11 ms·

Namecheap to Donate $1 to EFF for Every Domain Transfer on December 29th

568 points by flueedo 15y ago

nextparadigms 15y ago
Namecheap is really taking advantage of Godaddy's misstep. I say good for them! Godaddy deserves whatever is coming at them right now.
- josscrowcroft 15y ago
  Yeah, they are absolutely going to town on this one. Can't say I blame them - I'm surprised not more companies have come out of the woodwork to step in as the break-up rebound target.
  - frou_dh 15y ago
    Not related to recent events, but I remember Hover.com had an advertising run on the TWiT network that was essentially: We're not horrible like Go Daddy, transfer today!
- mbrzuzy 15y ago
  I was literally thinking the exact same thing. GoDaddy is an already shady company, hopefully they take a big hit from this and change the way they do things.
  - rhizome 15y ago
    Think bigger: hopefully they declare bankruptcy and no longer have the resources to participate in policy decisions. They should be considered a Corporation Non-Grata.
    - mattvot 15y ago
      I don't think they're going to 'go under' anytime soon. Domains are only a small portion of the product portfolio they offer.
      - exit 15y ago
        well, why wouldn't users abandon those services too?
        mattvot 15y ago
        Maybe, but my judgement is that while domains are relatively easy to move, various other services aren't. It seems to me that the focus on HN and other sites is to move domains. I'm not particularly up on GoDaddy TOS, but I imagine their not going to give refunds to prepurchased hosting. This would increase the friction involved in a total dump of GoDaddy. The customer would also have to allocate time to setup the new environments. Same with email, Dedicated and Virtual servers. There are also SSL certificates. Again, I assume no refund, and the time it takes to gain and install a new SSL certificate from another provider would also increase the friction. GoDaddy also provides alot of instant website tools. I'm not saying that SOPA opposers do not use these tools, but they tend to be marketed towards a non web savvy user that may not care/know about SOPA. This would reduce the effect of SOPA protests. In summary I'd say that the tech savvy GoDaddy customer with a decent budget and the time to set up alternatives could dump all services, it's could be unreasonable to expect a total boycott of services from other GoDaddy customers.
        cookiecaper 15y ago
        >It seems to me that the focus on HN and other sites is to move domains. I don't think that many readers of HN would have anything besides a domain with GoDaddy anyway. I have ONE client with a GoDaddy hosting account. I picked up this client on oDesk last week. The GoDaddy account was pre-existing. We have been fighting GoDaddy support for the last week or so to fix an intermittent misconfiguration that other users occasionally also experience. They have heretofore not fixed it and it constitutes a serious disruption to the client's business. GoDaddy is awful and any tech-savvy individual knows it.
      - rhizome 15y ago
        How much of their product portfolio requires a domain registration?
    - betterth 15y ago
      Don't get ahead of yourself buddy. GoDaddy is the largest and most wellknown registrar out there. From all accounts, they've lost less since this began than they gain -in a single day-. This isn't affecting their bottom line much at all, it's just affecting their image with the techie/hacker crowd. A vital crowd to have a good image with, but their business is literally built on taking advantage of NON-hackers -- let's be honest, how many people here have ACTUALLY bought anything but a domain from GoDaddy, and MAYBE some cheap/crappy hosting?
      - rhizome 15y ago
        This isn't affecting their bottom line much at all Well, we don't really know this yet, do we?
      - rkalla 15y ago
        If you look at this specific moment in time on Tuesday, no it hasn't effected their bottom line yet, but company perception is everything and GoDaddy's company perception has gone from "gray area that some hate and some don't care about" directly into the RED. Are any HN'er going to forget this for their next startup? Or their next contract? Or when their buddy asks them to register a domain for them? No, we are all going to remember that as long as we don't use GoDaddy we will be fine. That is going to cost GoDaddy a lot in the years to come. I don't think bankruptcy is around the corner, but I think we'll hear about some down sizing in a couple of years. FWIW, I am thrilled to see the karma fairy show up and pay GoDaddy in full for years of garbage.
        rhizome 15y ago
        "Always" and "never" are particularly strong marketing words when uttered by word of mouth. Non-technical people can easily remember never to use GoDaddy, much more than "use any of these X registrars depending on what you need."
        rkalla 15y ago
