddy, they said that it was on hold, and it would cost $$$ extra to release it, tried some other domain registers, and they said GoDaddy had locked the name. A month later, I checked on it using register4less.com, and it was available, so I renewed through them. I then checked a different old domain name on Register4less, and Domain Direct, both showed the domain available. Went to GoDaddy, and it was held, due to it being expired, and would need extra $$$ to purchase it.
I will never use GoDaddy to register another domain again.
----
gkg.net
I have been using them for years. They are cheap, their website is good enough, and never had a problem with them. In the beginning when I talked to their tech support for something they were very friendly and helpful.
Havoc Penington, the bane of my Linux desktop.
I use http://ipower.com/ Haven't had any hassles or anything with them. So far so good.
http://www.namepros.com/registerindex.php
f ree-speech+friendly/2100-1025_3-6155614.html
and
http://news.com.com/Survey+Are+domain+registrars+
I've had great luck with Directnic. They also offer cheap hosting if all you need for a while is a placeholder or brochure-ware sites. I don't think they do anything with CGI or databases or anything dynamic, though.
Melbourne IT, where our slogan is, "All your Panix belong to us".
Disclaimer: I work for Melbourne IT, so have to post Anonymously.
Does others have this issue, and what registrar would you recommend?
www.enameco.com, they even have a "register nameserver" button, cool.
I'm slowly moving new domains that reach renewal to Network Solutions. Go Daddy was great for a number of years and then became questionable. But after a domain expired w/o notice, I paid redemption fee they wanted, and after the waiting period had to petition them to refund the redemtion fees because some mystery registrar in Lebanon grabbed it "too soon" and they didn't know it, I gave up on their games. Network Solutions is more expensive but has great phone service, doesn't spam me for the Marine Corps and other odd causes, and is very solid all around.
Gandi at www.gandi.net is a French registrar that is fantastic, and has the best contract of any registrar. No bullshit suspensions or any of that nonsense.
Gandi is an excellent place to go. They aren't as cheap as GoDaddy, but they are a heck of a lot friendlier to deal with, and they allow you a lot of flexibility. They have a new XML API, and they support a lot of causes, including Debian.
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
- godhatesfags.com is registered through Network Solutions
- nambla.org is registered through Tucows
You get the idea."Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ -- these guys are the best. Check out their site, you'll understand.
Last I checked Gandi.net offered by far the best terms. Not in terms of money (close, though!) but in terms of recognising the customers rights.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
There's a list of registars at http://www.internic.net/alpha.html if you'd really like to compare. Myself, I tranferred a domain away from GoDaddy, and didn't have any particular problems (I transferred partly because I could get a better deal elsewhere, and partly because I don't want my domains all over the place). I currently use DreamHost and 000Domains, both of which seem decent enough.
My Blog: http://nic.dreamhost.com/
I used to be with NetSol, until they started having really bad security issues allowing for domain hijacking a few years ago. I looked around and wound up with Register, because at the time they had one of the most secure systems for changing information, not to mention they had a great coupon at the time :) I ended up buying multiple years for each of 9 domains. Since then, I suspect a few other registrars have started up that are good, but I haven't bothered to look around, yet, since I don't need to renew until 2011. I personally would like to stay with Register, but $35/year/domain is too much for me, especially since I have a list of more domains I want to add. I'll want a bulk rate from my next registrar.
Be sure you find one with a commitment to security first and foremost, and that will let you sign for the transfer and then do the work of contacting GoDaddy for you. Oh, and GD probably has something set up to block transfer requests for your domain; you will need to log in and turn that off, before you launch with the new registrar.
Get off my launchpad!
Whatever you do, no matter how good a deal they offer, NEVER register a domain through Yahoo.
I had problems with my Yahoo Domains account's email (web service was fine) - basically 1 out of every 5 emails sent from my Yahoo purchased domain's account would not be delivered to Yahoo or Hotmail addresses. I'd get a message 2 days later saying hotmail.com couldn't be found, or yahoo.com couldn't be found. I went back and forth with Yahoo support. Eventually they told me the addresses of my friends (the Yahoo ones, at least) didn't exist or weren't valid Yahoo accounts. These were people who regularly send me mail. So I made a test free Yahoo account of my own and got the same result - sometimes mail I sent to the account didn't go through and I didn't get any clue that something was wrong until a nondelivery message came 2 days later. Again customer support told me the address didn't exist, so I sent them email FROM that address, and then they completely stopped responding to all customer support mails I sent from that point on. I was amazed.
