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Comment by markovbot | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised that such a large percentage of domains are registered with GoDaddy. What leads people to pick them? They're such a shitty registrar, every time I have to deal with them it's awful.

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It's trustworthy and their domain management tools, particularly for dealing with large numbers of domains, is on point. I've transferred to other registrars before, and am moving some of my less critical domains to Cloudflare for the cost savings currently[1]. But my main domains will remain with GoDaddy for the foreseeable future.

Oh, and they have 24/7 phone support, that at least, last time I had to call, was US-based. I don't truly trust anyone who doesn't have good phone support. Ticket systems are great and all for low priority requests, but it's too easy for a place with only a ticket system to handle you in a low priority way.

[1]The transfer process is straightforward and the price can't be beat, but their domain management features are still incredibly immature. You can't have name servers set that aren't Cloudflare's, every time you go to domain registration, it wants you to transfer ALL of your domains. And bulk management of domains on Cloudflare is nonexistent: You can't even find the expiration/renewal dates of your domains on Cloudflare without visiting the page for each one individually. It's actually easier to find the expiration dates for all your domains that are not on Cloudflare (on the Domain Registration page). I do like it but they have work to do.

Just curious, how many domains do you have and what kinds of bulk management tools do you need?

I've been very happy with Cloudflare's registrar myself, even though they aren't always the cheapest[1]. Cloudflare just silently auto-renews all of my domains so I never have to think about when they're going to expire. And I don't mind the lack of nameservers since I can't think of a reason to use non-cloudflare nameservers for any of my domains.

[1] Namecheap offers .io for $32 (not a promo, standard price) whereas Cloudflare charges $45.

About 20-30 at any given time. I expect to be able to see the list of domains I own, when they expire, and if auto-renew is on or off from one convenient panel.

Also "just silently auto-renews" is not an okay behavior for me either. Even when I have auto-renew on, GoDaddy sends me email notices around renewal time for any of my domains. I like to manually renew them a bit early to ensure there's no problems with payment processing. Obviously I have like a year until any of my Cloudflare-held domains renew, but if I don't get email notices in advance, I will likely look at transferring them away. Proper notice of account/billing activity is a must for trustworthy service.

For one, my host auto-configures a lot of features on the DNS for my domains. Cloudflare imports it, obviously, when I transfer over, but if my host changes something, Cloudflare isn't going to get it, and I don't even have the option to change my name server provider even temporarily for troubleshooting purposes. That's a big flaw, and Cloudflare will need to fix it to keep me.

I don't have any .io domains, but my understanding is Cloudflare keeps literally nothing for any of their domains, so presumably Namecheap was able to cut a better deal with the registry.

I'm curious how you determined GoDaddy to be trustworthy. A quick search for "godaddy horror story" returns a long history of warnings about shady practices...

I've used them for over a decade without issue, for one. But as I said, 24/7 phone support, the fact that domains are their primary business, not an addon, and that their management tools are absolutely top shelf of any domain registrar I've ever dealt with.

I wouldn't use them personally but I understand the appeal. A lot of other web hosts and registrars have serious flaws. Godaddy picks up the phone when you call them, 24/7. You can also contact them via live chat or email. They have actual 2 factor support and require a 2 day waiting period and manual verification of ID to remove 2fa. It is a real company that has been around for a while and will not disappear. They won't hold your domain hostage if you cancel web hosting or want to transfer it. They offer a ton of products, and they advertise a lot. They use modern control panels or similar interfaces(really the same as many other web hosting companies, but not bad).

I worked at GoDaddy for a while. They have been around a really long time, so I'm not surprised there are so many registered there. They also advertised a lot more than any other registrar. Honestly, having worked there, they are not a bad registrar, they're just more focused on small businesses than on techies.

Another comment in this thread claims GoDaddy has a history of speculatively registering domains people search for but don't purchase in the hopes of extorting them later. Perhaps this practice explains the discrepancy.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's more the case GoDaddy snatches them all up and people don't bother to leave.

The biggest problem with GoDaddy's interface is how they try and hide access to changing nameservers or DNS. I don't want to "Use this domain"!

There are better registrars and some offer reseller accounts which is necessary when you manage a lot of domains and not all your own.

Back in the day, they were much less expensive than most of the other registrars. Now it's mainly inertia in the same way people still have AOL or Yahoo accounts.

They're usually the only registrar people are aware of.

I guess those lewd superbowl commercials paid off then.

Compounding superbowl and name recognition: Their referral incentives are also quite transparent and competitive compared to other quite large registrars that have clauses like, and this is paraphrasing, "payouts of $75 dollars must be accrued within 3 months or will be forfeited" or "must refer $300 dollars of signups per month".

I imagine this causes referring 3rd parties that read small print to align their product with GoDaddy than a competitor.

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