8 ms·

If you wanted good customer support you shouldn't have gone with Google. There are plenty of other more reputable domain regrestrars.

CameronNemo 6y ago
Do you have examples?
- dhagz 6y ago
  I'm a fan of Hover, personally.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  Namecheap have been solid for me for several years now.
  - abc-xyz 6y ago
    Namecheap dumping personal info without informing their customer (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18063667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18063667), Namecheap threatening to shut down a site if the customer doesn’t delete two images posted there within 24 hours (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14139288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14139288)
    - artificial 6y ago
      Which registrar is recommended?
      - abc-xyz 6y ago
        I personally prefer Gandi, but also use name.com and Cloudflare - haven't heard any horror stories about either of those 3 registrars.
        snazz 6y ago
        Cloudflare Registrar had some issues at one point but they had more to do with a broken system that assumed the domain was purchased elsewhere than anything else, if I remember correctly. Their support apparently handled that case very well.
        gfs 6y ago
        Gandi had its own horror story not too long ago too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22001822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22001822 I am a fan of NameCheap personally.
      - beardbound 6y ago
        I have used hover for years and quite like them. The customer support was awesome when I had an issue with getting a .com.au domain setup for a business. Australia has some extra requirements for domains that I wasn't familiar with. I also like to have my domains separate from everything else so if I move hosts/email providers it's easy.
      - mech422 6y ago
        I like easydns - don't know who they resell thru, but it's awesome being able to call and get a real engineer on the phone and not a call center. I've been using them for years, and never had any technical issues...
        jtl999 6y ago
        They have their own accreditation for .COM/.NET/.ORG/.INFO/.CA (and maybe a few others) else they fallback to Tucows OpenSRS system, which is decent except in the case of needing advanced features like DNSSEC (for certain TLDs) where they seemingly have a "Half Life 3" type schedule of deploying new features
      - chrisweekly 6y ago
        I've been happy with my dedicated providers: IWantMyName.com (registrar)and DNSMadeEasy.com (DNS).
      - vpzom 6y ago
        I've been using Porkbun for a while now
    - notriddle 6y ago
      > Namecheap threatening to shut down a site if the customer doesn’t delete two images posted there within 24 hours Better than what Google Domains did to Gitbook.
    - JimDabell 6y ago
      > Namecheap dumping personal info without informing their customer Something similar happened to me – Namecheap dumped the wrong (private) information into WHOIS immediately after a redesign of their systems. It definitely was not user error. Dealing with Namecheap's customer support to try to resolve this was possibly the worst customer support experience I've had in 20+ years in the tech industry. Lots of lies about getting back to me the next day, passing the buck, blaming everybody but themselves, extended periods of flat-out ignoring me, and eventually a complete inability to fix it. I've been a happy user of Hover ever since, but I'm unable to recommend them – ironically because nothing has ever gone wrong with them. I used to recommend Namecheap until that nightmare happened, then I found out just how shockingly useless they are when it comes to customer support and privacy. Ever since, I only recommend services where something has gone wrong so that I know they are capable of resolving problems well. I regret ever recommending Namecheap and don't want to make the same mistake again. Some more Namecheap horror stories here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18087862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18087862
- OzzyB 6y ago
  Apart from the most obvious examples, I would also consider Cloudflare's new registry service. It's cheap, at-cost, and they support a lot of the new TLDs like .io which is also a lot cheaper.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
    > It's cheap, at-cost That to me is a downside since that means that that is not a core part of their business. Financially, it makes no difference to them if I use their service or not. I would rather pay a little extra to a company that has domain registration as a core part of their business and actually makes a profit from me. And domain names are cheap. Even if you pay twice as much as the cheapest service, it still will not make any difference in your bottom line.
    - OzzyB 6y ago
      The counter is it's also risky to use a company that only does Domain Registration since it's a very low margin business and thus the risk for them shuttering is higher -- or they'll try to make it up with various erroneous fees I know the concern of putting all your eggs in one basket is real, but since CF's business is literally to take over your domain DNS and slap on some add-on services, adding domain registration in-house seems like a good fit.
      - joepie91_ 6y ago
        > The counter is it's also risky to use a company that only does Domain Registration since it's a very low margin business and thus the risk for them shuttering is higher You can avoid this issue by going with a registrar that focuses on bulk domain sales (eg. internet.bs in my case, but there are more, like eNom I think?), as they have a high-enough volume that they can easily stay afloat even when charging reasonable prices and without aggressive upsells. It's mostly the consumer-focused "$1 for the first year" registrars like GoDaddy that you want to stay away from. Those are the really problematic ones. > but since CF's business is literally to take over your domain DNS and slap on some add-on services, adding domain registration in-house seems like a good fit. Sure, if you want to send all the traffic of all of your users through a man-in-the-middle US-based company with a very dubious past and a questionable business model revolving around basically centralizing the internet. It's not a great recommendation to make. It also raises the question of why they seem intent on killing off the registrar market by offering "at cost" (which honestly isn't much lower than what aforementioned internet.bs charges anyway).
