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Introducing Cloudflare Registrar

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Introducing Cloudflare Registrar

#221

Post by nickjj »

jazoom wrote: post #218
nickjj wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are $8.99 for me for 1 year at a time. I have 7 domains with them but I didn't opt into their "discount program" (which required pre-funding your account at least $50 instead of using a CC / PayPal on demand). That's the one that drops them to $6.99 as seen here: https://www.namesilo.com/Support/Discount-Program It does mention the renewal price is $8.89 (which is about the normal price) if you click the renewal…

I didn't opt in to the discount program. I have never preloaded anything. I checked today and it was actually pretty difficult to find what the renewal prices would be. Partly because the website is awful. I didn't say it's a bait and switch. Even the renewal prices are outrageously cheap. I have no bad feelings towards Namesilo. My intent to move to Cloudflare is not because I'm unhappy with Namesilo.

Interesting. I wonder how else you're getting that discount on a regular basis.

Re: Introducing Cloudflare Registrar

#222

Post by WordSkill »

zackbloom wrote: post #12
nickjj wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the confirmation. Sounds promising. Do you happen to also offer free email forwarding with registered domains?

I don't have the answer to that yet. On the one hand it's a bit far afield of what we normally do. On the other a lot of people seem to get it from their registrar and rely on it. The ideal situation would be if we could find a way to do email forwarding which wasn't just as good as what they do, but was exciting and meaningful. We'll keep thinking about it and let you know on our blog.

Zack, please DON'T waste time on email, focus on security.

The category of customer who consider the flaky email solutions provided by registrars to be worth using, and who are unaware of how to hook their domains up to free forwarding at services such as Mailgun, are unlikely to ever buy your higher-margin services.

Your introduction of at-cost domain registration will already blow everyone away, you do not need email for that, but high-value domain owners will worry that the service will not be sufficiently-resourced to protect their domains. Those are precisely the domain owners you want because they are more likely to end up paying for your other services.

So, try to finally get U2F support in place before you spread your legs for mass domain registration. Real, proper U2F support that encourages users to associate TWO different hardware tokens with their account will save you from the tsunami of domain jacking attempts you are about to experience.

The point of having two different hardware tokens, kept in separate locations, is that it becomes far more unlikely that your support will ever have to deal with them. As long as they can continue to access their account with one, they will have time to buy and associate a replacement.

Meanwhile, any hacker attempting to socially engineer your support would be left with the tough job of having to explain how they managed to lose both tokens at the same time - they won't bother, they will move on to some other registrar that is too dumb to implement U2F.

You save your staff a world of hassle, you protect your reputation from a potential PR nightmare, and the high-value domain owners will be more than happy to bear the $95 cost of two Yubikeys. You just have to make it possible and gently encourage users in that direction.

Re: Introducing Cloudflare Registrar

#223

Post by jazoom »

nickjj wrote: post #221
jazoom wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't opt in to the discount program. I have never preloaded anything. I checked today and it was actually pretty difficult to find what the renewal prices would be. Partly because the website is awful. I didn't say it's a bait and switch. Even the renewal prices are outrageously cheap. I have no bad feelings towards Namesilo. My intent to move to Cloudflare is not because I'm unhappy with Namesilo.

Interesting. I wonder how else you're getting that discount on a regular basis.

It is interesting, but I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Also, I don't buy domains all that often anymore but I have heaps on renewals, so there is actually very little benefit to me.

Re: Introducing Cloudflare Registrar

#224

Post by sofaofthedamned »

newhere420 wrote: post #164
sofaofthedamned wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to use namecheap for all my stuff but they went a bit downhill. Their API was worse than useless and so rate limited I couldn't use it for Lets Encrypt DNS challenges in the end, so moved them all. I wonder what the coverage is from CF for 'odd' tlds? I've got a .je domain that I had to register with gandi.net as no other big ones supported it. After I moved my domains from Namecheap I wanted to close the acco…

Am I just misremembering, or was there a time where the only way to register a .je was direct through island networks? I used to live there, and recall the domains always being a bit of a pain.

You're correct and they're a proper tinpot organisation. Only other one I could find was gandi.net. £80 per year is horrendous too...

Re: Introducing Cloudflare Registrar

#225

Post by WordSkill »

homero wrote: post #169
Ayesh wrote: post #2

This is awesome! Charging the exact same price as the registry wholesale price. NameSilo, as far as I know, comes very close to the registry pricing and offers DNSSEC, nameserver registration and other APIs with the registry. This could totally throw all registrars out of competition for the price of registry wholesale price. You just have to hope CloudFlare wouldn't overstep their role as a registrar if you only reg…

Porkbun is also wholesale except they add a few cents

Not wholesale, Porkbun are adding 10%.

