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Unqualified comment, I admit, but GoDaddy as well as other domain shops seem to be stuck in the late 90s. With UI, tech and support quality. Also Namecheap, whi

by derFunk 10y ago

Unqualified comment, I admit, but GoDaddy as well as other domain shops seem to be stuck in the late 90s. With UI, tech and support quality. Also Namecheap, which I'm using primarily. They just put a fresh UI on top of parts of their customer acquisition facing system couple of years ago and still run the same core system.

kev009 10y ago
When godaddy had one of their big SOPA snafu I switched to name.com. name.com prices are good, UI is good, seems like a decent company. I guess they were bought last year by a larger company and I've noticed no negative changes. gandi.net is a little more expensive but they are highly regarded as a company.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  Name.com refused to do DNS properly if you used their bundled DNS service. They'd resolve any hostname, but if you hadn't defined it, then they'd resolve it to some search or ad page? That's why I stopped using them. Namecheap, despite the idiotic name, seems pretty good.
  - X-Istence 10y ago
    The name.com bundled DNS service no longer does this, and hasn't for a while now.
godzillabrennus 10y ago
I switched to buying domains from Google (http://domains.google.com http://domains.google.com) two years ago. They give free private registration, let you use google for authoritative dns and setting up Google Apps is super simple. Been a stellar choice so far!
- albasha 10y ago
  Last I checked it was for US residents only. I couldn't sign up from Canada. Thinking about trying AWS domain registration services soon.
  - fny 10y ago
    Look into Namesilo. I've had an incredible experience with them thus far. Not pretty, but insanely functional.
marincounty 10y ago
I haven't had to deal with their tech support. I've only had to deal with their sales department, but never had a problem--everyone spoke english. My problem is I got tired of the games by upper management. For years they have changed my settings. They changed the do not automatically renew, to renew. We all know what you are doing. I'm actually suprised someone haven't sued. Plus--the price game got old. They final straw was no coupons to renew. I moved everything to g with free privacy. No hassles whatsoever. I personally think this company is on its way out. If I had its stock, it would be sold on Monday. If the big guy is reading this; we just want a price under 8 dollars a year, with free privacy. You know you could make still make a lot of money. Hell, at this point I question the need for advertising. No need for commercials? No need for all that noise? Your customers will come back if you knock off the games. You just have too much completion to act the fool? And I want go-daddy back. G is alwready too big. (I'm sick with shingles this weekend. The pain is affecting my writing. I never knew shingles were so painful. It's more than just pain--I don't feel like myself? I hope I don't end up in the emergency room. I wish I got that antiviral drug. I'd watch the commercials, and thought shingles were basically just an aesthetic problem. They arn't. I think the virus is affecting my brain?)
ben_jones 10y ago
Two thoughts. * If it ain't broke don't fix it. * Google could take some tips from a lean tech company that creates a legacy product that requires minimum upkeep while staying respectable profitable.
- cellularmitosis 10y ago
  What tips could Google glean from the Blockbuster Video of registrars?
  - tyingq 10y ago
    Maybe Google is becoming interested in the lower end of the hosting market? GoDaddy is at roughly $1+B/year of revenue with a 5% market share. The revenue is split pretty evenly between domains and hosting, and there's obviously synergy between the two. A 5% market share netting $1+B implies an overall market of $20+B. Google has all the pieces, but doesn't seem to have made any notable inroads in that space. They haven't made any real attempts, thus far, to compete with GoDaddy, 1&1, EIG, etc.
- nihonde 10y ago
  But...really it is broken, because, as a long-time Namecheap customer, their shitty legacy systems have got me looking for a better option. I recently complained that they sent me an email warning about a pending expiration, followed immediately by an email about auto-renewal on the same account. Their response was basically to shrug and explain that their email notifications suck. That's garbage customer service no matter how you cut it, and the domain registration/hosting business is 100% customer service. And GoDaddy is all of the above, but a thousand times worse.
  - davidandgoliath 10y ago
    For reference, ICANN requires that upcoming renewal notifications are sent in specific intervals, so it results in very noisy registrars. Namecheap could note within that renewal notice (and subsequently avoiding the auto-renewal notice) but, I can see where they're coming from.
biot 10y ago
I switched all mine to EasyDNS... a quick scan of their blog gives a good idea of their philosophy: http://blog.easydns.org/ http://blog.easydns.org/
kyriakos 10y ago
Been using Namecheap for years but recently I had to use GoDaddy cause a client insisted. I had to use their support, the experience was awful and I am not talking about UX but to actually get to speak to a human who knows what you are talking about was nearly impossible. On the other hand Namecheap's chat support was very helpful in multiple occasions. So if we are not comparing UI's from my personal experience I wouldn't say namecheap is as bad.
joelrunyon 10y ago
Check out http://Uniregistry.com http://Uniregistry.com - seriously next-level domain management + free privacy & no annoying upsells. Been very impressed. I wrote about the reasons why recently here - https://startablog.tv/move-domains-to-uniregistry/ https://startablog.tv/move-domains-to-uniregistry/ Namecheap refreshed their UX, but still really difficult to handle any sort of volume of domains.
tyingq 10y ago
>> GoDaddy as well as other domain shops seem to be stuck in the late 90s I'm surprised that no startups (or existing vps/cloud providers) have tried to jump into this lower-end space of domains + shared hosting. The market size is pretty big, and the competition is, as you mention, pretty stagnant. At the moment, it's mostly GoDaddy, 1&1, and the various companies owned by EIG. There also seems to be quite a bit of room for disrupting that market. It's fairly tech support intensive, partially due to things that could be improved, automated, etc. For example, most of them depend on "Cpanel", which is more than showing it's age. The relative success of Wix.com (close to 1B mkt cap), which only went after a very specific sub-slice of this segment seems to indicate there's room for a bigger play.

by derFunk 10y ago

kev009 10y ago

When godaddy had one of their big SOPA snafu I switched to name.com. name.com prices are good, UI is good, seems like a decent company. I guess they were bought last year by a larger company and I've noticed no negative changes. gandi.net is a little more expensive but they are highly regarded as a company.