So I decided to switch my domain to Godaddy, the registrar I have been using recently. I made a transfer purchase order through Godaddy's site and all I needed was the authorization code for my domain from Yahoo.
And thus began the hell that is trying to transfer a domain away from Yahoo.
Buried deep down in Yahoo's Website Services help pages were the directions to contact Melbourne IT, the registrar Yahoo uses to purchase domains. (Yes, Yahoo is not a registrar.) I emailed Melbourne IT asking for my code. They said to contact the reseller. Yahoo sent me email that I should contact Melbourne IT. Another person at Yahoo said I should cancel my Yahoo Domains account and they'd send me the information I needed to login to Melbourne IT's site and get my code. This sounded dubious.
But searching online revealed that's what other people had ended up doing. So I tried to change my domain's contact email address to a temp gmail address, so that when Yahoo canceled my account they wouldn't send email to the just-canceled email service. Yahoo's contact address change form returned, "Unable to modify contact information at this time. Please try again later," no matter when I tried using it. Finally I got someone at Yahoo to change the address for me. I cancelled my Yahoo account.
True to their word, Yahoo sent the login information for Melbourne IT to my domain's contact address after closing my website services account. I logged into Melbourne IT's site and there was no way to request the authorization code other than entering a basic help ticket. I did, and got no response. After a few days I sent another request. Again, no response.
One day I was reading complaints on message boards about Melbourne IT and saw a link to a login URL I hadn't seen before. I logged in there and had access to to my domain's code! Apparently Melbourne IT's support pages are partitioned with no links between each other... I sent the auth code to Godaddy and they began the transfer. Four days later, Melbourne IT responded to my original request for the authorization codes.
(I have omitted the dozens of useless exchanges with tech support people asking me for information I had already given to one of their coworkers. There is nothing more frustrating - and Yahoo was really bad at this - of starting over in a process because the person who responds to your message today doesn't understand what their coworker began two days previous.)
Total time to transfer a domain from Yahoo Domains: 1 1/2 months
I had been using GKG.Net, as it was a Slashdot darling in this kind of story 5 or 6 years ago. Things turned bad when I let one of my names go a couple days past the expiration date. I had never had that be a big deal before (I had that happen using DomainMonger and paying a few days late was never a big issue, but their prices had become double that of the competition). GKG, however, demanded $60 in addition to the cost of the domain renewal fee, saying that 3 different people in their organization had to work on the request. They would only take the $60 as a money order, too, which struck me as incredibly shady. Since I had taken a year and a half off to study, I didn't have money to frivolously throw away on domain extortion, so I let it go and thought I'd just register it when it dropped off. No such luck, and for the past 2 years some squatters in Vancouver have had it.
Since then, I have been using VoxDomains and it has been a good experience. $6.95 domains, and when I forgot the password to my account and wanted to make sure a payment got through, it was no problem to contact a representative and get the payment posted. When one of my domains expired with VoxDomains, they had the domain redirect to a "please pay us" page, and when I paid them the regular domain registration fee, everything turned out fine.
I hesitate to "advertise" on here, but I am a registrar. Please check http://www.netwithus.net/ and see what I can do for you. My prices are competitive with Godaddy.
The world is my oyster. That's why it's always in a stew.
I've been using aitdomains.com for over a year now. $8 per usual domain IIRC, barely any trouble at all, and their customer support actually replies and solves problems. No DNS servers however, but I get those at dnsmadeeasy.com for $0.75 each plus goodies, and they have yet to fail me once. Total: less than $9 per domain and no hassle.
Enom has been suggested, I'd like to say why.
I have over 50 domains, and when I teach HTML classes, I buy each student a web domain. Enom is not for the casual web domain user. You have to deposit funds starting at $100US, but the domains are only $8.10US. The website is very thourough, and includes custom MX records, DNS entries, and a free web generator for those who don't know HTML or hate parking spam pages.
It's easy to transfer domains, and they have excellent customer service. I've been with them for years, and have been completely satisfied with their services.
"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
- Doctor Who
Main topic: I've not had any problem with HostIreland, though as you may be able to guess from the name they like to combine domain registration with hosting. One (host) to avoid at all costs is NetPivotal: they reverted my site to a week-old backup without telling me, then randomly merged the front page with my first page, a placeholder that had only been up for a few days. Oh, and to upload pages securely, the only option is* a bloated geocities-style file manager. Aside: I can understand being upset by the MySpace issue, but seriosuly, a High Court order? They have to simultaneously obey all laws of every country in which they operate. *or was, at the time.
