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ICANN Moves Against GoDaddy Domain Lockdowns
An anonymous reader writes "ICANN is finally taking action against Domain Registrar GoDaddy's controversial 'lockdowns'. GoDaddy has long had a policy of 'locking down' domain names for 60 days after a customer updated their contact details. This put customers in a Catch 22 position: ICANN requires customers keep their contact details up to date, or risk having the domain forfeited. Yet during the lockdown period the customer is prevented from transferring the domain from GoDaddy to another registrar. If the lockdown ran over the domain's expiry date, customers were forced to renew with GoDaddy or lose the domain. ICANN proposes to ban this practice. ICANN who is charged with overseeing the Internet has long been accused of giving domain registrars a free ride. But recently after ICANN failed to discipline Network Solutions over a front-running scam, they found themselves both on the wrong end of a lawsuit by lawyers Kabateck Brown Kellner. Is ICANN's action a signal of increased vigilance in policing registrars, or is it a PR move paving the way for a complete removal of US Government oversight?"
Does anyone have a list of the smaller/more honest registrars? I remember on the last Network Solutions article there were a few people talking about the better service at some of the less well known ones.
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
"Mein Furher! ICANN Moves!"
Yarr Yarr
I always use 1&1 Internet, which has excellent support and is extremely well priced. For hosting, Joyent is your friend.
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
customers were forced to renew with GoDaddy or lose the domain
So transfer it and then update your info. Although registrars shouldn't get away with this crap, I fail to see how this amounts to more than a minor nuissance.
Even in the worst-case scenario (changing your info a few weeks before expiration, before realizing you want to transfer), a domain's owner only "loses" a couple bucks at most for using GoDaddy for one more year. Not a big deal, IMO, even if I do fully encourage the spanking of GoDaddy over such games.
Hello
can anyone please point to a decent non "evil" registrar
Goddady = bad (see this article)
Enom = bad ( see http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/09/025222 )
Network solutions ( see http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/23/1914238 and http://slashdot.org/article.pl?no_d2=1&sid=00/05/12/2141250 and http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/15/2121200
Anyone?
Chances are, you'll end up buying from GoDaddy or NS, but with the retailer's extra charge.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
I go with gandi.net, who are reasonably price, have decent service, and appear to be fairly white-hat.
I thought they were responsible for assigning IP blocks and deciding that ".museum" was a good idea. When did that become "overseeing the internet"?
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
This really isn't surprising, though: spammers and phishers buy domains by the hundreds, if not thousands, which makes them excellent customers. And if you're GoDaddy, you need that income (among other reasons) to fund your offensively sexist commercials.
How does this tie in? It's all about profits. Profits for GoDaddy are maximized by selling as many domains as possible and then holding them for ransom. Given how weak and slow ICANN has been, this has been a viable strategy for a number of years; it remains to be seen if something meaningful will actually happen in this case, or whether GoDaddy will just continue cementing its reputation as one of the scummiest registrars out there.
If you speak (or at least understand some) danish, I will highly recommend http://gratisdns.dk/
It is free to move your domain to and use their DNS servers, and you get full control of the DNS records.
If you want to register a new domain, the prices are very fair.
Why the hell does anyone ever buy a domain from GoDaddy in the first place? I've heard nothing but bad things about them. Over here in the UK there are about a bajillion places you can get a domain name from, so there must be even more in the US.
Check out dreamhost.com. I use them for domain names and hosting - reasonable prices, great service (my bandwidth and disk space grows every week for free), and (if this matters to you) they're carbon neutral.
GoDaddy has long had a policy of 'locking down' domain names for 60 days after a customer updated their contact details
I ran into this exact same situation a few weeks ago with either Network Solutions or Register.com (we were bouncing back and forth between the two services working on a few different accounts, so my memory is faulty as to which one was the culprit - though I'm leaning towards NetSol). My point is that the issue is not isolated to just GoDaddy.
We wanted to transfer the account to a different registrar, but the email address on file was one that was no longer active. So we changed the address to one that was active so the transfer messages could arrive correctly, and we were told that there was a hold. Solution: I called and bitched about it. Took about 24 hours, but we were able to bypass the auto lock and move the account successfully. Not the most ideal situation, but at least there was a way around.
All those $10 from dishonest companies add up.
I tend to use Joker and 123-reg
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Network Solutions does this as well. I had to update my e-mail address in my contact information in order to transfer a domain to another registrar. NS locked the domain down for 60 days because of the update. The 60 days would have lasted beyond the expiration of the domain name, meaning I had to renew through NS or risk having someone (possibly NS!) buy it first and charge me more to get it back.