        Excellent point; I can even imagine some point in the distant future where a conversation along the lines of the following takes place: "Oh you never want to use GoDaddy." "Why?" "They suck, use Ghandi or NameCheap" "Right... but WHY... ?" "There was this thing a few years back... they just suck." "Oh ok." How many times do you think a conversation like that took place during the early years of the iPod before it was so mainstream? Or Ford vs Toyota... or McDonalds vs. In-and-Out... or DirecTV vs Cable back in the day. You forget the details of the conflict, but you file away the conclusion: "XYZ sucks!" and that is how people will remember GoDaddy until they make an active effort to redefine themselves as a customer-focused company. Which I doubt they will; they don't know how to run that company and it would be a very expensive transition. Instead they will just fade into the future until someone else steps in and redefines them and takes them to the next level (e.g. cloud hosting / SaaS offerings) or they dry up and die.
aiurtourist 15y ago
I'd like to switch to !GoDaddy, and Namecheap seems popular. Are there any useful pro/cons I should know about Namecheap before switching?
- DodgyEggplant 15y ago
  Tried to read their Terms of Service, long as hell
- pork 15y ago
  Switched over after the elephant cull, haven't regretted it at all. Clean interface, and very easy flow for new domains. Only gripe is that they don't have a mobile site.
  - miles_matthias 15y ago
    Or a mobile app like godaddy does? I like searching for available domains on my phone sometimes and godaddy's app does that well. Does anyone know of any alternative iPhone apps for searching for available domains?
    - mitchellhislop 15y ago
      Check out domize.com - great interface, tells you quickly whats available. You can set it to use namecheap as your default registrar, so clicking on one takes you right there. Works really well, but only for searching.
      - miles_matthias 15y ago
        Cool thanks. Sounds like it's exactly what I need.
- rubyrescue 15y ago
  i've also used dynadot which i like a lot. They have a pretty useful API, and good customer service. However, their pricing is only as good as namecheap if you spend more than $500 USD/year on domains.
jgeralnik 15y ago
They are being very careful not to mention any specific domain registrars. I wonder who they are talking about...
ck2 15y ago
Just keep in mind if you transfer to NameCheap - make sure you are happy with their full price for renewals - because you will NEVER get a discount for renewing. They only give new transfers in special pricing. Ironically you'll be able to transfer back to GoDaddy in a year when they make some kind of "come back to us" offer for a few dollars to transfer in.
- josscrowcroft 15y ago
  That is also definitely bound to happen... "Come back to Go Daddy and we'll give you a free renewal next year! [If you agree to these shady terms and conditions]"
  - ck2 15y ago
    One thing GoDaddy cannot stop is a transfer out after 60 days of a transfer in. Most registrars count on laziness which is surprisingly effective. Remember .com/net prices go up January 15th (I think).
- pbreit 15y ago
  Namecheap's posted renewal rate is less than GoDaddy's. Does GoDaddy discount on renewals? Other registrars?
  - username3 15y ago
    GoDaddy has coupon codes for renewals.
  - dangrossman 15y ago
    GoDaddy often has percentage-off-order coupons that would work on renewals.
  - rkudeshi 15y ago
    Coupons for GoDaddy renewals are generally available if you check RetailMeNot.com or other such sites. The codes tend to change every month/quarter, but I don't think I've ever renewed with them for more than ~$9.
danieldk 15y ago
That's nice, but it remains to be seen if this is not just cheap (no pun intended) exploitation of sentiments. Some registrars, such as Gandi have always supported various causes (such as EFF, Creative Commons, Debian, etc.). How much does Namecheap donate of regular domain registrations, etc.? What have they done in the past for digital rights? Also, as some people said before. This attack on Godaddy maybe a godsent diversion for SOPA supporters.
- pbreit 15y ago
  I don't understand the notion that this is somehow a distraction to the real SOPA fight. Maybe I'm alone in this issue having heightened my knowledge, opposition and action against the bill?
  - jedbrown 15y ago
    Go Daddy is totally insignificant in the scheme of things. The list of SOPO supporters is very deep and monopolizes many industries. Can you work out an effective boycott of all major record and movie producers, all major television networks, publishers (Elsevier, Macmillan, HarperCollins, and various coalitions), pharmaceuticals and beauty products (Pfizer, PhRMA, L'Oreal, Revlon, etc), banking (Visa, MasterCard, American Bankers Association), sports (NFL, MLB), Apple, and Microsoft? http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/Rogue%20Websites/SOPA%20Supporters.pdf http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/Rogue%20Websites/SOPA%20Su... Hurting Go Daddy over this is fine, but I suspect it is inconsequential to whether SOPA passes, and most of the key supporters aren't concerned about boycotts anyway.
