22 ms·

Domain registrar Gandi gets bought out, removes free mailboxes

452 points by insomniacity 4y ago

pomian 4y ago
Has anyone felt that GoDaddy is doing the same thing? They just switched to Microsoft for domain hosting and email, and it's a mess, and it seems as if all of the free mailboxes are gone including, free forwarding.
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  Yes, they dumped their basic free email for a 30 day trial of Office365 and an offer to pay monthly for Office365 through them. That's why I moved from GoDaddy to Gandi, so that's annoying.
  - pomian 4y ago
    Thanks for confirmation. I've been fighting the settings for a few days, in multiple domains. It's not clear. Does look like all free emails are revoked. Too bad.
oh_sigh 4y ago
Were the mailboxes part of the contract, or were they a "here's a nice thing we're giving you for free" deal sweetener?
Arubis 4y ago
Can someone add context to the “gets bought out” part?
kwanbix 4y ago
I don't have a mastodont account, if that makes a difference, but I cannot see anything.
mtlynch 4y ago
I keep seeing unsourced claims on Mastodon that Gandi has been acquired by an unscrupulous entity, but I can't find any official verification. Is it true?
- wlesieutre 4y ago
  Crunchbase says leveraged buyout by private equity firm Montefiore Investment in 2019 https://www.crunchbase.com/acquisition/montefiore-investment-acquires-gandi-net--6d5453d1 https://www.crunchbase.com/acquisition/montefiore-investment... If that's the case I'm surprised it took 4 years for me to hear anything about it turning shitty
  - microtonal 4y ago
    Because Montefoire sold them to a scummy company: https://your.online/press-release/ https://your.online/press-release/
    - wlesieutre 4y ago
      Good find. I've never heard of "Total Webhosting Solutions," anybody had experience with them? It's a bummer if Gandi goes downhill. I've never used them personally but I heard a lot of recommendations that they were a good registrar.
      - nraynaud 4y ago
        They used to be, got greedier and here we are.
      - microtonal 4y ago
        They were awesome. I have been with them over 15 years. But I fear it's time to move on. Still looking for an EU registrar that has modern 2FA (FIDO2) and is large enough to not be a target for takeover anytime soon.
        4y ago
branon 4y ago
Link's 404, Toot removed apparently. What happened? I use Gandi. They were acquired by a holdings company years ago but that's all I know.
- wlesieutre 4y ago
  The original post was someone having registered their domain for many years in advance and Gandi planning to yoink the included email service and replace it with one that they would have to pay extra for
- microtonal 4y ago
  They merged with Total Webhosting Solutions B.V., which is a Dutch company that buys up web hosts and then increases prices: https://your.online/press-release/ https://your.online/press-release/ The story on Mastodon is that they are axing free mail boxes that you'd get with every domain registered at Gandi, even if you had paid several years up front.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jrootabega 4y ago
  There's a little toast/growl message thing that says that toot has been rate limited. As of now it says try again after 30 minutes past the hour. EDIT: It works briefly every 5 or 10 minutes, until it gets rate limited again.
- aendruk 4y ago
  It’s flickering up and down so I don’t think it was intentionally removed. Mirror: https://archive.is/w3yZy https://archive.is/w3yZy
varun_chopra 4y ago
Full message for others not seeing the page: So, further to recent changes at Gandi, I've just got some more info from support which I've included below. I've purchased domains from Gandi, pre-paying for multiple years of service such that some domains I have don't need renewing until 2027. When I purchased that service the offer was inclusive of 2 mailboxes for the duration of the contract, and now they're planning to remove those inclusive mailboxes and start charging me extra for them from next month. To me, this sounds like a planned and fully intentional breach of contract. "We'll start charging for mailboxes from next month. Our current mail offer will end and will be replaced by our new offer: [...] What’s going to happen going forward ? Starting from April 6th, you will have the choice to either : - Keep your mailbox and pay accordingly on a monthly basis. - Refuse the offer and you can have the choice to delete the mailbox or migrate your mailbox to another provider. In that case you will have a two months window to migrate before the deletion of your mailbox - Forwarding address remains free How ? - You will receive ln the 6th of April a mail with a link to make your choice. How much it will cost for me ? - It will depend on how many active mailboxes you own. A mailbox costs £2,99 so if you have 2 mailboxes, you will be billed £5,98 monthly."
kikoreis 4y ago
For those curious about what's going on (the post was removed) they merged with TWS: https://your.online/press-release/ https://your.online/press-release/
- chunk_waffle 4y ago
  Where the hell is the date on this press release... > "Gandi SAS (“Gandi”) and Total Webhosting Solutions B.V. (“TWS”), today announced" when was "today"?
  - bombcar 4y ago
    This reposting - https://news.knowledia.com/US/en/articles/gandi-and-tws-join-forces-to-form-youronline-youronline-718ea4d1616c4ed4ef6e6ea2c8086e7e49c93119 https://news.knowledia.com/US/en/articles/gandi-and-tws-join... indicates it was Feb 23, 2023
- Freak_NL 4y ago
  We're getting bitten by this in the Netherlands as well. Two domain registrars, PCExtreme and Neostrada, merged with Versio, and Versio is now owned by TWS. My company has domains registered with Versio (and PCExtreme and Neostrada), but the control panel was showing multiple domains wrongly flagged as 'processing', and actually getting through to customer service takes the better part of day by now. I'm not looking forward to our domains getting migrated due to these mergers. Start looking for alternative registrars if your domains are hosted by Versio, Neostrada, or PCExtreme! The competent staff of PCExtreme and Neostrada seem to have evaporated in these mergers.
  - VoxPelli 4y ago
    Any suggestion of a good serious independent European registrar?
    - Freak_NL 4y ago
      I wish I had something useful to recommend now, but we've only just started looking.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
swayvil 4y ago
So who's the trustworthy, low-bullshit registrar now? I've been using Gandi for over a decade.
- _fat_santa 4y ago
  I personally use Namecheap and Name.com for a few other domains. My rule of thumb is domain registrars only get to manage my domains. Registrars love to upsell you on email and hosting but in my experience that's where all the bullshit starts. If you just buy a domain, you could go to place like GoDaddy and probably have a decent experience. EDIT: Just like I said, in the original thread they are talking about Ghandi screwing customers on email inboxes. Follows my rule of "anything outside of domains and the bs starts".
  - koolba 4y ago
    > My rule of thumb is domain registrars only get to manage my domains. Registrars love to upsell you on email and hosting but in my experience that's where all the bullshit starts. That’s the Unix philosophy applied to service providers. The same logic applies to why you should have a separate cable modem and WiFi router. > If you just buy a domain, you could go to place like GoDaddy and probably have a decent experience. No GoDaddy sucks even as just a registrar because even configuring NS records to host your DNS elsewhere is a terrible UX.
    - Tyr42 4y ago
      Yeah, but I just wanted a few accounts I could "send as" in Gmail . No backups or whatever is fine.
  - highclass 4y ago
    If you search on hacker news there are some people including me who have bad experiences with namecheap, as they threaten to cut off domain itself easily when they get complaints. I am not talking about hosting, but the domain itself. For any large enterprise client, I recommend against using them. Right now, I am on Gandi and only use them for domain, even reading this I'd still pick them over namecheap.
bob1029 4y ago
What registrars has HN been using lately? I've been super lazy and use Route53 for everything right now.
- csunbird 4y ago
  Route53 is Gandi under the covers
  - halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
    No way, source? Kind of amazing if true.
    - Traubenfuchs 4y ago
      https://aws.amazon.com/route53/domain-registration-agreement/ https://aws.amazon.com/route53/domain-registration-agreement... > AWS currently provides Domain Name Registration Services through Gandi SAS , Mesh Digital Limited, Amazon Registrar, Inc., and other ICANN-accredited registrars
      - ajb 4y ago
        I expect they use the in-house one for the largest fraction of revenue and the rest for obscure ones they can't be bothered with.
  - andrelaszlo 4y ago
    That's surprising. It seems like it's only partially true: > AWS provides the Domain Name Registration Services through ICANN-accredited registrars. AWS currently provides Domain Name Registration Services through Gandi SAS , Mesh Digital Limited, Amazon Registrar, Inc., and other ICANN-accredited registrars (the “Registrar”), and your use of the Domain Name Registration Services is subject to their terms. You can identify the Registrar of record for any Registered Name by performing a WHOIS query here . AWS reserves the right to use any ICANN-accredited registrar as the Registrar. https://aws.amazon.com/route53/domain-registration-agreement/ https://aws.amazon.com/route53/domain-registration-agreement...
TheChaplain 4y ago
Note: the post is deleted from mastodon. I managed to grab a screenshot earlier: https://imgur.com/a/JB4xpPs https://imgur.com/a/JB4xpPs
- X-Istence 4y ago
  It's still visible to me in an Incognito browser window.
zhte415 4y ago
This seems short sighted. For just one mailbox per domain, 2.99 per month is 35.88 per year. This will wipe goodwill from an existing loyal customer base very quickly#. I have 4 domains, each with 2 email addresses. I do not want a 287.04 per year bill, and nor do I want my domains being held hostage for this. I will look to migrate away immediately. But, I have emailed Gandi to ask them to confirm, since the website doesn't yet reflect this news, and it's not the first time they may be victim of disinformation (action perhaps indicitative of trust built using Gandi). #small, non wholesale customers.
bhartzer 4y ago
It sound like they’re hosting at the same place (gandi) where they registered the domain. This is absolutely never recommended, for security purposes. If someone gains access to your hosting account you’ll likely lose all your domain names. Transfer the domains over to a better more secure registrar. Then set up a server or vps and set up as many mailboxes or emails that you need.
- justeleblanc 4y ago
  Is there any indication that Gandi is insecure?
  - mbreese 4y ago
    Not that I know of, it’s just good practice to separate services like this (even if it can be more expensive and logistically difficult).
    - justeleblanc 4y ago
