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I have some experience with Freenom. In fact after seeing a Show HN for Mailoji (single character emoji emails) I found the TLD .gq and registered a number of

I have some experience with Freenom. In fact after seeing a Show HN for Mailoji (single character emoji emails) I found the TLD .gq and registered a number of county flag single emoji domains. In my experience it is not a total scam at all, rather they offer a freemium business model which is unique in the domain space. Like many other freemium services the free tier is limited and just a means of getting you to upgrade. For example the free domain registration is limited to a maximum term of 12 months, they do not allow you to transfer ownership of the free domain registrations and they even froze my account after registering maybe a few dozen single character emoji domains in rapid succession. I was actually so please with registering single character country flag emoji domains I paid the fee to upgrade and unlocked all the features. I don’t think I can use emojis on the HN comment but for reference I registered (all .gq extensions): Cuba Flag, Israel Flag, Palestinian Flag, Ireland flag, South African Flag, Nigerian Flag and a few other middle eastern county flags. As a side note the Mailoji service used the official Kazakhstan (.kz) registrar and I was interested and registered two single character country flag emoji domains with them (including Russia Flag) and they took that domain from me and gave it to a Developer in Kazakhstan that is clearly connected with employees that work for the registrar.

josephcsible 5y ago
> Like many other freemium services the free tier is limited and just a means of getting you to upgrade. The part that makes it a scam is that the trigger to start extracting money from you happens once you have something to lose by not doing so. Think about cloud storage providers with a 2GB free tier. Now imagine if instead of just forbidding uploads that would put you over your limit, that once you hit your limit, they held all of your existing files hostage until you paid them $100. Wouldn't you then consider them a scam?
- throwawaycities 5y ago
  It’s not apples to apples, a domain name is an asset and a Dropbox account isn’t an asset. However the logic is the same, Dropbox extracts value once they have a reasonable belief I am so invested into their service I would be more likely to pay to upgrade than migrate my data to another freemium service. Also in my opinion Freenom makes very clear disclosures about the differences in the paid and unpaid features and rights. Just like Dropbox. To say Freenom is defrauding people would be more on par with saying GoDaddy is defrauding customers when they offer a discount on the 1st year registration and then they “extract more money” subsequent years after I have invested in the domain and have something to lose. The complaints against Freenom are clearly manufactured as well, and my guess is people like you calling it fraud haven’t used their service or customer service.
  - BenjiWiebe 5y ago
    I would consider the contents of a Dropbox account to be as much or more so assets than a domain name.
    - throwawaycities 5y ago
      Yes, the contents of a Dropbox account can be assets for sure. But a Dropbox account isn’t an asset anymore than a GoDaddy/Namecheap/Freenom account. A domain name on the other hand is an asset, of course like any asset (including Dropbox contents) some are more valuable than others.
  - matkoniecz 5y ago
    > Also in my opinion Freenom makes very clear disclosures about the differences in the paid and unpaid features and rights. They are not making it clear. > would be more on par with saying GoDaddy is defrauding customers when they offer a discount on the 1st year registration and then they “extract more money” subsequent years If it is not made clear to user - then yes, it is a fraud.
    - throwawaycities 5y ago
      Perhaps English isn’t your first language or some other issue, but as an example on the homepage under services there is “free and paid domains” with a chart that explains the difference between the free and paid feature akin to any other freemium service that provides a chart to compare free vs paid accounts/features. It’s also in the footer, they also have a price chart under services and in the footer, they also show you these options when checking out. I guess what everyone is arguing here is that they shouldn’t allow any free registration but charge a discounted rate the first year like every other domain registrar. https://www.freenom.com/en/freeandpaiddomains.html https://www.freenom.com/en/freeandpaiddomains.html
      - matkoniecz 5y ago
        now it claims that every single domain name is not available. But when I checked the main flow starting from the main page - there was no clear mention that "your" free domain is not actually yours

josephcsible 5y ago

> Like many other freemium services the free tier is limited and just a means of getting you to upgrade. The part that makes it a scam is that the trigger to start extracting money from you happens once you have something to lose by not doing so. Think about cloud storage providers with a 2GB free tier. Now imagine if instead of just forbidding uploads that would put you over your limit, that once you hit your limit, they held all of your existing files hostage until you paid them $100. Wouldn't you then consider them a scam?

throwawaycities 5y ago
It’s not apples to apples, a domain name is an asset and a Dropbox account isn’t an asset. However the logic is the same, Dropbox extracts value once they have a reasonable belief I am so invested into their service I would be more likely to pay to upgrade than migrate my data to another freemium service. Also in my opinion Freenom makes very clear disclosures about the differences in the paid and unpaid features and rights. Just like Dropbox. To say Freenom is defrauding people would be more on par with saying GoDaddy is defrauding customers when they offer a discount on the 1st year registration and then they “extract more money” subsequent years after I have invested in the domain and have something to lose. The complaints against Freenom are clearly manufactured as well, and my guess is people like you calling it fraud haven’t used their service or customer service.
- BenjiWiebe 5y ago
  I would consider the contents of a Dropbox account to be as much or more so assets than a domain name.
  - throwawaycities 5y ago
    Yes, the contents of a Dropbox account can be assets for sure. But a Dropbox account isn’t an asset anymore than a GoDaddy/Namecheap/Freenom account. A domain name on the other hand is an asset, of course like any asset (including Dropbox contents) some are more valuable than others.
- matkoniecz 5y ago
  > Also in my opinion Freenom makes very clear disclosures about the differences in the paid and unpaid features and rights. They are not making it clear. > would be more on par with saying GoDaddy is defrauding customers when they offer a discount on the 1st year registration and then they “extract more money” subsequent years If it is not made clear to user - then yes, it is a fraud.
  - throwawaycities 5y ago
    Perhaps English isn’t your first language or some other issue, but as an example on the homepage under services there is “free and paid domains” with a chart that explains the difference between the free and paid feature akin to any other freemium service that provides a chart to compare free vs paid accounts/features. It’s also in the footer, they also have a price chart under services and in the footer, they also show you these options when checking out. I guess what everyone is arguing here is that they shouldn’t allow any free registration but charge a discounted rate the first year like every other domain registrar. https://www.freenom.com/en/freeandpaiddomains.html https://www.freenom.com/en/freeandpaiddomains.html
    - matkoniecz 5y ago
      now it claims that every single domain name is not available. But when I checked the main flow starting from the main page - there was no clear mention that "your" free domain is not actually yours