A quick google turns up a lot of registrars.
I had a domain name registered at godaddy for a while, but I left, exactly because of the horror stories from their (alleged?) "we'll pull any site that generates complaints without investigating one bit" policy. I don't host anything controversial (in fact, I use my domainnames almost exclusively for e-mail), but all it takes is someone deciding to (fake) some spam advertising your domainname, and you can kiss it goodbye.
Something godaddy pulled on me was that when it came time to renew, the registration rates offered to me were higher than for new customers - and no discount for 10 year registrations.
So, after some forum reading, and weeding out suspiciously cheap registrars, I decided on namecheap. As the name implies, they're cheap, $8.88 per domain per year. At the time they were slightly more expensive than godaddy, now they're slightly cheaper.
They're an eNom reseller, so they probably offer the exact same services as any other eNom reseller, but they're cheap.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
I've had excellent service from joker.com over the years.
It Just Works. No BS, no loud advertising, just working registry service.
The only complaint I have about them is that their DNS service doesn't allow wildcards. I'm not losing any sleep over that, though.
I've been using DirectI for years. The web interface is heavy and slow, but the domains are cheap and the customer service is good and friendly. The thing to do, though, is not to buy your domains from DirectI as a customer, but to sign up as a reseller. This is easy and gives you lower prices. Last I checked, prices were something like 6 to 7 US dollars per year, depending on volume.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Just a few days ago, I launched a noncommercial site dedicated to this exact purpose -- encouraging and helping people move away from GoDaddy. The site is at NoDaddy.Com (I'm sure Bob Parsons loves the domain name ;).
I launched the site after GoDaddy shut down my domain SecLists.Org, as noted in this /. article summary. The site includes a list of alternative registrars that readers have recommended. It is rather sparse on details right now, but I'm working on that. I'll go through all your comments in this article tomorrow to fish out good ideas for the registrar section of the site. I'm trying to fill up the site as much as possible before GoDaddy's big SuperBowl ads air on Sunday. We are currently seeking a volunteer to set up and run the NoDaddy forums -- write me if you're interested. We're also looking for "NoDaddy girl" models, but perhaps Slashdot isn't the best place to recruit for that :).
Just today, CNET News.Com posted an article where they interviewed many registrars about there takedown policies. Unfortunately, many registrars refused or didn't bother to respond. Of those who did, the authors "found that the French registrar Gandi.net and New Orleans-based DirectNIC offered the most extensive guarantees against unnecessary domain name suspension."
-Fyodor
Insecure.Org
I definitely recommend Gandi.net. They're friendly, their terms of service are fair and honest and they don't offer as much options as Godaddy - yes, this is good, because I'm talking about all the sh$t that Godaddy tries to push down clients' throats when they buy one simple domain name.
I started to think of moving away from Godaddy when they made the huge change to MS-based servers and that's when I started to notice all the news about them shutting down domain names without notice, their tricky way of pushing unneeded stuff onto their customers and also their draconian terms of service.
There's just one thing that Godaddy offers and Gandi.net doesn't which I think could be usefull for some - anonymous information for the domains. But then again, if Godaddy is willing to release the ownership information just because of one single legal threat, as the article says, then it's not worth that much, wither.
There's also the price tag thing - Gandi.net is not as cheap as Godaddy but I think the advantages of working with an honest company who treats their clients fairly and doesn't try to sell them 5 tonnes of unneeded crap, largely compensate the extra money I pay for the domains I have there.
Been using them for a while now, I'm very happy with them. If you're looking for other services you may be out of luck, they really don't do much OTHER then registrar and DNS service, but then thats what attracted me to them in the first place. (I like it when a company does one thing well, rather then doing 500 things badly.)
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
MysticOne is absolutely right. 1and1 will never get my business because of the way they caved to the cryptofascists at Disney/ABC. I don't care if Disney is the 800lb gorilla, you look out for your customers and you don't pull a registration just because you got one letter from a lawyer. I doubt they spent 5 minutes looking into the matter. As soon as they saw "Disney/ABC" on the letterhead, they were reaching for the plug.
And thanks, MysticOne,for telling me about this Spocko's Brain thing. Living in the cold Midwest, I forget there are also people on the coasts that are trying to stand up. I sent Spocko a few bucks just for being a stone in the shoe of those who would threaten liberty.