      I'm asking because the GGP wrote "better more secure registrar". Since I'm using Gandi right now (and I don't care about their mailbox offer), I wanted to know if it was really insecure.
      - judge2020 4y ago
        GGP said hosting, but I think they mean email hosting. Even if you keep your actual registrar account @gmail or anther third-party, it's not recommended to handle your registrar, DNS, and email in the same place, since a compromise of any of them is likely to lead to compromise of the other systems (eg. an attacker gains admin permissions on the website / backend and uses it to reset your email password and download your email inbox)
        justeleblanc 4y ago
        I'm sorry but I don't understand what you're saying. The sentence was literally "Transfer the domains over to a better more secure registrar." This is about domain names and registrars and it's implying that Gandi is insecure. Your point about putting your eggs in the same basket is a different point.
throwaway81523 4y ago
Gandi email has been useless from the start. They say right in the contract that they don't back up their email servers. Isn't the host handling chores like backup part of the point of a hosted product? Of course you can and should distrust the host's backups and have your own in addition, but that's way different than the host not doing them in the first place. Maybe they have fixed that (I don't see it on their site any more) but I have a screen shot of the old contract provision and I complained to them about it in 2017, and they ignored the complaint.
- SahAssar 4y ago
  For email it is sometimes useful to only have a host handling things like reputation and crypto/protocols (DKIM, SPF, DMARC, DANE, MTA-STS, etc.) while doing the actual handling of data yourself. I'm not sure that gandi's email fits that purpose, but specifically for email it can be a bit more tricky to roll your own than things like HTTPS, so having a hosted solution to handle that can help.
  - behringer 4y ago
    Pretty sure gandi doesn't do much of the above either. Gandi email hosting is generally not worth paying for.
    - PaulKeeble 4y ago
      As a bundled service it was fine, I have a complete copy of my emails on my client(s) anyway so what it really did was give an IMAP interface to use for sending and receiving emails under my domain that dealt with the entire "Google et el are pretty evil about personal email boxes". Its not worth £3 a month per box when previously the Gandi markup was £4 a year or so for the extra services on top of the raw domain price.
    - branon 4y ago
      I've been using Gandi's free mailboxes since 2019 when I de-Googled, they provide easy setup for SPF/DKIM/DMARC. Not sure about the other two. No significant deliverability issues to report. They offer IMAP and a choice between two web UIs which is all I need. I'd be more than happy to pay for their service in general, just not under duress. If they'd have given me 6 months to onboard I'd have been perfectly fine with $3/mo for email. If I'm going to be abused with a false sense of urgency and pushed to make a quick decision, I'll just leave.
WirelessGigabit 4y ago
This is why I only use service A for domains. And service B for emails.
- KingOfCoders 4y ago
  I use service A for domains, service B for DNS and service C for emails.
  - Idiot_in_Vain 4y ago
    How do you prove to service B that you own the domain?
    - rcme 4y ago
      You usually need to update the name servers with service A to point to service B.
    - zenexer 4y ago
      You don’t need to. Your registrar tells the registry which nameservers you’ve chosen. You specify the nameservers that belong to your DNS provider, which causes DNS clients to query that DNS provider. There’s nothing stopping you from paying for service with a DNS provider for a domain you don’t own, but nobody will actually query those nameservers for your domain, so it doesn’t matter.
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    I reached that by accident. Service B for DNS was just a more pleasant product to use than service A, and service A didn't offer certain features I needed for emails. To bring it back on topic, this made it easy when I switched service A from Gandi to something else a year or two ago because a few things I was seeing from them "smelled funny." I don't remember the details, just that I wanted to switch.
    - imwillofficial 4y ago
      Same, swapped over to PorkBun. Much more pleasant experience.
pricechild 4y ago
This is really frustrating. I'm only a small customer but it doesn't seem right that they could take away part of the deal if I have multiple years pre-bought prior to the change. The email I received is slightly different and doesn't include set dates, it just says "after the first year" which could be tomorrow. I've emailed them asking for clarification. I pay for Fastmail, but use several of the gandi basic mailboxes for other reasons. I could live with those disappearing. I hope this doesn't also remove the 'forwarded addresses' though.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
insomniacity 4y ago
Are there any reputable registrars with APIs with Terraform providers, outside of Gandi and AWS? Just not sure I can give that up!
RealStickman_ 4y ago
What are some recommended alternatives? I specifically need support for .li domains and acme.sh to renew certificates.
- SahAssar 4y ago
  inwx supports basically every TLD I've looked at and the acme.sh support will be based on where you have your DNS which can be separate from your registrar (I've used acme.sh on cloudflare, rage4, and many others. I've also used it with a local bind9 DNS server)
ajross 4y ago
Not that this isn't a travesty. But it's worth pointing out that my first thought was: I need to bookmark this page to cite every time we end up in another giant front-page argument about "I don't use GMail because I don't trust Google; I have my own domain with some tiny provider with human support where this can never happen." Meh. The specifics here seem pretty damning, though. Most likely the new owners just didn't understand the older contracts and started rolling out the new business model without review. The end result will probably be just a refund for the affected accounts.
- account42 4y ago
  > I need to bookmark this page to cite every time we end up in another giant front-page argument about "I don't use GMail because I don't trust Google; I have my own domain with some tiny provider with human support where this can never happen." This is about them changing the pricing of their service. The part about doing it to customers who have paid in advance may be fraud, but it's still miles better then google randomly locking you out of your account without recourse. You don't have to use Gandi for your email (why would you even except for it being "free" which you now have learned it is not) and you can transfer your domain to another registrar.
- teddyh 4y ago
  Are you calling Gandi “some tiny provider”?
KingOfCoders 4y ago
Looks like fraud to me.
quercusa 4y ago
I haven't seen anything from them yet - do they say anything about forwarding addresses?
- lgvld 4y ago
  Neither do I. Would be really upset if they start charging for the two included mailboxes.
conradfr 4y ago
Even last week they were saying nothing would change, that Gandi remained independent inside Your.online. That may be a new record.
- jrootabega 4y ago
  Often, and even more so in corporate PR, things are said precisely because they aren't true.
- ornornor 4y ago
  If you believe every acquisition PR saying “but nothing will change at all, we’re committed to run $bought_company as an independent entity” then I have a bridge to sell you! Company A never buys company B to let it do its thing.
  - vram22 4y ago
    Right. Or a ship in Arizona to sell you. GP and others who believe that should google "our incredible journey" - and look at multiple hits, not just the first few. It has become a meme by now.
- xnyan 4y ago
  >Even last week they were saying nothing would change If you want to be dishonest but not explicitly lie, there are almost always ways to do it. For example, "I believe access to healthcare is a human right" to a normal person sounds like the person is saying that healthcare is a human right, but "access" can mean anything at all and in reality they are saying nothing. I would not be surprised at all to find that similar inconspicuous weasel words were used.
marksbrown 4y ago
I honestly cannot believe the hubris. A 20% price hike and removal of features mid-term. If I don't pay for the email accounts I apparently didn't pay for, I will lose my business email accounts. I get the impression I should just have stuck with : <official sounding>_<country> @ gmail.com and moved on with my life. Maddening.
- ornornor 4y ago
  That comes with its own set of issues when google decides to block your account for reasons only known to their algorithms and there are no humans to talk to. You end up locked out of your business email with no recourse.
  - marksbrown 4y ago
    What is an SME supposed to do? I need static web-hosting and an email server that will not get blocked by Google!
    - tarsinge 4y ago
      Gmail, Fastmail... with custom domain
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - ornornor 4y ago
      Having your own domain you control the MX record. If google locks you out, you can still move to another host for your email on the same day. You don't get your historical email (unless you backed it up with offlineimap or something like that) but at least you still have access and control over the address. Using @gmail.com for your business (or even personal email) is asking for trouble given how notorious google is at locking people out with no recourse and for mysterious reasons.
    - jcrawfordor 4y ago
      Smaller commercial email providers are probably a good balance of competence and reliability (their email service is their revenue source) and better customer service (they have few enough customers that they care more about each of them). Fastmail is often brought up in this category. I think Zoho is pretty good too if you're looking for more of a complete G-suite like offering with other applications. Both of these companies also increasingly feel like more competent or at least better-run software engineering organizations than Google.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
glomgril 4y ago
Is migrating domains from Gandi to somewhere else easy/possible? I've had the same domain for years, I used to pay like $20 for five years, but then I forgot to renew, and because I let it expire for a few days, now they are charging me $100/year! Sour taste in my mouth about them even before this...
- manquer 4y ago
  Moving from any registars is possible [1] the process is fairly easy and takes a couple of days . You would need access to admin emails you provided for verification. The process is free as in gandi won’t charge you to migrate but newer registar might , and also if you DNS or other services the new service provider will likely charge for those. [1] for .come .net .org and many other popular ones it is, however for some of newer Top level domains (TLD) they may have only one domain registrar and you cannot move. .dev is owned and operated by google alone. Gandi afaik does not have exclusive access to any significant TLD so it shouldn’t be a problem