    - pbreit 15y ago
      The point isn't how significant GoDaddy is. The point isn't how much business damage GoDaddy is suffering, if any. The point is about how much awareness this event is raising and how much of an impact it is having on encouraging people to do something (anything) to express opposition to the bill. One example: I had not seen SOPA on the nightly news until now. I don't think this event has been or will be considered "inconsequential". There's a small chance it will be one of the more important events in the opposition.
Shorel 15y ago
I transfered from Namecheap to SpeedySparrow a couple of months ago. Just consolidating vendors (domain and hosting) to simplify management.
jamesbritt 15y ago
I couldn't be bothered waiting. I've some domains due for renewal at the end of the year and decided to beat the holiday rush and just move then all over to namecheap.com. I started the process yesterday afternoon. Still haven't seen anything on the GoDaddy side indicating any pending transfers. I imagine this sort of delay will only be worse come the 29th. Update: just got a slew of form mail from namecheap. Apparently every EPP/authorization key code I entered, taken from the list generated by GoDaddy, is wrong. Now I have to re-do every transfer.
- Natsu 15y ago
  > Apparently every EPP/authorization key code I entered, taken from the list generated by GoDaddy, is wrong. Now I have to re-do every transfer. They sure have had a lot of funny accidents lately....
  - jamesbritt 15y ago
    It may be that I entered the domain and EPP info into the namechaep form with some spaces (foo.com, x$fo!ss) and the namecheap form code was too clueless to realize that no EPP code is going to start with a space. I also discovered that I cannot automatically transfer azhackers.com, apparently because it triggers some "bad, evil, we don't like it" domain name filter. Are they really that upset with Arizona? :)
    - Natsu 15y ago
      You're in the AZ area? Interesting. Also interesting is that I had no idea that Maker Bench existed, even though it's practically within walking distance.
      - jamesbritt 15y ago
        You're in the AZ area? Interesting. Yeah, Scottsdale. Also interesting is that I had no idea that Maker Bench existed, even though it's practically within walking distance. MakerBench seems to do a poor job of promoting itself. I think their RSS feed, for example, used to be filled with posts from assorted other sites (e.g. make.com) such that I gave up on it as being to noisey. It looks to be more focused now so I re-subbed A few user groups meet there, too, such as the Android dev group. My AZ Hackers group had been meeting up in Scottsdale but attendance faded to zero after a few months. I've thought about reviving it down at MakerBench but got distracted with work. Anyways I'll have to write to namecheap about getting the name approved for transfer.
Tloewald 15y ago
And as a bonus they get to stress test their servers ;-)
nickpinkston 15y ago
I've used NameCheap ever since I found out how horrid GoDaddy's service and slimy policies were. NameCheap has always answered my noob questions with haste, and I've never had any issues with them. I have no connections with them other than being a happy customer. If I didn't already have all my domains through them, I'd switch them over.
dmarble 15y ago
I've been with Namecheap for most of my domains for a couple years now. One of the surprisingly awesome extras: Dynamic DNS No more need for DynDNS or another third-party DNS service for this simple but useful feature! Once enabled for a domain, you can simply use an update client to regularly update the IP Namecheap servers point to. See Namecheap's knowledgebase articles to enable and use it: http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/category.aspx/11/dynamic-dns http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/category.aspx... Update clients: ddclient (unixy) - http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/ddclient http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/ddclient inadyn (unixy) - http://www.inatech.eu/inadyn/ http://www.inatech.eu/inadyn/ Namecheap's DNS update client (Windows) - http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/28/11/do-you-provide-any-dynamic-dns-clients http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/...
- smilliken 15y ago
  Second the recommendation for NameCheap dynamic DNS. In my experience it's much more reliable than no-ip and dyndns. Also, if you have dd-wrt installed on your router, the firmware comes with a dynamic dns client that works well with NameCheap.
- 3dFlatLander 15y ago
  I'm a big fan of their free e-mail forwarding and customer support (they got a domain back for me that I had let expire out of its grace period). But, I'm surprised so many people tolerated godaddy for this long just because of their control panel. Every time I have to go in there and help a client/friend, I begin to feel like an idiot almost immediately. It's impossible to find anything intuitively and I feel like their design changes every few months. Namecheaps panel isn't pretty by a long shot, but it's so clutter free I just don't care.