Oh, and I am happy with dynDNS, they surprised me with their service and strong policies.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I don't understand the suggestion. Does Registry Rocket register domains?
This Registry Rocket?
"RegistryRocket is a customizable e-commerce web page. It is designed as a tool for you to sell domain names. You give your site a name, upload a logo (or not), and set the pricing. We take care of the website hosting, merchant processing and other eNom services. Track sales and watch your account balance grow in your eNom reseller account.Whether this is your permanent e-commerce solution fordomain name sales, or an interim option until you have your own merchant account established, RegistryRocket works."
RegistryRocket.com gives an error message.
Registry Rocket - Free Domain Reselling?
Of your recommendations for alternatives to GoDaddy.com, which ones allow for the alignment of multiple domain expiry dates?
:]P
I have several domains with different expiration dates I'd just as soon only have to deal with ONCE a year.
Enom is not a direct seller of domain names?
Enom has "Pricing", rather than "prices": enom.com. "Become an eNom Reseller for as little as $195".
PagesGarden.com apparently is not a domain registrar, unless you buy hosting through them.
Gandi.net costs "12,00 Tax Excl. ie. 14,35 incl. tax". That is $15.63 today (2007-02-03), almost twice as expensive as the minimum.
DynDNS has pricing rather than "prices". When I see that word, I think "pricey". Why should a domain name registrar be so expensive? What do they do with the money ($15 per year)?
Here are NameCheap.com's features. Anything missing from Enom.com's features? Is NameCheap.com really an Enom.com reseller?
StargateInc.com asks you to pay extra for "URL Forwarding, Email Forwarding, and Advanced DNS Zone Control Panel", apparently.
Parent comment is very interesting.
But Register4Less.com has "pricing structure" instead of "prices". You know what that means. "Registering one domain name for one year will cost $14.95, already saving you $20 or more as compared to some other registrars." Paying almost twice as much saves you $20 per year? They mean "some other [very expensive] registrars".
GKG.net does not seem to list the features. Do they provide email forwarding, for example?
MOD PARENT UP!!! Excellent links: NamePros.com provides a list of registrars and prices. CNet's article is must reading: Survey: Are domain registrars free-speech friendly?
I've been using RegisterFly.com for years, and have had excellent results. There may be better ones out there, but RegisterFly.com has been very, very reliable for me.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
eNameCo.com is $16.99 per year. Here are eNameCo.com's free services.
But see the above comment about Gandi.net: "There was a dispute with one of his [Gandi.net] domains and they shut them ALL down."
Gandi.net is also a bit spendy: 12,00 = 15,6276 U.S. dollars (on 2007-02-03).
Nearlyfreespeech.net costs $7.30/year for email forwarding? Apparently you cannot discover the features offered unless you are already a customer: "Visit the Domains tab in our user interface for more information."
DreamHost.com domain names are $9.95/year. However, apparently it is not possible to see the domain features unless you are a customer.
Thanks for the link to the InterNIC list of all domain registrars.
000domains.com domains are $13.50 per year, with a list of no-extra-cost features.
VoxDomains.com has a list of free services for $6.95/year.
Please note that the company offering Yahoo domains' service differs from country to country.
Their scheme works this way (as you already found out): Yahoo! interconnects its users via an obscure login algorithm involving a shared secret and some header redirects to a company which functions as a domain registrar. Yahoo! never shares any account information with said company, so you (as customer) have to register twice: Once for Yahoo! and the second time for the registrar.
The fact that they converted you to a native user of themselves to transfer your domain is sound. I once worked for a company which provided the same service (different country) for Yahoo!. We did exactly the same because Yahoo! messed with the logins of our users (lost them, etc.) and generally were totally incompetent and unhelpful to its contractors (us). The additional work overhead when dealing with Yahoo! is enormous.
Meme of the day: I browse "Disable Sigs: Checked". So should you.
See this ugly story about GKG.net.
I am currently with GoDaddy because it offers private domain registrations - my email and address are replaced by GoDaddy's email and address in whois lookups, and therefore it keeps spammers away from my inbox. What other registrars offer this private registration service?
I use NearlyFreeSpeech.NET for my domain registration. They're a web host, but they offer great domain name prices ($7.50 for .com/.net/.org). If you plan on using all of the crappy bells and whistles that come with most registrars (like email forwarding and WHOIS privacy), it'll cost a little more -- $0.01/day for WHOIS privacy, and $0.02/day for email. So that's $3.65 a year and $7.30 a year. But the email forwarding is nice; they let you create unlimited addresses that can 1) forward to any address 2) POST the message to a CGI script (!) 3) bounce messages or 4) discard messages, and you can select any of those options as a catchall.