  - mikea1 4y ago
    > The process is free as in gandi won’t charge you to migrate but newer registar might The new registrar will charge a fee and the expiration date of your domain will increase by one year. The transfer fee should be roughly the same as the registration and renewal fees. If anything looks fishy, compare with another registrar (starting with common registrar recommendations you see at HN)
- LinuxBender 4y ago
  One can migrate any of their domains from any registrar to another registrar. I do not have a Gandi account so I don't know where in the UI to find this, but you would need to go into the properties for each domain and first unlock the domain and then get the unlock/transfer code. Use that code in your new registrar to move the domain(s). It is best to do this over the phone with the new registrar to ensure a smoother migration.
- rationalist 4y ago
  Yes, I did it for one domain years ago, it was easy, and it can be done can be done completely online. Contrary to the other reply, I do NOT recommend calling and doing it over the phone, as in my opinion that will just be slower and prone to accidents by adding a human into an otherwise automated process.
iuafhiuah 4y ago
So the change is instead of two free emails per domain forever, it's going to be two free emails per domain for the first year. Additionally, the price per email is going up massively: Standard: 0.31 GBP -> 2.99 GBP (964%) Premium: 1.57 GBP -> 5.99 GBP (381%)
Panino 4y ago
https://archive.ph/w3yZy https://archive.ph/w3yZy
deanmoriarty 4y ago
How do I find out if this change affects me? I have been a Gandi customer for 5+ years, and I have bought domains til 2026, and I rely on their free email. But I haven't received any communication about changes in pricing.
- onderweg 4y ago
  Same here
- judge2020 4y ago
  The service being taken away is the free email for the duration of your registration. If you don't use it, you're likely unaffected.
  - deanmoriarty 4y ago
    Maybe I wasn't clear when I said "and I rely on their free email". I do use the free email with every domain I buy with them, but haven't received any communication asking me to pay for them.
- angst_ridden 4y ago
  Same here. Maybe it's happening by region?
- lgvld 4y ago
  Same here.
- branon 4y ago
  Same here, I'm registered until 2025 and make heavy use of the free mailboxes. I thought this was a good move because by registering a domain I became a paying customer, even if I was also using free-tier services. Haven't heard any communication from Gandi yet but maybe I can update here if/when it happens.
- aidog 4y ago
  I have not yet either. Customer for 10+ years. If they go through with this, I will have to consider small claims court in Taiwan or Japan.
jwildeboer 4y ago
From their statement it is not really clear if these changes affect new contracts (most probable) or are retroactively extended to existing contracts (not probable). FTR: I have 20+ domains at Gandi and never used their mail service (I run my own e-mail Server for all those domains since many years) so this change does not affect me.
Animats 4y ago
Now I need to move all my domains away from Gandi. And I'm paid for years in advance. Any recommendations?
- janosdebugs 4y ago
  Check your domain expiration in the whois. For most registries, the domain should keep its expiry, but you would need to pay one year extra when moving them.
rwaksmunski 4y ago
I migrated my domains and deleted my account as soon as I got wind of the sale. It was a PITA but apparently well worth it.
mcsniff 4y ago
I have quite a few domains with Gandi, using their email service on a few because I'm lazy and it's free. Not sure when (or if) I'll receive notice of this change. Maybe it's regional? Seems most of the comments show £ as currency. This is going to burn all of their goodwill they accumulated with the "no bullshit" slogan. I will be swiftly moving all my domains, likely to Porkbun.
- hrunt 4y ago
  Why Porkbun? What makes a good domain registrar these days (almost everyone is or has been acquired by someone doing something questionable)?
  - mcsniff 4y ago
    I've seen the name around recently on HN and people never seem to have much to say other than they use it and it's well priced -- which means to me it's "boring" and that's exactly what I'm looking for. A boring company who does 1 thing and does it so well that people dont say good or bad, it's so boring they barely notice it because it gets out the way.
    - Porkbun 4y ago
      Us? Boring!? [oinks internally]
- aidog 4y ago
  It is not free, it is included with the purchase. I think that is quite a difference.
mardifoufs 4y ago
How do european customer protection laws not protect against this??
- pinkcan 4y ago
  uk is not in the eu anymore?
  - capableweb 4y ago
    Gandi SAS (Société par Actions Simplifiée) is a French company, not British.
  - blibble 4y ago
    EU law didn't evaporate the moment the UK left it was almost entirely transposed into UK law
MonkeyClub 4y ago
Is this confirmed? TFA 404’s, gandi.net still advertises the two free mailboxes, and I haven’t received any communication from Gandi.
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  I confirm that I received email from Gandi about it a couple of days ago, which is annoying because that's why I moved from GoDaddy to Gandi. It said: > "What hasn’t changed over the last 20 years is our commitment to serving you, and we will continue doing that every day. In order to serve you in the best way in the future, we are announcing changes to our pricing policy effective April 6th 2023. [...] To ensure we can maintain the highest standards in the future we will stop free mailboxes beyond the first year, and price it at £2.99 per month for standard mailboxes and £5.99 per month for premium mailboxes and we will expand the e-mail offering with [...] Better anti-spam and anti-virus protection" (Which I'm sure has nothing to do with the uptick in spam I've been receiving the past month or so).
mikea1 4y ago
> I've purchased domains from Gandi, pre-paying for multiple years of service such that some domains I have don't need renewing until 2027. Just in case you did not know: if you transfer to a different registrar, you will not lose the extra years of registration. You can confirm the expected expiration date of 2027 at lookup.icann.org.
- bambax 4y ago
  > if you transfer to a different registrar, you will not lose the extra years of registration I did not know that. But how do you do it? And where to find a list of reputable registrars (which seems the rarest of species)?
  - Jiocus 4y ago
    As a long time customer, I would recommend Namecheap. I was trying out Gandi since a couple months. On the bright side, they have a lot of additional international TLDs, but that's about it. Gandi has been noticeably more expensive when comparing equivalent domains.
    - Penguinx628 4y ago
      Strong disagree. Migrated off namecheap after their support left a bad taste in my mouth. Also they had a data breach and did NOT notify me as a customer of theirs. https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/116j7iq/fyi_namecheap_is_selling_your_email_or_is/ https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/116j7iq/fyi_namech... https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/namecheaps-email-hacked-to-send-metamask-dhl-phishing-emails/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/namecheaps-em...
      - ldoughty 4y ago
        That article seems to indicate that no customer data was involved... looks like their send-only email key was compromised. Maybe I'm not paranoid enough, but I think there would be too much noise if every company blasted out emails to all customers any time there was ANY security failure, including failures that do not expose customer data... Sure, they should follow up on your who got phishing emails, but I don't see a need to email every customer. I've had no issues with NameCheap, but I just register domains, no other fancy services.
imwillofficial 4y ago
I switched from Gandi to Porkbun, never looked back
EGreg 4y ago
Capitalism as usual.
duckmysick 4y ago
So I guess I will be looking for a new email provider. I have a couple of domains with emails + a lot of custom aliases. Don't care for a web UI since I'm using an email client. Anyone hosting with runbox.com? What can you tell me about it?
- junon 4y ago
  I use Migadu and aside from the meh webmail client that's provided for you (which I can't really complain about), the service is impeccable for individual users.
ectospheno 4y ago
My main complaint with gandi is the status page is a lie. Take now for example. You can check email but can’t send. Status page says all is well. Happens a lot.
tracker1 4y ago
For good or bad, Google domains does include email forwarding services... Though not sure how much I trust Google for domain registration in the long term.
motrm 4y ago
As some comments have mentioned the pricing will increase for domain names too, not very explicit in their email on Tuesday evening "Gandi.net - Update": Domains We remain committed to offering you the largest portfolio of TLDs, customized TLD suggestions and best-in-class anycast-level primary DNS servers. In addition, we will step-up our effort to unburden you by introducing new managed features: Advanced and easy to use account security Proactive notifications on changes and important events Better rights management Easier domain transfers with continuity of service Best-in-class anycast-level secondary DNS servers You can find the associated new pricing for your domains here[0]. Renewing a .com at these new prices is now £24 per year inclusive of tax and .uk domains £12. Annoyingly my previous registrar raised prices last year and I thought that, hey, I'll pay a few quid extra and support Gandi as they generally have a decent reputation. Now with this move I'm the fool! Like others in this thread I've moved to Porkbun, the .com renewals are now about £8.50 and .uk about £5.50 which is much more reasonable and much closer to their cost price. I'd like my registrar to make a reasonable amount of profit to make staying in business worthwhile but that doesn't make sense when the registrar wants to double or triple the pricing for their bottom line. Shame, but there we go. [0] https://www.gandi.net/static/documents/2023-march-gbp-renew-price-increase.pdf https://www.gandi.net/static/documents/2023-march-gbp-renew-...
- tolien 4y ago
  > Porkbun [...] .uk about £5.50 Porkbun do .uk domains now? TIL! I moved some domains from Gandi to Porkbun before as part of a plan to ditch Gandi and when I asked (almost 3 years ago to the day), they didn't support .uk.
- callahad 4y ago
  > I'd like my registrar to make a reasonable amount of profit to make staying in business worthwhile Ditto. Moved 11 domains from Gandi to Porkbun today. But... for the lot of them, Porkbun was only $9 more than Cloudflare, which charges straight wholesale prices and takes no profit. I'm glad Porkbun isn't gouging, but less than $1/domain/year markup still feels a bit thin and leaves me worried that I'll be doing this dance again in a few years.
- 4y ago
dang 4y ago
