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To the various people saying they’ll transfer their domains away, why is this bad that they transfer to another registrar company? Is there something concerning

To the various people saying they’ll transfer their domains away, why is this bad that they transfer to another registrar company? Is there something concerning about Squarespace?

paulgb 3y ago
Price and features. Squarespace charges $20/year for a .com vs $12 on google and less than that elsewhere. I haven’t used squarespace but I also imagine they don’t have as much of a power-user appeal, given that DNS is not their main product.
cobertos 3y ago
Registrars in general have many failure modes. Customer service nightmares (stakes being high if you lose an important domain, either through error or social engineering), malicious behavior (NetworkSolutions sniffing searches to buy domains[1], WhoIs privacy shell companies used to steal domain ownership, Unregistry increasing some of their new gTLDs by 500+%[2]), stability problems are all non-rare occurances. It's hard to trust a new registrar when it's so easy to fuck over customers [1]: They're mentioned in this article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_front_running https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_front_running [2]: Can't find the article anymore, it was like, 2015.
- t-writescode 3y ago
  Sure; but, we're talking about Squarespace specifically. Why are they problematic? And, how are they problematic for someone that decided Google was a trustworthy company to register their domains with, knowing their history to kill all of their products?
  - cobertos 3y ago
    Sorry, my answer was for why transferring to _any_ registrar is a problem. It involves a lot of trust built up over time. I don't know SquareSpace's business dealings, but I'm sure many others who were on Google Domains don't too, and will need to build the same trust. Google Domains has been around longer than their more recent reputation of frequently killing things. It also felt "complete". It worked (just maintain it) and people liked it, why kill it? It felt stable. But apparently everyone misjudged. But that's also why I personally am no longer on Gmail, Google Drive, Google itself, etc. I have found replacements.
WillPostForFood 3y ago
1: Price (66% increase in price for no additional value) 2: Uncertainty around Squarespace's technical ability. Are they going to be a rock solid DNS provider? When DNS is down it is no fun. I left a smaller registrar because they couldn't handle large DDoS attacks (we weren't targets, but were affected).
- ipaddr 3y ago
  Use dns at your cloud or webspace provider. Digital ocean offers this. I've used it to point a domain to other servers not connect to digital ocean.
MrStonedOne 3y ago
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omoikane 3y ago
I tried finding pricing info on Squarespace's site and it just wasn't as easy to find compared to some other sites. I also tried finding how they were doing previously by searching for "domain name registrar market share", and they don't seem to rank pretty highly there either[1]. So that wasn't particularly reassuring. Squarespace feels like an unknown to me because I don't know why they were selected and when the domain will move, so I transferred my domain away just now. This way, the registrar and transfer date are both within my control. [1] On the other hand, Google Domains appears to consistently rank in the top 10 for market share and they still want to give it up, so maybe market share doesn't mean anything.

To the various people saying they’ll transfer their domains away, why is this bad that they transfer to another registrar company? Is there something concerning about Squarespace?

paulgb 3y ago

Price and features. Squarespace charges $20/year for a .com vs $12 on google and less than that elsewhere. I haven’t used squarespace but I also imagine they don’t have as much of a power-user appeal, given that DNS is not their main product.

cobertos 3y ago

Registrars in general have many failure modes. Customer service nightmares (stakes being high if you lose an important domain, either through error or social engineering), malicious behavior (NetworkSolutions sniffing searches to buy domains[1], WhoIs privacy shell companies used to steal domain ownership, Unregistry increasing some of their new gTLDs by 500+%[2]), stability problems are all non-rare occurances. It's hard to trust a new registrar when it's so easy to fuck over customers [1]: They're mentioned in this article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_front_running https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_front_running [2]: Can't find the article anymore, it was like, 2015.

t-writescode 3y ago
Sure; but, we're talking about Squarespace specifically. Why are they problematic? And, how are they problematic for someone that decided Google was a trustworthy company to register their domains with, knowing their history to kill all of their products?
- cobertos 3y ago
  Sorry, my answer was for why transferring to _any_ registrar is a problem. It involves a lot of trust built up over time. I don't know SquareSpace's business dealings, but I'm sure many others who were on Google Domains don't too, and will need to build the same trust. Google Domains has been around longer than their more recent reputation of frequently killing things. It also felt "complete". It worked (just maintain it) and people liked it, why kill it? It felt stable. But apparently everyone misjudged. But that's also why I personally am no longer on Gmail, Google Drive, Google itself, etc. I have found replacements.

WillPostForFood 3y ago

1: Price (66% increase in price for no additional value) 2: Uncertainty around Squarespace's technical ability. Are they going to be a rock solid DNS provider? When DNS is down it is no fun. I left a smaller registrar because they couldn't handle large DDoS attacks (we weren't targets, but were affected).

ipaddr 3y ago
Use dns at your cloud or webspace provider. Digital ocean offers this. I've used it to point a domain to other servers not connect to digital ocean.

MrStonedOne 3y ago

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omoikane 3y ago

I tried finding pricing info on Squarespace's site and it just wasn't as easy to find compared to some other sites. I also tried finding how they were doing previously by searching for "domain name registrar market share", and they don't seem to rank pretty highly there either[1]. So that wasn't particularly reassuring. Squarespace feels like an unknown to me because I don't know why they were selected and when the domain will move, so I transferred my domain away just now. This way, the registrar and transfer date are both within my control. [1] On the other hand, Google Domains appears to consistently rank in the top 10 for market share and they still want to give it up, so maybe market share doesn't mean anything.