Startups should not use GoDaddy. Ever • Hacker News Board

Re: Startups should not use GoDaddy. Ever

#81

Post by kijin » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 4:46 PM UTC

jeremydavid wrote: post #54

Has anyone here used Nearly Free Speech (www.nearlyfreespeech.net)? I have finally started to make my migration away from GoDaddy (I have been planning this for years), and NFS seems pretty good. I can't seem to find any horror stories about them... but I rarely see them brought up in discussions about registrars. Am I missing something?

I've been using NFS.N for over three years now. I have a number of small sites and domains with them. The sites cost pennies a month, the feature set is staggering, and the domain registration process makes Gandi and Namecheap look clunky in comparison. They're also painstakingly honest. They recently corrected a billing error of $56 over three years over their entire client base. [1] My only complaint with them is the lack of SSL, but that's what a VPS is for.

In fact, I like NFS.N so much I made a simple webmail app to interface with their e-mail forwarding service. It's highly experimental though. [2]

[1] http://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2011/04/07/a-small-billing-... [2] http://www.github.com/kijin/nearlyfreemail

Re: Startups should not use GoDaddy. Ever

#82

Post by mcantelon » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 4:49 PM UTC

GoDaddy: not even once.

Re: Startups should not use GoDaddy. Ever

#83

Post by stonemetal » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 4:52 PM UTC

jbhelms wrote: post #32

andrewl wrote: post #17

Paul Graham says "I use EasyDNS. They're expensive, but reliable and never do anything evil." Source: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=150565 Note that that comment was posted over three years ago. Does anybody have any more recent experience with them?

DNS wasn't really the problem here, it was the hosting and setting up a ssl cert. I use GoDaddy for my DNS stuff and have never had any problem with them for that. Most of the horror stories come from people hosting with them.

They also provide registration and SSL.

Re: Startups should not use GoDaddy. Ever

#84

Post by qx24b » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 5:00 PM UTC

akkartik wrote: post #78

lucisferre wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Namecheap personally

How long have you been using it?

Not the person you asked but I've used namecheap for 3 years now and haven't had any issues, the whoisgaurd they offer is cheap when it comes up for renewal and you don't have to have a card or anything on file for when renewals come up, they do email you a bit when they do but I don't mind that.

The interface isn't going to win any awards and most of my domains use linodes dns so I can't say how well their dns stacks up.

I also have a few domains on nearlyfreespeech which is quite a bit down on the interface but their terms are great.

Re: Startups should not use GoDaddy. Ever

#85

Post by mikeleeorg » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 5:03 PM UTC

akkartik wrote: post #78

lucisferre wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Namecheap personally

How long have you been using it?

I'll chime in. I've been using them since 2007. For me, they're nice and straight-forward. They don't offer any bulk discounts (NN% off for 5 years, etc), but they do occasionally hold sales.

They also raised their rates a few times. When I first joined, they were $8.88/mo. Then they went to $9.29/mo, then $9.69/mo, and now $10.16/mo. Arguably, this may be one of their downsides, but I've never minded. I believe other registrars were also raising their rates around the same time too. (NOTE: prices include the ICANN fee.)

Re: Startups should not use GoDaddy. Ever

#86

Post by thisisnotme » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 5:12 PM UTC

I am stunned that anyone would ever use them in the first place. After going through domain registration with them, and being appalled at the amount of up-sale, I decided they aren't the company I would want to trust with anything.

I have been using dreamhost for years, and they make registration management painfully simple (and honest).

Also GoDaddy had an issue years back where they were apparently scooping up domains that people didn't finish checkout with and then selling them at a higher price.

Re: Startups should not use GoDaddy. Ever

#87

Post by ericabiz » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 5:13 PM UTC

onedognight wrote: post #59

All the complaints here about GoDaddy have nothing to do with the one reason to use them, paying the least for a domain with free DNS. If you pay them anything else then you have just nullified this advantage as they can make back the few dollars you saved on the domain by charging you more for things like hosting and SSL (free at startcom).

It's only cheaper if your time is worth nothing. Digging through pages of upsells takes time. I prefer using a registrar where I don't have to do that. (I use both Namecheap and eNom.)

Re: Startups should not use GoDaddy. Ever

#88

Post by genieyclo » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 5:15 PM UTC

jeremydavid wrote: post #54

Has anyone here used Nearly Free Speech (www.nearlyfreespeech.net)? I have finally started to make my migration away from GoDaddy (I have been planning this for years), and NFS seems pretty good. I can't seem to find any horror stories about them... but I rarely see them brought up in discussions about registrars. Am I missing something?

I've used them for domain registration for several domains for about 4 years now. Very much a satisfied customer, honest and responsive crew behind it. I moved to them after having a nightmare experience with 1and1 a few years ago. I pay very little to maintain about 7 sites domain and hosting annually.

Re: Startups should not use GoDaddy. Ever

#89

Post by mikeleeorg » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 5:16 PM UTC

I know two non-techie people (one a friend, one an acquaintance) who've used GoDaddy and gotten confused by all of the upsells and promos. My friend ended up purchasing a few extra services by accident and had a hard time trying to cancel them. The acquaintance was much less cognizant and ended up paying hundreds a month unknowingly.

I've also used them too, because a cofounder had registered our domain name with them. In Aug 2010, I noticed that GoDaddy had been charging us for an extra service we never purchased. I know this because none of us had logged into the GoDaddy account in a while. Fortunately, I'm really anal with accounting records and noticed the discrepancy in our bill.

After several emails and attempts to get this charge removed, I tweeted this issue with @GoDaddy included in it. THAT got an immediate response. Eventually, the charges were removed and we got a refund.

Moral of the story: Don't recommend GoDaddy to your non-techie friends, and consider avoiding it yourself. But if you must use them and have a problem, tweet about it to get a quick resolution.

Re: Startups should not use GoDaddy. Ever

#90

Post by dasil003 » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 5:16 PM UTC

davidandgoliath wrote: post #68

_delirium wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'd be surprised if a typical DIY VPS webserver can beat nearlyfreespeech.net's uptimes and resilience to burst traffic.

Doubtful. Largely in part due to the average 'vps' user not managing things properly -- or knowing how much they need to scale, etc. Entities that have been doing it for years have things optimized quite a bit to handle the spikes. I suspect the average shared hosting kicks the ass of the average VPS -- particularly in the IO department.

Are you guys serious? No doubt there is good shared hosting, but most of it is oversold to shit. "Average shared hosting" is a race to the bottom.

The reason I say VPS is because that way you have guaranteed resources and the ability to debug and fix problems yourself. I guess if you know the right shared host you can get some good value there, but it still seems like a terrible risk to me due to undisclosed limits, or vulnerability to neighbors traffic spikes. When I said "startup" I thought it was implicit that it would not be expected to be a low traffic site, at least not for long.