Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 751 posts

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

#191

Post by ars »

cloudwizard wrote: post #184
mdorazio wrote: post #33

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.

Not necessarily. I used to think that, but it's rather common for the person with the idea to just go and buy the domain on GoDaddy.

Then they'll search for technical people to implement their idea. So being hosted there is not necessarily connected with the people actually doing the work.

I think you may be used to cases where the startup idea generator and implementer is the same person. But it's not always that way.

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

#193

Post by Dig1t »

Wow this is amazing, I just checked right now and this same just happened to me. I searched a week ago on NameCheap for a name it was available, and now it is registered to GoDaddy.. Is there any way that GoDaddy would be able to see searches from NameCheap or is that just a really big coincidence?

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

#194

Post by RandomBacon »

krn wrote: post #100

After doing a lot of research, I would recommend Dynadot as the best domain registrar at the moment. My main criteria were: fair prices without any coupon codes, no-upselling, free whois privacy as standard, most ccTLDs supported, REST API for everything, and at least 15-20 years of history. I would normally prefer a European company, but Dynadot has been the registrar of wikileaks.org since 2006.

I also use Dynadot for most of the same reasons: My main criteria were: great prices without any coupon codes, no-upselling, free whois privacy as standard, most ccTLDs supported, and a nice clean interface. (emphasis mine)

They are a major registrar with many millions of domains registered through them.

I had some domains registered through Gandi in the past, but they're prices are kinda high, and their web interface isn't that great.

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

#195

Post by InvaderFizz »

krn wrote: post #100

After doing a lot of research, I would recommend Dynadot as the best domain registrar at the moment. My main criteria were: fair prices without any coupon codes, no-upselling, free whois privacy as standard, most ccTLDs supported, REST API for everything, and at least 15-20 years of history. I would normally prefer a European company, but Dynadot has been the registrar of wikileaks.org since 2006.

We use Dynadot as our primary registrar. Their folder based assignments of DNS/Contacts is great for all the domains I have to keep indefinitely as part of brand identity and protection.

When we acquire a new domain, I just file it in the appropriate folder and all my templates are automatically applied.

Free privacy and DNS is a nice extra. Reduces spam and overhead.

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

#196

Post by nett18 »

tanatocenose wrote: post #170
wenc wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Godaddy spammed me so much and so often that I transferred my domain to porkbun.com. It's been so problem-free that I couldn't even remember the provider's name -- I had to WHOIS my domain to figure out who was hosting it.

Spam

honestly, the company is amazing, they are the discord equivalent of domain hosting

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

#197

Post by hobofan »

wegs wrote: post #117
snapetom wrote: post #97

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.

As far as I can tell, the general business model in domains is: * Be the good guy, and establish a customer base. Provide low prices, good customer service, etc. Lose money on the razor-thin margins. * Once you've got a ton of customers, turn evil, and milk your customer-base for all they've got. Engage in every nasty sleazeball tactic. I've seen this cycle many times, starting with Network Solutions. People use GoDa…

That must have been a long time ago, as I've only heard about them as a bad business for the past ~10 years (= how long I've been loosely involved in tech).

I think their business plan is rather: Lure in general population customers via mainstream media advertising, and don't really care about anything else (including their reputation with tech people). No one in tech that I know would touch them with a ten-foot pool. Most of the non-tech people I know are running to GoDaddy when they have to register a domain for their business/project, because they are almost the only ones doing widespread advertising.

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

#199

Post by gazelleeatslion »

I used their broker service to buy a really expensive domain via a client (squatter).

They ranted about how it's done totally anonymous and had to do all the communication.

They transferred the domain to us revealing the seller's WHOIS information (email, phone, name, address).

Ended up being someone literally walking distance from me in Washington, DC. So that's some crazy sketch dangerous behavior... I couldn't imagine what would happen if they sold to a really pissed off client. People are crazy over their company and personal names. Like hello incoming pissed off dude who just forked over multiple $xx,xxx to a squatter and now has their address.

Then I couldn't replace the WHOIS information because you needed the seller to confirm via their WHOIS email (GoDaddy support could not understand this / or I suck at explaining).

I almost just called the seller up, but instead finally found out GoDaddy allows you to bypass the WHOIS process with the email of your GoDaddy account.

Disaster. Don't really buy domains anymore but probably Cloudflare or bust at this point.

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

#200

Post by jansan »

cloudwizard wrote: post #184
mdorazio wrote: post #33

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.

>If they are on GoDaddy, it means that they are technically incompetent.

Let's just say it can be used as an indicator.

Post reply on HN