It took two or three encounters with their support staff and the threat of a complaint to ICANN to get the lock removed so I could continue with the transfer.
I have a bad feeling about the future of domain name registration. I fear greed will ultimately win out, and shady practices like lockdowns, and worse, mass squatting like sedo.com will take over completely.
What can we do about it?
:T:R:A:N:S:
Not always. In many cases, GoDaddy sells the domains to smaller registrars at lower prices than they charge end users, so many times the markup brings it to the same price as GoDaddy, sometimes less, sometimes more.
GoDaddy is like $10 a year, which I think is plenty cheap, so while I don't like their tactics, I don't think their pricing is exorbitant, and their online tools are pretty nice.
My blog
1&1 Internet took over a week & a half to register my (new) domain. Went to GoDaddy, registered it in 20ms after I clicked purchase. Thankfully 1&1 Internet gave a refund, an additional week later.
I've had my domains with Go Daddy for about 5 years, and I knew the company was crappy, but I didn't know they were this bad. Plus, every time I visit their website I feel like I need to take a shower. Off to a better registrar for me, then. Good riddance.
Not to be a shill here, but I use Crystal Tech, which resells Melbourne IT and I've been happy with it. YMMV.
~S
If you really want a cheap one, go for hosterio. It is based in India, and that is almost the cheapest you can get.
A few people have requested a list of "good" ISPs so they can use them.
I also advocate a list of "bad" ISPs so we can **avoid** them. Name and shame I say, the nets good for that.
Its amazing how many business practices seem to be accepted or tolerated on the net that would be frowned upon or a cue for legal action in the real world. its as though virtual assets somehow seem less valuable then real ones, which is obviously not always true.
I have two domains with GoDaddy and manage about 6 others and I've never had a single problem with them. Not only did I purchase the domains there, but hosting as well. The single time I had to deal with Support my issue was resolved in about 20 minutes via email. I definitely disagree with the lockdown policy, but its not unique to GoDaddy, nor do I think a governing body should step in. Its called Capitalism. I guess its me versus the masses of techs, as I have no problem with GoDaddy.
Register.com is just as expensive as NetSol, but lacking any evil qualities as far as I can tell. Real people answer the phone if you need to call, and are helpful to boot. If your domain is going to expire, you get a PHONE CALL reminding you to renew, after the traditional emails. I have never gotten spammed at the email address I used for registration, aside from the occasional pricing specials or new service announcements.
Granted, I don't own hundreds of domains, so price isn't a major issue. If it were, I'd probably be switching to a more evil registrar whose business plan includes making money off the backs of the domain owners. But for now, register.com seems to b truly 'non-evil'.
Joker shits me... anytime there was a support query or we needed to transfer a domain with non-current details the turnaround was in the order of weeks.
For the few customers we've taken over with domain issues, this wasn't acceptable by any means...
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." - Aneurin Bevan
"they found themselves both on the wrong end of a lawsuit by lawyers Kabateck Brown Kellner"
So, there are only two people working for ICANN?
I have never had to deal with someone hijacking my phone number, and every time I have moved it to a new location or cell carrier it has taken effect in less than a day after requesting it. Why must we put up with a much more chaotic system for domain names?
As for Godaddy being "evil", I've used them for years, had no trouble tranferring domains in or out, speak to live humans when I need to, and get phone calls from them when domains are expiring or when they have a deal that would actually lower what I pay.
anytime there was a support query or we needed to transfer a domain with non-current details the turnaround was in the order of weeks.
I can't comment on this since I've never needed to make a support query.
However, I have always found that running your own name servers, rather than relying on the registrar's (or anyone else's) does make life a lot easier - you can make changes to your domain immediately instead of waiting around for someone else to do it, you have more chance of the changes being correct (the number of times someone has screwed up when copying and pasting from a change request email is mind-boggling) and you get to do stuff that commercial name servers usually won't let you do (set very low TTLs when shuffling servers around, set up records that aren't just the usual A and MX records, etc).
The less third parties you have to trust to run services for you, the better off you are.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
http://www.montecarlohosting.net/
I buy all my domains and hosting there. Not the cheapest, but GREAT service.
"Free software" is a matter of liberty, not price.
GoDaddy is one of the many horrible registrars. Things are not right when you have to be careful picking a registrar. http://nodaddy.com/ is a great site about the woes GoDaddy.
People who say it's only $10 per year obviously don't run web businesses of any significant size. It is $10 per year for one domain, but in practice most companies will have dozens is not hundreds of domains registered to prevent counter typo-squatting and to protect domains that we may use in the future. When designing a new product or service one of the first questions is "What domains might you want?" and then you need to grab them now. And I mean NOW before an employee or dumpster diver grabs them (it can be really hard to track down who bought the domain, even if it is the guy working in the next cubical). Besides, it is the general principle. Yes, people in business do have principles. They especially have principles if they are the ones being ripped off.