The submitted title was "Domain registrar Gandi gets bought out, screws existing customers". The latter bit is linkbait so I've edited it (as the site guidelines request - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). But I realize the OP isn't just complaining about price increases, so if someone can suggest a more accurate and neutral title, we can change it again.
- branon 4y ago
  OP's original issue had to do with changes to Gandi's included email service specifically. Perhaps the title should indicate that Gandi is rugpulling email accounts from people who have prepaid for domain registrations. They haven't told me I'm losing my mailbox yet but I'm on the lookout. The free mailbox was honestly one of the biggest reasons I chose Gandi, and I would not mind paying for it at all - preferably not under duress though!
  - insomniacity 4y ago
    Yep, prices are prices, but switch and bait on the mailboxes is the issue here. Really struggled with the title length limit!
- scrps 4y ago
  Gandi buyout brings unwelcome changes (Could also add "for some" to limit the scope if that is too broad.)
- em-bee 4y ago
  how about: "Domain registrar Gandi gets bought out, removes free mailboxes"
  - dang 4y ago
    Ok let's use that. Thanks!
  - gpm 4y ago
    This title strikes me as incorrect. The user paid for the mailbox as part of the bundle they purchased with their domain name. It was not free.
mongrelion 4y ago
I see that a lot of us rely heavily on the 2x free mail addresses we got per domain. Is it an idea to join efforts & money and rent a VPS from Hetzner and run our own mail server?
- TheChaplain 4y ago
  I run my own mail server and it is not an easy task. First you need an un-tainted ip-address/network. Then you need to get it all right with spf, dkim, dmarc, dane etc. One mistake or misconfiguration and emails from your server will at best end up in the junk folder. Not to mention the server maintenance. Even if you think you got it all done, you will not be welcome at all recipients (I'm looking at you Microsoft). It's quite a pain, but I still keep at it because I have the interest and time.
worksonmine 4y ago
Crap, I was about to move there because the namecheap CEO is too impulsive and still waiting for the explanation of their "third party getting hacked" a few weeks ago. Where do I go now?
- duud 4y ago
  Dynadot is good
- MrFoof 4y ago
  Hover has been about as no nonsense as it can get. Not the cheapest, but I'd rather pay a few extra dollars a year to not have to deal with this in the future. I swear I'm the only person I know not constantly switching domain registrars, because I don't want to waste time sweating over maybe tens of dollars a year for something so core to my operations. The one time many years ago I had to call support for a question a human being answered in 2 rings. Tucows (which owns Hover) has been around for 30 years. It's likely they'll be around for a long while still.
  - pomian 4y ago
    That's good to hear. I've been using GoDaddy for years, with same high quality tech help, and free emails, until now. Might check hover.
- aww_dang 4y ago
  Name.com is more expensive, but I've never been surprised. Normal ticketing if you do have an issue. No inane chat support, less bloated site and they've never attempted stunt billing.
sitzkrieg 4y ago
i switched from gandi to porkbun a few years ago and cant recommend them enough. the least crufty domain and dns management site ever too, simple as it should be
aguywithguile 4y ago
Dont know if its related to the recent changes but I opened a support request that has been open for 3 days now with the only reply being we've transfered you to a different part of the support team. it is related to moving registrar which i can see not being the highest priority but still quite frustrating. netim replied within 30 minutes of me opening a ticket related to the same issue for context.
- behringer 4y ago
  this kind of change could definitely upset customer service queues. I don't know if 3+ days is normal for Gandi or not though.
huhneverthot 4y ago
Uh, I didn't get an email from Gandi...
benhurmarcel 4y ago
That doesn't match Gandi's website. https://www.gandi.net/en-US/domain https://www.gandi.net/en-US/domain > Two, free custom email addresses https://docs.gandi.net/en/gandimail/index.html https://docs.gandi.net/en/gandimail/index.html > With every domain name you buy from Gandi you receive two free email inboxes through Gandi’s email service, each with 3GB of storage.
- crtasm 4y ago
  Correct. They should really update their website at the same time as announcing the upcoming change to existing customers by email.
seydor 4y ago
I think their motto was "no bullshit" or something It looks like they don't like to be coy about scamming their users either
- MildlySerious 4y ago
  To be fair, they have done a good job with that motto for a long time. I've been with them for 10 years and have recommended and praised them for being "no bullshit" on a few occasions, both here on HN and on reddit. It sucks how quickly these things can change.
dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
Tangential by related technical question: Does something exist out there which is equivalent to a domain name for a website (or an any entity) which is independent of a external entities, like DNS or DNS like servers. I know that in some sense public/private keys in asymmetric cryptography mimic that feature (the public key being the address of the receiver), but is there anything out of the box? Does Tor have a similar feature? I do understand that this equivalent to which I'm alluding to, may be an unintelligible string of characters, unlike current website user friendly names. I also understand that the underlying ip address change can be a challenge , but probably not an insurmountable one.
- Thoreandan 4y ago
  There's things like purl-dot-org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_uniform_resource_locator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_uniform_resource_lo... or .onion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.onion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.onion e.g. http://p53lf57qovyuvwsc6xnrppyply3vtqm7l6pcobkmyqsiofyeznfu5uqd.onion/ http://p53lf57qovyuvwsc6xnrppyply3vtqm7l6pcobkmyqsiofyeznfu5... will be up even if the propublica.org domain is broken / disabled.
  - dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
    Thanks, between the 2 if you had to choose one, which would you recommend?
- dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
  Think I found atleast one answer from: https://www.expressvpn.com/blog/how-to-create-a-onion-address/ https://www.expressvpn.com/blog/how-to-create-a-onion-addres...: When you type a .onion address into your Tor browser, unlike with a regular domain, you are not looking up an IP address on a DNS server. Instead, you are asking a Hidden Service directory, which anybody can volunteer to run.
- _glass 4y ago
  Maybe like ENS? https://ens.domains/ https://ens.domains/
sam_lowry_ 4y ago
Thus is all the fault of Laetitia Halliday, ultimately. If she did not sue Valentin Lacambre, he would not have abandoned altern.org. If he kept altern.org, gandi would have been an association, not a corporation. And the world would be a slightly better place.
- ploum 4y ago
  Wow, good old memories! (btw, it was Estelle Halliday, not Laetitia Halliday. But your uchrony is perfectly right)
  - sam_lowry_ 4y ago
    True, it was Estelle. Thanks.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      Maybe edit the original in case there is someone with that actual name?
      - kerneis 4y ago
        Both exist. Trivia time: Laeticia (née Laetitia) was married to Johnny, the famous French rock singer; Estelle was married to David, son of Johnny. Note that Johnny is dead now, Laeticia has been remaried twice but kept Johnny's last name, Estelle is divorced, and David is not the son of Laeticia as Johnny got married several times (David's mother is the French actress Sylvie Vartan).
        ploum 4y ago
        To summarize : Laeticia is basically the step-mother of Estelle. But she’s 9 years younger.
        kbelder 4y ago
Thoreandan 4y ago
I'd be a lot happier as a long-time GANDI customer if there was any mention of this whatsoever on https://news.gandi.net https://news.gandi.net ... nothing there since 2022. :-(
- glandium 4y ago
  Also, no email in my inbox about the merger.
- rendaw 4y ago
  I didn't get an email, there's no news, and AFAICT this story hasn't been picked up by any other news outlets at all (nothing on Google News at least). There are a couple individual anecdotes, and off topic discussions about domain prices. Gandi obviously has issues, but is the thing about email real? Are there _any_ sources that can confirm it?
aidog 4y ago
I've bought a strangers domain name with a deal to keep hosting their two e-mail addresses. Just set up everything last year and can't easily move off. It now seems that this deal is going to cost me a lot more. I prepaid until 2029. Their tagline "No Bullshit" seems to no longer apply. I was a good client for over 10 years. Shame, that they don't have a japanese office, but maybe I can do small claims court in taiwan.
artdigital 4y ago
Sad to see Gandi worsening. It was a fantastic registrar that I recommended to everyone. Now I’m in the process to move everything to cloudflare and porkbun Just recently I moved a .pn domain (required gandi corporate subscription) to Gandi and they’ll charge me almost double of the at-cost for renewal as the base fee, excluding the corporate subscription. Inquired about this and asked for a refund because I wasn’t satisfied with the service, but that sadly wasn’t granted to me either What happened to Gandi - No bullsh*t?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
FounderBurr 4y ago
Wow Gandi was one of th4 old school internet “good guys”. Are there any similar quality registrars left?
indigodaddy 4y ago
One of the comments on the mastodon site references bookmyname.com as an alternative with free email boxes (1G). They’re site looks pleasingly last millennium and also says powered by FreeBSD (also pleasing!)
bofadeez 4y ago
They no longer have a competitive advantage and I'll be moving all my inboxes to MXRoute. RIP Gandi
einichi 4y ago
I used Gandi's email service as just an SMTP service to send notifications from various scripts and apps. Any alternatives I can use? Ideally actual SMTP and not some API, some apps I use only support the SMTP protocol.
l1e34r 4y ago
As a us customer I have not received any emails about this. I reached out to them asking about it. They gave me the same boiler plate code. Sent back another email say thats basically fraud in the us. their response `My bad. I assume the mail you sent was after reading a communication made for clients paying in £. You're not impacted by this communication. We’re currently reviewing our general conditions and pricing policy in each currency given the fluctuation for the latter which means changes won’t likely be the same for each currency. Should a change occur for you; you'll receive a mail from us.` I asked them to confirm the free email isnt being removed for US customers yet, and if it does a email will be sent out. their reply `I can only confirm what I shared with you above.`