  - loumf 15y ago
    Not to defend them, but GoDaddy's iPad app is pretty good, and I use that rather than their control panel whenever I can. I am fed up with them for other reasons, so this comes at a good time.
juddlyon 15y ago
This incident will in a public relations textbook as a case study in ten years.
gospelwut 15y ago
I recall reading that namecheap stores passwords in plaintext? I'd be interested if this was refuted. In any case, I'd be a bit wary to go along with the bandwagon to this particular registrar without further investigation.
- chrishenn 15y ago
  I believe its Hover that you're remembering. 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...
  - freejack 15y ago
    That article is horribly outdated. Hover does not store passwords in plaintext.
jeff18 15y ago
I wish you could just give namecheap your GoDaddy credentials and have them move your domains properly for you. I am definitely not looking forward to figuring out GoDaddy's UI for all my domains.
- Nat0 15y ago
  This handy guide should help you through GoDaddy's maze of a UI. http://blog.jeffepstein.me/post/14629857835/a-step-by-step-guide-to-transfer-domains-out-of-godaddy http://blog.jeffepstein.me/post/14629857835/a-step-by-step-g...
- ConstantineXVI 15y ago
  Hover[1] says they'll handle xfers for you; not sure how far that help extends (we xfer'd ours manually without a hitch) but they've generally been very pleasant so far. [1] https://www.hover.com/ https://www.hover.com/
abcd_f 15y ago
Can anyone explain why would one want to transfer a domain from one US-based registrar to another given that all recent domain-related issues are US-centered?
- dangrossman 15y ago
  Your choice of registrar is completely irrelevant; the registry itself is in the US (Verisign), and the government goes straight to the registry. Unless you plan to abandon the .com/.net/etc extensions, you're under US jurisdiction even if you register the domain in another country.
- alecco 15y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com
openmosix 15y ago
A similar initiative: fightsopa.org will donate 5$ to EFF for each developer solving one coding puzzle
shawnz 15y ago
I'd like to point out that name.com (my current registrar) has been an EFF donor for some time already -- but I don't know to what extent.
arthurgibson 15y ago
Why doesn't NameCheap donate a $1 for every domain moved since 12/22 or last week when all the SOPA issues with Godaddy were presented?
akuchlous 15y ago
http://byebyegodaddy.com http://byebyegodaddy.com now points to http://namecheap.com http://namecheap.com
dspillett 15y ago
I'm surprised no other registrars seem to have jumped on this in quite the way NameCheap have. Is it that they feel too small to take the risk of rocking the boat?
- freejack 15y ago
  Speaking only for myself, there's only a certain amount of opportunism that I'm comfortable with in piling on when a competitor stumbles, especially when it is rooted in politics. For example, Tucows does a ton of great work to support various causes and we've always (at least as long as I can remember) supported the development of the Open Internet but we've never had a huge animal rights component to our activism, so we didn't feel right adopting an elephant rescue charity for our giving. A few other registrars did, but it just felt weird for us to change our stripes for PR & marketing purposes. Same dynamics at work with this issue (and it is much more of an issue than it is an opportunity). We do a lot of work with a lot of organizations that oppose SOPA and PIPA and similarly stupid bits of law that might destroy or inappropriately restrain the Internet commons and we're going to continue to do that, but to buddy up to the EFF and promise donations based on business volumes just isn't something we're comfortable with. We think our activism can be expressed much more productively. We're continuing to talk about what works best for us and our customers while staying true to our values and we may or may not stay our current course - it is always a live issue, but as one of the largest registrars, I can definitely say that it isn't a case of being too small or not wanting to rock the boat. :-)
Samuel_Michon 15y ago
I just transferred 20 general TLDs from GoDaddy to Namecheap. I did so based on the positive reviews here on HN, but also because Namecheap has been very verbal during this SOPA ordeal. The SOPAsucks coupon was a nice perk. Too bad Namecheap doesn't do transfers for ccTLDs like .nl and .es. Can anyone suggest a good, affordable registrar with broad ccTLD support and a decent mobile site/app? Preferably an independent company with phone support in the US. (I looked into Hover, but they're owned by Tucows. I also looked into Gandi, but they're based in France.)