I'm soured on 1&1 too. At work, we have one domain (our primary one) on Netsol, and the rest of the names on 1&1. Unfortunately, 1&1 bounced an email to us and put us in collections and never bothered to give us a phone call.
:)
We only found this out when we wanted to consolidate all our domains with 1&1. (Of course, I found that our 10-year old domain had the contact info from our old ISP!)
Because of the transfer screwup, we kept it status quo with one name on NS and the others on 1&1. It was such a hassle with 1&1 that I am thinking seriously about consolidation again, only to Netsol instead! (and that is saying much!)
I'd like to see reforms at ICANN, so I don't have to worry about being screwed when some registrar is bought out by someone or when some different set of suits is put in management.
P.S. Direcnic is not the cheapest, but I use them personally and I have no reason to switch. Besides, considering their location, they have disaster preparedness down pat.
serious idea steganographically hidden in a lolcat:
[ picture of godaddy ]: ICANN haz sankshunz?
*ducks
I've always used changeip.com. While they are reselling NS, you don't ever deal with NS. They even let you transfer NS domains to them with no drama.
The company has been around for a while, the prices are reasonable, the control panels sane, and the support very quick to respond. I've even donated money to them in the past (I was a longtime free ddns user before using paid services).
--- Do you believe in the day?
Site5.com offers very simple domain registration if you already have their hosting service. The registration is $8.88/yr, and the hosting is cheap and EXTREMELY fast and reliable.
You should definitely check it out.
As someone whose ass was saved by Network Solutions' lockdown, let me tell you the lockdowns are a Really Good Thing.
Hackers can break in to your account. It can happen even when you're being careful. A lockdown means that you have time to track down a real human being and get it reversed before the domain is transferred to some registrar in China whose support reps don't even speak English.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Godaddy is just $10 a year -- not a lot of money, even by poverty standards. What is it with all this namby-pamby BS when you'll spend more in a day's lunch than it's worth mulling over saving a buck a year with a different registar.
I guess some people need something to complain about!
I don't care to give money to assholes, personally, whether its $10 or $1000. Also, some people own multiple domains (I own about 10 personally), so it could potentially be more than $10.
GoDaddy's been making stupid asshole moves ever since I heard about them, so they've never received my money. It's your bad decision if you chose GoDaddy. But in any case, it's important that people be made aware of the kind of practices GoDaddy has. When you have Kevin and Alex (Diggnation) telling you to buy a domain from GoDaddy, you need another voice saying "Hey! GoDaddy is a fucking shitty registrar!"
There's no point in your meta-complaining. If you like to let companies ass-rape you, that's fine, but that doesn't mean everyone else likes it.
Dreamhost is also $9.95/year (I use them). There's no good reason to use GoDaddy when there are plenty of better registrars that aren't any more expensive.
#!/
I've been with EuroDNS for quite some years.
They have excellent web-based administration for DNS records (or easy dyndns support) if you stick with their nameservers, or you can specify your own.
They actually reinforce the ICANN-defined practices: I hadn't specified a real contact name for a domain I had, and in a few days I got some email from their staff, where they said they'll report the violation to ICANN if I don't correct it.
I feel that is great, in the sense that they're a major registrant and do mass registrations.
Excellent support? They took 2 weeks to fix a domain name that their control panel borked when updating.
I was out a domain name for two weeks, and received no compensation.
Oh, and if you only do domain registration through them, you're limited to 5 subdomains per account, not per domain.
That means if you have 100 domain names, you can only have 5 glue domains.
Not if ICANN protect my precious bodily fluids!
Seriously, though. I made a reference to this movie about 15 minutes ago in real life. : ) How blissful.
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
namecheap.com
Lousy name, perfect record. DNS hosting and WHOIS protection.
insecure.org put up a nice list at nodaddy.com when their domain was yanked. It looks like it is still there.
http://nodaddy.com/#alternatives
I go with NearlyFreeSpeech.NET for domain registration and hosting. If it works for BugMeNot, it's good for me. Plus I host some rather...interesting...content, and they haven't had a problem with it yet.
ICANN is proving itself once again to be a menace to free enterprise and the US government is using it to once again regulate the internet.
What about foriegn companies who register using GoDaddy, outside the reach of the US? Furthermore, what if the foreign company did no business in the US nor was subject to US taxation? We are back to regulation without representation. I do not see what GoDaddy is doing wrong.
I have said before ICANN needs to be turned over to an international body or maybe a consortium of private businesses for its operations. The US government simply fucks up anything it touches.
