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Introducing Cloudflare Registrar

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Re: Introducing Cloudflare Registrar

#181

Post by awill »

jhall1468 wrote: post #166
awill wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All my domains are with Hover. Good customer support, reasonable UI, 2FA. I'm pretty happy with them. Sure, it's a little more expensive, but I actually like the no upsell, stable prices, no coupon codes etc.. Most importantly, there's a number to call. I've never had to call it in my 7 years with them, but I'm glad it's there for emergencies. A domain is so, so important, I don't see "we're a few bucks cheaper" as a…

I mean, that's literally the same thing CF is doing here. No upsell, stable prices (at cost) and obviously no coupon codes.

Yes. But will they have a number to call? Can they pay support staff if they're selling domains at cost.

Re: Introducing Cloudflare Registrar

#182

Post by mariushn »

Ayesh wrote: post #69
mariushn wrote: post #48

What about email hosting? Gandi includes 5 email accounts with every registration, while most other registrars charge for each account. Email is a basic need.

It is a basic need, but they are pretty distinct features. Registrars today sprinkle features such as email hosting, authoratice DNS hosting, email forwarding, SSL certificates (lol, I know), web site builders, etc for more profit. I really hope CloudFlare registrar will be a proper stripped down registrar. They offer you domains for the wholesale price, and it's too much to ask for email hosting.

Ok, makes sense. I learned about https://opensrs.com/services/hosted-email/ from another thread.

Re: Introducing Cloudflare Registrar

#183

Post by stevenicr »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #117
eridius wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's misleading. They removed the records of one site. Not "sites". And they did it because that site was claiming that CloudFlare providing them services meant that CloudFlare secretly supported their (hate-based) ideology. And it's also worth pointing out that CloudFlare wasn't the only company terminating services for Storm Front. GoDaddy dropped them, then Google dropped them (and their YouTube account), then T…

And, perhaps more importantly, Cloudflare admitted that was a mistake and promised that it wouldn't happen again. (IIRC.)

I've been trying to watch these issues and not seen anything that suggests they won't do it again. If you have some evidence of this, please post it.

In fact I think it more important to point out that the incident proved they can and will do such a thing, and will have less of an argument should someone stick a piece of paper to their head and tell them to do it more often.

I like cloudflare and appreciate all these cool things they are doing with with other's (Google's, Micorsoft's and Baidu's ?) money... however the old playbook of get big and entrenched then start to bleed your captive customers is getting rather old.

Wall street pressure has made godaddy much worse in my experience, and I have seen nothing that says cloudflare has done anything to prevent these things from happening again.

Whichever registrar is keeping stormfront as a customer is likely more resilient. (would like to know which (tucows?) reseller is the one.)

As I have mentioned elsewhere, I hope cloudflare is already setting up ways to split their company into cloudflare US, cloudflare CA, cloudflare UK, cloudflare JP, IN, etc etc.. as I think it's the only way to prevent mass takedowns that are likely coming in the future.

Re: Introducing Cloudflare Registrar

#184

Post by JimDabell »

kweks wrote: post #96
zawerf wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like it was just a handful of users who posted their story multiple times. The users highclass, ethanwillis, kweks all had multiple comments only about namecheap on a thread that wasn't directly about namecheap. Can I get more horror stories to confirm those are real? It's unfortunate because namecheap used to have the exact opposite reputation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3396606

I was one of the upvoted posters there. TLDR: I was issued couriered C&Ds to a postal and email address only used on Namecheap. The attacking party had no court order, subpoena, judgement, etc. Ted from namecheap asked me to email him. He confirmed legal had received the complaints, but said they hadn't replied. He hasn't replied to my email since (3 days ago) to offer any explanation how the attacking lawyers got de…

I had one of the worst customer support experiences I can remember with Namecheap that also involved private information disclosure. It was immediately after they had launched a "redesign" of their system (actually, a Frankenstein of some pages being new, the majority of the system being ancient).

It seems like they had a bug where in some cases they discarded the WHOIS information provided and used the billing details instead. Not only did they disclose private information, they endangered a white label contract I was working on.

Bugs are understandable, especially after redesign work, but the biggest problem came afterwards – customer support were useless. First they insisted it was user error and I simply hadn't entered the right details (I'm 100% certain that's not true). Then they claimed that they were unable to update the WHOIS information because they were just a reseller, so they had to forward my support request on. They refused to take responsibility and couldn't get anything done.

At this point they were taking weeks to respond to every message, even after promising a response within 24 hours. I even asked them for a response even if it was just "we asked again and no reply" which they agreed to then ignored. They wouldn't provide contact details for support at their supplier, they wouldn't escalate to anybody who could do anything, their whole attitude was to ignore me as much as they could and (presumably; I have no evidence of this) email their supplier once in a while when I annoyed them enough.

