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Startups should not use GoDaddy. Ever

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121–130 of 167 posts

Re: Startups should not use GoDaddy. Ever

#121

I moved away from GoDaddy a couple of years ago. Now I have a few expiring domains left on there. Last week I got a notice they were going to charge me for a renewal, which I did not want. So I called the support guy. Twenty or so minutes later, he sent me to a link to fill out a form where all would be taken care of. Except it wasn't. Just like my previous few encounters with GoDaddy, when I went to the link I learn…

DNS management very often sucks, whether with GoDaddy or any other I've tried.

I founded a cloud management company for EC2 (and later other infrastructure clouds), and one of the first things we included was decent dns record management. It's integrated into your apache vhosts and whatnot, but the value is really just keeping your sanity when all you need to do is add an MX record.

Re: Startups should not use GoDaddy. Ever

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm taking a stab at simple registrations and management with Coffee & Domains ( https://www.coffeeanddomains.com ). The goal was to make a domain name registration and management system I'd like to use. That means no upselling and no charging for standard services like whois privacy, url forwarding, and email forwarding. I also made it easy to set your domain names to not auto-renew and to transfer away your name. T…

Sorry for asking this under such a nice idea but what happens to those who have domains with a company that goes out of business?

I'm actually a reseller of Key-Systems. If I go out of business you'll still have access to all of your domains and be able to manage them through Key-Systems and RrpProxy.net (http://key-systems.net/). They also run Domain Discount 24 (http://dd24.com/) and are a fairly large registrar.

Re: Startups should not use GoDaddy. Ever

#123
post #11
post #6

No one should ever use GoDaddy for any reason. I thought that was geek 101 by now. Also, incidentally, you never host a startup on shared hosting. If a day or two of downtime is a big deal than you gotta go VPS at a minimum.

That's not true. For low traffic sites, NFSN and Webfaction are more than capable.

Sure, "low traffic" sites. But if you are running a startup (as in, a business, and not a little hobby project), you should never use shared hosting.

If your "startup" is really just a hobby, then you shouldn't be making generalizations like "startups should...".

Re: Startups should not use GoDaddy. Ever

#124
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 othe…

You realize VeriSign increases the registry fee 7% each year. NameCheap from my calculation is actually eating into their own margin each year slightly. I used to use them back in around 2004, love the company, owner is wonderful. Only reason I don't use them is I got a much better deal at Fabulous.com which is designed for large portfolios. I still recommend them to basically anyone looking for a registrar that isn'…

Ah, I didn't know that. Good to know. Although, I didn't see an increase each year. Just the few times I listed.

In any case, I highly recommend NameCheap as well.

Re: Startups should not use GoDaddy. Ever

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Backups don't matter in this case. What is he going to do with backups?

His sites were down for "days". If he had backups he could have restored the sites to a different server.

Yes, but isn't the problem related to the domains not the hosting?

Re: Startups should not use GoDaddy. Ever

#126

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?

They host my website (but don't hold the domain - it's .nl). I've never had any problem. They are also wonderfully cheap for low-traffic sites, especially static ones.[1]

Of course, they assume that you know what you are doing.

[1] In fact, I've lost more money to the continuing fall of the dollars in my account than I've actually paid them. I'm not sure how to feel about that...

Re: Startups should not use GoDaddy. Ever

#127

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?

NSFN has a good interface for registrations, but it's worth noting that they're just a reseller for register.com (they even say so in their FAQ).

Re: Startups should not use GoDaddy. Ever

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

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Re: Startups should not use GoDaddy. Ever

#130
post #3

No one should use GoDaddy, ever; there are many other registrars in their price range that don't share their onerous practices with regards to transfer, takedown, security and privacy and which have much better customer service.

which 1?

Namecheap as well. I used to be on GoDaddy and sure, everything they do is spelled out but why do they have to make every transaction so annoying and difficult? So many screwy add-on options. Namecheap just keeps it simple to me.

The only thing with Namecheap is that I got a little confused when the whois guard stuff (or whatever they call it) didn't apply like it expected. My memory is a little fuzzy about the scenario right now but I bought three whois guards, applied one and then the other two couldn't be applied to my other domains. I ended up having to get support involved but they cleared it up within an hour. A little confusing? yeah. Annoying? no.

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