I've used GANDI for many years and they're great. The difference between the two is that GoDaddy practices "Gotcha Capitalism" very hard while GANDI is satisfied with you paying for the year (and that's it). Credit to them for not trying to screw the world and also not pulling domains off-line at any idiot's request.
Personally I'd avoid GoDaddy like a cheap hooker in NYC during "Fleet Week". =)
I have no figures on how big they are, but I use Surpass Domains. I was oddly attracted to them because their domain registration fees weren't bargain bin cheap. The customer service is nonpareil.
nodaddy.com has a nice list.
I personally use moniker
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
GoDaddy is like $10 a year, which I think is plenty cheap, so while I don't like their tactics, I don't think their pricing is exorbitant, and their online tools are pretty nice.
In this case, GoDaddy's lockdown policies are probably worth the trouble they cause. On the down side, you need to cough up an extra $10/domain if you happen to change your info, AND want to move registrars, AND wait until there are less than 60 days on your contract. On the up side, if your account gets compromised, you have 60 days to notice and fix things before it will cost you thousands of dollars in legal fees to maybe get your domains back.
GoDaddy is slimy, and they will take the spammers dollars as readily as they'll take anyone else's, but that doesn't mean they are pure evil incarnate. If you ever do have a domain you care about compromised, you'll be very, very happy with their lockdown policies.
I've had good luck with Address Creation. I don't know what GoDaddy charges for domain registrations, but they're about $15 at Address Creation, which certainly doesn't break the bank. They only e-mail me when one of my domains is going to expire (and actually this year allowed me to glom four of them together so that I can renew them all at once from now on) and don't seem to have any obnoxious terms of use like what GoDaddy is accused of.
Good luck!
and (if this matters to you) they're carbon neutral.
I'm sorry, but I'm not familiar with that alignment. Is that like "True Neutral", or does it lean towards "Lawful" or "Chaotic" ends?
Highly recommended, obviously.
That 'show' is regularly pretty awful, but the couple of times I did check it out they were hawking a discount if you used the name of their show as a promo code. Doing that, I'm able to renew domains and purchase new ones for $7 instead of $10. And since I don't watch the show any more, that makes me a leech, I guess.
So, I guess my question is: is that cheap enough to overlook some of this kind of thing? Is there a price cheap enough per annum where this kind of thing would be tolerated? I mean, you kind of get what you pay for, right? Besides, at $7 a year, I'm not going anywhere anytime soon, so having my domain locked for 60 days isn't going to affect me in the slightest, and I don't use any of their services other than domain registration. So as long as they don't go out of business and take my domains with them, then I, personally, don't have any problems.
I've used Joker for a few years and have been happy with the service.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
I buy from LCN.com. Not as cheap as godaddy but they work well and don't do anything scummy with your domain (like trying to stop you from transferring). I guess you gets what you pays for.
I'm not sure how godaddy can justify doing this. The icann policy only lets them deny a transfer under the following circumstances (listed under point 3):
Either they are doing it because they like nature, in which case they are probably a druid (and likely true neutral as a result), or they do it because it attracts more customers (and profit), which is a distinctly chaotic neutral trait.
Better than most companies, which tend towards chaotic evil.
https://www.gandi.net/faq/view_question/313 What worries me about Gandi is that they don't offer auto renewing and the restore rates if it expires are pretty steep...
I have alway had good luck with Domainmonger. Funny name, but reasonable prices, and a rather powerful DNS control panel (which is free with the domain purchase). But, you can easily point your domain to your own NS records if you so choose. Been with them for 7 years, never had a problem.
I use dreamhost.com to host my site (which is more of a file store as it has NO html anywhere) but I'm definitely happy with their service.
Another vote for you to check out dreamhost.com.
It's hard to believe, but your comment is the first I've read on this page with anything good to say about GoDaddy. I have about a dozen domains registered thru them, and I've recommended them to friends and family and clients many times throughout the years, often because they were getting ripped-off or defrauded by NSI.
I've never had a problem with GoDaddy, nor have I *ever* received a complaint. On the contrary, several of those whom I've referred have *compliments* about their service and pricing.
In about 8 years of doing business with them, yy only beef with GoDaddy so far is how desperate they seem to sell you loads of additional software that many people simply don't know that they *don't* need. I always warn people about that ahead of time.
Yes, I acknowledge their 'evil' practices, but really, for me, none of that has ever been an issue, and I've only had a positive consumer experience with them.
BTW - I am not, not have I ever been employed or in any way paid by GoDaddy or any related entity. I only add this because I get the sense that nobody here would believe there's anything *good* to say!
I'm done with sigs. Sigs are lame.
