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Alternatives to GoDaddy
- kiplinger 15y agoHonestly, as a freelancer, if you want to keep your domains and email on GD, that is fine with me. Their shared hosting is so inexcusably slow and difficult to manage,it makes me wonder why there hasn't been a class action lawsuit against them. Hyperbole, I know, but they suck at hosting! IF a potential client has space up there, the first thing I do is have them move it.
- omarshammas 15y agojust what I was looking for after all the horrible stories I heard on here.
- filipmares 15y agobro, it's a game and godaddy's winning.
- rooshdi 15y agoWell if it's a "game", Godaddy's committing too many "violations" for our tastes. Time to root for some other team.
- filipmares 15y agothanks for the alternatives. i hate the filthy up-selling from godaddy. have you tried hover.com? they are Canadian.
- myusuf3 15y agoI will give them a shot. How is their dns management?
- diogenescynic 15y agoCheck out this article first: Hover.com: we store & email passwords in plaintext for usability: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2727123 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2727123
- freejack 15y agoOld and inaccurate. New and accurate: http://help.hover.com/2011/07/07/hover-secures-passwords-with-bcrypt-and-enhances-usability-with-identity-verification-tools/ http://help.hover.com/2011/07/07/hover-secures-passwords-wit...
- jackmoore 15y agoI'm sure this is common practice, but I don't like that Tucows (Hover) is squating 200k premium domains and auctioning expiring domains. I have too much disdain for cyber squatters to respect Hover as a registrar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucows#Domain_Portfolio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucows#Domain_Portfolio
- freejack 15y agoWe don't run any auctions and the bulk of our portfolio was acquired on the open market as part of corporate acquisitions (i.e. we bought businesses that owned their own large portfolios). Cybersquatter? I'd love to know how you are defining that term. Usually reserved for scumbags that sit on other peoples trademarks, I can assure you that Tucows is not cybersquatting. If you mean have registered a domain name you want before you thought of it, then... well, tough. We're actually using the vast majority of the names we own as part of our premium email business, etc. These aren't just parking pages etc.
- namank 15y agoNamecheap is an awesome registrar. For hosting, try JustHost.com. Excellent customer service.
- newchimedes 15y agoI just went with Namecheap. I'm moving all my domains all of GoCrappy. GoDaddy is not only a mess to use, but it also costs a lot more.
- namank 15y agoand their bombardment of emails.
- kenjackson 15y ago1&1 might be better than GoDaddy, but not by much. Avoid them if possible.
- paulirish 15y agoI've heard rough things about their hosting but their domain mgmt has been painless. Really enjoy private domain registration for free.
- myusuf3 15y agoThis post is only reviewing domain registration, not hosting.
- RyanKearney 15y agoWait people actually use GoDaddy for hosting?
- myusuf3 15y agoyeah it was an early few, and they can't seem to unregister :P
- WildUtah 15y agoI was looking for this post or one just like it a few months ago but I didn't find one. I went with Gandi.fr instead and I'm so very much happier than with Godaddy and its awful peers. Unfortunately I have to pay in euros. But it was worth it.
- jbyers 15y agoWhen migrating our company's 15 domains away from GoDaddy I evaluated around a dozen registrars. Our criteria may be different from yours. With millions of subdomains and tens of millions of user-generated pages, we needed a registar that would absolutely honor our rights as domain owners. This was our top priority. Our lowest priority was cost, though there was a reasonable upper bound on what we'd pay per year. Features are somewhere in the middle -- we didn't want or need lots of extras. Our priorities were: 1. rights as domain owners 2. registar stability 3. control panel usability 4. extra features (DNS, etc.) 5. cost The winner was Gandi. Their combination of common-sense, customer-friendly terms and European privacy laws made the choice easy. Read your registrar's terms. See if you still want to save that $6 a year.
- arkitaip 15y agoAnd they keep your whois info private. http://www.gandibar.net/post/2008/07/08/Gandi-helps-guard-your-privacy http://www.gandibar.net/post/2008/07/08/Gandi-helps-guard-yo...
- amesign 15y agoExcept for your name. And their private whois is only available to individuals, not company accounts.
