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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

#101

Post by sebst »

hk__2 wrote: post #56

Something that scares me regarding domain names is their variable cost. I purchased a .sexy domain for a joke website and its price got raised by +70% less than one year after that, making the joke a lot less appealing. There’s no guarantee that when you purchase a domain name it reasonably stays around that price for years. Build a business on a domain -> the name increase by XX% -> you’re screwed and must pay.

If it's a joke, okay, 70% might hurt.

.sexy is about 60-100$ per year. If you've build a business on it, paying double the amount should not hurt.

For me the most important thing about this new gTLDs is more about reputation of the gTLD registry. What if these go out of service? I'm pretty sure that there exist a protocol for that case, but I'm also sure that domains in a less popular new gTLD space might get far less protection from ICANN than any non-sponsored gTLD.

Re: How a domain registrar can kill your business

#102

Post by mehrdadn »

magic_beans wrote: post #100
mehrdadn wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idea: Write a Google Script that periodically checks the domain for expiry, then inserts an email directly in your inbox if there is an issue.

This solution is a bit over-engineered, don't you think?

I'm confused, how is it over-engineered?

Re: How a domain registrar can kill your business

#104

Post by petercooper »

creeble wrote: post #22
_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #8

TL;DR .io

I _think_ TL;DR Domain.com, unless this is common with other registrars? Is this a common problem in .io?

.io has particularly long lead times for renewals with third party registrars. I ran into a similar issue 8 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1973704

Re: How a domain registrar can kill your business

#105

Post by jethro_tell »

crooked-v wrote: post #95
davidgh wrote: post #92

I recall a time when a company I had association with lost their main domains due to a failed renewal. In this case it was a long-term employee who left the company that had loads of company bills going to his card. He cancelled the card sometime after he left and the domains were not renewed. I’m not sure where the renewal failure emails were going but probably some unmonitored admin email box. These were very impor…

Personally, I'd rather have a corporate domain be renewed once per year and have a defined process for it (e.g. literally have a binder somewhere listing all the details, and put reviewing it on a checklist of other yearly legal and financial tasks) than have it be forgotten about for 10 years at a time.

I've set it up before to have 10y which is the max, and renew for 1 year every year. So the domain always has a lead time of 9-10 years but it is still renewed once a year for practice. for most domains thats like 100 bucks to lock it down for 10 years. You can also monitor the domain expiry in your monitoring system i.e. nagios or whatever you are using.

Re: How a domain registrar can kill your business

#106

Post by tacon »

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.

Whois is going dark shortly for at least six months, and maybe forever, due to GDPR. So much for the public Whois.

Re: How a domain registrar can kill your business

#107

Post by hlandau »

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".

Namecheap also did the same for the same website. I switched away from Namecheap for this reason.

Re: How a domain registrar can kill your business

#108

Post by sebst »

ai_ja_nai wrote: post #76

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…

> I recall UnitedDomains ...

United Domains rely on manual things very for a large part of domain related service processes which are "uncommon" for a private or small domain owner.

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

For the German market I remember the good old times with InternetX before they were bought by United Internet. Had some good talks with their tech support back then.

A "free" registrar is maybe not the right solution. The key is "care" for your domain. Take your example of "letsencrypt". They exist because they automate everything. They don't "care" if your certificate causes troubles, they'd just fix their API. With domain registrars the story is different: You need a good support to prevent fraud, you need a good contact to registries if something goes wrong. Key learning here is: In 99% of the cases with domains, everything is fine. But if you find yourself in the 1% where trouble occurs, you need immediate support of competent people. Not sure if this is a case for a "community" or "free" registrar. More a business case for MarkMonitor without the Brand Protection: Simply a domain registrar who cares.

Re: How a domain registrar can kill your business

#109

Post by matte_black »

davidgh wrote: post #92

I recall a time when a company I had association with lost their main domains due to a failed renewal. In this case it was a long-term employee who left the company that had loads of company bills going to his card. He cancelled the card sometime after he left and the domains were not renewed. I’m not sure where the renewal failure emails were going but probably some unmonitored admin email box. These were very impor…

They got lucky, because if it were me and I left on mild terms I would be invoicing them $50k a year to renew their domain.

Re: How a domain registrar can kill your business

#110

Post by damieng »

Do not rely on other people to resolve time-sensitive issues when you can easily avoid it.

In this particular case as soon as it's clear the domain hasn't renewed despite being billed then manually renew it using the usual user interface, pay the extra $10 and then contact support after to get one of the charges refunded now the time-sensitivity is gone.

The stress alone isn't worth being out of pocket $10 let alone only for a week or two.

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