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Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com

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

#632
post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Ted - can you speak to Namecheap's stance on bulk spam domain registrations and the fact that Namecheap does nothing to stop it? There has been (at least in the Bay Area) a large increase in text spam. They all have a very similar format, e.g. pretending you missed a delivery, and try to get you to click on a link, usually a .info domain. They are all hosted on Alibaba Cloud, but they are registered in bulk via Na…

You really, really don't want registrars to enter that game. A registrar is simple: request a domain, they check you match the requirement for said domain rules, take your money and register the domain for you. Very simple, very stupid, very non-opiniated. If registrars start deciding who is worthy of domains, what arbitrary set of rules they want you to follow on top of the real ones, what set of laws they act as ju…

Registrars already deal with abuse complaints (and have done so since the 90s.) GoDaddy, eNom and other large registrars are happy to suspend domains with proof of network abuse.

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

#633
post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've actually always used Godaddy for searching and Namecheap for registering, simply because Godaddy's search interface is faster and more stable but Namecheap is great for not hassling you and way easier to configure. Fix the search Namecheap, and I will no longer use Godaddy again!

Try our new Beast Mode tool for searching: https://www.namecheap.com/domains/registration/results/?doma...

Feedback on beast mode: it's super slow with bulk keywords (100s). It makes a separate request per keyword, and gets stuck in a minute. You should be doing the splitting server-side.

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

#634
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Namecheap for domains and domain searches since at least 2009. I haven't used any of their other services, besides their WHOISGuard offerings. I have never had issues with them stealing domains after searches or any other problems w/ my account.

Thank you for being a longtime customer. We appreciate you!

Me too!

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

#635
post #226

Ted from Namecheap here. I cannot speak to GoDaddy's practices. However, I can say that for Namecheap, this is not something we would ever even consider doing. In my experience though, lookups are more complex than most think. We are querying so many different sources to give you availability status, some of which are less reliable than others. For example, with smaller TLDs like .ai or .is, lookups may be less relia…

Namecheap is so much better than godaddy. Interface : just give me the records. I don't want to buy more stuff. Somehow namecheap lets me but the same extras like email, without badgering me. Godaddy is just ads ads ads and interfaces to sell stuff to people who aren't tech savvy. Squatting: this definitely happens with godaddy, like the OP says. Never use them, it's a disgusting practice. I use namecheap for dozens…

Also a very satisfied Namecheap customer. I do wish I didn't have to click so many things to modify DNS records though. But just a minor issue.

GoDaddy doesn't even sound like a professional service to me. The name itself wreaks of technical incompetence. I want round-the-clock network infra experts managing my domains, not some random dude's daddy.

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

#636
post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of startups are rather low in engineering talent early on when they're trying to find market fit and make a product. I imagine that is the class of companies the GP is trying to avoid.

It would be worth avoiding at that initial stage, but would be less and less of a factor as the company grows and matures. I work for a startup with ~60 employees. The DNS was setup through GoDaddy by our CEO over 6 years ago when the company consisted of just founders. Employee #1 updated GoDaddy to point to AWS for nameservers. We've been managing DNS through Route53 ever since. It's tech debt, sure, but migrating…

> gives us almost no benefits.

> until finance complains at me I'm not bothering to change it.

> would pain me to find out that a candidate would red flag the company

You have a good grasp on one perspective, what I would call the purely pragmatic business-owner perspective.

There is another (perhaps flawed) perspective, let's call it the idealistic engineer's perspective. This perspective notices the vestigial godaddy remnants. The flawed DB schema fragments from two refactorings ago which stubbornly survive. The fact that the site goes down for 30 seconds every time someone ships a change to production. The fact that shipping frequently is discouraged because of this. The overly aggressive cache invalidation strategy which causes 30% more DB load. The fact that no one is monitoring the DB load. The API endpoints with 4,000ms of latency. The fact that this will never be fixed because you are way too deep in bed with a poorly chosen framework and ORM.

All of these things can be justified from a business perspective as "not worth the effort to fix". Customers aren't leaving, revenue isn't dipping. It's fine. Just focus on the sprint.

But on every engineer's internal balance scale of "should I stay or should I go", all of these things get noticed. Each one adds a pebble to the "leave" side of the scale. For your talented engineers, two pebbles.

Don't let too many pebbles pile up.

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

#637
post #226

Ted from Namecheap here. I cannot speak to GoDaddy's practices. However, I can say that for Namecheap, this is not something we would ever even consider doing. In my experience though, lookups are more complex than most think. We are querying so many different sources to give you availability status, some of which are less reliable than others. For example, with smaller TLDs like .ai or .is, lookups may be less relia…

I have only one domain on namecheap, but since a few month I cannot access it any more. There is a captcha service (hcaptcha) before it which totally locks me out.

You might be using a VPN that is blocked by Namecheap. Try turning off the VPN and then logging in. If this is inconvenient, you can transfer the domain to a registrar that does not block VPNs. As far as I am aware, Namecheap is the only one that does.

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

#638
post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Export a zone file? Namecheap can't even export a text or CSV file of all of my domains and their expiration dates. This is a long-standing open issue that Namecheap support has dodged several times with us. I'm still a customer right now, but I'm looking for another registrar.

Dodged? Just not currently a feature in our dashboard but it's straightforward and we know there's demand for it. We have some major updates in the works. Happy to manually provide an export for you in the meantime.

Yes, I was offered a manual export of my domain list. By "dodged", I mean that the request for an export feature in the same ticket was ignored, sort of a passive-aggressive "wontfix". I would have just scraped the HTML table, but at the time it just didn't work in Firefox/Chrome, and there was a weird interaction between filtering and showing more than 25 domains on a page. This might be fixed now, but was very frustrating at the time. I felt like support ignored all of that and just offered a manual export, without understanding how much more time it takes for me to write up a ticket (and wait for response) vs implementing a proper export feature.

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

#639
Just a quick plug for DNSimple. If you need a blazing fast tool to register domains, they’ve got it. Beats GoDaddy 1000x, no exaggeration.

I just did a quick interview with their founder, judge for yourself - https://www.raddadshow.com/episode/anthony-eden

They really run the company for the sake of providing the best service, even if that doesn’t make them the biggest or richest.

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

#640

I have a similar sorry about the scuzziness of GoDaddy. When Apple first announced the Swift programming language at their wWWDC i immediately went to GoDaddy to register every Swift related domain I could think of - learnswift.com, swift-tutorial.com type domains. I added several and in the process of checking out (which used to be like 7 steps as each step along they way they tried to trick you into buying somethin…

Chances are they literally had the same idea as you and just beat you at your own game.

It’s a certain kind of justice when a squatter gets squatted.

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