452 points by insomniacity 4y ago

Has anyone felt that GoDaddy is doing the same thing? They just switched to Microsoft for domain hosting and email, and it's a mess, and it seems as if all of the free mailboxes are gone including, free forwarding.

jodrellblank 4y ago
Yes, they dumped their basic free email for a 30 day trial of Office365 and an offer to pay monthly for Office365 through them. That's why I moved from GoDaddy to Gandi, so that's annoying.
- pomian 4y ago
  Thanks for confirmation. I've been fighting the settings for a few days, in multiple domains. It's not clear. Does look like all free emails are revoked. Too bad.

oh_sigh 4y ago

Were the mailboxes part of the contract, or were they a "here's a nice thing we're giving you for free" deal sweetener?

Arubis 4y ago

Can someone add context to the “gets bought out” part?

kwanbix 4y ago

I don't have a mastodont account, if that makes a difference, but I cannot see anything.

mtlynch 4y ago

I keep seeing unsourced claims on Mastodon that Gandi has been acquired by an unscrupulous entity, but I can't find any official verification. Is it true?

wlesieutre 4y ago
Crunchbase says leveraged buyout by private equity firm Montefiore Investment in 2019 https://www.crunchbase.com/acquisition/montefiore-investment-acquires-gandi-net--6d5453d1 https://www.crunchbase.com/acquisition/montefiore-investment... If that's the case I'm surprised it took 4 years for me to hear anything about it turning shitty
- microtonal 4y ago
  Because Montefoire sold them to a scummy company: https://your.online/press-release/ https://your.online/press-release/
  - wlesieutre 4y ago
    Good find. I've never heard of "Total Webhosting Solutions," anybody had experience with them? It's a bummer if Gandi goes downhill. I've never used them personally but I heard a lot of recommendations that they were a good registrar.
    - nraynaud 4y ago
      They used to be, got greedier and here we are.
    - microtonal 4y ago
      They were awesome. I have been with them over 15 years. But I fear it's time to move on. Still looking for an EU registrar that has modern 2FA (FIDO2) and is large enough to not be a target for takeover anytime soon.
      - 4y ago

branon 4y ago

Link's 404, Toot removed apparently. What happened? I use Gandi. They were acquired by a holdings company years ago but that's all I know.

wlesieutre 4y ago
The original post was someone having registered their domain for many years in advance and Gandi planning to yoink the included email service and replace it with one that they would have to pay extra for
microtonal 4y ago
They merged with Total Webhosting Solutions B.V., which is a Dutch company that buys up web hosts and then increases prices: https://your.online/press-release/ https://your.online/press-release/ The story on Mastodon is that they are axing free mail boxes that you'd get with every domain registered at Gandi, even if you had paid several years up front.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jrootabega 4y ago
There's a little toast/growl message thing that says that toot has been rate limited. As of now it says try again after 30 minutes past the hour. EDIT: It works briefly every 5 or 10 minutes, until it gets rate limited again.
aendruk 4y ago
It’s flickering up and down so I don’t think it was intentionally removed. Mirror: https://archive.is/w3yZy https://archive.is/w3yZy

varun_chopra 4y ago

Full message for others not seeing the page: So, further to recent changes at Gandi, I've just got some more info from support which I've included below. I've purchased domains from Gandi, pre-paying for multiple years of service such that some domains I have don't need renewing until 2027. When I purchased that service the offer was inclusive of 2 mailboxes for the duration of the contract, and now they're planning to remove those inclusive mailboxes and start charging me extra for them from next month. To me, this sounds like a planned and fully intentional breach of contract. "We'll start charging for mailboxes from next month. Our current mail offer will end and will be replaced by our new offer: [...] What’s going to happen going forward ? Starting from April 6th, you will have the choice to either : - Keep your mailbox and pay accordingly on a monthly basis. - Refuse the offer and you can have the choice to delete the mailbox or migrate your mailbox to another provider. In that case you will have a two months window to migrate before the deletion of your mailbox - Forwarding address remains free How ? - You will receive ln the 6th of April a mail with a link to make your choice. How much it will cost for me ? - It will depend on how many active mailboxes you own. A mailbox costs £2,99 so if you have 2 mailboxes, you will be billed £5,98 monthly."

kikoreis 4y ago

For those curious about what's going on (the post was removed) they merged with TWS: https://your.online/press-release/ https://your.online/press-release/

chunk_waffle 4y ago
Where the hell is the date on this press release... > "Gandi SAS (“Gandi”) and Total Webhosting Solutions B.V. (“TWS”), today announced" when was "today"?
- bombcar 4y ago
  This reposting - https://news.knowledia.com/US/en/articles/gandi-and-tws-join-forces-to-form-youronline-youronline-718ea4d1616c4ed4ef6e6ea2c8086e7e49c93119 https://news.knowledia.com/US/en/articles/gandi-and-tws-join... indicates it was Feb 23, 2023
Freak_NL 4y ago
We're getting bitten by this in the Netherlands as well. Two domain registrars, PCExtreme and Neostrada, merged with Versio, and Versio is now owned by TWS. My company has domains registered with Versio (and PCExtreme and Neostrada), but the control panel was showing multiple domains wrongly flagged as 'processing', and actually getting through to customer service takes the better part of day by now. I'm not looking forward to our domains getting migrated due to these mergers. Start looking for alternative registrars if your domains are hosted by Versio, Neostrada, or PCExtreme! The competent staff of PCExtreme and Neostrada seem to have evaporated in these mergers.
- VoxPelli 4y ago
  Any suggestion of a good serious independent European registrar?
  - Freak_NL 4y ago
    I wish I had something useful to recommend now, but we've only just started looking.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

swayvil 4y ago

So who's the trustworthy, low-bullshit registrar now? I've been using Gandi for over a decade.

_fat_santa 4y ago
I personally use Namecheap and Name.com for a few other domains. My rule of thumb is domain registrars only get to manage my domains. Registrars love to upsell you on email and hosting but in my experience that's where all the bullshit starts. If you just buy a domain, you could go to place like GoDaddy and probably have a decent experience. EDIT: Just like I said, in the original thread they are talking about Ghandi screwing customers on email inboxes. Follows my rule of "anything outside of domains and the bs starts".
- koolba 4y ago
  > My rule of thumb is domain registrars only get to manage my domains. Registrars love to upsell you on email and hosting but in my experience that's where all the bullshit starts. That’s the Unix philosophy applied to service providers. The same logic applies to why you should have a separate cable modem and WiFi router. > If you just buy a domain, you could go to place like GoDaddy and probably have a decent experience. No GoDaddy sucks even as just a registrar because even configuring NS records to host your DNS elsewhere is a terrible UX.
  - Tyr42 4y ago
    Yeah, but I just wanted a few accounts I could "send as" in Gmail . No backups or whatever is fine.
- highclass 4y ago
  If you search on hacker news there are some people including me who have bad experiences with namecheap, as they threaten to cut off domain itself easily when they get complaints. I am not talking about hosting, but the domain itself. For any large enterprise client, I recommend against using them. Right now, I am on Gandi and only use them for domain, even reading this I'd still pick them over namecheap.

bob1029 4y ago

What registrars has HN been using lately? I've been super lazy and use Route53 for everything right now.

csunbird 4y ago
Route53 is Gandi under the covers
- halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
  No way, source? Kind of amazing if true.
  - Traubenfuchs 4y ago
    https://aws.amazon.com/route53/domain-registration-agreement/ https://aws.amazon.com/route53/domain-registration-agreement... > AWS currently provides Domain Name Registration Services through Gandi SAS , Mesh Digital Limited, Amazon Registrar, Inc., and other ICANN-accredited registrars
    - ajb 4y ago
      I expect they use the in-house one for the largest fraction of revenue and the rest for obscure ones they can't be bothered with.
- andrelaszlo 4y ago
  That's surprising. It seems like it's only partially true: > AWS provides the Domain Name Registration Services through ICANN-accredited registrars. AWS currently provides Domain Name Registration Services through Gandi SAS , Mesh Digital Limited, Amazon Registrar, Inc., and other ICANN-accredited registrars (the “Registrar”), and your use of the Domain Name Registration Services is subject to their terms. You can identify the Registrar of record for any Registered Name by performing a WHOIS query here . AWS reserves the right to use any ICANN-accredited registrar as the Registrar. https://aws.amazon.com/route53/domain-registration-agreement/ https://aws.amazon.com/route53/domain-registration-agreement...