Their hosting is also wonderful for personal sites that don't get a ton of traffic. (It's probably good for larger sites, but I only host my personal website on it right now.) They charge a flat $1.00/GB for transfer and $0.01/MB/month for storage. Bandwidth is available in discounted "buckets" that contain a certain amount and expire after a certain date. Storage might be available in a similar way soon. MySQL is $0.01/day for the first process, $0.02/day for each extra (normally you only need one), $0.01/day/process for InnoDB, and $0.01/day/process if you're in the top 10% of activity (not likely). They have every CGI language known to man, but of course they don't support things like FastCGI and mod_perl, since FastCGI would require a ton of persistent processes, and mod_perl allows one user to crash the whole server. And their control panel is really simple and intuitive (although they're scrambling to create better reporting/statistics tools).
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
Please provide links! DNSMadeEasy.com.
AITDomains.com sells URL forwarding for "only" $5.99 per year. I don't see a list of other features.
Joker.com is $12/year with a list of free features.
I feel uncomfortable with the name. When someone chooses a poor name for a business, doesn't that indicate a low amount of business sophistication?
How much does it cost to be a DirectI.com reseller?
Investigating the features of every suggested registrar is beginning to be bind moggling.
EasyDNS is $25 per year.
I've used MyDomain for 3 years and I am happy with them. I've never had a problem with my domain, and it only costs $8.50 a year.
Aside from offering many services for little or no cost, I have stayed with them because they have frequent promotions (right now I have free WHOIS privacy protection for a year) and their forums have a lot of common questions and answers you might have about your domain.
Granted, I've never tried out other registrars, but I've never felt the need to!
Domains for $7.95 / year, will full control over your DNS zone file.
Registration Technologies http://www.regtek.com/ are excellent. Inexpensive, excellent online service, excellent customer service. As someone else mentioned, Joker is also pretty good, though I've moved most of my domains away from them as they came up for renewal.
MarkMonitor. They also seem to include services to register your domain (i.e. trademark, company name) across basically all the TLDs and ccTLDs as well as protection from phishing (so that would probably including registering all the typo.com et al. domains as well). Be warned, however, that it appears they also set the clientTransferProhibited, clientDeleteProhibited, and clientUpdateProhibited flags (according to GNU whois using VeriSign's whois database), so of course that would help from domain squatters and other spammers and phishers from acquiring your domain name if you forgot to renew (which I'd assume they allow for automatic renewal), but it may or may not be a hassle to transfer your domain in the future. I'd assume they're nice about allowing you (or your company) and only you to transfer the domain name to another service, but I don't have experience with them, so I can't say for sure.
With the service they provide and the target customer (businesses), you can probably be sure they're not going to touch your domain name without the police getting involved. What they're selling is also a guarantee that your domain name (and therefore, your company brand and image) is protected.
So, based on that, I'd recommend looking into it and seeing if it's in your price range.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
"Apparently you cannot discover the features offered unless you are already a customer"
If by already a customer, you mean signed up for a free (+ $0.02 bonus added) account, then yes. Everything is a la carte in their system, so while you're required to have at least a single site or domain setup for the account to stay active for more than say 60 days, you certainly are under no obligations to buy anything, or even to provide credit card information.
That being said, their non-member site gives a pretty comprehensive overview of their services, especially in the FAQ.
After hearing about the GoDaddy/MySpace fiasco, I looked around for a new registrar. Moniker seemed to have really good marks for customer service and the price is just a little more expensive than GoDaddy at about $10/year for each domain. Everything online says they change $18/year, but not according to their website, they must have recently lowered their rates.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
I've been using DomainSite.com for a few years now and have been very happy. Transfers have all gone very smoothly, they have a good un-cluttered management interface, and best of all...NO ADS! I even moved all of the domains for the company I work for to them last year.
I used to use GoDaddy as well but got tired of their cluttered interface and constant ads for their add-on services. I'm glad I left them before all this suspension BS started.
duh
The only issue I would have with them is a requirement that the Whois information be accurate and that they'll suspend you if it's not. I wouldn't care to put my real name, address & email up there for everyone to harvest, personally.
