8 ms·
Chart of YC companies' hosting decisions
- charliepark 17y agoIt's surprising how many cells of that table say "GoDaddy."
- jf 17y agoYes, that surprised me too, considering GoDaddy's lackluster reputation. Which reminds me, you can click on the table header to sort the columns.
- kevindication 17y agoI've had no problems with GoDaddy as registrar, and they're priced right (and that seems to be where they win most in that chart). I can't speak to their quality as a hosting provider though. Have they been screwing up as registrar for others?
- Locke1689 17y agoWell... I do have to make a slight UI criticism. Which would you rather see when managing your domains? http://www.godaddy.com/default.aspx http://www.godaddy.com/default.aspx or http://www.dyndns.com/ http://www.dyndns.com/ Also, I have had very good experiences with DynDNS. Support is helpful and their services are top-notch. I am always confident that I'll get someone knowledgeable at DynDNS, while my experience with GoDaddy was nowhere near as nice. Seems they have a good reputation as a company too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DynDNS#Awards http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DynDNS#Awards
- kevindication 17y agoTo be honest I barely ever see the front page, so I don't think it's a useful comparison. The so-called "Total DNS Control" page that GoDaddy offers works well enough for me. Is DynDNS' control panel nicer? As far as support I'll have to defer as I haven't had any problems worth bringing up yet. I moved from Register.com some time ago and that was a breath of fresh air in so many respects.
- zandor 17y agoAs with Locke1689, I have only good things to say about DynDNS's services. Coming from GoDaddy, UI-wise, DynDNS are a bit nicer, but it's their support which really makes a difference.
- eswat 17y agoNo problems with GoDaddy here. My domains were at RegisterFly before the ICANN fiasco and subsequent move. Now THAT was a screwed up registrar.
- drusenko 17y agoIf you are running a user-generated content site and you get to a large enough size, it's near certain that GoDaddy will shut off your domain. We had a very, very close call with Weebly where someone from GoDaddy called at 10am on a Saturday, didn't get through, and started shutting off the domain. If I hadn't called right back it would have been disastrous. For some reason, GoDaddy sees it as their job to police the Internet, which is completely not acceptable for a domain registrar.
- danielrhodes 17y agoWere they checking the authenticity of the registration info? If so, that's them enforcing ICANN rules. They usually don't do that though unless somebody requested it.
- drusenko 17y agoNo. They field abuse requests for phishing sites, DMCA requests, etc. When notified, we take them down promptly. However, whenever someone makes a phishing abuse request on the .weebly.com subdomain to GoDaddy, they don't even look at your traffic or website and just override your DNS servers/records to be blackholed if you don't answer your phone when they call.
- jhancock 17y agoWho would you recommend that does not see DMCA take-down notices as "their job"?
- donw 17y agoI've had great service from GoDaddy as well, and it's a lot cheaper to buy a wildcard SSL cert from them ($199/year) than pretty much everywhere else I've looked.
- jf 17y agoI figured that price was the main reason why people buy SSL certificates from GoDaddy. (Speaking of which, it's worth checking retailmenot.com for GoDaddy discount codes: I recently bought several wildcard certificates from them and was able to get discount codes for 10-30% off.)
- kirubakaran 17y agohttp://www.google.com/search?q=godaddy+sucks http://www.google.com/search?q=godaddy+sucks Of course you'll personally have a great experience until you get screwed. Learn from others. I use namecheap.
- vaksel 17y agoNot that surprising, Godaddy is pretty much the amazon of domain registrations. I'm surprised however, that there are 2 companies that are using them for webhosting.
- oscardelben 17y agoActually amazon try to make my life easier when I want to by something. Godaddy instead is trying to sell me tons of stuff I don't want.
- bradgessler 17y agoTheir UI is horrendously busy for YC founders, but as everybody else is saying, "the price is right."
- tdavis 17y agoEverybody complains about the UI -- but it's domain registration! How often do you really use the UI? A couple times a year, maybe? GoDaddy is super cheap and reliable (for domains). Until somebody makes something better (and equally cheap), I'm staying.
- bradgessler 17y agoYou must be a light user; I'm on godaddy at least once a week doing something. The checkout process is obnoxious; I just want to buy something, not be upsold a billion times. I understand why they do this so godaddy probably isn't ideal for me. I just deal with it because of the price. On the other hand, I'd love to see some enterprising company (even godaddy; all it "GoDaddy Pro" or something) come up with a no-frills domain reservation/management service inspired by http://domai.nr/ http://domai.nr/ and http://manage.slicehost.com/ http://manage.slicehost.com/ (Slicehost has an awesome, simple management interface).
