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WhoisGuard Privacy Protection is now free

namecheap.com

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Re: WhoisGuard Privacy Protection is now free

#41

Post by ted0 »

joering2 wrote: post #36
ausjke wrote: post #35

Dreamhost has this since forever for free, along with many others, why is this even a HN post, seems more like a late-arrived commercial ads to me.

Their table to see how they stand up against competitors is hilarious! So many free privacy providers since ever like Dreamhost, Namesilo, BrandShelter, Marcaria (some TLDs), but yet you look at that table and you think "wow they are the only one". I take it as a deceiving advertising.

GoDaddy still charges more than 2X what we used to charge for WhoisGuard. We have always given away WhoisGuard for the first year of registration and have always been transparent about the renewal charge. However, now it is 100% free. No deception here.

Teddy from Namecheap

Re: WhoisGuard Privacy Protection is now free

#42

Post by giarc »

tradesmanhelix wrote: post #17

I just renewed a domain with Namecheap and, based on the price they're now charging, pretty sure the cost of this “free” whois privacy protection is now just built into the cost of their products. Not impressed. Edit: spelling

I register all my domains on Namecheap, they always have a coupon you can use to save a few bucks.

https://www.namecheap.com/promos/coupons/

Re: WhoisGuard Privacy Protection is now free

#43

Post by StavrosK »

Ugh, leave it to Namecheap to fuck up extremely simple UX. Instead of just giving me a toggle in the domain settings, I have to add WhoisGuard to my cart, once per domain (for the tens of domains I own), then go and select "10 years" in the purchasing screen (and wait for the entire page to reload) once for each domain, and then go through the entire checkout process to pay $0.

Why not just let me click a single button, Namecheap?

I wish a new registrar would come in with good service and UX and eat every other registrar's lunch. There aren't any registrars that easily let me manage my domains without trying to sell me tons of stuff every time I need to make a simple change. I've switched to Cloudflare for DNS because their UI is no-nonsense, I half wish they just sold me the domain as well.

Re: WhoisGuard Privacy Protection is now free

#44

Post by s_dev »

StavrosK wrote: post #43

Ugh, leave it to Namecheap to fuck up extremely simple UX. Instead of just giving me a toggle in the domain settings, I have to add WhoisGuard to my cart, once per domain (for the tens of domains I own), then go and select "10 years" in the purchasing screen (and wait for the entire page to reload) once for each domain, and then go through the entire checkout process to pay $0. Why not just let me click a single butt…

I actually switched to Namecheap because the UI/UX design was so much better than my previous registrar: IrishHosting

You might be able to see room for improvement but they're better than 90% of the other registrars.

Re: WhoisGuard Privacy Protection is now free

#45

Post by StavrosK »

s_dev wrote: post #44
StavrosK wrote: post #43

Ugh, leave it to Namecheap to fuck up extremely simple UX. Instead of just giving me a toggle in the domain settings, I have to add WhoisGuard to my cart, once per domain (for the tens of domains I own), then go and select "10 years" in the purchasing screen (and wait for the entire page to reload) once for each domain, and then go through the entire checkout process to pay $0. Why not just let me click a single butt…

I actually switched to Namecheap because the UI/UX design was so much better than my previous registrar: IrishHosting You might be able to see room for improvement but they're better than 90% of the other registrars.

Yeah, but that's more or less my point: The bar is so low...

Re: WhoisGuard Privacy Protection is now free

#46

Post by ve55 »

It's pretty absurd to require users to continually pay you money with threat of revealing all of their personal information publicly if they ever choose to stop paying you.

I can't imagine many industries getting away with that except for registrars due to how the whois system has worked historically, but it's basically just extortion, keep paying us or you're doxxed. Whois privacy should be the default everywhere for no additional charge, so I guess this is a change in the right direction.

Re: WhoisGuard Privacy Protection is now free

#47

Post by topogios »

StavrosK wrote: post #43

Ugh, leave it to Namecheap to fuck up extremely simple UX. Instead of just giving me a toggle in the domain settings, I have to add WhoisGuard to my cart, once per domain (for the tens of domains I own), then go and select "10 years" in the purchasing screen (and wait for the entire page to reload) once for each domain, and then go through the entire checkout process to pay $0. Why not just let me click a single butt…

Maybe, as a first shot, they decided to favour near-instant implementation over usability by simply setting the price for an existing product to $0 and use the existing checkout flow.

Re: WhoisGuard Privacy Protection is now free

#48

Post by corobo »

ve55 wrote: post #46

It's pretty absurd to require users to continually pay you money with threat of revealing all of their personal information publicly if they ever choose to stop paying you. I can't imagine many industries getting away with that except for registrars due to how the whois system has worked historically, but it's basically just extortion, keep paying us or you're doxxed. Whois privacy should be the default everywhere fo…

I realise it's not even in the same ball park really but the US health service works in that way from an outsider's perspective "Keep paying us or die"

Re: WhoisGuard Privacy Protection is now free

#49

Post by m_sahaf »

ploggingdev wrote: post #39

Tangent : what happens to the whois guard if I want to transfer a domain between providers (eg- namecheap to google)? I've heard that during the transfer the whois guard has to be disabled. This means that services such as Domain Tools will log the whois data. Is this true? If so, is there any way to transfer a domain between providers while keeping contact details out of the public whois database?

I had to transfer domains once (from WordPress to Namecheap) and the instructions explicitly required disabling the privacy guard. It was only needed for the transfer period, which was about 3 days. I would love to know why the process requires it.

Now that this is mentioned, I revisited WordPress' instructions page and it says: "Most domain names registered at WordPress.com have GDPR protection, which means registrant contact information is not visible publicly, regardless of whether or not the domain has Privacy Protection in place. For these domains, disabling privacy will not result in contact info being publicly published."[0] Does this mean the process doesn't really need it but they registrars require it for some odd reason? If they can work it out without disabling privacy feature to comply with GDPR, why can't they do the same for everyone?

[0] https://en.support.wordpress.com/move-domain/transfer-domain...

Re: WhoisGuard Privacy Protection is now free

#50

Post by StavrosK »

topogios wrote: post #47
StavrosK wrote: post #43

Ugh, leave it to Namecheap to fuck up extremely simple UX. Instead of just giving me a toggle in the domain settings, I have to add WhoisGuard to my cart, once per domain (for the tens of domains I own), then go and select "10 years" in the purchasing screen (and wait for the entire page to reload) once for each domain, and then go through the entire checkout process to pay $0. Why not just let me click a single butt…

Maybe, as a first shot, they decided to favour near-instant implementation over usability by simply setting the price for an existing product to $0 and use the existing checkout flow.

Maybe, but it would have been equally as instant to just set all domains as "WhoisGuard purchased until the year 3000" in the database, and much more user-friendly.
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