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Comment by sbov | Hacker News Reader

> Something I learned the hard way when I first started out in business is to never make your business dependent on a single entity.

Seems impossible. Assuming you're an internet business, how did you make your business not dependent upon your domain registrar?

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Typically, a registrar is not irreplaceable. They could terminate your account so you'd have to transfer to another registrar, but unless their TOS says they can seize your domain they shouldn't be able to completely block you. Even then you have the ability to sue then if they break the contract terms.

This is in contrast to the app store gatekeepers, where there are effectively two, each serving a non-overlapping chuck of market, and you can't shop around for better terms or an alternative.

Not an ideal situation if something happens with your registrar, of course, but at least there is some possible recourse. The risk of this leading to your business closing is significantly lower.

how did you make your business not dependent upon your domain registrar?

It wasn't an internet business, so I didn't have to deal with those kinds of perils.

But more to your point, I knew a guy who put one on .com, one on .info, one on a county tld. Advertising material rotated through the three. His logic was that it didn't really matter what address was advertised because people just hit a search engine for the brand name. I haven't spoken to him in years, so I don't know how it worked out.

> Advertising material rotated through the three. His logic was that it didn't really matter what address was advertised because people just hit a search engine for the brand name.

This is a great idea, thanks for sharing

Seems effective, but I assume he took a huge SEO penalty, possibly without being aware of it. The search relevance of the site got divided by all the domains.

Google at least is smart enough to identify alias domains, and you can even tell it how to behave in the search console

I can't remember the exact details of the story I read here on HN, but there was a case of some SaaS company that had this exact issue. Fortunately they were able to spread the word to temporarily use a backup domain on a different registrar via social media until the issue was resolved.

If anyone reading this remembers that story, I would very much appreciate a link.

I don't have a link, but pretty sure it was Zoho

It was Zoho. Their registrar took down their main domain after a few phishing reports.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/24/zoho-pulled-offline-after-...

Jotform & Zoho had similar issues in the past.

Out of the myriad registrars, you can pick a good one, or at least one that lets you transfer out easily.

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