I've been with 1 & 1 http://www.1and1.com/ for domain registration and web-hosting and have never had any complaints. Service is fast and easy, domains are inexpensive, and new domains have always come online quickly, within hours.
You know I have been using GoDaddy for around 7 years. I have around 20-25 domains for myself and customers I support. I have never had a problem with them. The domain management is very easy and quick. Not to mention they have very good pricing.
Unless you have a need to move from them as a registrar this is not an issue and I really do not see a need to move if it works well.
If you want to move for ethical reasons, then I have no problem with your reasoning. However if you really think that the majority of the business are ethical, where have you been hiding.
After a little bouncing around through bad registrars, I moved all of my domain names to Moniker. $11 per domain name, great customer service and tech support, and I'm not shafted left and right like I was with GoDaddy. Even though I have told GoDaddy repeatedly the issues they caused (tech support recommended an upgrade to Plesk that fubared by server and they refused to fix it), they have followed up about a dozen times checking to see if there's anything they can do to help my account (e.g. sell my more crummy service). Go riddance.
Second to this. I don't think they sell domains independently from the hosting, but if you want a painless (and cheap!) all-in-one solution, NFS.N is the way to go.
All comments are properties and trademarks of the voices in my head. Not like I'm gonna claim them.
It means they they plant a tree for every orc they kill.
I'd do something interesting, but my server can't handle a slashdotting.
I just moved my domain from NS to No-IP. I did this after NS preemptively took down the Fitna website. I don't want to be doing business with a registrar that has no qualms about revoking a domain for no valid reason.
I was already using No-IP for dynamic DNS and found that their management tools are simple and their website is uncluttered (they don't spam every page with ads for the zillions of services like GoDaddy and some of the other big registrars).
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
I use Misk Same price.
I just switched from NS to No-IP. So I haven't had my domain with them for very long yet, but I've used their other services (Dynamic DNS) for a long time now.
I've never read or heard about them doing anything overtly evil (unlike NS or GoDaddy).
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
I just used Dynamic Network Solutions, Inc (DYNDNS.COM) as my registrar. Seems pretty good so far.
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
> What worries me about Gandi is that they don't offer auto renewing
That may be because Gandi do not own the domain name, the purchaser does. They cannot extend the contract because they are not the owners of the domain.
On the plus side, this prevents the domain being locked-away indefinitely by being auto-renewed into the registrar's name. One domain name that I abandoned eight years ago is still being auto-renewed by the registrar in the vain hope that I might pay their extortionate fees.
Thanks. That looks good, since all I'm looking for is a domain name and email forwarding!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
mydomain.com has been good to me for the last 6 years, good prices, good service, quick support, only thing that bugs me is no ipv6
I had two customers of mine use dreamhost. Both times we tried to upload site changes only to get out of space messages. It appears the hard drives on those servers were full. It was fixed quickly, but still I was not impressed.
I registered with MyDomain. US$9/yr per domain name. They seem okay. We've added subdomain names and modified various email forwarding settings using web forms, and generally it has taken effect within an hour (usually within half an hour). No big problems. Haven't tried to switch to different registrars yet, though, so I don't know how they are in that respect. I checked out their web site before going with them, and I liked how they responded to messages in their help forum.
Slightly offtopic: the above was for domain registration. What about hosting? My previous hosting service, a volunteer-based hosting service, got shut down due to lack of donations. I'm looking for a place that can let me host a web site with structured directories (places like GooglePages does not allow subdirectories) and hopefully CGI (Python preferred, Perl if need be). Having 100MB would be nice, but I really only need about 20MB. If I have choices not within the USA, I'll try those because of the increasingly draconian USA government attitude toward what they can do with my data.
Any recommendations? I've heard of Rackspace in the UK, but haven't checked them out yet.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Thank you for trying to bring teh funnie.
"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand" - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
I had recent bad experiences with 1&1 also, having previously used them for domains and hosting. PHP server returned 500 error about 10% of the time (even on a simple Hello World! script), a problem they refused to take ownership of.
I now have my domains at GoDaddy with a Xen instance for hosting at Panix and life is good again.
They have the Internet on computers now?
I have to agree with you. They are pricier than others but I also have never had a problem and when I had to learn for the first time how to do domain transfers I was able to find much of the information I needed on their site. Of course, I was transferring to them. You pay a little more but I'd say it's worth every penny even though it's only personal use for me.
I hate ICANN for tolerating domain squatters. I even hate google for making the whole thing profitable.
I can't sing their praises enough. I've done domain transfers, renewals, etc without any hitches. They are a little pricier but worth every penny. I only use them to register a few personal domains and a couple of non-profits I volunteer for but I've never had a problem.