568 points by flueedo 15y ago

Namecheap is really taking advantage of Godaddy's misstep. I say good for them! Godaddy deserves whatever is coming at them right now.

josscrowcroft 15y ago
Yeah, they are absolutely going to town on this one. Can't say I blame them - I'm surprised not more companies have come out of the woodwork to step in as the break-up rebound target.
- frou_dh 15y ago
  Not related to recent events, but I remember Hover.com had an advertising run on the TWiT network that was essentially: We're not horrible like Go Daddy, transfer today!
mbrzuzy 15y ago
I was literally thinking the exact same thing. GoDaddy is an already shady company, hopefully they take a big hit from this and change the way they do things.
- rhizome 15y ago
  Think bigger: hopefully they declare bankruptcy and no longer have the resources to participate in policy decisions. They should be considered a Corporation Non-Grata.
  - mattvot 15y ago
    I don't think they're going to 'go under' anytime soon. Domains are only a small portion of the product portfolio they offer.
    - exit 15y ago
      well, why wouldn't users abandon those services too?
      - mattvot 15y ago
        Maybe, but my judgement is that while domains are relatively easy to move, various other services aren't. It seems to me that the focus on HN and other sites is to move domains. I'm not particularly up on GoDaddy TOS, but I imagine their not going to give refunds to prepurchased hosting. This would increase the friction involved in a total dump of GoDaddy. The customer would also have to allocate time to setup the new environments. Same with email, Dedicated and Virtual servers. There are also SSL certificates. Again, I assume no refund, and the time it takes to gain and install a new SSL certificate from another provider would also increase the friction. GoDaddy also provides alot of instant website tools. I'm not saying that SOPA opposers do not use these tools, but they tend to be marketed towards a non web savvy user that may not care/know about SOPA. This would reduce the effect of SOPA protests. In summary I'd say that the tech savvy GoDaddy customer with a decent budget and the time to set up alternatives could dump all services, it's could be unreasonable to expect a total boycott of services from other GoDaddy customers.
        cookiecaper 15y ago
        >It seems to me that the focus on HN and other sites is to move domains. I don't think that many readers of HN would have anything besides a domain with GoDaddy anyway. I have ONE client with a GoDaddy hosting account. I picked up this client on oDesk last week. The GoDaddy account was pre-existing. We have been fighting GoDaddy support for the last week or so to fix an intermittent misconfiguration that other users occasionally also experience. They have heretofore not fixed it and it constitutes a serious disruption to the client's business. GoDaddy is awful and any tech-savvy individual knows it.
    - rhizome 15y ago
      How much of their product portfolio requires a domain registration?
  - betterth 15y ago
    Don't get ahead of yourself buddy. GoDaddy is the largest and most wellknown registrar out there. From all accounts, they've lost less since this began than they gain -in a single day-. This isn't affecting their bottom line much at all, it's just affecting their image with the techie/hacker crowd. A vital crowd to have a good image with, but their business is literally built on taking advantage of NON-hackers -- let's be honest, how many people here have ACTUALLY bought anything but a domain from GoDaddy, and MAYBE some cheap/crappy hosting?
    - rhizome 15y ago
      This isn't affecting their bottom line much at all Well, we don't really know this yet, do we?
    - rkalla 15y ago
      If you look at this specific moment in time on Tuesday, no it hasn't effected their bottom line yet, but company perception is everything and GoDaddy's company perception has gone from "gray area that some hate and some don't care about" directly into the RED. Are any HN'er going to forget this for their next startup? Or their next contract? Or when their buddy asks them to register a domain for them? No, we are all going to remember that as long as we don't use GoDaddy we will be fine. That is going to cost GoDaddy a lot in the years to come. I don't think bankruptcy is around the corner, but I think we'll hear about some down sizing in a couple of years. FWIW, I am thrilled to see the karma fairy show up and pay GoDaddy in full for years of garbage.
      - rhizome 15y ago
        "Always" and "never" are particularly strong marketing words when uttered by word of mouth. Non-technical people can easily remember never to use GoDaddy, much more than "use any of these X registrars depending on what you need."
        rkalla 15y ago
        Excellent point; I can even imagine some point in the distant future where a conversation along the lines of the following takes place: "Oh you never want to use GoDaddy." "Why?" "They suck, use Ghandi or NameCheap" "Right... but WHY... ?" "There was this thing a few years back... they just suck." "Oh ok." How many times do you think a conversation like that took place during the early years of the iPod before it was so mainstream? Or Ford vs Toyota... or McDonalds vs. In-and-Out... or DirecTV vs Cable back in the day. You forget the details of the conflict, but you file away the conclusion: "XYZ sucks!" and that is how people will remember GoDaddy until they make an active effort to redefine themselves as a customer-focused company. Which I doubt they will; they don't know how to run that company and it would be a very expensive transition. Instead they will just fade into the future until someone else steps in and redefines them and takes them to the next level (e.g. cloud hosting / SaaS offerings) or they dry up and die.