Re: Introducing Cloudflare Registrar

#226

Post by znpy »

icebraining wrote: post #209
znpy wrote: post #206

Meh. I am mainly using italian company Tophost to register my domains, and domains usually cost cost 5.99€+ vat. And they're still making profit from that. So I kinda call bs on this "no added fees". OTOH, I have to say that Tophost is not the prettiest or the coolest, but so far I had no real issue and the price is low. However, it's nice to see another player joining the game. Regarding the $0.99 domain... Didn't i…

From Tophost: "solo 1 euro in più per .com". So it's 6.99€ ~= $8.10; seven cents more than Cloudflare. In any case, the Verisign fee is not hard to confirm; it would be weird for them to lie about it: https://investor.verisign.com/news-releases/news-release-det...

Indeed, only seven cents more: do you really think Tophost and similar (including Coudflare) are living off those seven cents per domain?

Re: Introducing Cloudflare Registrar

#227

Post by [deleted] »

WordSkill wrote: post #222
zackbloom wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have the answer to that yet. On the one hand it's a bit far afield of what we normally do. On the other a lot of people seem to get it from their registrar and rely on it. The ideal situation would be if we could find a way to do email forwarding which wasn't just as good as what they do, but was exciting and meaningful. We'll keep thinking about it and let you know on our blog.

Zack, please DON'T waste time on email, focus on security. The category of customer who consider the flaky email solutions provided by registrars to be worth using, and who are unaware of how to hook their domains up to free forwarding at services such as Mailgun, are unlikely to ever buy your higher-margin services. Your introduction of at-cost domain registration will already blow everyone away, you do not need ema…

[deleted]

Re: Introducing Cloudflare Registrar

#228

Post by WordSkill »

dannyw wrote: post #195

How does CloudFlare cover payment processing fees?

As a big company, they pay their processor(s) far less than you or I pay Stripe or Ayden.

For the marketing dynamite of being the only $8.03 "at-cost" registrar, they are going to take a payment processing hit of around ten to fifteen cents per domain. They could shift that cost to the price, but then they would lose those invaluable bragging rights.

The point is not that customers save a few cents, but the absolute transparency of paying exactly the registry cost + the ICANN tax. The simple math of $7.85 + 18 cents implicitly suggests that you are dealing with an utterly fair company: not a penny more, not a penny less. $8.03 will gain the attention of the big companies they want to attract in a way that $8.13, $8.18 or $8.20 never could. In this context, $8.03 is actually a far more powerful price than $8.

There are plenty of other costs associated with running a registrar, not just payment processing fees, but the whole thing is intended as a loss-leader to attract new users and coax their existing, non-paying users into a paying relationship. From there, with a credit card on file, it becomes far easier to sell them higher-margin services.

It will also deepen their relationship with their existing paying users, making it a lot harder for competitors (present or future) to lure them away.

When you consider the cost of customer acquisition through normal marketing channels, positioning themselves as the only "at-cost" registrar is a stroke of genius. Reminiscent of Apple disrupting the phone business, Cloudflare have chosen to disrupt a particularly messy, flaky industry that no customer loves. If they manage to pull this off at the $8.03 price, it will catapult Cloudflare to a whole new level.

Re: Introducing Cloudflare Registrar

#229

Post by aestetix »

Shank wrote: post #158
aestetix wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anyone explain why they downvoted me instead of just downvoting?

I didn’t, but I can provide some advice since I see this type of comment and nobody really gets advice on this kind of thing. Your comment wasn’t inflammatory — it was factual. However, it only contained a fact, and in that fact, the wording sounded like you were being not only factual, but perhaps a little too stuck to your guns. Controversial comments on HN are generally appreciated as long as they have both commen…

For the record, when I posted that comment, its score was in the negative, and now it's positive again. So I guess it was just a matter of waiting for more people to read it.

Re: Introducing Cloudflare Registrar

#230

Post by WordSkill »

GordonS wrote: post #87
WordSkill wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second the request for the .UK TLDs.

Uh, uk just feels like a scam! I mean, what is the point, other than to extort existing .co.uk owners?

I presumed most existing co.uk owners simply moved to the far simpler, more memorable .uk TLD, ditching their old domains along the way. I know I did.
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