- andyfleming 6y ago
  GoDaddy has great support. It’s available via phone and you don’t need to be on some enterprise plan to get it. (Disclaimer: I work there)
  - hundchenkatze 6y ago
    No thanks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoDaddy#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoDaddy#Controversies
  - Semaphor 6y ago
    Wow, I’d use Google before I ever used GoDaddy, I mean that’s probably the most well-known "Do not use under any circumstances" registrar.
  - cirno 6y ago
    GoDaddy answers their phones with real people, but they are completely powerless to actually help you. You can escalate all the way to the office of the CEO (who doesn't answer their phones) and they won't lift a finger to help you. I had been a customer for over ten years with several domains, and they still wouldn't help me with a three-figure billing error. What kind of business fights a decade-long customer over an interest rounding error for them?
- kube-system 6y ago
  I haven't used them personally, but I've read a ton of rave reviews about gandi.net. Namecheap also talks a good talk, and Cloudflare has a good reputation.
- michaelt 6y ago
  According to whois, google.com, amazon.com, github.com, microsoft.com, netflix.com, reddit.com, baidu.com, youtube.com, twitch.tv and wikipedia.org all use MarkMonitor [1] apple.com, twitter.com and ocado.com use CSC Corporate Domains [2] I have no idea what such services charge, but they're all "call for pricing" and none of those companies would blink at spending $10k/year on their domains. Not every well known brand uses such a service, though. bbc.com uses tucows, stackoverflow.com uses name.com and ycombinator.com uses gandi. facebook.com uses RegistrarSafe, a subsidiary of themselves, and almost every domain registrar is registered with themselves. [1] https://markmonitor.com/ https://markmonitor.com/ [2] https://www.cscglobal.com/global/web/csc//micro-domain-name-management_uk.html https://www.cscglobal.com/global/web/csc//micro-domain-name-...
  - hitpointdrew 6y ago
    Google.com doesn't even use Google Domains....that is telling right there.
    - snazz 6y ago
      Google.com was registered long before Google Domains was created. Lots of other more modern Google domains---even .google ones---are registered with MarkMonitor as well. Google Domains doesn't compete with MarkMonitor for large businesses with extremely valuable domains.
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      Google Domains is not a corporate registrar. It's thus not targeted at the big corporate Google use case anyway, so that's not a surprise.
    - manojlds 6y ago
      Not really useful when talking about companies like Google. They also don't use Kubernetes...
  - toast0 6y ago
    At my last job, we called MarkMonitor after NetworkSolutions' lack of admin security got our domain hijacked. I don't remeber the prices exactly, and I'm sure they've changed, but from what I recall, the per domain year prices were about 10x normal prices, like $100/year for .com, but they also had a mininum annual spend of I think $10k/year; to get the 'super lock' domain service was about $1000/year available on a small selection of TLDs. They were also pretty dismissive on the first call until they looked us up and you could hear the dollar signs spinning in their eyes. They were very easy to work with and professional after that though. This was while they were owned by Thompson-Reuters, they've since been sold to private equity.
yoran 6y ago
I don't understand why you got downvoted. Google's customer support is notoriously non-existent (perhaps except for stuff that brings in money like AdWords). They admit themselves that it's a business decision: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-support-staff-limits-13916.html https://www.seroundtable.com/google-support-staff-limits-139...
- ballenf 6y ago
  Because it's about as helpful as saying "you shouldn't have moved to Los Santos if you value safety" to someone who's bleeding on the street having just been mugged. The same message could also be worded more like "once you get past this, I'm sure you're already considering moving registrars. But please let us know if the support you're receiving from them is as bad as (my experience / reputation / etc.)".
  - fmajid 6y ago
    Or better yet, "here is a reputable site reviewing registrars for reliability and customer service" (I don't know if there is such a site, there really should, but it's unclear how it would make money).
MattGaiser 6y ago
99% of people never need customer support, so I doubt most people consider it when choosing a service.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  That may be true for a given service, but I'd wager closer to 99% of people have used customer support for something in the past. It'd be foolish to disregard it when you know you've needed it before, even if not for that same service category.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    I don't think it should be disregarded, just that it is not top of mind when making the choice.
- m463 6y ago
  You may be downvoted, but I think it is true. I think they consider price and convenience most of all (both of which happen to be google's forte)
- bigiain 6y ago
  You're right. Because 99% of people don't realise that their domain registrar holds the keys to their business's entire internet presence. They can switch off your website/email at any time, with no real consequences apart from a little bit of bad PR if you have enough social media followers or post in the right forums where their staff hang out. They can also do a shitty job of securing your domain, and let it get stolen/hijacked. The attacker then gets to set up their own MX records and collect all the password reset emails they triggered on every other important site, and pretty much own anything you doin't have 2FA set up on. Anyone who doesn't think customer support from their business domain registrar is a thing worth paying for, most likely hasn't evaluated the risks properly.