I used RegisterFly. I transfered my domain from another registrar to them and it was really easy. They also have a lot of good deals. When you transfer, they give you the time left on your domain before you have to renew it plus another year. They had a special a few days ago for $4.95 transfers if you enter the code 'CLIENTREWARDS'. Not sure if it still works though.
I like YI.ORG because they don't do any of that spamming crap, they have a direct itnerface that lets you do anything you want (even if you have to know what you want to do - ie it's for geeks), and the guy that runs it is good about fixing any problems you have if you IM him. I use YI for most of my long-term domains whereas I use 1&1 for short-term domains that I'm going to throw away in a year. 1&1 is cheap but don't allow much flexibility and have bad customer service.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Even though their prices are a little higher than some of the big discount places, their $15 (Australian) charge for a domain name registration which works out to somewhere around $11.50 for me in the US is still very, very reasonable.
Plus, they have a free DNS service which is very handy. And if you get to know them and they get to know and trust you, they can fix you up with an SSL certificate which is also a free service.
As an added bonus, they like Linux and they also like Commodore computers.
-Maurice
FixingTheWeb.com Helping to keep the bad guys out...
They use the exact same web interface as GoDaddy, once you get into managing your site, and charge about the same. I don't know about the terms...
To be honest, the only reason I went with them was the fact that you can do a manual PayPal transaction. That is, I can just send them $9 and a note saying what I want them to do with it, rather than with GoDaddy, where I'm required to sign a contract giving them unrestricted access to my PayPal account until I cancel.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Since my only websites are personal, I appreciate that Nearlyfreespeech.net will shut down public access to my website if it is slashdotted or otherwise DoSed, rather than charging me extra for bandwidth, like most other hosting providers, and will immediately restore access once I have put more money in the "bank".
.org).
I also like that there is no monthly fee, so I pay only for what I use.
(I put in $40 about a year ago or so, and still have over $30 left.)
However, I think that it is a bad idea to have one's web site host and one's domain registrar be the same entity, so I have my domains registered at domaindiscover.com ($9.95/yr for
DomainDiscover also allows subdomains (which I haven't used yet, but plan to in the near future), and allows more-or-less direct access to the DB, so one can add, say, AAAA records (for IPv6) and so forth.
It also offers free email forwarding.
Finally, nothing on the site (of which I know) requires JavaScript (which I have disabled for security reasons), another big plus.
I have no complaints so far.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
IMHO, they have really shown nothing as a reputable registrar, EVER. Their commercials were pure shock value and nothing more. IMHO, I think that picking someone like Network Solutions etc is a better way to go.
GoDaddy hit fast and hard, but IMHO, were always a 2 bit company. I would have never used them to register a domain.
RonB
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
US$9/yr, autorenewing if you want. That includes email redirection and web site forwarding. I've used them a happy 2.5 years for made-up-on-the-spot disposable email addresses, as well as structuring my web site. What first attracted me to them was their Q&A/Tech Support forums which anyone can browse. Admittedly, they could have been deleting all the posts about unsatisfactory service etc. and I wouldn't have known, but it looked like they're pretty open about solving problems and letting anyone and everyone read about their problems, which aren't too many.
Haven't checked the forums at all since I signed up --never needed to.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
I've used Yahoo domains and have been happy with them. I also have used Dotster and have been continuously spammed by them ever since.
I've avoided GoDaddy just because I choose not to support advertisers I feel are trashy.
Fix Your Own TV - RiddledTV.com Avoid the Landfill
I have had an experience with DirectNIC squatting on one of my domains. I will not support DirectNIC in any way shape or form. Here's a few links with information on their activities.
Check the wikipedia article on Sigmund Solares, the CEO.
www.kenyatechwatch.com Forum for discussion of kenyatech, the front company for their squatting activities.
www.rederon.net got taken as well, he has articles up and is fighting them.
www.rootfest.net/squatters.html explains how they're able to do it.
There are others as well, a quick google search will bring up more information.
Anger problem?
I had good experiences with Gandi. Last I checked, they had the best Terms of Service, and while they weren't exactly the cheapest, they weren't expensive either.
They're quite straight forward, no ad-bombardement or spamming; they just do what they say they would do. The few times I had a problem (not because of them), they were always quite helpful. I reserve the right to change my mind, but up till now, I've been nothing but happy (based on my experience with them for many years)
Thanks for pointing that out! I was just about to register a couple of domains with dynadot. Then I read what you posted.
So that little tidbit just cost them a couple of domains. Plus the referrals that I give.