How odd, asked for a recommendation for a registrar, you just throw in a recommendation for a hosting service that serves a fairly particular, non-generalized need?
I've registered a few domains through NearlyFreeSpeech.Net, and have been pleased with the service. Registration fee is on par with most places (USD$7.99/yr), and the reg. info anonymizing fee is $0.01/day. Web hosting isn't too shabby, either (again, very affordable).
I've used 1&1 before, and they have been wonderful.
Check out any Small Business trade magazine archive, they'll probably have some sort of article on domain providers in the last year.
"Teach a man to build a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life."
The period of renewal stays with the domain name so it's not like I'm going to lose the money I paid to GoDaddy. If I change my contact details in preparation for a domain name transfer and GoDaddy locks me out out of transferring it for 60 days, what's to stop me from transferring it on day 61? If it happens to overlap with my renewal with GoDaddy then all I have to do is renew the domain name for one year with GoDaddy and then transfer it when the lockdown is over. Nothing is lost here. It might be inconvenient but they're not bilking anyone out of any money.
They're usually a pretty decent group. Last year they moved against my provider, RegisterFly, which was not only involved in highly dubeus money transactions, but had completely shutdown its techsupport system and was ignoring all clients. I was one of the few trapped by an expiring domain, and wasn't able to get it back for 3 months until the entire block was forcefully moved to GoDaddy, under ICANN's guidence. I have since moved to Server Logistics, a small apple-based service with impecable tech support (I know the staff on a first-name basis), and nil down time.
However, I applaud ICANN for it's actions against RegisterFly... they were sort of my savior at that point, since RF and litterally taken my domain (and a few hundred more) hostage in attempts to stave off impending bankruptcy. I called ICANN quite a few times during this period, and they were always able to answer questions as best as they could (even though they themselves were being locked out for a time).
GoDaddy hasn't always had a great reputation, which was why I moved from them. I had mixed feelings about ICANN's forced transfer of all current RegisterFly domains to GoDaddy, but it was without question the fastest and most efficient solution. I do sorta wish that they had moved the domains to a place without a 60-day lockdown. On the other hand, after 3 months of banging on doors, being put on hold for hours, and scouring the 'net for answers, I was perfectly happy to sit back and take a breather for that period of time.
The fact that they are now moving against GoDaddy assures me that they have no underhanded deal with them, and they basically move against those they feel are in the wrong. I have no recollection of the Network Solutions debacle, however.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Careful there. That place has a pretty harsh policy for what their email servers accept. Granted, it's a good policy, but there is potential for legit mails being bounced (as with any anti-spam measures). Still, if I wanted mail forwarding, I'd use the service. After all, the owner is one of the original spam fighters (search for Jeff Wheelhouse), so I'd expect no less of his services. (For you internet young'uns not old enough to have used a real NNTP client for collaboration, this is a great historical worth reading. Plus, it outlines what fools lawyers can be.)
I moved all of mine from GoDaddy to Name Cheap... The freedom to not click through 10 pages of ads and gimmicks just to register a domain is nice. Pricing is nice and they use WhoIsGuard rather than paying another $8 or $9 to GoDaddy for privacy.
What's even better is that GoDaddy won't immediately release your domain. They hold it for 4 days to make sure it wasn't an accident that you initiated the transfer, even with several confirmation e-mails and having to enter transfer codes. I'm sure glad they're looking out for me.
My greatest joy would be to see Bob Parsons homeless, penniless and sleeping in a gutter.
I used to love 1&1 too, until they decided to screw me over.
About three years ago I started hosting podcasts. I didn't see a problem because when I'd set up the account (perhaps two three years before that) there was a bandwidth cap of 5GB a month. However 1&1 removed the cap without altering their terms and conditions with me. Suddenly I had a £400 bill posted to me, which obviously was slightly worrying.
Despite dozens of phone calls with service representatives (which seem to only consist of three people) and having them recorded saying the amount was incorrect and their fault, they refused to refund the money and re-instate the cap. I had the account type changed and placed a email notifier to ensure that if I went over the daily limit I would be notified, within hours of me placing that notifier my control panel was "updated" and the notifier removed, and anouther £250 bill was noticed three days later.
After writing to the damm company with about three pages of compliants they agreed to waive the £250 since it was within the new accounts limits (and aparently a technical error.) They disagreed about the control panel "update" dispite me waiving the logs in their face (the update also removed several other things I put in place to stop my bandwidth issues) lastly the finance department argued it was ok for them to change the terms and conditions without notice because they didn't offer that service anymore (despite going against the contract and UK law.)