CameronNemo 6y ago

Do you have examples?

dhagz 6y ago
I'm a fan of Hover, personally.
nicoburns 6y ago
Namecheap have been solid for me for several years now.
- abc-xyz 6y ago
  Namecheap dumping personal info without informing their customer (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18063667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18063667), Namecheap threatening to shut down a site if the customer doesn’t delete two images posted there within 24 hours (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14139288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14139288)
  - artificial 6y ago
    Which registrar is recommended?
    - abc-xyz 6y ago
      I personally prefer Gandi, but also use name.com and Cloudflare - haven't heard any horror stories about either of those 3 registrars.
      - snazz 6y ago
        Cloudflare Registrar had some issues at one point but they had more to do with a broken system that assumed the domain was purchased elsewhere than anything else, if I remember correctly. Their support apparently handled that case very well.
      - gfs 6y ago
        Gandi had its own horror story not too long ago too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22001822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22001822 I am a fan of NameCheap personally.
    - beardbound 6y ago
      I have used hover for years and quite like them. The customer support was awesome when I had an issue with getting a .com.au domain setup for a business. Australia has some extra requirements for domains that I wasn't familiar with. I also like to have my domains separate from everything else so if I move hosts/email providers it's easy.
    - mech422 6y ago
      I like easydns - don't know who they resell thru, but it's awesome being able to call and get a real engineer on the phone and not a call center. I've been using them for years, and never had any technical issues...
      - jtl999 6y ago
        They have their own accreditation for .COM/.NET/.ORG/.INFO/.CA (and maybe a few others) else they fallback to Tucows OpenSRS system, which is decent except in the case of needing advanced features like DNSSEC (for certain TLDs) where they seemingly have a "Half Life 3" type schedule of deploying new features
    - chrisweekly 6y ago
      I've been happy with my dedicated providers: IWantMyName.com (registrar)and DNSMadeEasy.com (DNS).
    - vpzom 6y ago
      I've been using Porkbun for a while now
  - notriddle 6y ago
    > Namecheap threatening to shut down a site if the customer doesn’t delete two images posted there within 24 hours Better than what Google Domains did to Gitbook.
  - JimDabell 6y ago
    > Namecheap dumping personal info without informing their customer Something similar happened to me – Namecheap dumped the wrong (private) information into WHOIS immediately after a redesign of their systems. It definitely was not user error. Dealing with Namecheap's customer support to try to resolve this was possibly the worst customer support experience I've had in 20+ years in the tech industry. Lots of lies about getting back to me the next day, passing the buck, blaming everybody but themselves, extended periods of flat-out ignoring me, and eventually a complete inability to fix it. I've been a happy user of Hover ever since, but I'm unable to recommend them – ironically because nothing has ever gone wrong with them. I used to recommend Namecheap until that nightmare happened, then I found out just how shockingly useless they are when it comes to customer support and privacy. Ever since, I only recommend services where something has gone wrong so that I know they are capable of resolving problems well. I regret ever recommending Namecheap and don't want to make the same mistake again. Some more Namecheap horror stories here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18087862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18087862
OzzyB 6y ago
Apart from the most obvious examples, I would also consider Cloudflare's new registry service. It's cheap, at-cost, and they support a lot of the new TLDs like .io which is also a lot cheaper.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
  > It's cheap, at-cost That to me is a downside since that means that that is not a core part of their business. Financially, it makes no difference to them if I use their service or not. I would rather pay a little extra to a company that has domain registration as a core part of their business and actually makes a profit from me. And domain names are cheap. Even if you pay twice as much as the cheapest service, it still will not make any difference in your bottom line.
  - OzzyB 6y ago
    The counter is it's also risky to use a company that only does Domain Registration since it's a very low margin business and thus the risk for them shuttering is higher -- or they'll try to make it up with various erroneous fees I know the concern of putting all your eggs in one basket is real, but since CF's business is literally to take over your domain DNS and slap on some add-on services, adding domain registration in-house seems like a good fit.