I have used Gandi on and off since 2002 really only one complaint, the price has gone up. Depending on currency fluctuation it can cost $18 USD, if you are still on the US dollar. I tried Joker last year, but was not pleased with either their interface or their customer service. It took a few weeks to get the domain to kick in even after coughing up the money. It was rather smooth, though not fast, to transfer some domains away from Joker. That took about a week.
One of the other posts mentioned an idea about registering five or six years at a discount place and then transfefring to Gandi. It's worth investigating, but does involve some delay and some risk. The delay is from minimum time before transfer that many registrars
It'd be interesting to hear a few months down the road what you decided on and how it turned out.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I really like sitelutions.com
I happened upon them by accident but they are reasonably priced, have excellent customer service. They also have scripts for windows and linux (which would work fine in OSX) to autoupdate domain name ip addresses (DNS A records). They have some hosting services which I've not taken advantage of but which seem fine. They also donate a significant percentage of their profits to a charity of your choosing. I give them 5/5 penguins!
Dave
What do they do with the money ($15 per year)?
Others have mentioned some of the good things they do but for me the primary driver is that they use it to hire polite, competent, knowledgeable local folks to work at their company. When you send in a request you get a fast response from a helpful person who isn't trying to just close your ticket.
This has been more of a help to some of my clients than to me, so I can say they're very good to those folks our there who aren't BSD admins themselves.
They also put resources into supporting the local business community.
In summary, they run a good "old-fashioned" business, that is "offer a good service at a fair price and take care of your customers" . If the extra $9/yr over the most craptacular service you can find isn't worth it to you, fine, enjoy GoDaddy.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I've had a lot of luck with cominsys. It's pretty fast, they answer my questions, and I never have any problems with my domains or hosting. It's not perfect, but for what I can afford it's pretty good... http://www.cominsys.com/. I've got two domains through them, and am thinking about adding a new one for a blog.
I haven't seen it here yet, but I use NearlyFreeSpeech.net. They now offer their own domain registration service. From their ideals listed on the page. I can't imagine them caving to any bogus threats. Their prices and support are also great!
satisfied customer
Cheap storage VM.
Are you saying that they restore from one month into the future?
That's some neat trick!
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
The question of the OP isn't clear, or at least a lot of the responses are mixing up a great many things.
- Domain registration, that is to say putting NS records into the appropriate gTLD / ccTLD / ccSLD (.co.uk etc)zone and registrant / contact info into whois
- DNS hosting
- Web hosting / redirection
- Mail hosting / redirection
Now, a lot of companies will sell you any combination of the above, but without knowing what the OP wants, it's difficult to make a recommendation. Personally, I'm very happy with Joker - but only for the first item. I've never had cause to pay someone to do the other three, I have my own servers for that, so I can't comment on whether Joker's offerings are better or worse than anyone else's.
Most of those services are done by a computer. Most of the services done by a person are done once, but the domain registration fee is paid every year.
Notice that GoDaddy has become so rich that it can buy a Superbowl commercial. It seems that most of that money comes from tricking first-time buyers into buying things they don't need, but why should a mostly online clerical company become fabulously wealthy?
Maybe the domain registration business should be re-organized. Was it ever intended to help the registrars build vast fortunes?
I've used namecheap.com for the last couple domains I registered. They seem to be good enough I used to use GoDaddy, but some of the things in their ToS annoyed me. Anyway, namecheap.com has been perfectly suitable, has a sane control panel, costs just south of $9/year, and they don't charge you extra to keep your WHOIS data masked if that's what you want.
Game... blouses.
I switched after GoDaddy started taking bribes from Microsoft.
GoDaddy's site is so full of advertising for "add-on" services that it's hard to manage your domain for all of the junk.
It's so dumbed down that it's actually difficult to use. For instance: One cannot designate a DNS server before it's up. If I want to point by domain's DNS to a server that's not up yet, that's my business. I could see giving a warning or whatever, but it's my decision.
If you've read some of the writing of Bob Parsons, the founder, you get the impression that he's something of a lunatic.
Sorry for ranting. The bottom line is that any company that is too focused on making money will alienate it's customer-base.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
Considering the large amount of spam I receive from domains that are registered through godaddy.com, I suspect you are looking for a new registrar to register your domains to sell v!@gr/\ and other such wonderful things through.
Well, I have found the perfect spammer-friendly registrar - pacnames.com. They have even launched a new anonymizer service to obfuscate your information - sheildedwhois.com - so that the people you spam will never succeed in contacting you. They've registered dozens of different domains for selling pirated software and illegal drugs, so you know they must be good!
