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No forewarning, no post on the website, no justification, and the nasty news buried in the middle of unrelated text. It appears designed to deceive. “No bullsh

No forewarning, no post on the website, no justification, and the nasty news buried in the middle of unrelated text. It appears designed to deceive. “No bullshit” is no more. https://www.gandi.net/en/no-bullshit https://www.gandi.net/en/no-bullshit That promise is what justified their slightly higher prices. With it broken, I have no reason not to transfer to a less expensive registrar. So that I’ve now done, and Gandi can try to win me back next year.

pcthrowaway 3y ago
They sent out an email to their existing customers, and the price increase won't be announced til July 13
- xoa 3y ago
  FWIW I've been a customer of Gandi.net for something like a decade now with a number of domains and many email accounts. This morning is the very first email I received from them on this (at 0025 EST this morning). I got no message about any previous email changes either. And my domain admin contact is not uniform either, email accounts there are across four different services including theirs, MXroute and GSuite. Not a spam filter issue. So yes, this feels pretty sudden here. That may or may not have been some sort of further screwup on their part, just a data point that notifications have not been uniform.
  - lgvld 3y ago
    Yes, absolutely. Notification has been delayed for customers in some countries (not UK especially) it seems. French customer here btw.
- aendruk 3y ago
  You’re right, there is one month of warning; I’d misread July for June. If I could I’d just edit out that complaint as the timing is secondary to their deceptive messaging around domain registration price increases. The dark pattern seems to have worked as many here are still discussing only the mail hosting announcement in which the change to their core service was buried.
whizzter 3y ago
Existing customers will retain the free service for renewals done for the next month until they shut it down, and even then the cost of the new email service is a fraction of what you pay for Microsofts or Google custom domain emails. I have a mailbox there for my domain so I hope they can introduce some easy way to just pre-pay for a longer period.
- ryanjshaw 3y ago
  Their premium email service will be $5.99/mo going forward. The equivalent Exchange Online plan is $4.80/mo in year 1 (or $4 with 12mo commitment), then additional $12/yr for the custom domain i.e. $5.80/mo in year 2 - that's cheaper than Gandi?
  - bombcar 3y ago
    When I was preparing to flee free google apps for domains during the recent kerfuffle, the cheapest overall really was Exchange Online (it's a basic email-only option). For a single user and single domain, it's just $56 a year. Next best was proton mail (seems it's a bit cheaper now, $48/yr)
    - vel0city 3y ago
      Zoho Mail seems like a pretty cheap deal. $1.25/user/month 1yr commitment for their 10GB/user email + calendar + contacts support according to the website. It says it can do Exchange ActiveSync and IMAP for connecting. This is currently my target for migrating my few email accounts. I'd love to hear arguments for another service that's cheaper than that for just a few accounts. I don't really want/need all the extra document collaboration tools other services provide and I definitely don't want yet another Google/Microsoft account. https://www.zoho.com/mail/zohomail-pricing.html https://www.zoho.com/mail/zohomail-pricing.html
      - bombcar 3y ago
        That looks good, the thing that was making me lean toward Microsoft is their single email/domain thing lets you make infinite aliases/wildcards.
elaus 3y ago
That also rubbed me the wrong way. So much marketing text and then a single paragraph about service terminations and price changes.
- shiftpgdn 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - api 3y ago
    … and at the same time have you seen what most modern startups spend on cloud? Price tolerance in this industry is grossly out of whack vs what things actually cost. Certain businesses are permitted to print money and nobody bats an eye (cloud, hosted data analytics, marketing, hipster web shit) while other things are expected to be free or absurdly cheap and people freak out otherwise. Everyone knows pricing and cost expectations are never rational but they’re particularly ridiculous in software and SaaS.
  - meragrin_ 3y ago
    Not everyone on here makes $400,000/year.
    - kennyadam 3y ago
      I don't make that in 10 years!
chmod775 3y ago
> No forewarning This is announcing the shutdown of their previous offering 5 months in advance. I'd call that a forewarning.
- branon 3y ago