Meanwhile I had no explanation to give to my client, for over a month. We gave up on the domain. Once I stopped chasing, Namecheap never bothered following up. Namecheap could never fix the problem.

Until that point, I had recommended Namecheap many times. Now I warn people away from them. Now I hesitate to recommend any service until I've used their customer support. I still see plenty of glowing recommendations for Namecheap. I wonder how many of them are from people who have never had to use their customer support.

Re: Introducing Cloudflare Registrar

#185

Post by tootahe45 »

brobinson wrote: post #127
rk249 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I though namecheap was one of the better ones around? I'm looking for a domain registrar. Could share the link with namecheap horror stories? Thanks

If you are using PrivateInternetAccess, you can't login to your NameCheap account. As in, your valid username and password will be rejected. This happens even if you have 2fa enabled. I reset my password twice (even though I _knew_ the original because I use a password manager) before I opened a support case, and they confirmed that they block legitimate logins if they detect you're using a VPN. I wanted to move off…

That may have caused my headaches with Namecheap once actually. I've stopped using PIA due to the IP ranges being so abused, the final straw was my gmail getting randomly disabled for using that VPN (wasn't even logging in from different PC).

Re: Introducing Cloudflare Registrar

#186

Post by dangero »

toast0 wrote: post #141
brandur wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from the price, one very good reason to be interested in CloudFlare as a registrar compared to Google Domains is that CloudFlare supports CNAME flattening [1] so that you can use a CNAME instead of an IP address for an A record (AKA "ALIAS" on DNSimple or Route53). I'm using Google Domains right now, but have been using CloudFlare to host my DNS for ages for this reason alone. I'll think about transferring my d…

Note that if you're cnaming to some thing that is doing dns based load balancing or Geo targeting, introducing flattening in the middle may reduce the ability of your provider to do those things.

What is the alternative for a root domain A record? You are saying use a direct ip to the load balancer instead?

Re: Introducing Cloudflare Registrar

#187

Post by toast0 »

amluto wrote: post #177
brandur wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from the price, one very good reason to be interested in CloudFlare as a registrar compared to Google Domains is that CloudFlare supports CNAME flattening [1] so that you can use a CNAME instead of an IP address for an A record (AKA "ALIAS" on DNSimple or Route53). I'm using Google Domains right now, but have been using CloudFlare to host my DNS for ages for this reason alone. I'll think about transferring my d…

Would it really be that hard to update DNS so that CNAMEs on non-leaf domains actually worked? Sure, IoT devices might never update, but I’m not sure that actually matters.

If you got the rfc changed today, I suspect you wouldn't be able to reliably use it for about 20 years. 5 years for everybody to pick it up in new software, 5 years for new hardware to not be shipped with the old software, and 10 years for all the old software and hardware to die out.

And all for what? So you can cname example.org instead of www.example.org? Doesn't seem worth it. Also, consider that in 20 years, we're likely to consider IPv6 only servers, and a host can more easily offer you a IPv6 ip that they can commit to serving your traffic for a long time on. It's a lot harder to be flexible with IPv4 addresses.

Re: Introducing Cloudflare Registrar

#188

Post by interfixus »

For the last ten years+ I've done all my domain-stuff through Dynadot, and all that time I have been mystified that these guys aren't far better known than they appear to be. Prices are decent, comprehensible, and stable. UX is okay. Not spectacular, but absolute useable. Great flexibility with whois records. I have needed support once in those ten years, and that was my own bloody fault for having forgotten which birthday I signed up with. Even so, help was prompt, polite, and efficient.

Looked in at the competition from time to time - NameCheap, GoDaddy, whoever - just to see what I might be missing out on. The experience was always sobering and ugly to look at, and every time, I ended up dragging my new domain over to Dynadot.

Re: Introducing Cloudflare Registrar

#189

Post by samat »

JimDabell wrote: post #184
kweks wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was one of the upvoted posters there. TLDR: I was issued couriered C&Ds to a postal and email address only used on Namecheap. The attacking party had no court order, subpoena, judgement, etc. Ted from namecheap asked me to email him. He confirmed legal had received the complaints, but said they hadn't replied. He hasn't replied to my email since (3 days ago) to offer any explanation how the attacking lawyers got de…

I had one of the worst customer support experiences I can remember with Namecheap that also involved private information disclosure. It was immediately after they had launched a "redesign" of their system (actually, a Frankenstein of some pages being new, the majority of the system being ancient). It seems like they had a bug where in some cases they discarded the WHOIS information provided and used the billing detai…

I am Namecheap customer for several years.

I have used their support two times, but it was an easy transfer request somehow not handled automatically.

Your story is horrible. I wonder if they care to comment.

Re: Introducing Cloudflare Registrar

#190

Post by bad_user »

Is Cloudflare profitable?

I like their service, but given all the freebies that don't generate revenue, I can't help but wonder if they are going to be around for another 5 years before transferring my domains to them.

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