    - joepie91_ 6y ago
      > The counter is it's also risky to use a company that only does Domain Registration since it's a very low margin business and thus the risk for them shuttering is higher You can avoid this issue by going with a registrar that focuses on bulk domain sales (eg. internet.bs in my case, but there are more, like eNom I think?), as they have a high-enough volume that they can easily stay afloat even when charging reasonable prices and without aggressive upsells. It's mostly the consumer-focused "$1 for the first year" registrars like GoDaddy that you want to stay away from. Those are the really problematic ones. > but since CF's business is literally to take over your domain DNS and slap on some add-on services, adding domain registration in-house seems like a good fit. Sure, if you want to send all the traffic of all of your users through a man-in-the-middle US-based company with a very dubious past and a questionable business model revolving around basically centralizing the internet. It's not a great recommendation to make. It also raises the question of why they seem intent on killing off the registrar market by offering "at cost" (which honestly isn't much lower than what aforementioned internet.bs charges anyway).
andyfleming 6y ago
GoDaddy has great support. It’s available via phone and you don’t need to be on some enterprise plan to get it. (Disclaimer: I work there)
- hundchenkatze 6y ago
  No thanks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoDaddy#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoDaddy#Controversies
- Semaphor 6y ago
  Wow, I’d use Google before I ever used GoDaddy, I mean that’s probably the most well-known "Do not use under any circumstances" registrar.
- cirno 6y ago
  GoDaddy answers their phones with real people, but they are completely powerless to actually help you. You can escalate all the way to the office of the CEO (who doesn't answer their phones) and they won't lift a finger to help you. I had been a customer for over ten years with several domains, and they still wouldn't help me with a three-figure billing error. What kind of business fights a decade-long customer over an interest rounding error for them?
kube-system 6y ago
I haven't used them personally, but I've read a ton of rave reviews about gandi.net. Namecheap also talks a good talk, and Cloudflare has a good reputation.
michaelt 6y ago
According to whois, google.com, amazon.com, github.com, microsoft.com, netflix.com, reddit.com, baidu.com, youtube.com, twitch.tv and wikipedia.org all use MarkMonitor [1] apple.com, twitter.com and ocado.com use CSC Corporate Domains [2] I have no idea what such services charge, but they're all "call for pricing" and none of those companies would blink at spending $10k/year on their domains. Not every well known brand uses such a service, though. bbc.com uses tucows, stackoverflow.com uses name.com and ycombinator.com uses gandi. facebook.com uses RegistrarSafe, a subsidiary of themselves, and almost every domain registrar is registered with themselves. [1] https://markmonitor.com/ https://markmonitor.com/ [2] https://www.cscglobal.com/global/web/csc//micro-domain-name-management_uk.html https://www.cscglobal.com/global/web/csc//micro-domain-name-...
- hitpointdrew 6y ago
  Google.com doesn't even use Google Domains....that is telling right there.
  - snazz 6y ago
    Google.com was registered long before Google Domains was created. Lots of other more modern Google domains---even .google ones---are registered with MarkMonitor as well. Google Domains doesn't compete with MarkMonitor for large businesses with extremely valuable domains.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    Google Domains is not a corporate registrar. It's thus not targeted at the big corporate Google use case anyway, so that's not a surprise.
  - manojlds 6y ago
    Not really useful when talking about companies like Google. They also don't use Kubernetes...
- toast0 6y ago
  At my last job, we called MarkMonitor after NetworkSolutions' lack of admin security got our domain hijacked. I don't remeber the prices exactly, and I'm sure they've changed, but from what I recall, the per domain year prices were about 10x normal prices, like $100/year for .com, but they also had a mininum annual spend of I think $10k/year; to get the 'super lock' domain service was about $1000/year available on a small selection of TLDs. They were also pretty dismissive on the first call until they looked us up and you could hear the dollar signs spinning in their eyes. They were very easy to work with and professional after that though. This was while they were owned by Thompson-Reuters, they've since been sold to private equity.