- rednaught 15y agoFYI, They are also now incorporated in the US and comply with the Safe Harbor Act.
- ngsayjoe 15y agoI used to use Gandi, but has since transferred all domains to Namecheap, becoz Gandi force you to use NIC handlers to login.
- andresmh 15y agowhy is that a problem? serious question
- callmeed 15y agoI have 63 domains and 5 SSL certs with GoDaddy. While they're definitely not a favorite company, I don't hate them so much that I'm willing to go to the trouble of transferring everything. If you really can't handle their upselling or bad UX, then just use their mobile site (http://godaddymobile.com http://godaddymobile.com) or iPad app. If you have issues with Parsons or their way of doing business, fine–I get that. Otherwise, meh ... just buy your domains and get to work.
- drivebyacct2 15y agoYou clearly have missed a lot when it comes to GoDaddy. You've made the same mistakes that many have made repeatedly. Everytime it's the same, "we thought we were fine, just hosting some domains", right before they have downtime because their hosting was suspended or DNS info dropped at a whim that GoDaddy acted upon with little short-term recourse. It's not hard to transfer, that's just laziness.
- callmeed 15y agoJust to clarify, I don't use GD for actual hosting–just domain registration and SSL certificates. And I've never had DNS issues with them. Not the first time I've been accused of being lazy :)
- drivebyacct2 15y ago>And I've never had DNS issues with them. And neither did any of the many others, until they did. Google "GoDaddy domain problem", "GoDaddy horror stor(y/ies)", etc (I'm too lazy to hyperlink the first 5 links I found in less than a minute of searching). It's just silly to rely on GoDaddy at all these days, in my opinion.
- pbreit 15y agoNo one uses godaddy hosting and few use dns. For domains and ssl, godaddy's prices are tough to beat.
- leftnode 15y ago
- treitnauer 15y agoWe've started building a new domain management service at http://iWantMyName.com http://iWantMyName.com and we're bootstrapped, profitable and proud as 37signals would say... ;) Here is some more background information from a co-founder perspective: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2448717 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2448717
- rednaught 15y agoI had looked at your site some months ago but saw you were a reseller for 1 API at the time. Are you guys ICANN accredited now?
- treitnauer 15y agoNot yet. We're accredited for some ccTLDs and will add further accreditations as we grow. That's a common practice at lots of registrar companies. Even the big ones like GD, NetSol etc. are "only" resellers for some ccTLDs. We've got an excellent relationship with our ICANN registrar and access to all management functions so there isn't really a difference technology-wise.
- mariorz 15y agoI've been using this for a while, the site is beautiful, simple and fast, it's like the anti-godaddy in the best possible way. the online support is also some of the best I've experienced. really great job guys.
- treitnauer 15y agoThanks for such kind words! Since we're on HN, I thought I'd also share the tech behind iWantMyName. It's a catalyst app powered by a RabbitMQ based backend flavored with a lot of CouchDB and sugar coated with some Redis: http://lnz.me/K6MP http://lnz.me/K6MP
- latch 15y agoI'll settle for 1 alternatives to XYZ Registrar if it handles transfers in a sane/simple way.
- drivebyacct2 15y ago1&1 is on the same playing field as GoDaddy.
- chaud 15y agoTheir admin interface is significantly worse and they lack many of the options found on other registrars like Namecheap or Gandi. They don't even offer DDNS or TXT records.
- cesar 15y agoFor registering a new domain I would recommend google apps, because of all the google apps integration to your domain. And if you are looking for server hosting I would recommend linode.
- freejack 15y agoGoogle Apps is godaddy and Enom.
- andrewtj 15y agoFor a simple registrar that supports DNSSEC I've been quite happy with https://www.gkg.net/ https://www.gkg.net/. Their prices are reasonable and their site is quick and functional, though it's navigation is a bit clumsy. I can't comment on their hosting (including DNS) as I've not used it.
- kelleyk 15y agoI switched from Godaddy to Moniker a little while back---quick, easy to use, and price-competitive. They're outside the US (in Canada), too.
- freejack 15y agoMoniker is in Florida and their parent co. has offices in NY, Portland and Germany.