Because I lived with my parents and we were moving house I had chance to talk to a solicitor about the whole situation, who told me I was legally in the right and it was a pretty much open and shut case, but because of the evidence etc.. needed to prove it I'd be better off paying the bill as it would save me time and money.
1&1 are theives as far as I'm concerned its been three years since this happened and I still get angry about it.
If I'm transferring a domain away from somebody that means I'm either not happy with the service they were providing or for some other reason I just don't want to give them any more of my money. Denying transfer requests like that just because I changed the admin contact 59 days before the domain is set to expire essentially means a company I don't want to have anything else to do with is reaching back into my pocket and swiping another $10 as a parting gift to themselves. It's the principle of the matter, not the fact that I'd still be out about the same amount of money either way.
It's just as dumb as Comcast wanting to charge $2 to cancel your internet service.
I've always had great luck with 1&1. Just registered a .org last night with them and it was done within the hour (I could visit www.mydomain.org.) While just a little bit more expensive, NearlyFreeSpeech.NET might be a good alternative. I've yet to use them, but have been looking into transferring most of my domains there due to their nearly free speech policies.
1&1 - Cheap domain and web hosting.
Note that the nodaddy.com site hasn't done a lot of research on the registrars they listed and they warn you about that. It is JUST a list of registrars they have heard good things about.
...should both go die in a fire.
INCOMPETENT BASTARDS
Sounds like you have a dedicated server. So if GoDaddy advises you something, why should they be responsible as well?
NOT NameCheap. You can only leave a message when you call them, and they NEVER called me back. They didn't answer ANY of my many support tickets, except with irrelevant replies. They are an eNom reseller, and eNom seems to me to have become abusive. Absolutely the worst I've seen, for many other reasons, too. For example, their system refused to allow me to renew my domains with them. NameCheap.com is an eNom.com reseller, and in my opinion eNom.com has become abusive.
I too want to find a good domain name registrar. I have had very bad experiences with GoDaddy.com, NameCheap.com, and DomainSite.com.
A big problem with trying a new registrar is that they hide how they do business until you have a domain with them. For example, DomainSite.com email forwarding uses an "aggressive" block list that cannot be disabled. DomainSite.com also throws away all Catchall email.
ICANN is a TERRIBLY badly managed organization, in my opinion.
I'm keeping a list of stories about GoDaddy on Slashdot, in order by date:
Go Daddy Usurps Network Solutions (2005-05-04)
GoDaddy Serves Blank Pages to Safari & Opera (2005-12-08)
GoDaddy.com Dumps Linux for Microsoft (2006-03-23)
GoDaddy Holds Domains Hostage (2006-06-17)
GoDaddy Caves To Irish Legal Threat (2006-09-16)
MySpace and GoDaddy Shut Down Security Site (2007-01-26)
That incident prompted this web site:
Exposing the Many Reasons Not to Trust GoDaddy with Your Domain Names. According to this March 11, 2008 story in Wired, GoDaddy shut down an entire web site of 250,000 pages because of one archived mailing list comment: GoDaddy Silences Police-Watchdog Site RateMyCop.com. See below for Slashdot's story about RateMyCop.com.
Alternative Registrars to GoDaddy? (2007-02-03)
GoDaddy Bobbles DST Changeover? (2007-03-11)
850K RegisterFly Domains Moved To GoDaddy (2007-05-29)
GoDaddy Silences RateMyCop.com (2008-03-12)
ICANN Moves Against GoDaddy Domain Lockdowns (2008-04-08)
Any error or stories not included?
GoDaddy's reputation is not just one of a negative stories. In my opinion, GoDaddy tries to confuse non-technical people by offering services they don't need that are presented as valuable.
Here are some of the opinions of Bob Parsons, the owner of GoDaddy. He is pro-violence: Close Gitmo? No way!!
I had no shell access, and he "fixed" the problem for me. A year later I did some other updates (forgetting that one component could not be updated). When I contacted tech support, they told me there was no way to fix the machine, it was an impossible situation to be in (e.g. it was not possible to do my upgrade/install combo), and that I could only reprovision the server.
While I researched how to fix it on my own (I have another day job, so couldn't dedicate lots of time), I was contacted a few times by GoDaddy customer service a few times to see I was satisfied with GoDaddy. I twice explained the situation to the reps, who promised they would fix it, said they found a solution in the notes, but that I would have to reprovision. I told them I'd be willing to pay for the answer rather than reprovisioning, and I'd stay a GoDaddy customer. They did not, and I left. I had prepaid for my server, and didn't want to fight them over a refund.