yoran 6y ago

I don't understand why you got downvoted. Google's customer support is notoriously non-existent (perhaps except for stuff that brings in money like AdWords). They admit themselves that it's a business decision: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-support-staff-limits-13916.html https://www.seroundtable.com/google-support-staff-limits-139...

ballenf 6y ago
Because it's about as helpful as saying "you shouldn't have moved to Los Santos if you value safety" to someone who's bleeding on the street having just been mugged. The same message could also be worded more like "once you get past this, I'm sure you're already considering moving registrars. But please let us know if the support you're receiving from them is as bad as (my experience / reputation / etc.)".
- fmajid 6y ago
  Or better yet, "here is a reputable site reviewing registrars for reliability and customer service" (I don't know if there is such a site, there really should, but it's unclear how it would make money).

MattGaiser 6y ago

99% of people never need customer support, so I doubt most people consider it when choosing a service.

Jtsummers 6y ago
That may be true for a given service, but I'd wager closer to 99% of people have used customer support for something in the past. It'd be foolish to disregard it when you know you've needed it before, even if not for that same service category.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  I don't think it should be disregarded, just that it is not top of mind when making the choice.
m463 6y ago
You may be downvoted, but I think it is true. I think they consider price and convenience most of all (both of which happen to be google's forte)
bigiain 6y ago
You're right. Because 99% of people don't realise that their domain registrar holds the keys to their business's entire internet presence. They can switch off your website/email at any time, with no real consequences apart from a little bit of bad PR if you have enough social media followers or post in the right forums where their staff hang out. They can also do a shitty job of securing your domain, and let it get stolen/hijacked. The attacker then gets to set up their own MX records and collect all the password reset emails they triggered on every other important site, and pretty much own anything you doin't have 2FA set up on. Anyone who doesn't think customer support from their business domain registrar is a thing worth paying for, most likely hasn't evaluated the risks properly.