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Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com

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181–190 of 751 posts

Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com

#181

Amusingly, if you query GoDaddy for "godaddy-is-an-ongoing-criminal-enterprise.com", they claim it is "unavailable", although it's not in "whois" and other registrars say it is available. I was curious to see if GoDaddy would actually register that domain for themselves. Network Solutions used to do that, which was really annoying.

GoDaddy is likely blocking registration of any domain with the string "godaddy" in it, likely for entirely legitimate anti-phishing reasons. If someone got e.g. godaddyauth.com (or similar) and started phishing with it to try to get people's login details, and a WHOIS even revealed GoDaddy as the registrar, a lot of people might fall for it. Keep in mind that many people don't understand all the distinctions between registry, registrar, and registrant, and that WHOIS output often gives you details on all 3.

Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com

#182

Back when I was in college, GoDaddy let my at the time close friend break into my account and steal several of my domains, including https://strategywiki.org . This was while I was on an overseas study and couldn't regularly check in. GoDaddy gave me no recourse to dispute. He had server access because I trusted him. He wasn't supposed to have access to my domain account, and I didn't share my credentials. I had anot…

That sounds really unpleasant! It's not clear to me, though, what you're saying GoDaddy did wrong?

Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com

#184

I had this happen as well in the past when researching domain names for a new product. Pro Tip: Stay the hell away from GoDaddy for everything. I've had the unfortunate task of managing a server hosted with them and it's been consistently awful (ex. I literally cannot upgrade PHP because the VPS doesn't support it and there is no upgrade path without spinning up an entirely new VPS on a different, and of course more…

Whenever I talk to startups, I check their domain. If they are on GoDaddy, it means that they are technically incompetent.

Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recommendations for superior alternatives? I'm an indifferent GoDaddy user but would be happy to switch to something else since I've never liked them as a company.

We use AWS Route 53 for domain registration. Works like a charm.

Can also recommend them. No race-to-the-bottom scammy upsell shit since... it's basically just there as a value-add on AWS. And you're piggy-backing on all the infrastructure/support/etc that people expect from AWS instead of a domain registrar where people are generally shopping pretty exclusively on price.

And you can expect that they're not going to turn _into_ a scammy registar at any point since, well, it's AWS.

Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com

#186

This is just part of a long line of scummy practices by GoDaddy in its history. Bad PR for GoDaddy constantly popped up in tech news sites ~15 years ago, but it was never enough to stop their aggressive marketing. Still, I always wondered why anyone in tech would use them. Y'all know what they're capable of and what they do. Don't support that.

I don't think people in the tech world use them. People in the non-tech world trying to do tech (e.g. small business owners) use them because they are the only hosting company and domain registrar with name brand recognition.

In general you're right. Their marketing is targeted to the small business owner. However, I've met my fair share of tech people that did use them.

In one company I was at, we needed an offsite FTP server. The admin set one up on GoDaddy. I asked him wtf he was doing, and he just shrugged and said, "eh, they're easy." Shortly after joining another company, my boss, the CTO, was complaining about some huge problem he had with GoDaddy on a legacy platform. I asked why in the world did he ever use them in the first place, and he just said, "I know, I know."

Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com

#188

I had this happen as well in the past when researching domain names for a new product. Pro Tip: Stay the hell away from GoDaddy for everything. I've had the unfortunate task of managing a server hosted with them and it's been consistently awful (ex. I literally cannot upgrade PHP because the VPS doesn't support it and there is no upgrade path without spinning up an entirely new VPS on a different, and of course more…

Recommendations for superior alternatives? I'm an indifferent GoDaddy user but would be happy to switch to something else since I've never liked them as a company.

dnsimple has been a fantastic provider for me for at least 5 years. it’s just... simple.

Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com

#189
post #26
post #11

Is there a safe method to search for domains?

I've been using iwantmyname.com both as a registrar and domain search engine. Never had a name sniped from me.

Agreed. Plus whoisprivacy is free if the tld supports it. Autorenewal is nice also. Only gripe is that they use authy for 2fa. This is a big gripe though.

Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com

#190

I had this happen as well in the past when researching domain names for a new product. Pro Tip: Stay the hell away from GoDaddy for everything. I've had the unfortunate task of managing a server hosted with them and it's been consistently awful (ex. I literally cannot upgrade PHP because the VPS doesn't support it and there is no upgrade path without spinning up an entirely new VPS on a different, and of course more…

Recommendations for superior alternatives? I'm an indifferent GoDaddy user but would be happy to switch to something else since I've never liked them as a company.

Dynadot.com, they've been around a long time, for me it's been the provider I always come back to.
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