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How a domain registrar can kill your business

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Re: How a domain registrar can kill your business

#71

Post by djsumdog »

zzzcpan wrote: post #37
djrogers wrote: post #5

That's a horrible situation, and one I'd encourage everyone to try to avoid - register production critical domains with a company that provides live phone support and stick with tried and true TLDs. Yeah, it may cost more, but this story just illustrates that you're staking your entire company on a $15/yr service, and you get what you pay for. Even if you want to run your marketing/landing page/etc off a .io or other…

Even the most reputable tried and true do not guarantee anything. They can and will kick you out on a whim. You can still mitigate the risk though. Use multiple domains in all marketing materials from different tlds and different registrars. Use regional domains. Have alternative ways to communicate with your customers. It's all very basic stuff. Merely thinking about it gets you far. Most people don't even think abo…

Even if you pre-plan, how many of your customers will think some random e-mail from a totally different domain explaining the situation are not a Phishing attempt? (The percentage that don't .. are probably the percentage with the least security sense).

Re: How a domain registrar can kill your business

#72

Post by djsumdog »

daxorid wrote: post #40
djrogers wrote: post #5

That's a horrible situation, and one I'd encourage everyone to try to avoid - register production critical domains with a company that provides live phone support and stick with tried and true TLDs. Yeah, it may cost more, but this story just illustrates that you're staking your entire company on a $15/yr service, and you get what you pay for. Even if you want to run your marketing/landing page/etc off a .io or other…

This is no guarantee. GoDaddy and Google Domains, in particular, have demonstrated willingness to throw you into clientHold hell for political reasons, even for "tried and true TLDs".

I remember last year how Google, GoDaddy and CloudFlair all threw this one website under the bus:

https://fightthefuture.org/article/the-new-era-of-corporate-...

The Internet isn't as free as people think it is. Things still need to be hosts and those providers could simply chose to stop hosting you.

Re: How a domain registrar can kill your business

#73

Post by 0x0 »

jtl999 wrote: post #67
hbosch wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The domain did expire, though I was never made aware of the upcoming expiration. My assumption is that there was some glitch between Namecheap, Google, and the .co domain authority... but I still don’t know exactly how my domain expired so silently. All my other domains were purchased through Google, this one was transferred in. It really was a massive headache. I have no idea how long it would have taken me to notic…

I note my domains expiration dates and renew them at least 30 days before. Your not the only person whose had issues recently with Namecheap not sending renewal emails.

Yeah, NameCheap is pretty flaky with the warning emails. I once had their WhoisGuard service expire (it was on a different renewal phase from the actual domain, for some reason), and I never received any warnings about the service expiring until they sent an email to notify me that the WHOIS records had been automatically updated.

I've since added a monthly calendar reminder to log in to all registrars and verify all services are still enabled and correctly configured with plenty of time left.

Re: How a domain registrar can kill your business

#74

Post by ingenium »

csdreamer7 wrote: post #21

Never heard of domain.com. If anyone wants a recommendation I use namecheap and have never had a problem. They are supporters of the EFF and Net Neutrality. Edit: If you are going to downvote, state why. Namecheap is a good service for a good price and supports Internet freedom. When even GoDaddy was supporting SOPA Namecheap took a stand against SOPA.

I use Namecheap and I generally like them. However I was having a repeat issue for several months using them for DNS with DNSSEC enabled. Basically, validation would fail because they'd let their records expire and "forget" to resign them. I'd notice my domains failing to resolve, and had to manually create a new record and delete it to force all my records to be resigned. Support seemed clueless, and I stumbled across this workaround by accident.

I opened multiple support tickets with them, and each time the issue would re-appear in 1-3 months. Went on for probably a year or so and I was just about to move to a different DNS provider when it stopped happening.

Re: How a domain registrar can kill your business

#75

Post by tobltobs »

x0x0 wrote: post #36
csdreamer7 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.io domains are popular, especially among the HN crowd; despite the high price and poor practices of the registrar. You should know that being on HN.

We use one. It had nothing to do with .io per se; it was just that .io hadn't been as throughly squatted yet.

Maybe that tell you something if even domain squatters avoid .io

Re: How a domain registrar can kill your business

#76

Post by ai_ja_nai »

I recall UnitedDomains (German provider) who wanted me in 2016 to fax the request to update the contact information. Fax it.

Times are mature for the equivalent of Letsencrypt for registering domains, something like Letsregistrar. We need to have this inefficient industry wiped away since it's really too much manual and too much in the way.

If somebody wants to found a noprofit to create a free registrar, I'm 100% in.

Re: How a domain registrar can kill your business

#77

Post by woodruffw »

gist wrote: post #52
woodruffw wrote: post #41

I used a free domain coupon from domain.com a few years ago, and was spammed with both snail mail and robocalls (advertising services for the domain) for months afterwards. I don't know whether they're selling customer data or what, but it left me with a very negative image of their company.

> I don't know whether they're selling customer data or what, but it left me with a very negative image of their company. Whois is public and has always been as required by ICANN. If you don't understand how things work then be fair and don't blame what you think is the obvious cause or reason. There are valid reasons for whois being public and all registrars have this in their agreement and it is widely known.

I know how WHOIS works. The letters were sent to my academic address, not the professional address I disclosed to WHOIS.

Re: How a domain registrar can kill your business

#78

Post by tobltobs »

I always wonder how people care about "good prices" if they choose a registrar. Quite often the domain name is the most valuable asset of your company. As long as you are not a domain squatter you shouldn't care about if you pay $10 or $1000 per year. And if possible register the name for the next 10 years in advance.

Re: How a domain registrar can kill your business

#79

Post by dylz »

madengr wrote: post #24

Back in the late 90's before it was Verisign (I can't recall the name), my domain registration could only be changed with an email from my domain. Of course I didn't have my domain up since I switched ISP and had to move my DNS and mail server. Catch 22; what a cluster fuck. Weeks of phone calls with no resolutions. I was going to Virginia anyway, so I physically showed up at Verisign (I wanted to bring a baseball ba…

Can you explain the LCD thing a bit more? I've not seen a physical separate GPS unit before.

Re: How a domain registrar can kill your business

#80

Post by ddtaylor »

tobltobs wrote: post #78

I always wonder how people care about "good prices" if they choose a registrar. Quite often the domain name is the most valuable asset of your company. As long as you are not a domain squatter you shouldn't care about if you pay $10 or $1000 per year. And if possible register the name for the next 10 years in advance.

I agree, but not all domains are fully fledged corporate entities - some of us just throw together fun things randomly and for that it's nice to have an $0.88 TLD.
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