TheChaplain 4y ago

Note: the post is deleted from mastodon. I managed to grab a screenshot earlier: https://imgur.com/a/JB4xpPs https://imgur.com/a/JB4xpPs

X-Istence 4y ago
It's still visible to me in an Incognito browser window.

zhte415 4y ago

This seems short sighted. For just one mailbox per domain, 2.99 per month is 35.88 per year. This will wipe goodwill from an existing loyal customer base very quickly#. I have 4 domains, each with 2 email addresses. I do not want a 287.04 per year bill, and nor do I want my domains being held hostage for this. I will look to migrate away immediately. But, I have emailed Gandi to ask them to confirm, since the website doesn't yet reflect this news, and it's not the first time they may be victim of disinformation (action perhaps indicitative of trust built using Gandi). #small, non wholesale customers.

bhartzer 4y ago

It sound like they’re hosting at the same place (gandi) where they registered the domain. This is absolutely never recommended, for security purposes. If someone gains access to your hosting account you’ll likely lose all your domain names. Transfer the domains over to a better more secure registrar. Then set up a server or vps and set up as many mailboxes or emails that you need.

justeleblanc 4y ago
Is there any indication that Gandi is insecure?
- mbreese 4y ago
  Not that I know of, it’s just good practice to separate services like this (even if it can be more expensive and logistically difficult).
  - justeleblanc 4y ago
    I'm asking because the GGP wrote "better more secure registrar". Since I'm using Gandi right now (and I don't care about their mailbox offer), I wanted to know if it was really insecure.
    - judge2020 4y ago
      GGP said hosting, but I think they mean email hosting. Even if you keep your actual registrar account @gmail or anther third-party, it's not recommended to handle your registrar, DNS, and email in the same place, since a compromise of any of them is likely to lead to compromise of the other systems (eg. an attacker gains admin permissions on the website / backend and uses it to reset your email password and download your email inbox)
      - justeleblanc 4y ago
        I'm sorry but I don't understand what you're saying. The sentence was literally "Transfer the domains over to a better more secure registrar." This is about domain names and registrars and it's implying that Gandi is insecure. Your point about putting your eggs in the same basket is a different point.

throwaway81523 4y ago

Gandi email has been useless from the start. They say right in the contract that they don't back up their email servers. Isn't the host handling chores like backup part of the point of a hosted product? Of course you can and should distrust the host's backups and have your own in addition, but that's way different than the host not doing them in the first place. Maybe they have fixed that (I don't see it on their site any more) but I have a screen shot of the old contract provision and I complained to them about it in 2017, and they ignored the complaint.

SahAssar 4y ago
For email it is sometimes useful to only have a host handling things like reputation and crypto/protocols (DKIM, SPF, DMARC, DANE, MTA-STS, etc.) while doing the actual handling of data yourself. I'm not sure that gandi's email fits that purpose, but specifically for email it can be a bit more tricky to roll your own than things like HTTPS, so having a hosted solution to handle that can help.
- behringer 4y ago
  Pretty sure gandi doesn't do much of the above either. Gandi email hosting is generally not worth paying for.
  - PaulKeeble 4y ago
    As a bundled service it was fine, I have a complete copy of my emails on my client(s) anyway so what it really did was give an IMAP interface to use for sending and receiving emails under my domain that dealt with the entire "Google et el are pretty evil about personal email boxes". Its not worth £3 a month per box when previously the Gandi markup was £4 a year or so for the extra services on top of the raw domain price.
  - branon 4y ago
    I've been using Gandi's free mailboxes since 2019 when I de-Googled, they provide easy setup for SPF/DKIM/DMARC. Not sure about the other two. No significant deliverability issues to report. They offer IMAP and a choice between two web UIs which is all I need. I'd be more than happy to pay for their service in general, just not under duress. If they'd have given me 6 months to onboard I'd have been perfectly fine with $3/mo for email. If I'm going to be abused with a false sense of urgency and pushed to make a quick decision, I'll just leave.

WirelessGigabit 4y ago

This is why I only use service A for domains. And service B for emails.

KingOfCoders 4y ago
I use service A for domains, service B for DNS and service C for emails.
- Idiot_in_Vain 4y ago
  How do you prove to service B that you own the domain?
  - rcme 4y ago
    You usually need to update the name servers with service A to point to service B.
  - zenexer 4y ago
    You don’t need to. Your registrar tells the registry which nameservers you’ve chosen. You specify the nameservers that belong to your DNS provider, which causes DNS clients to query that DNS provider. There’s nothing stopping you from paying for service with a DNS provider for a domain you don’t own, but nobody will actually query those nameservers for your domain, so it doesn’t matter.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  I reached that by accident. Service B for DNS was just a more pleasant product to use than service A, and service A didn't offer certain features I needed for emails. To bring it back on topic, this made it easy when I switched service A from Gandi to something else a year or two ago because a few things I was seeing from them "smelled funny." I don't remember the details, just that I wanted to switch.
  - imwillofficial 4y ago
    Same, swapped over to PorkBun. Much more pleasant experience.

pricechild 4y ago

This is really frustrating. I'm only a small customer but it doesn't seem right that they could take away part of the deal if I have multiple years pre-bought prior to the change. The email I received is slightly different and doesn't include set dates, it just says "after the first year" which could be tomorrow. I've emailed them asking for clarification. I pay for Fastmail, but use several of the gandi basic mailboxes for other reasons. I could live with those disappearing. I hope this doesn't also remove the 'forwarded addresses' though.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

insomniacity 4y ago

Are there any reputable registrars with APIs with Terraform providers, outside of Gandi and AWS? Just not sure I can give that up!

RealStickman_ 4y ago

What are some recommended alternatives? I specifically need support for .li domains and acme.sh to renew certificates.

SahAssar 4y ago
inwx supports basically every TLD I've looked at and the acme.sh support will be based on where you have your DNS which can be separate from your registrar (I've used acme.sh on cloudflare, rage4, and many others. I've also used it with a local bind9 DNS server)

ajross 4y ago

Not that this isn't a travesty. But it's worth pointing out that my first thought was: I need to bookmark this page to cite every time we end up in another giant front-page argument about "I don't use GMail because I don't trust Google; I have my own domain with some tiny provider with human support where this can never happen." Meh. The specifics here seem pretty damning, though. Most likely the new owners just didn't understand the older contracts and started rolling out the new business model without review. The end result will probably be just a refund for the affected accounts.

account42 4y ago
> I need to bookmark this page to cite every time we end up in another giant front-page argument about "I don't use GMail because I don't trust Google; I have my own domain with some tiny provider with human support where this can never happen." This is about them changing the pricing of their service. The part about doing it to customers who have paid in advance may be fraud, but it's still miles better then google randomly locking you out of your account without recourse. You don't have to use Gandi for your email (why would you even except for it being "free" which you now have learned it is not) and you can transfer your domain to another registrar.
teddyh 4y ago
Are you calling Gandi “some tiny provider”?

KingOfCoders 4y ago

Looks like fraud to me.

quercusa 4y ago

I haven't seen anything from them yet - do they say anything about forwarding addresses?

lgvld 4y ago
Neither do I. Would be really upset if they start charging for the two included mailboxes.

conradfr 4y ago

Even last week they were saying nothing would change, that Gandi remained independent inside Your.online. That may be a new record.

jrootabega 4y ago
Often, and even more so in corporate PR, things are said precisely because they aren't true.
ornornor 4y ago
If you believe every acquisition PR saying “but nothing will change at all, we’re committed to run $bought_company as an independent entity” then I have a bridge to sell you! Company A never buys company B to let it do its thing.
- vram22 4y ago
  Right. Or a ship in Arizona to sell you. GP and others who believe that should google "our incredible journey" - and look at multiple hits, not just the first few. It has become a meme by now.
xnyan 4y ago
>Even last week they were saying nothing would change If you want to be dishonest but not explicitly lie, there are almost always ways to do it. For example, "I believe access to healthcare is a human right" to a normal person sounds like the person is saying that healthcare is a human right, but "access" can mean anything at all and in reality they are saying nothing. I would not be surprised at all to find that similar inconspicuous weasel words were used.

marksbrown 4y ago

I honestly cannot believe the hubris. A 20% price hike and removal of features mid-term. If I don't pay for the email accounts I apparently didn't pay for, I will lose my business email accounts. I get the impression I should just have stuck with : <official sounding>_<country> @ gmail.com and moved on with my life. Maddening.

ornornor 4y ago
That comes with its own set of issues when google decides to block your account for reasons only known to their algorithms and there are no humans to talk to. You end up locked out of your business email with no recourse.
- marksbrown 4y ago
  What is an SME supposed to do? I need static web-hosting and an email server that will not get blocked by Google!
  - tarsinge 4y ago
    Gmail, Fastmail... with custom domain
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - ornornor 4y ago
    Having your own domain you control the MX record. If google locks you out, you can still move to another host for your email on the same day. You don't get your historical email (unless you backed it up with offlineimap or something like that) but at least you still have access and control over the address. Using @gmail.com for your business (or even personal email) is asking for trouble given how notorious google is at locking people out with no recourse and for mysterious reasons.
  - jcrawfordor 4y ago
    Smaller commercial email providers are probably a good balance of competence and reliability (their email service is their revenue source) and better customer service (they have few enough customers that they care more about each of them). Fastmail is often brought up in this category. I think Zoho is pretty good too if you're looking for more of a complete G-suite like offering with other applications. Both of these companies also increasingly feel like more competent or at least better-run software engineering organizations than Google.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

glomgril 4y ago

Is migrating domains from Gandi to somewhere else easy/possible? I've had the same domain for years, I used to pay like $20 for five years, but then I forgot to renew, and because I let it expire for a few days, now they are charging me $100/year! Sour taste in my mouth about them even before this...