It's been several months since I left, and just yesterday I got another call- after I have already asked them to never contact me again. What also irks me is that every call to GoDaddy includes several sales offers. Even simple tech support calls (reset password or locked account) would result in a number of sales pitches for items that were due 6 months down the road. They're driven to have you spend as much money as possible each time they contact you.
I like Moniker: no pressure. My server is now with Spry, again, no pressure or upsells (and tech support that fixes problems).
- Customer Experience
The report that I linked to goes into more detail about the type of complaints and whether or not 1 & 1 made reasonable attempts to resolve.Based on BBB files, this company has an unsatisfactory record with the Bureau due to unanswered complaint(s).
Customer Complaint Data
Number of complaints processed by the BBB over the last 36 months: 510
Number of complaints processed by the BBB in the last 12 months: 256
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
Easydns.org. It's a Canadian company. I've registered with them for years. Good ethical business with good service.
I had MAJOR problems with NameCheap.com, and am still having problems. They pretend that they don't know how to refund my money, even though I am no longer hosting with them.
The don't answer trouble tickets except with irrelevant replies. It is possible to call them and leave a message, but they have NEVER called me back.
MAJOR, major hassles.
I never had a problem with 1&1 doing registrations, but within a week of registering a half dozen domains the card that I used with them (and had never user any where else) was used fraudently a dozen times for small purchases in three or four Canadian towns.
I haven't done business with them since.
1and1 doesn't just bounce you to collections for not paying. They have a more unique way of doing things. They disable the domain for the slightest blip in credit processing, and simultaneously send it to collections to collect FUTURE fees. They even do this when you set the domain to NOT auto-renew.
What really takes the cake is that they take up to 3 weeks to reactivate the domain after you pay their collection agency- NCO. Blatant fraud because they are charging you for the down time that you've already paid for. But last but not least 1and1 disables ALL domains in an account if even one is not paid- even when you set it to not renew! So they then defraud you by charging you for all the fully paid domains while blocking them to collect $6 or so on the unwanted domain.
Really bad practice, really arrogant, and really stupid. Why wait 3 weeks for them to reactivate when you can switch to a new registrar and new host on the same day. With morons like the ones they have working in billing, I have no doubt that they are hemorrhaging customers at an exponential rate.
Ronin
If you're lucky, GoDaddy leaves you alone. But here's the problem: Eventually something can happen, and if it does, they have you over a barrel. Case in point: Buddy of mine had about 20 business domains. Someone sent an anonymous complaint that he was spamming. He wasn't. It was pure bunkum, but here is the thing: Anyone can go to GoDaddy and use an anonymous form to accuse you of spamming or doing something illegal. They don't need to give any contact details. GoDaddy will shut you down, then hold your domain hostage for a $200 processing fee to 'cover the costs of the investigation'. My Buddy not only had to pay that fee, but had *all* his other domain names locked too. He paid the fee, grumbled, and moved off. He really had no choice. His business is web based and it was the fastest way to get his domain name back.
I moved off GoDaddy after they shutdown seclists.org without warning. My friend knew about this, but he figured "It won't happen to me." Turns out fate loves a dare!
NoDaddy is a consumer activist site about GoDaddy. It has a list of alternative registrars:
http://forums.nodaddy.com/index.php?board=3.0
We have added an auto renew system on a prepaid account recently. Thxs I will update this faq tomorrow
I have been using yi.org for hosting without any issues. Also received great support from them.
"History is the realm of the true lie." A.Szerb
I've always heard good things about pairNIC and Gandi). I use NameCheap.
It's just the cost of doing business, and even at 200 is not that much of a cost in the scheme of things. I have much bigger fish to fry over trying to save a few pennies on a domain name or two.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
Are their cheaper services? Probably, I'm sure. Are there less annoying ones? You bet. But Godaddy is a known evil, and their high-pressure upsale efforts just plain suck. But you know what? I've been with them for years, and I can become my own mini-registar in the future using their API and also reduce my costs by $300/yr. Their customer support is usually good. And they've been around for awhile.
So what can I say? We live in an imperfect world.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
its not necessarily the "smaller" registrars, in fact, they can be the most abusive and harmful. Many of them are just resellers of the bigger registrars. I recommend Fabulous.com, Moniker.com and Rebel.com. These are companies dedicated to making domainer feel safe, working hard to keep your domains managed correctly and being a great source of information. These are the "domainers' registrars". More info you can email me by visiting my site: Stephen Douglas Successful Domain Managementâ BLOG: http://www.successclick.com/ DomainRelevance.com "Own Your Competitionâ"
There are more to evilness of Godaddy than just Domain locking !! Must Read !!
You be the judge !!!
http://baddaddy.angelfire.com/index.html
&
http://www.nodaddy.com/
or dup
http://www.angelfire.com/baddaddy/