Oh and did I mention, they even have a physical address that doesn't correspond to a business location, and a name that is not recognized as a business in the city (and country!) where they claim to operate? Clearly, you can trust all your spamming needs to a company who themselves is able to internationally obfuscate their own registration data!
Haven't had a problem with Domainmonger, been with them for a while (actually before they were DomainMonger, I think). I hear people dismiss it as being too pricey (just under half of NS), but it's been reliable and stable, which is better than I can say for cripplingly slow gandi, which always seems to be the reg behind any domain I have trouble looking up. It helps that they were offering single-year pricing well before most.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
When I was looking around a few years back for a cheap registrar I found both godaddy and gkg.net were about the same price... I'm glad I went with gkg.net.
Any comments on http://moniker.com/ ?
Being an eNom reseller isn't necessarily a bad thing; I've had very good experiences using Namecheap.com, who resells for eNom at $8.88 for most TLDs.
Haven't experienced nor seen any reports of heavy-handed censoring by them, but I can't say it hasn't happened.
Cheers...
Pi Ran Out
I've got a whole handful of names registered at NameCheap.com. I've recommended them to several people.
I've never had any trouble with them, and they have all the features I need to manage a combination of domains with DNS run by them, a domain with DNS run by someone else, and domain urls that are just forwarders to other urls.
1and1, just never use them. Let me tell you a little story
Five years ago now myself and two school mates registered a domain with 1and1 hosting, we went with 1and1 because they offered a bandwidth cap, were the cheapest and we found a domain that was very cool. After about a year we lost interest in the website but kept the account because it was usefull to have webspace, apart form the occasional reminder to pay to continue the service (came yearly) there was no other notification of change in status. I've actually been through the previous emails to confirm this and the original signed terms and conditions included the bandwidth cap in them.
Several years went by and I started with a group of online friends a website, we used my existing account because 1and1 offered a free service. A few months go by and the podcast becomes popular but I notice that their billing me extra each month. So I phone them (and have the woman on record (I love PPC's)) telling me that the bandwidth cap must be broken and I wouldn't be charged. Then assuming things were ok I carried on and recieved a bill for £650. After dozens of phone calls I put measures in place to stop any more downloading and they agreed they had screwed up, this time a man (on a saved MP3) said they were wrong and he would look into it.
So I guess you would be surprised when a £700 bill landed on my door mat with threats of calling in people to take my stuff three weeks later. At the time I was in contact with a solicitor for other reasons and related this story to here complete with the agreed terms and conditions, the difference in service without notification and all the recorded phone calls. Her response was legally I was completly correct however the cost of fighting the bill would be pretty much the cost of the bill plus alot of time off university I couldn't afford. After some time with her I sent a letter to the head of the accounting department starting the process of a legal challenge(the idea was to get them to drop the bill) he agreed that after a certain date that things had gone wrong at their end and knocked the bill down to £400. I'm a poor student the people I ran the podcast with had coffed up £350 and my legal advice was that challenging the bill would cost more than £400. I was already going without sleep to keep up with university so I swallowed my principles.
In short they changed my service without notification (against their Terms and Conditions) they deactivated features after I'd activated them without notice (in this case a bandwidth warning notifier, due to 'site maintanence' the guy on the phone told me) they lied to me on the phone over technical matters, they lied about the service plan so many times I've lost count, they used the fact that the legal costs would be greater than the bill to force their customer to pay, even though they repeatedly agreed they were wrong.
I hate 1and1, I want them to die. I'd actually put them as worse than the RIAA in their tactics, their fine if all you want to use your site is to transfer the occasional large file, so you don't use email.
When registering an account — with anyone, but especially registrars and web-hosters, since they are supposed to know — try giving an e-mail address with a plus-tag (like mine here <mi+slashdot@aldan.algebra.com>).
If a site rejects such an address is "invalid", stay away — their techs are incompetent...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I am a bulkregister.com customer (bulkregister was recently acquired by enom). This past December a few of my domains were expiring and I wanted to renew them while on business trip in Ukraine. Bizarrely, Enom refused to accept my credit card, because I was connecting from Kyiv... They never responded to my e-mail on the subject either, of course (bulkregister used to respond to e-mails back 6 or so years ago, when I had some DNS issues).
I note, that you quote $8.10 per year — bulkregister still wants $12 even though they are part of enom now. I'll look into that.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.