  Yes - when the first wave of emails hit EU users several months ago, I complained on HN that I'd be fine with paying for GandiMail as long as I had 6 months notice or whatever. The email I got today was pretty clear and no-BS, it says flat out that pricing changes are effective in 30 days for "all our existing services and the new Mailbox service" - price hikes aren't exactly fun, but my domain is registered out for a few years already and I'm using their email service for free... so is 30-day notice of a pricing increase _truly_ only 30 days notice? Not really, not for a vendor whom I only pay annually in advance. Notably the existing, free GandiMail service stays up until November which is the part I was worried about. So this seems fine to me, I am happy to become a paying customer for email and they've made this easy by giving me plenty of time to onboard. Domain registry fees are already cheap, I don't really care about paying a little more to keep my domain. For my TLD it looks like prices are going up the equivalent of 60 cents per month. I have been freeloading on GandiMail for several years and it's been great. I am happy to pay $4/mo for a standard inbox (at least while I shop around) especially if they are upgrading their product. Currently GandiMail's MFA scheme is pretty crappy/broken so I am excited to see what I'll be able to get in return for my money after they complete their changes.
  - quercusa 3y ago
    Since I just use it for forwarding aliases, is there any reason to get the more expensive mail plan? The Sieve support looks pretty nice.
    - branon 3y ago
      Probably no reason, they said forwards will remain free. Hopefully that includes aliases as well, I've got a wildcard alias that is awesome to use. How do you know they're adding Sieve support? The email just says "Better anti-spam" The email also says "Stronger email server security" which I hope means they are fixing their MFA scheme - I've sent an email to their new support address to confirm this.
junon 3y ago
To be fair, they announced this a long time ago, and I got an email with this exact email content.
jodrellblank 3y ago
Yes forewarning, they were bought out and closed free email and said email would cost $ripoff/month at least three months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35080777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35080777
- demetrius 3y ago
  Not really, I've never got the previous email, only today's one. Maybe some people got the information 3 months ago, but definitely not all of customers.
lockhouse 3y ago
If a company goes out of their way to tell you how ethical they are, they probably aren't.
- Anthony-G 3y ago
  I haven't downvoted you but making a blanket statement like this is unfair. Some companies are founded explicitly to provide a more ethical product or service. If they don't market themselves based on their unique selling point, they'll either go out of business or be bought out by their less ethical competitors who can compete on price. Such is the nature of capitalism.
mehdix 3y ago
I received the announcement email today. I understand and appreciate them offering the email service for free for many years. It's a lot of work and I was always wondering how they manage to offer email hosting for free.
- azepoi 3y ago
  Free is a marketing gimmick. It was never free but included in the domain package = domain registration + dns hosting + email boxes. The domain prices were generally higher than some concurrents. Now all of a sudden the domains see a price hike of 20-40% and each basic mail box that was included costs 57€ VAT included. So if you use the mail box this is essentially x3 or worse on the price. God forbid you used two mailboxes.
kryptoncalm 3y ago
Exactly this. I didn’t know they were acquired, it seems they’re acting quickly. Any recommendations on how to migrate e-mail address + IMAP boxes?
kaivi 3y ago
My only experience with Gandi was awful. Bought a bunch of domains from them after they were praised here on HN, was assured that WHOIS privacy is enabled by default and without any extra fees. Looked up the WHOIS records a minute later, and my phone number, name and email were all there. Those were .com, .org and .net domains.
- no-reply 3y ago
  I think on porkbun they explicitly tell you that some domains like .com do not have the option of enabling WHOIS privacy. So more likely this has something to do with the registrar and not gandi themselves.
  - kaivi 3y ago
    Huh, name.com has been hiding my PII just fine for years, for maybe a dozen most popular TLDs...
    - Raicuparta 3y ago
      I have my domains on Porkbun and all info is hidden, including in .com domains. So maybe they saw that with some other tld
- manmal 3y ago
  Same for my two .re domains. They explicitly show toggle buttons for „email“ and „contact info“ guards and I enabled those. But when you look in the fine print, .re domains cannot hide contact info.
- BostonEnginerd 3y ago
  I had exactly the same thing happen. Ended up moving all my domains to another registrar after that happened.
LukeShu 3y ago
> “No bullshit” is no more. https://www.gandi.net/en/no-bullshit https://www.gandi.net/en/no-bullshit They mostly phased-out the "no bullshit" slogan from all of their branding with the v5 migration in 2018. It went from being in the homepage's <title> and the first thing you see on the homepage[1] and in the header at the top of every page to being just a tiny link under "About Us" in the homepage's footer[2]. I get phasing it out, to be more "business friendly" or whatever; but doing it at the same time as the big v5 UI and accounts overhaul... it seemed to me to be an admission that the fancy new Javascript UI was bullshit. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20180104001527/https://www.gandi.net/en https://web.archive.org/web/20180104001527/https://www.gandi... [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20181230012842/https://www.gandi.net/en https://web.archive.org/web/20181230012842/https://www.gandi...