manquer 4y ago
Moving from any registars is possible [1] the process is fairly easy and takes a couple of days . You would need access to admin emails you provided for verification. The process is free as in gandi won’t charge you to migrate but newer registar might , and also if you DNS or other services the new service provider will likely charge for those. [1] for .come .net .org and many other popular ones it is, however for some of newer Top level domains (TLD) they may have only one domain registrar and you cannot move. .dev is owned and operated by google alone. Gandi afaik does not have exclusive access to any significant TLD so it shouldn’t be a problem
- mikea1 4y ago
  > The process is free as in gandi won’t charge you to migrate but newer registar might The new registrar will charge a fee and the expiration date of your domain will increase by one year. The transfer fee should be roughly the same as the registration and renewal fees. If anything looks fishy, compare with another registrar (starting with common registrar recommendations you see at HN)
LinuxBender 4y ago
One can migrate any of their domains from any registrar to another registrar. I do not have a Gandi account so I don't know where in the UI to find this, but you would need to go into the properties for each domain and first unlock the domain and then get the unlock/transfer code. Use that code in your new registrar to move the domain(s). It is best to do this over the phone with the new registrar to ensure a smoother migration.
rationalist 4y ago
Yes, I did it for one domain years ago, it was easy, and it can be done can be done completely online. Contrary to the other reply, I do NOT recommend calling and doing it over the phone, as in my opinion that will just be slower and prone to accidents by adding a human into an otherwise automated process.

iuafhiuah 4y ago

So the change is instead of two free emails per domain forever, it's going to be two free emails per domain for the first year. Additionally, the price per email is going up massively: Standard: 0.31 GBP -> 2.99 GBP (964%) Premium: 1.57 GBP -> 5.99 GBP (381%)

Panino 4y ago

https://archive.ph/w3yZy https://archive.ph/w3yZy

deanmoriarty 4y ago

How do I find out if this change affects me? I have been a Gandi customer for 5+ years, and I have bought domains til 2026, and I rely on their free email. But I haven't received any communication about changes in pricing.

onderweg 4y ago
Same here
judge2020 4y ago
The service being taken away is the free email for the duration of your registration. If you don't use it, you're likely unaffected.
- deanmoriarty 4y ago
  Maybe I wasn't clear when I said "and I rely on their free email". I do use the free email with every domain I buy with them, but haven't received any communication asking me to pay for them.
angst_ridden 4y ago
Same here. Maybe it's happening by region?
lgvld 4y ago
Same here.
branon 4y ago
Same here, I'm registered until 2025 and make heavy use of the free mailboxes. I thought this was a good move because by registering a domain I became a paying customer, even if I was also using free-tier services. Haven't heard any communication from Gandi yet but maybe I can update here if/when it happens.
aidog 4y ago
I have not yet either. Customer for 10+ years. If they go through with this, I will have to consider small claims court in Taiwan or Japan.

jwildeboer 4y ago

From their statement it is not really clear if these changes affect new contracts (most probable) or are retroactively extended to existing contracts (not probable). FTR: I have 20+ domains at Gandi and never used their mail service (I run my own e-mail Server for all those domains since many years) so this change does not affect me.

Animats 4y ago

Now I need to move all my domains away from Gandi. And I'm paid for years in advance. Any recommendations?

janosdebugs 4y ago
Check your domain expiration in the whois. For most registries, the domain should keep its expiry, but you would need to pay one year extra when moving them.

rwaksmunski 4y ago

I migrated my domains and deleted my account as soon as I got wind of the sale. It was a PITA but apparently well worth it.

mcsniff 4y ago

I have quite a few domains with Gandi, using their email service on a few because I'm lazy and it's free. Not sure when (or if) I'll receive notice of this change. Maybe it's regional? Seems most of the comments show £ as currency. This is going to burn all of their goodwill they accumulated with the "no bullshit" slogan. I will be swiftly moving all my domains, likely to Porkbun.

hrunt 4y ago
Why Porkbun? What makes a good domain registrar these days (almost everyone is or has been acquired by someone doing something questionable)?
- mcsniff 4y ago
  I've seen the name around recently on HN and people never seem to have much to say other than they use it and it's well priced -- which means to me it's "boring" and that's exactly what I'm looking for. A boring company who does 1 thing and does it so well that people dont say good or bad, it's so boring they barely notice it because it gets out the way.
  - Porkbun 4y ago
    Us? Boring!? [oinks internally]
aidog 4y ago
It is not free, it is included with the purchase. I think that is quite a difference.

mardifoufs 4y ago

How do european customer protection laws not protect against this??

pinkcan 4y ago
uk is not in the eu anymore?
- capableweb 4y ago
  Gandi SAS (Société par Actions Simplifiée) is a French company, not British.
- blibble 4y ago
  EU law didn't evaporate the moment the UK left it was almost entirely transposed into UK law

MonkeyClub 4y ago

Is this confirmed? TFA 404’s, gandi.net still advertises the two free mailboxes, and I haven’t received any communication from Gandi.

jodrellblank 4y ago
I confirm that I received email from Gandi about it a couple of days ago, which is annoying because that's why I moved from GoDaddy to Gandi. It said: > "What hasn’t changed over the last 20 years is our commitment to serving you, and we will continue doing that every day. In order to serve you in the best way in the future, we are announcing changes to our pricing policy effective April 6th 2023. [...] To ensure we can maintain the highest standards in the future we will stop free mailboxes beyond the first year, and price it at £2.99 per month for standard mailboxes and £5.99 per month for premium mailboxes and we will expand the e-mail offering with [...] Better anti-spam and anti-virus protection" (Which I'm sure has nothing to do with the uptick in spam I've been receiving the past month or so).

mikea1 4y ago

> I've purchased domains from Gandi, pre-paying for multiple years of service such that some domains I have don't need renewing until 2027. Just in case you did not know: if you transfer to a different registrar, you will not lose the extra years of registration. You can confirm the expected expiration date of 2027 at lookup.icann.org.

bambax 4y ago
> if you transfer to a different registrar, you will not lose the extra years of registration I did not know that. But how do you do it? And where to find a list of reputable registrars (which seems the rarest of species)?
- Jiocus 4y ago
  As a long time customer, I would recommend Namecheap. I was trying out Gandi since a couple months. On the bright side, they have a lot of additional international TLDs, but that's about it. Gandi has been noticeably more expensive when comparing equivalent domains.
  - Penguinx628 4y ago
    Strong disagree. Migrated off namecheap after their support left a bad taste in my mouth. Also they had a data breach and did NOT notify me as a customer of theirs. https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/116j7iq/fyi_namecheap_is_selling_your_email_or_is/ https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/116j7iq/fyi_namech... https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/namecheaps-email-hacked-to-send-metamask-dhl-phishing-emails/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/namecheaps-em...
    - ldoughty 4y ago
      That article seems to indicate that no customer data was involved... looks like their send-only email key was compromised. Maybe I'm not paranoid enough, but I think there would be too much noise if every company blasted out emails to all customers any time there was ANY security failure, including failures that do not expose customer data... Sure, they should follow up on your who got phishing emails, but I don't see a need to email every customer. I've had no issues with NameCheap, but I just register domains, no other fancy services.

imwillofficial 4y ago

I switched from Gandi to Porkbun, never looked back

EGreg 4y ago

Capitalism as usual.

duckmysick 4y ago

So I guess I will be looking for a new email provider. I have a couple of domains with emails + a lot of custom aliases. Don't care for a web UI since I'm using an email client. Anyone hosting with runbox.com? What can you tell me about it?

junon 4y ago
I use Migadu and aside from the meh webmail client that's provided for you (which I can't really complain about), the service is impeccable for individual users.

ectospheno 4y ago

My main complaint with gandi is the status page is a lie. Take now for example. You can check email but can’t send. Status page says all is well. Happens a lot.

tracker1 4y ago

For good or bad, Google domains does include email forwarding services... Though not sure how much I trust Google for domain registration in the long term.

motrm 4y ago

As some comments have mentioned the pricing will increase for domain names too, not very explicit in their email on Tuesday evening "Gandi.net - Update": Domains We remain committed to offering you the largest portfolio of TLDs, customized TLD suggestions and best-in-class anycast-level primary DNS servers. In addition, we will step-up our effort to unburden you by introducing new managed features: Advanced and easy to use account security Proactive notifications on changes and important events Better rights management Easier domain transfers with continuity of service Best-in-class anycast-level secondary DNS servers You can find the associated new pricing for your domains here[0]. Renewing a .com at these new prices is now £24 per year inclusive of tax and .uk domains £12. Annoyingly my previous registrar raised prices last year and I thought that, hey, I'll pay a few quid extra and support Gandi as they generally have a decent reputation. Now with this move I'm the fool! Like others in this thread I've moved to Porkbun, the .com renewals are now about £8.50 and .uk about £5.50 which is much more reasonable and much closer to their cost price. I'd like my registrar to make a reasonable amount of profit to make staying in business worthwhile but that doesn't make sense when the registrar wants to double or triple the pricing for their bottom line. Shame, but there we go. [0] https://www.gandi.net/static/documents/2023-march-gbp-renew-price-increase.pdf https://www.gandi.net/static/documents/2023-march-gbp-renew-...

tolien 4y ago
> Porkbun [...] .uk about £5.50 Porkbun do .uk domains now? TIL! I moved some domains from Gandi to Porkbun before as part of a plan to ditch Gandi and when I asked (almost 3 years ago to the day), they didn't support .uk.
callahad 4y ago
> I'd like my registrar to make a reasonable amount of profit to make staying in business worthwhile Ditto. Moved 11 domains from Gandi to Porkbun today. But... for the lot of them, Porkbun was only $9 more than Cloudflare, which charges straight wholesale prices and takes no profit. I'm glad Porkbun isn't gouging, but less than $1/domain/year markup still feels a bit thin and leaves me worried that I'll be doing this dance again in a few years.
4y ago

dang 4y ago

The submitted title was "Domain registrar Gandi gets bought out, screws existing customers". The latter bit is linkbait so I've edited it (as the site guidelines request - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). But I realize the OP isn't just complaining about price increases, so if someone can suggest a more accurate and neutral title, we can change it again.

branon 4y ago
OP's original issue had to do with changes to Gandi's included email service specifically. Perhaps the title should indicate that Gandi is rugpulling email accounts from people who have prepaid for domain registrations. They haven't told me I'm losing my mailbox yet but I'm on the lookout. The free mailbox was honestly one of the biggest reasons I chose Gandi, and I would not mind paying for it at all - preferably not under duress though!
- insomniacity 4y ago
  Yep, prices are prices, but switch and bait on the mailboxes is the issue here. Really struggled with the title length limit!
scrps 4y ago
Gandi buyout brings unwelcome changes (Could also add "for some" to limit the scope if that is too broad.)
em-bee 4y ago
how about: "Domain registrar Gandi gets bought out, removes free mailboxes"
- dang 4y ago
  Ok let's use that. Thanks!
- gpm 4y ago
  This title strikes me as incorrect. The user paid for the mailbox as part of the bundle they purchased with their domain name. It was not free.

mongrelion 4y ago

I see that a lot of us rely heavily on the 2x free mail addresses we got per domain. Is it an idea to join efforts & money and rent a VPS from Hetzner and run our own mail server?