- pasbesoin 15y agotucows used to be Canadian, IIRC (Toronto?). Rebranded or sold the domain business to Hover; not sure about them. Hover seems to have a decent reputation, and are fairly price competitive. Not as cheap as e.g. Namecheap, but close. With all the seizure BS and whatnot, I'm thinking of moving some things really off-shore. Maybe Switzerland? Or I recently read that the Bahamas are good at telling various law enforcement agencies to f-off. Not sure I believe it, though. (I'm not actually running anything gray, let alone black. I'd move partly on principle, and partly because things only look to get worse. For me, it would be more a matter of free speech. Perhaps also free and anonymous speech (at least, anonymous to most private and commercial interests). P.S. freejack, I just noticed one of your other comments. You're with Tucows? Are you still (really) Canadian? Are Canadian registrars holding their own against Washington (and, these days, Ottawa, I guess)?
- myusuf3 15y agoUpdated to include suggestions from discussion!
- peppaayaa 15y agoi use godaddy,namecheap, and internerbs. IMHO, internetbs have best DNS management
- mieses 15y agoDreamhost can be used for purely name registration and DNS. http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Domain_Registration http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Domain_Registration
- carterschonwald 15y agowhat about nearlyfreespeach.net ? I'm surprise no one has mentioned them. I've been quite happy with them and they're seemingly on the pretty aggressive side of nice pricing and digital rights.
- luckyeights 15y agoI've never found a more honest company. For example, they recently discovered a billing error that amounted to $56 over 5 years .. so they refunded everyone double, donated what they couldn't refund to charity, and apologized profusely. (http://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2011/04/07/a-small-billing-error-corrected/ http://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2011/04/07/a-small-billing-...)
- pkamb 15y agoMy one criticism of NFS is that there's no way to save a credit card on file. Certainly makes those "inspiration struck, better go register the domain" purchases much more of a have-to-pull-out-the-wallet ordeal... but maybe making random domains more annoying to buy is actually a good thing.
- soult 15y agoThat is because they use a prepaid model instead of charging you after the registration. Just keep a couple bucks in your account and you can register domains even when you don't have a credit card handy.
- teadrinker 15y agoAs an aside, have any of those inspiration struck domains ever paid off or been developed further? I ask because I've registered about 50 of them over the last 3 and a half years and after a good nights sleep the fire has usually died down and they languish in my account until expiry...
- fbuilesv 15y agoI'm not entirely sure of how it works these days, but when I used to host sites there they required you to host your sites on NFS if you wanted to qualify for the cheap domain registrations.
- ebcase 15y agoThrough our work on Domainr (http://domai.nr/ http://domai.nr/ -- a domain availability search engine) I've gotten to know folks at: - iWantMyName (Timo already posted in this thread) - 101domain - Dreamhost - DNSimple ...and I'd personally recommend all of them, for having solid services, ethical business practices, and good design (for iWMN and DNSimple). I've also heard good things about Namecheap and Gandi from a few friends.
- timerickson 15y agoJust wanted to say I love Domainr. Thanks.
- rytis 15y agoI'm now gradually migrating all domains off GoDaddy (just waiting for them to expire), so this list comes in quite handy. I'm moving to https://www.dynadot.com/ https://www.dynadot.com/, but no one has mentioned it here. Prices are ok, UI is simple. DNS management is simple too, so probably will not suit everyone. No upselling. So far I'm liking them, but bear in mind, I'm only few months with them. Just wondering if anyone has any experience with DynaDot and how they compare to others on the list (especially Gandi, as it looked quite interesting)?
- davidjade 15y agoI've used them a few years now and have been really happy. Not feature-rich but they cover the basics and have reasonable prices with no upsell pressure.
- stock_toaster 15y agoI have also been using dynadot for a few years. No problems here.