MichaelGG 10y ago
Name.com refused to do DNS properly if you used their bundled DNS service. They'd resolve any hostname, but if you hadn't defined it, then they'd resolve it to some search or ad page? That's why I stopped using them. Namecheap, despite the idiotic name, seems pretty good.
- X-Istence 10y ago
  The name.com bundled DNS service no longer does this, and hasn't for a while now.

godzillabrennus 10y ago

I switched to buying domains from Google (http://domains.google.com http://domains.google.com) two years ago. They give free private registration, let you use google for authoritative dns and setting up Google Apps is super simple. Been a stellar choice so far!

albasha 10y ago
Last I checked it was for US residents only. I couldn't sign up from Canada. Thinking about trying AWS domain registration services soon.
- fny 10y ago
  Look into Namesilo. I've had an incredible experience with them thus far. Not pretty, but insanely functional.

marincounty 10y ago

I haven't had to deal with their tech support. I've only had to deal with their sales department, but never had a problem--everyone spoke english. My problem is I got tired of the games by upper management. For years they have changed my settings. They changed the do not automatically renew, to renew. We all know what you are doing. I'm actually suprised someone haven't sued. Plus--the price game got old. They final straw was no coupons to renew. I moved everything to g with free privacy. No hassles whatsoever. I personally think this company is on its way out. If I had its stock, it would be sold on Monday. If the big guy is reading this; we just want a price under 8 dollars a year, with free privacy. You know you could make still make a lot of money. Hell, at this point I question the need for advertising. No need for commercials? No need for all that noise? Your customers will come back if you knock off the games. You just have too much completion to act the fool? And I want go-daddy back. G is alwready too big. (I'm sick with shingles this weekend. The pain is affecting my writing. I never knew shingles were so painful. It's more than just pain--I don't feel like myself? I hope I don't end up in the emergency room. I wish I got that antiviral drug. I'd watch the commercials, and thought shingles were basically just an aesthetic problem. They arn't. I think the virus is affecting my brain?)

ben_jones 10y ago

Two thoughts. * If it ain't broke don't fix it. * Google could take some tips from a lean tech company that creates a legacy product that requires minimum upkeep while staying respectable profitable.

cellularmitosis 10y ago
What tips could Google glean from the Blockbuster Video of registrars?
- tyingq 10y ago
  Maybe Google is becoming interested in the lower end of the hosting market? GoDaddy is at roughly $1+B/year of revenue with a 5% market share. The revenue is split pretty evenly between domains and hosting, and there's obviously synergy between the two. A 5% market share netting $1+B implies an overall market of $20+B. Google has all the pieces, but doesn't seem to have made any notable inroads in that space. They haven't made any real attempts, thus far, to compete with GoDaddy, 1&1, EIG, etc.
nihonde 10y ago
But...really it is broken, because, as a long-time Namecheap customer, their shitty legacy systems have got me looking for a better option. I recently complained that they sent me an email warning about a pending expiration, followed immediately by an email about auto-renewal on the same account. Their response was basically to shrug and explain that their email notifications suck. That's garbage customer service no matter how you cut it, and the domain registration/hosting business is 100% customer service. And GoDaddy is all of the above, but a thousand times worse.
- davidandgoliath 10y ago
  For reference, ICANN requires that upcoming renewal notifications are sent in specific intervals, so it results in very noisy registrars. Namecheap could note within that renewal notice (and subsequently avoiding the auto-renewal notice) but, I can see where they're coming from.

biot 10y ago

I switched all mine to EasyDNS... a quick scan of their blog gives a good idea of their philosophy: http://blog.easydns.org/ http://blog.easydns.org/

kyriakos 10y ago

Been using Namecheap for years but recently I had to use GoDaddy cause a client insisted. I had to use their support, the experience was awful and I am not talking about UX but to actually get to speak to a human who knows what you are talking about was nearly impossible. On the other hand Namecheap's chat support was very helpful in multiple occasions. So if we are not comparing UI's from my personal experience I wouldn't say namecheap is as bad.

joelrunyon 10y ago

Check out http://Uniregistry.com http://Uniregistry.com - seriously next-level domain management + free privacy & no annoying upsells. Been very impressed. I wrote about the reasons why recently here - https://startablog.tv/move-domains-to-uniregistry/ https://startablog.tv/move-domains-to-uniregistry/ Namecheap refreshed their UX, but still really difficult to handle any sort of volume of domains.

tyingq 10y ago

>> GoDaddy as well as other domain shops seem to be stuck in the late 90s I'm surprised that no startups (or existing vps/cloud providers) have tried to jump into this lower-end space of domains + shared hosting. The market size is pretty big, and the competition is, as you mention, pretty stagnant. At the moment, it's mostly GoDaddy, 1&1, and the various companies owned by EIG. There also seems to be quite a bit of room for disrupting that market. It's fairly tech support intensive, partially due to things that could be improved, automated, etc. For example, most of them depend on "Cpanel", which is more than showing it's age. The relative success of Wix.com (close to 1B mkt cap), which only went after a very specific sub-slice of this segment seems to indicate there's room for a bigger play.