pcthrowaway 3y ago

They sent out an email to their existing customers, and the price increase won't be announced til July 13

xoa 3y ago
FWIW I've been a customer of Gandi.net for something like a decade now with a number of domains and many email accounts. This morning is the very first email I received from them on this (at 0025 EST this morning). I got no message about any previous email changes either. And my domain admin contact is not uniform either, email accounts there are across four different services including theirs, MXroute and GSuite. Not a spam filter issue. So yes, this feels pretty sudden here. That may or may not have been some sort of further screwup on their part, just a data point that notifications have not been uniform.
- lgvld 3y ago
  Yes, absolutely. Notification has been delayed for customers in some countries (not UK especially) it seems. French customer here btw.
aendruk 3y ago
You’re right, there is one month of warning; I’d misread July for June. If I could I’d just edit out that complaint as the timing is secondary to their deceptive messaging around domain registration price increases. The dark pattern seems to have worked as many here are still discussing only the mail hosting announcement in which the change to their core service was buried.

whizzter 3y ago

Existing customers will retain the free service for renewals done for the next month until they shut it down, and even then the cost of the new email service is a fraction of what you pay for Microsofts or Google custom domain emails. I have a mailbox there for my domain so I hope they can introduce some easy way to just pre-pay for a longer period.

ryanjshaw 3y ago
Their premium email service will be $5.99/mo going forward. The equivalent Exchange Online plan is $4.80/mo in year 1 (or $4 with 12mo commitment), then additional $12/yr for the custom domain i.e. $5.80/mo in year 2 - that's cheaper than Gandi?
- bombcar 3y ago
  When I was preparing to flee free google apps for domains during the recent kerfuffle, the cheapest overall really was Exchange Online (it's a basic email-only option). For a single user and single domain, it's just $56 a year. Next best was proton mail (seems it's a bit cheaper now, $48/yr)
  - vel0city 3y ago
    Zoho Mail seems like a pretty cheap deal. $1.25/user/month 1yr commitment for their 10GB/user email + calendar + contacts support according to the website. It says it can do Exchange ActiveSync and IMAP for connecting. This is currently my target for migrating my few email accounts. I'd love to hear arguments for another service that's cheaper than that for just a few accounts. I don't really want/need all the extra document collaboration tools other services provide and I definitely don't want yet another Google/Microsoft account. https://www.zoho.com/mail/zohomail-pricing.html https://www.zoho.com/mail/zohomail-pricing.html
    - bombcar 3y ago
      That looks good, the thing that was making me lean toward Microsoft is their single email/domain thing lets you make infinite aliases/wildcards.

elaus 3y ago

That also rubbed me the wrong way. So much marketing text and then a single paragraph about service terminations and price changes.

shiftpgdn 3y ago
[flagged]
- api 3y ago
  … and at the same time have you seen what most modern startups spend on cloud? Price tolerance in this industry is grossly out of whack vs what things actually cost. Certain businesses are permitted to print money and nobody bats an eye (cloud, hosted data analytics, marketing, hipster web shit) while other things are expected to be free or absurdly cheap and people freak out otherwise. Everyone knows pricing and cost expectations are never rational but they’re particularly ridiculous in software and SaaS.
- meragrin_ 3y ago
  Not everyone on here makes $400,000/year.
  - kennyadam 3y ago
    I don't make that in 10 years!

chmod775 3y ago

> No forewarning This is announcing the shutdown of their previous offering 5 months in advance. I'd call that a forewarning.