- sanswork 17y agoGoDaddy has a no-frills solution with wildwestdomains. We use the api in our systems and it was a nightmare to implement but works well enough.
- mattmaroon 17y agoDude, that's what I said and then someone here told me about dynadot. Check it out. It's cheaper than Godaddy if you're using private registration, and the UI is about 100x better.
- sant0sk1 17y agos/surprising/depressing/ GoDaddy's "used car lot" salesmanship makes me loathe the company. I'm in process of transferring all my domains elsewhere.
- potatolicious 17y agoLikewise. Have a fairly budget-price but not-so-shady registrar in mind? [edit] WTF guys, why am I being modded up? I asked a question without providing additional insight - this doesn't deserve +points.
- sant0sk1 17y agoI have been happy with http://www.name.com http://www.name.com (so far). $9 .com's with free private WHOIS and they don't mess with you at all. Actually, I called them today to check on a transfer and the customer service was good too.
- pg 17y agoIt's common for people to vote up a question they would also like to have answered.
- tdupree 17y agoI have had good experiences with 1and1.com as a registrar. $8.99 domains, free private whois, and a decent domain management dashboard, YMMV.
- codyrobbins 17y agoI second 1&1 — they are cheap, incredibly responsive to support requests, and generally a pleasure to deal with all around.
- staunch 17y agoI have 50+ domains with them. I like them okay, but I don't love em. I did call support ~2-3 time recently and they were really quite good. 24/7 and almost no waiting. When you cancel a domain they reveal your contact information for some period of time. Maybe they can't help this, but I blame them anyway. Overall I think they're pretty good.
- kogir 17y agoFor a while at Loopt we considered becoming a Tucows reseller and only holding our domains, but it wasn't worth the effort. Whoever bought our first domain used GoDaddy we just stuck with it. We've seen no pressing reason to switch.
- staunch 17y agoTucows is more of a pain. You can become an eNom reseller in a day or two very easily. As I recall, there's a little faxing involved, but no biggie. It's convenient if you need to register or modify domains programmatically.
- jmcnally 17y agoI'm with OpenSRS/Tucows. We've recently overhauled the signup process and I think you'll find it much simpler now. Have a look: http://opensrs.com/signup/ http://opensrs.com/signup/
- staunch 17y agoGood to know. It was my first choice, but seemed complicated/slow. I'll definitely give it a shot next time.
- jganetsk 17y agoIt's not surprising how many cells say Google.
- zhyder 17y agoCool! Looks like most folks using GoDaddy as registrar switch to some other service (typically web host?) for the DNS. How come? Are any of the companies with Softlayer using their Cloudlayer offering? If yes, how do you find it?
- aq 17y agoUmm, what about multiple CN SSL certificates?
- jf 17y agoI didn't think to check for those. Great idea, thanks!
- juliusdavies 17y agoI think multi-CN is pretty rare. It's Subject Alt Names to look out for! https://owa.central1.com/ https://owa.central1.com/ for example.
- pg 17y agoInteresting, but in the first two there are slices labeled both "other/self hosted" and "self hosted."
- jf 17y ago"self hosted" means that the IP or Whois lookup matched the second level domain - a high degree of confidence that the service is self hosted. "other/self hosted" is basically a catch all. Originally just labeled "other", I added "self hosted" later since that is often (but not always) the case.
- donw 17y agoI'm surprised that Linode isn't on there at all, although it's good to see BitPusher get mentioned for their work on Wufoo (good bunch of guys over there).
- borism 17y agooh noes, you made a pie chart - the most useless chart type of all!
- jf 17y agohttp://laughingsquid.com/accurate-pie-chart/ http://laughingsquid.com/accurate-pie-chart/
- borism 17y agothank you! morons who down-voted my comment don't seem to be able to understand...
- rms 17y agoMaking it as a joke didn't work on this forum because people generally downvote short jokes they don't get. The rule about humor here that seems to work here is to make sure it's actually funny.
- ivankirigin 17y agoEmail should include outgoing. Tipjoy uses http://authsmtp.com http://authsmtp.com Google hosted email for outbound kinda stinks
- akamaka 17y agoI'm just about to switch to Google for mail hosting, and your comment worries me a little. What kind of trouble have people had with Google's outgoing mail servers?
- rufo 17y agoI think they might just be talking about using it for mass-outbound messages from an app, not for actual human-to human messages. (Never had a problem with Gmail for my personal/work e-mail, anyway.)
