I though namecheap was one of the better ones around? I'm looking for a domain registrar. Could share the link with namecheap horror stories? Thanks
Even transferring out was a hassle. I had privacy service, and namecheap sends the confirmation email to the proxy address, and not your actual contact address. They also spam filter the service so aggressively that you won't receive their transfer confirmations...sent FROM namecheap. Luckily, the transfer completed at the end of the window.
Their hosted email stinks, too. They spam filter it pretty hard and nothing you can do can effectively whitelist emails.
My impression is that they focus on not doing anything actively evil too often, and respond to just enough social media posts to give the impression they're responsive.
I got a free domain with Github student pack from Namecheap. Just my personal experience, the person I talked to seemed very helpful and kind. However, the multiple rounds of talking to a real person to register a domain makes me think they don't have nearly enough automation which is a red flag.
I wanted to move off of them, but everyone else is worse. CF Registrar is interesting, but there is precedent for CF revoking its services from non-abusive customers before (whatever that alt-right site was) so I don't think I will support them either. I heard Gandhi is good so I might check them out.
Don't make claims that CF secretly support your politics, I guess. I think that's enough of a corner case not to worry about.
Stay far, far away.
$8.99 .coms as a base price, free whois guard for life, solid support and no up-sell spam or BS.
I moved almost all of my domains there over the last year'ish.
However, they were acquired by a Canadian investment firm earlier this year [1]. Till now there's been no change and things are still running smoothly — I just hope that continues.
[1] https://coupontree.co/namesilo-was-sold-for-9-5-million/
Also, on closer inspection today, I realised that Namesilo does indeed increase renewal fee after the first year. The fee stays the same thereafter, and it's still the cheapest around, but it's worth keeping in mind.
I caught onto this when I realised their registration price is actually below the wholesale cost for .com domains, according to this Cloudflare blog post.
I might move my domains to Cloudflare when they make this available.
If it was with a coupon then I could see it being bumped up but if you get it at $8.99, it will be $8.99 the next year and all years forward.
Edit: I do have many domains with them. I register new ones semi-frequently.
It does mention the renewal price is $8.89 (which is about the normal price) if you click the renewals tab.
I don't think I would put this into the same category as a bait and switch tactic that other vendors do. This one is all spelled out on the page and it's not part of the check out process. You have to go out of your way to discover and opt into the discount program.
I checked today and it was actually pretty difficult to find what the renewal prices would be. Partly because the website is awful.
I didn't say it's a bait and switch. Even the renewal prices are outrageously cheap. I have no bad feelings towards Namesilo. My intent to move to Cloudflare is not because I'm unhappy with Namesilo.
Also, I don't buy domains all that often anymore but I have heaps on renewals, so there is actually very little benefit to me.
I wonder what the coverage is from CF for 'odd' tlds? I've got a .je domain that I had to register with gandi.net as no other big ones supported it.
After I moved my domains from Namecheap I wanted to close the account, rather than leave it dormant, and it took a week as support were so anal about the fact I had 1) some 'free' SSL certificates I had no intention of ever using and 2) 0.56UKP in my account I didn't care about but they wanted to transfer via Paypal to me. I appreciate the thorough nature of this, but i'd rather just close the account.
Can I get more horror stories to confirm those are real? It's unfortunate because namecheap used to have the exact opposite reputation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3396606
I have been moving my stuff to porkbun.com. They are US based and $8.84 for a .com. Cloudflare is an interesting offering, although as of right now, it's not actually launched and it appears that you are required to be routing all your traffic through cloudflare to be able to use their registrar service. I don't know if that is a permanent requirement or just for now though.
Why do you say this? You can already use their DNS service without routing your traffic through Cloudflare, so it'd be weird that domain registration required that.
Seems likely that some of the issues might have been related to them switching from being an Enom reseller to their own direct ICANN accreditation but I'm still planning on migrating my domains out.
The attacking party had no court order, subpoena, judgement, etc.
Ted from namecheap asked me to email him. He confirmed legal had received the complaints, but said they hadn't replied.
He hasn't replied to my email since (3 days ago) to offer any explanation how the attacking lawyers got details on in NC.
YMMV, but it is a real issue, which cost me just under 2k in legal fees to unwind. I am definitely moving away from NC, sadly, after 10 years.
If someone really wanted to sue you, it's pretty cheap to issue subpoenas (<$100). The provider can quash the subpoena on the customers' behalf[1] but I don't know any who does.
In our instance, our service providers received a swath of C&Ds electronically, alleging IP infringement.
Within 24 hours, our various services providers had disclosed personal information, cut off services, blocked payments.. all based on an unfounded email.
The legal system is based on due process. This process should be respected. If my service provider gets a legitimate subpoena, I expect them to react.
However, I don't expect them to divulge personal information and cut off services based on an unfounded email. It's really, really nuts how quickly you can lose your business / take down someone else's business..
It seems like they had a bug where in some cases they discarded the WHOIS information provided and used the billing details instead. Not only did they disclose private information, they endangered a white label contract I was working on.
Bugs are understandable, especially after redesign work, but the biggest problem came afterwards – customer support were useless. First they insisted it was user error and I simply hadn't entered the right details (I'm 100% certain that's not true). Then they claimed that they were unable to update the WHOIS information because they were just a reseller, so they had to forward my support request on. They refused to take responsibility and couldn't get anything done.
At this point they were taking weeks to respond to every message, even after promising a response within 24 hours. I even asked them for a response even if it was just "we asked again and no reply" which they agreed to then ignored. They wouldn't provide contact details for support at their supplier, they wouldn't escalate to anybody who could do anything, their whole attitude was to ignore me as much as they could and (presumably; I have no evidence of this) email their supplier once in a while when I annoyed them enough.
Meanwhile I had no explanation to give to my client, for over a month. We gave up on the domain. Once I stopped chasing, Namecheap never bothered following up. Namecheap could never fix the problem.
Until that point, I had recommended Namecheap many times. Now I warn people away from them. Now I hesitate to recommend any service until I've used their customer support. I still see plenty of glowing recommendations for Namecheap. I wonder how many of them are from people who have never had to use their customer support.
I have used their support two times, but it was an easy transfer request somehow not handled automatically.
Your story is horrible. I wonder if they care to comment.
1. Have had them turn off private WHOIS for all (hundreds of) domains "by accident".
2. I haven't figured out a way to export a list of domains after their UI revamp some years ago.
3. At some point they started setting DNS records for newly purchased domains to their landing page with a 30 minute TTL, which makes setting up something on the fly impossible, unless you use their API:
4. Their API is flaky at best. I wrote a script to register domains and set NS records and was forced to write a loop to set NS records up to 10 times until they got set properly.
namecheap also can't handle standard 410 character DKIM records from gsuite since their internal DB only allows 256 character records
They used to be amazing but recently their site has been slow and buggy with support trying to be helpful but ultimately falling short. Their prices seem to have also gone from being really good to just normal.