branon 3y ago
Yes - when the first wave of emails hit EU users several months ago, I complained on HN that I'd be fine with paying for GandiMail as long as I had 6 months notice or whatever. The email I got today was pretty clear and no-BS, it says flat out that pricing changes are effective in 30 days for "all our existing services and the new Mailbox service" - price hikes aren't exactly fun, but my domain is registered out for a few years already and I'm using their email service for free... so is 30-day notice of a pricing increase _truly_ only 30 days notice? Not really, not for a vendor whom I only pay annually in advance. Notably the existing, free GandiMail service stays up until November which is the part I was worried about. So this seems fine to me, I am happy to become a paying customer for email and they've made this easy by giving me plenty of time to onboard. Domain registry fees are already cheap, I don't really care about paying a little more to keep my domain. For my TLD it looks like prices are going up the equivalent of 60 cents per month. I have been freeloading on GandiMail for several years and it's been great. I am happy to pay $4/mo for a standard inbox (at least while I shop around) especially if they are upgrading their product. Currently GandiMail's MFA scheme is pretty crappy/broken so I am excited to see what I'll be able to get in return for my money after they complete their changes.
- quercusa 3y ago
  Since I just use it for forwarding aliases, is there any reason to get the more expensive mail plan? The Sieve support looks pretty nice.
  - branon 3y ago
    Probably no reason, they said forwards will remain free. Hopefully that includes aliases as well, I've got a wildcard alias that is awesome to use. How do you know they're adding Sieve support? The email just says "Better anti-spam" The email also says "Stronger email server security" which I hope means they are fixing their MFA scheme - I've sent an email to their new support address to confirm this.

junon 3y ago

To be fair, they announced this a long time ago, and I got an email with this exact email content.

jodrellblank 3y ago

Yes forewarning, they were bought out and closed free email and said email would cost $ripoff/month at least three months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35080777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35080777

demetrius 3y ago
Not really, I've never got the previous email, only today's one. Maybe some people got the information 3 months ago, but definitely not all of customers.

lockhouse 3y ago

If a company goes out of their way to tell you how ethical they are, they probably aren't.

Anthony-G 3y ago
I haven't downvoted you but making a blanket statement like this is unfair. Some companies are founded explicitly to provide a more ethical product or service. If they don't market themselves based on their unique selling point, they'll either go out of business or be bought out by their less ethical competitors who can compete on price. Such is the nature of capitalism.

mehdix 3y ago

I received the announcement email today. I understand and appreciate them offering the email service for free for many years. It's a lot of work and I was always wondering how they manage to offer email hosting for free.

azepoi 3y ago
Free is a marketing gimmick. It was never free but included in the domain package = domain registration + dns hosting + email boxes. The domain prices were generally higher than some concurrents. Now all of a sudden the domains see a price hike of 20-40% and each basic mail box that was included costs 57€ VAT included. So if you use the mail box this is essentially x3 or worse on the price. God forbid you used two mailboxes.

kryptoncalm 3y ago

Exactly this. I didn’t know they were acquired, it seems they’re acting quickly. Any recommendations on how to migrate e-mail address + IMAP boxes?

kaivi 3y ago

My only experience with Gandi was awful. Bought a bunch of domains from them after they were praised here on HN, was assured that WHOIS privacy is enabled by default and without any extra fees. Looked up the WHOIS records a minute later, and my phone number, name and email were all there. Those were .com, .org and .net domains.

no-reply 3y ago
I think on porkbun they explicitly tell you that some domains like .com do not have the option of enabling WHOIS privacy. So more likely this has something to do with the registrar and not gandi themselves.
- kaivi 3y ago
  Huh, name.com has been hiding my PII just fine for years, for maybe a dozen most popular TLDs...
  - Raicuparta 3y ago
    I have my domains on Porkbun and all info is hidden, including in .com domains. So maybe they saw that with some other tld
manmal 3y ago
Same for my two .re domains. They explicitly show toggle buttons for „email“ and „contact info“ guards and I enabled those. But when you look in the fine print, .re domains cannot hide contact info.
BostonEnginerd 3y ago
I had exactly the same thing happen. Ended up moving all my domains to another registrar after that happened.

LukeShu 3y ago

> “No bullshit” is no more. https://www.gandi.net/en/no-bullshit https://www.gandi.net/en/no-bullshit They mostly phased-out the "no bullshit" slogan from all of their branding with the v5 migration in 2018. It went from being in the homepage's <title> and the first thing you see on the homepage[1] and in the header at the top of every page to being just a tiny link under "About Us" in the homepage's footer[2]. I get phasing it out, to be more "business friendly" or whatever; but doing it at the same time as the big v5 UI and accounts overhaul... it seemed to me to be an admission that the fancy new Javascript UI was bullshit. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20180104001527/https://www.gandi.net/en https://web.archive.org/web/20180104001527/https://www.gandi... [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20181230012842/https://www.gandi.net/en https://web.archive.org/web/20181230012842/https://www.gandi...