TheChaplain 4y ago
I run my own mail server and it is not an easy task. First you need an un-tainted ip-address/network. Then you need to get it all right with spf, dkim, dmarc, dane etc. One mistake or misconfiguration and emails from your server will at best end up in the junk folder. Not to mention the server maintenance. Even if you think you got it all done, you will not be welcome at all recipients (I'm looking at you Microsoft). It's quite a pain, but I still keep at it because I have the interest and time.

worksonmine 4y ago

Crap, I was about to move there because the namecheap CEO is too impulsive and still waiting for the explanation of their "third party getting hacked" a few weeks ago. Where do I go now?

duud 4y ago
Dynadot is good
MrFoof 4y ago
Hover has been about as no nonsense as it can get. Not the cheapest, but I'd rather pay a few extra dollars a year to not have to deal with this in the future. I swear I'm the only person I know not constantly switching domain registrars, because I don't want to waste time sweating over maybe tens of dollars a year for something so core to my operations. The one time many years ago I had to call support for a question a human being answered in 2 rings. Tucows (which owns Hover) has been around for 30 years. It's likely they'll be around for a long while still.
- pomian 4y ago
  That's good to hear. I've been using GoDaddy for years, with same high quality tech help, and free emails, until now. Might check hover.
aww_dang 4y ago
Name.com is more expensive, but I've never been surprised. Normal ticketing if you do have an issue. No inane chat support, less bloated site and they've never attempted stunt billing.

sitzkrieg 4y ago

i switched from gandi to porkbun a few years ago and cant recommend them enough. the least crufty domain and dns management site ever too, simple as it should be

aguywithguile 4y ago

Dont know if its related to the recent changes but I opened a support request that has been open for 3 days now with the only reply being we've transfered you to a different part of the support team. it is related to moving registrar which i can see not being the highest priority but still quite frustrating. netim replied within 30 minutes of me opening a ticket related to the same issue for context.

behringer 4y ago
this kind of change could definitely upset customer service queues. I don't know if 3+ days is normal for Gandi or not though.

huhneverthot 4y ago

Uh, I didn't get an email from Gandi...

benhurmarcel 4y ago

That doesn't match Gandi's website. https://www.gandi.net/en-US/domain https://www.gandi.net/en-US/domain > Two, free custom email addresses https://docs.gandi.net/en/gandimail/index.html https://docs.gandi.net/en/gandimail/index.html > With every domain name you buy from Gandi you receive two free email inboxes through Gandi’s email service, each with 3GB of storage.

crtasm 4y ago
Correct. They should really update their website at the same time as announcing the upcoming change to existing customers by email.

seydor 4y ago

I think their motto was "no bullshit" or something It looks like they don't like to be coy about scamming their users either

MildlySerious 4y ago
To be fair, they have done a good job with that motto for a long time. I've been with them for 10 years and have recommended and praised them for being "no bullshit" on a few occasions, both here on HN and on reddit. It sucks how quickly these things can change.

dennis_jeeves1 4y ago

Tangential by related technical question: Does something exist out there which is equivalent to a domain name for a website (or an any entity) which is independent of a external entities, like DNS or DNS like servers. I know that in some sense public/private keys in asymmetric cryptography mimic that feature (the public key being the address of the receiver), but is there anything out of the box? Does Tor have a similar feature? I do understand that this equivalent to which I'm alluding to, may be an unintelligible string of characters, unlike current website user friendly names. I also understand that the underlying ip address change can be a challenge , but probably not an insurmountable one.

Thoreandan 4y ago
There's things like purl-dot-org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_uniform_resource_locator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_uniform_resource_lo... or .onion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.onion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.onion e.g. http://p53lf57qovyuvwsc6xnrppyply3vtqm7l6pcobkmyqsiofyeznfu5uqd.onion/ http://p53lf57qovyuvwsc6xnrppyply3vtqm7l6pcobkmyqsiofyeznfu5... will be up even if the propublica.org domain is broken / disabled.
- dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
  Thanks, between the 2 if you had to choose one, which would you recommend?
dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
Think I found atleast one answer from: https://www.expressvpn.com/blog/how-to-create-a-onion-address/ https://www.expressvpn.com/blog/how-to-create-a-onion-addres...: When you type a .onion address into your Tor browser, unlike with a regular domain, you are not looking up an IP address on a DNS server. Instead, you are asking a Hidden Service directory, which anybody can volunteer to run.
_glass 4y ago
Maybe like ENS? https://ens.domains/ https://ens.domains/

sam_lowry_ 4y ago

Thus is all the fault of Laetitia Halliday, ultimately. If she did not sue Valentin Lacambre, he would not have abandoned altern.org. If he kept altern.org, gandi would have been an association, not a corporation. And the world would be a slightly better place.

ploum 4y ago
Wow, good old memories! (btw, it was Estelle Halliday, not Laetitia Halliday. But your uchrony is perfectly right)
- sam_lowry_ 4y ago
  True, it was Estelle. Thanks.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Maybe edit the original in case there is someone with that actual name?
    - kerneis 4y ago
      Both exist. Trivia time: Laeticia (née Laetitia) was married to Johnny, the famous French rock singer; Estelle was married to David, son of Johnny. Note that Johnny is dead now, Laeticia has been remaried twice but kept Johnny's last name, Estelle is divorced, and David is not the son of Laeticia as Johnny got married several times (David's mother is the French actress Sylvie Vartan).
      - ploum 4y ago
        To summarize : Laeticia is basically the step-mother of Estelle. But she’s 9 years younger.
        kbelder 4y ago

Thoreandan 4y ago

I'd be a lot happier as a long-time GANDI customer if there was any mention of this whatsoever on https://news.gandi.net https://news.gandi.net ... nothing there since 2022. :-(

glandium 4y ago
Also, no email in my inbox about the merger.
rendaw 4y ago
I didn't get an email, there's no news, and AFAICT this story hasn't been picked up by any other news outlets at all (nothing on Google News at least). There are a couple individual anecdotes, and off topic discussions about domain prices. Gandi obviously has issues, but is the thing about email real? Are there _any_ sources that can confirm it?

aidog 4y ago

I've bought a strangers domain name with a deal to keep hosting their two e-mail addresses. Just set up everything last year and can't easily move off. It now seems that this deal is going to cost me a lot more. I prepaid until 2029. Their tagline "No Bullshit" seems to no longer apply. I was a good client for over 10 years. Shame, that they don't have a japanese office, but maybe I can do small claims court in taiwan.

artdigital 4y ago

Sad to see Gandi worsening. It was a fantastic registrar that I recommended to everyone. Now I’m in the process to move everything to cloudflare and porkbun Just recently I moved a .pn domain (required gandi corporate subscription) to Gandi and they’ll charge me almost double of the at-cost for renewal as the base fee, excluding the corporate subscription. Inquired about this and asked for a refund because I wasn’t satisfied with the service, but that sadly wasn’t granted to me either What happened to Gandi - No bullsh*t?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

FounderBurr 4y ago

Wow Gandi was one of th4 old school internet “good guys”. Are there any similar quality registrars left?

indigodaddy 4y ago

One of the comments on the mastodon site references bookmyname.com as an alternative with free email boxes (1G). They’re site looks pleasingly last millennium and also says powered by FreeBSD (also pleasing!)

bofadeez 4y ago

They no longer have a competitive advantage and I'll be moving all my inboxes to MXRoute. RIP Gandi

einichi 4y ago

I used Gandi's email service as just an SMTP service to send notifications from various scripts and apps. Any alternatives I can use? Ideally actual SMTP and not some API, some apps I use only support the SMTP protocol.

l1e34r 4y ago

As a us customer I have not received any emails about this. I reached out to them asking about it. They gave me the same boiler plate code. Sent back another email say thats basically fraud in the us. their response `My bad. I assume the mail you sent was after reading a communication made for clients paying in £. You're not impacted by this communication. We’re currently reviewing our general conditions and pricing policy in each currency given the fluctuation for the latter which means changes won’t likely be the same for each currency. Should a change occur for you; you'll receive a mail from us.` I asked them to confirm the free email isnt being removed for US customers yet, and if it does a email will be sent out. their reply `I can only confirm what I shared with you above.`