aiurtourist 15y ago

I'd like to switch to !GoDaddy, and Namecheap seems popular. Are there any useful pro/cons I should know about Namecheap before switching?

DodgyEggplant 15y ago
Tried to read their Terms of Service, long as hell
pork 15y ago
Switched over after the elephant cull, haven't regretted it at all. Clean interface, and very easy flow for new domains. Only gripe is that they don't have a mobile site.
- miles_matthias 15y ago
  Or a mobile app like godaddy does? I like searching for available domains on my phone sometimes and godaddy's app does that well. Does anyone know of any alternative iPhone apps for searching for available domains?
  - mitchellhislop 15y ago
    Check out domize.com - great interface, tells you quickly whats available. You can set it to use namecheap as your default registrar, so clicking on one takes you right there. Works really well, but only for searching.
    - miles_matthias 15y ago
      Cool thanks. Sounds like it's exactly what I need.
rubyrescue 15y ago
i've also used dynadot which i like a lot. They have a pretty useful API, and good customer service. However, their pricing is only as good as namecheap if you spend more than $500 USD/year on domains.

jgeralnik 15y ago

They are being very careful not to mention any specific domain registrars. I wonder who they are talking about...

ck2 15y ago

Just keep in mind if you transfer to NameCheap - make sure you are happy with their full price for renewals - because you will NEVER get a discount for renewing. They only give new transfers in special pricing. Ironically you'll be able to transfer back to GoDaddy in a year when they make some kind of "come back to us" offer for a few dollars to transfer in.

josscrowcroft 15y ago
That is also definitely bound to happen... "Come back to Go Daddy and we'll give you a free renewal next year! [If you agree to these shady terms and conditions]"
- ck2 15y ago
  One thing GoDaddy cannot stop is a transfer out after 60 days of a transfer in. Most registrars count on laziness which is surprisingly effective. Remember .com/net prices go up January 15th (I think).
pbreit 15y ago
Namecheap's posted renewal rate is less than GoDaddy's. Does GoDaddy discount on renewals? Other registrars?
- username3 15y ago
  GoDaddy has coupon codes for renewals.
- dangrossman 15y ago
  GoDaddy often has percentage-off-order coupons that would work on renewals.
- rkudeshi 15y ago
  Coupons for GoDaddy renewals are generally available if you check RetailMeNot.com or other such sites. The codes tend to change every month/quarter, but I don't think I've ever renewed with them for more than ~$9.

danieldk 15y ago

That's nice, but it remains to be seen if this is not just cheap (no pun intended) exploitation of sentiments. Some registrars, such as Gandi have always supported various causes (such as EFF, Creative Commons, Debian, etc.). How much does Namecheap donate of regular domain registrations, etc.? What have they done in the past for digital rights? Also, as some people said before. This attack on Godaddy maybe a godsent diversion for SOPA supporters.

pbreit 15y ago
I don't understand the notion that this is somehow a distraction to the real SOPA fight. Maybe I'm alone in this issue having heightened my knowledge, opposition and action against the bill?
- jedbrown 15y ago
  Go Daddy is totally insignificant in the scheme of things. The list of SOPO supporters is very deep and monopolizes many industries. Can you work out an effective boycott of all major record and movie producers, all major television networks, publishers (Elsevier, Macmillan, HarperCollins, and various coalitions), pharmaceuticals and beauty products (Pfizer, PhRMA, L'Oreal, Revlon, etc), banking (Visa, MasterCard, American Bankers Association), sports (NFL, MLB), Apple, and Microsoft? http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/Rogue%20Websites/SOPA%20Supporters.pdf http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/Rogue%20Websites/SOPA%20Su... Hurting Go Daddy over this is fine, but I suspect it is inconsequential to whether SOPA passes, and most of the key supporters aren't concerned about boycotts anyway.
  - pbreit 15y ago
    The point isn't how significant GoDaddy is. The point isn't how much business damage GoDaddy is suffering, if any. The point is about how much awareness this event is raising and how much of an impact it is having on encouraging people to do something (anything) to express opposition to the bill. One example: I had not seen SOPA on the nightly news until now. I don't think this event has been or will be considered "inconsequential". There's a small chance it will be one of the more important events in the opposition.