- bodyfour 15y agoA year or so ago I regretfully moved _to_ GoDaddy because they were one of the only registrars I could find that supported IPv6 glue records (i.e. you run your own nameservers with IPv6 connectivity, so a lookup of example.com also returns an IPv6 address for ns1.example.com) Many of the smaller players just go through OpenSRS which at least recently only could add IPv6 glue with manual intervention. Maybe they've (finally) fixed that by now. I would like to get back off GoDaddy someday soon, but I've been worried that my IPv6 glue will break. Does anybody know a registrar with solid IPv6 experience?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- systems 15y agoJust out of curiosity, I whoised some domains and google , yahoo & facebook are something called markmonitor microsoft is using melbourneit oracle is using tucows ycombinator is using easyDNS interesting
- ez77 15y agoWhat I don't understand is that Google, being an accredited ICANN registrar [1], is not its own registrar, just like Go Daddy or Name.com. [1] http://www.icann.org/en/registrars/accredited-list.html http://www.icann.org/en/registrars/accredited-list.html
- silencio 15y agoGoogle and Microsoft both are registrars. The answer to your question is likely that MarkMonitor specializes in corporate domain management, and the services they probably offer make it worthwhile to not do everything in-house even at these major tech companies. I can only guess at what might be involved, but I mean hey, there must be a reason, right? It's not just tech companies (Apple and Microsoft included) that have them listed as registrars, it's companies from my bank (Chase) to my ISP (Time Warner) too. The portfolio, so to speak, of MarkMonitor and their clients says a lot. Especially in the face of cheap .com renewals with Go Daddy :p
- ez77 15y agoYou're right, MarkMonitor's portfolio is truly impressive, so there must be something to it. I just thought that precisely those top tech companies (maybe not banks) would appreciate having the additional security layer that arguably comes from being your own registrar, and do so effortlessly.
- silencio 15y agoPerhaps. Then again, with an agreement between the companies involved and whatever mostly-unknown-to-us services they provide, the additional security layer you speak of could be meaningless. I doubt most of the legal teams of said corporations would be okay with this arrangement if it was potentially insecure. And of course there is no such thing as "effortlessly", someone somewhere has to be around to manage the huge domain name portfolios these corporations have. I really wish MarkMonitor's website wasn't basically a bunch of marketing mumbo jumbo about all the services they provide. It'd be interesting to find out what they are being paid to do (even in brief) for all these major companies. For all we know they could just be a glorified godaddy for corporations that buy and hold a lot of domain names as far as their domain registry service is concerned.
- scorpion032 15y agoGodaddy offers Rupee transactions that no one else does. Enough feature for me to stick and not bother transferring.
- nodata 15y agoNameCheap for SSL certs, dd24 for domains (http://www.domaindiscount24.com/?language=en http://www.domaindiscount24.com/?language=en) Edit: scrub that: gandi are the same price for SSL certs, and have a better interface for domains. Switched!
- nh 15y agoMore discussion at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=150561 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=150561
- Rinum 15y agoNo dynadot? Is there something I should know?
- foobarbazetc 15y agoThat a random article on the Internet can't cover all registrars? :) Dynadot is IMHO the best registrar ever. This speaks volumes: Domain Name:WIKILEAKS.ORG Created On:04-Oct-2006 05:54:19 UTC Last Updated On:24-May-2011 23:27:29 UTC Expiration Date:04-Oct-2018 05:54:19 UTC Sponsoring Registrar:Dynadot, LLC (R1266-LROR) Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
- ajhit406 15y agoWe use Dnsimple. It's not Cheap, but if you have a bunch of domains it's incredibly helpful and just gets out of the way and works. For some reason propogation of changes is always seems faster too. For all our super cool (.io) domains, we use iwantmyname. No frills, fantastic support and simple UI.
- petercooper 15y agoI use several registrars for various reasons but so far NameCheap have been my favorite. They're on the list but wanted to give them a thumbs up here. No nonsense from them and their free "WHOIS guard" is a nice touch.
- chris24 15y agoNameCheap's great. They're pretty quick and cheap. They also offered a free PositiveSSL cert with new domain registrations & transfers for awhile too.
- blackboxxx 15y agoNamespro.ca is good, especially for Canadians. I transferred all my domains there from GoDaddy after the elephant killing.
- skysurfer172 15y agoI've been happy with Dotster for my domain registration and some DNS management and have been slowly moving domains over from GD to them. Anyone else have input on Dotster?
- canassa 15y agoI am transferring my domains from GoDaddy to Dynadot (http://www.dynadot.com http://www.dynadot.com), so far I have no complains.