- ivankirigin 17y agoYou're right. We still use it for inbound, and human based outbound. We do things like send monthly reminders to pay for Tipjoy, meaning lots of emails sent regularly.
- sharjeel 17y agoIs it possible to have multiple email providers on a single domain? How do you do that?
- fuzzmeister 17y agoDoes anyone else have any thoughts on the best outbound email provider to use for automatically-generated emails?
- gcheong 17y agoWow, nothing on Google App Engine or Azure?
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- tybris 17y agoWell, Google App Engine isn't exactly suitable for innovative applications since you're locked to what their environment offers you (e.g. no background processes!?). Azure I don't know, is that generally available yet?
- stevejalim 17y agoApp Engine does offer you cron jobs now, at least.
- run4yourlives 17y agoCould somebody please explain why you would use a DNS provider that is not your web host? I've always just used the host's DNS servers for my domains, but I'm curious as to the decision making of others... are there real concerns that would lead you to separate these services?
- jf 17y agoAmong other reasons, using a 3rd party DNS provider allows you to deal with reliability issues that your web host might have. (For example, if your web host goes down and you have low TTLs, you could put your site on a different provider or show visitors a "down for maintenance" page.)
- zach 17y agoMany places you lease a server from do not typically provide DNS servers. Also, you get the advantage of always-speedy, geographically diverse name lookup. When I leased my own server, I had a painful experiment with hosting my own DNS on the same box. After I gave up on that, I admit I snooped on the provider YC used and have never had a problem.
- tybris 17y agoI'd argue that you should never use your web host as a DNS provider. Eventually you will get sick of your webhost and moving your site is a lot easier if they don't lay claim to your domain.
- utku_karatas2 17y agoNice! I'd also be interested in the techology decisions (languages, frameworks..).
- manpreets7 17y agoI wonder why Google App Engine doesn't show up even once. I thought it was a pretty viable and flexible option.
- gregking 17y agoI noticed a bunch of people are using enom for email. I assume this is because of their hosted exchange. Does anyone have any experience with enom's standard hosted exchange and using it using mobile devices such as BB/iphone
- codyrobbins 17y agoThis is pretty much the exact breakdown of information I have had in the back of my mind to find for quite a while. It's very helpful — perhaps the most useful thing I've seen posted on HN since I started reading. (At least, most useful for me!) Of course, I wouldn't want to jump off a bridge just because everyone else was doing it, but researching all the available providers for all these hosting requirements is a potentially endless job. It's nice to see the decisions other companies have made, to crowdsource it a bit and narrow down the options.
- jf 17y agoThanks Cody! I wrote the code that generated that report for the same reason: I wanted to be able to research what decisions other domain owners have made. I'm happy to hear that you found this information useful too! Did you see the code I put on GitHub? http://github.com/jpf/domain-profiler http://github.com/jpf/domain-profiler
- tybris 17y agoGreat work. I immediately stored it to help my future hosting decisions. Small feature suggestions: include percentages in the pie charts to make them more readable. (Especially for colour blind)
- Keyframe 17y agodoes anyone have experience with http://www.fdcservers.net/ http://www.fdcservers.net/ ? I was looking around for unmetered 100MBps and what I am looking at looks really good and cheap. I have a dedicated server at local ISP and one at theplanet.com - I am not really satisfied with theplanet.com one and prices for local ISP (though superb ping, of course) are a riot.
- steamboiler 17y agoDoes choice of hosting provider figure in selection of startups? Will one startup get preference over another otherwise equal startup if the former is (not) using a particular hosting provider/mail/registrar?
- jhancock 17y agoHN has had several slicehost vs. linode threads. Comments seems they were an even match (different but even). So why are there no linode users in this list? I'm asking as a new startup eyeing both as potential host.
- worldhello 17y agoalso, bumptechnologies.com is using linode as DNS. Doesn't linode only offer DNS to domains hosted there?
- jmintz 17y agoCorrect, both our website and our matching infrastructure is hosted at Linode.
- hypermatt 17y agoSlicehost is backed by a fairly large hosting company now, they always seemed more professional then linode. I used them back in the day and it always seemed like it was just one dude and he didn't have his processed automated well enough.
- galactus 17y agoPie charts considered harmful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_chart#Discussion_on_use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_chart#Discussion_on_use
- jf 17y agoThe code is on github. Send me a patch ;-)
- dmillar 17y agoI'm curious. Does hosting with Amazon imply EC2? Or S3 static files? Or some other form of hosting I am unaware of?
- jf 17y agoIt (in almost every case) implies hosting on EC2. I haven't added detection of image host to my script yet.