Shorel 15y ago

I transfered from Namecheap to SpeedySparrow a couple of months ago. Just consolidating vendors (domain and hosting) to simplify management.

jamesbritt 15y ago

I couldn't be bothered waiting. I've some domains due for renewal at the end of the year and decided to beat the holiday rush and just move then all over to namecheap.com. I started the process yesterday afternoon. Still haven't seen anything on the GoDaddy side indicating any pending transfers. I imagine this sort of delay will only be worse come the 29th. Update: just got a slew of form mail from namecheap. Apparently every EPP/authorization key code I entered, taken from the list generated by GoDaddy, is wrong. Now I have to re-do every transfer.

Natsu 15y ago
> Apparently every EPP/authorization key code I entered, taken from the list generated by GoDaddy, is wrong. Now I have to re-do every transfer. They sure have had a lot of funny accidents lately....
- jamesbritt 15y ago
  It may be that I entered the domain and EPP info into the namechaep form with some spaces (foo.com, x$fo!ss) and the namecheap form code was too clueless to realize that no EPP code is going to start with a space. I also discovered that I cannot automatically transfer azhackers.com, apparently because it triggers some "bad, evil, we don't like it" domain name filter. Are they really that upset with Arizona? :)
  - Natsu 15y ago
    You're in the AZ area? Interesting. Also interesting is that I had no idea that Maker Bench existed, even though it's practically within walking distance.
    - jamesbritt 15y ago
      You're in the AZ area? Interesting. Yeah, Scottsdale. Also interesting is that I had no idea that Maker Bench existed, even though it's practically within walking distance. MakerBench seems to do a poor job of promoting itself. I think their RSS feed, for example, used to be filled with posts from assorted other sites (e.g. make.com) such that I gave up on it as being to noisey. It looks to be more focused now so I re-subbed A few user groups meet there, too, such as the Android dev group. My AZ Hackers group had been meeting up in Scottsdale but attendance faded to zero after a few months. I've thought about reviving it down at MakerBench but got distracted with work. Anyways I'll have to write to namecheap about getting the name approved for transfer.

Tloewald 15y ago

And as a bonus they get to stress test their servers ;-)

nickpinkston 15y ago

I've used NameCheap ever since I found out how horrid GoDaddy's service and slimy policies were. NameCheap has always answered my noob questions with haste, and I've never had any issues with them. I have no connections with them other than being a happy customer. If I didn't already have all my domains through them, I'd switch them over.

dmarble 15y ago

I've been with Namecheap for most of my domains for a couple years now. One of the surprisingly awesome extras: Dynamic DNS No more need for DynDNS or another third-party DNS service for this simple but useful feature! Once enabled for a domain, you can simply use an update client to regularly update the IP Namecheap servers point to. See Namecheap's knowledgebase articles to enable and use it: http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/category.aspx/11/dynamic-dns http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/category.aspx... Update clients: ddclient (unixy) - http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/ddclient http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/ddclient inadyn (unixy) - http://www.inatech.eu/inadyn/ http://www.inatech.eu/inadyn/ Namecheap's DNS update client (Windows) - http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/28/11/do-you-provide-any-dynamic-dns-clients http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/...

smilliken 15y ago
Second the recommendation for NameCheap dynamic DNS. In my experience it's much more reliable than no-ip and dyndns. Also, if you have dd-wrt installed on your router, the firmware comes with a dynamic dns client that works well with NameCheap.
3dFlatLander 15y ago
I'm a big fan of their free e-mail forwarding and customer support (they got a domain back for me that I had let expire out of its grace period). But, I'm surprised so many people tolerated godaddy for this long just because of their control panel. Every time I have to go in there and help a client/friend, I begin to feel like an idiot almost immediately. It's impossible to find anything intuitively and I feel like their design changes every few months. Namecheaps panel isn't pretty by a long shot, but it's so clutter free I just don't care.
- loumf 15y ago
  Not to defend them, but GoDaddy's iPad app is pretty good, and I use that rather than their control panel whenever I can. I am fed up with them for other reasons, so this comes at a good time.

juddlyon 15y ago

This incident will in a public relations textbook as a case study in ten years.

gospelwut 15y ago

I recall reading that namecheap stores passwords in plaintext? I'd be interested if this was refuted. In any case, I'd be a bit wary to go along with the bandwagon to this particular registrar without further investigation.

chrishenn 15y ago
I believe its Hover that you're remembering. 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...
- freejack 15y ago
  That article is horribly outdated. Hover does not store passwords in plaintext.

jeff18 15y ago

I wish you could just give namecheap your GoDaddy credentials and have them move your domains properly for you. I am definitely not looking forward to figuring out GoDaddy's UI for all my domains.

Nat0 15y ago
This handy guide should help you through GoDaddy's maze of a UI. http://blog.jeffepstein.me/post/14629857835/a-step-by-step-guide-to-transfer-domains-out-of-godaddy http://blog.jeffepstein.me/post/14629857835/a-step-by-step-g...
ConstantineXVI 15y ago
Hover[1] says they'll handle xfers for you; not sure how far that help extends (we xfer'd ours manually without a hitch) but they've generally been very pleasant so far. [1] https://www.hover.com/ https://www.hover.com/

abcd_f 15y ago

Can anyone explain why would one want to transfer a domain from one US-based registrar to another given that all recent domain-related issues are US-centered?

dangrossman 15y ago
Your choice of registrar is completely irrelevant; the registry itself is in the US (Verisign), and the government goes straight to the registry. Unless you plan to abandon the .com/.net/etc extensions, you're under US jurisdiction even if you register the domain in another country.
alecco 15y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com

openmosix 15y ago

A similar initiative: fightsopa.org will donate 5$ to EFF for each developer solving one coding puzzle

shawnz 15y ago

I'd like to point out that name.com (my current registrar) has been an EFF donor for some time already -- but I don't know to what extent.

arthurgibson 15y ago

Why doesn't NameCheap donate a $1 for every domain moved since 12/22 or last week when all the SOPA issues with Godaddy were presented?

akuchlous 15y ago

http://byebyegodaddy.com http://byebyegodaddy.com now points to http://namecheap.com http://namecheap.com

dspillett 15y ago

I'm surprised no other registrars seem to have jumped on this in quite the way NameCheap have. Is it that they feel too small to take the risk of rocking the boat?

freejack 15y ago
Speaking only for myself, there's only a certain amount of opportunism that I'm comfortable with in piling on when a competitor stumbles, especially when it is rooted in politics. For example, Tucows does a ton of great work to support various causes and we've always (at least as long as I can remember) supported the development of the Open Internet but we've never had a huge animal rights component to our activism, so we didn't feel right adopting an elephant rescue charity for our giving. A few other registrars did, but it just felt weird for us to change our stripes for PR & marketing purposes. Same dynamics at work with this issue (and it is much more of an issue than it is an opportunity). We do a lot of work with a lot of organizations that oppose SOPA and PIPA and similarly stupid bits of law that might destroy or inappropriately restrain the Internet commons and we're going to continue to do that, but to buddy up to the EFF and promise donations based on business volumes just isn't something we're comfortable with. We think our activism can be expressed much more productively. We're continuing to talk about what works best for us and our customers while staying true to our values and we may or may not stay our current course - it is always a live issue, but as one of the largest registrars, I can definitely say that it isn't a case of being too small or not wanting to rock the boat. :-)

Samuel_Michon 15y ago

I just transferred 20 general TLDs from GoDaddy to Namecheap. I did so based on the positive reviews here on HN, but also because Namecheap has been very verbal during this SOPA ordeal. The SOPAsucks coupon was a nice perk. Too bad Namecheap doesn't do transfers for ccTLDs like .nl and .es. Can anyone suggest a good, affordable registrar with broad ccTLD support and a decent mobile site/app? Preferably an independent company with phone support in the US. (I looked into Hover, but they're owned by Tucows. I also looked into Gandi, but they're based in France.)