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Domain registrar Gandi gets bought out, removes free mailboxes

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Re: Domain registrar Gandi gets bought out, removes free mailboxes

#231

It sound like they’re hosting at the same place (gandi) where they registered the domain. This is absolutely never recommended, for security purposes. If someone gains access to your hosting account you’ll likely lose all your domain names. Transfer the domains over to a better more secure registrar. Then set up a server or vps and set up as many mailboxes or emails that you need.

Infrastructure best practices have gone out the window, haven't you heard? Most people who use AWS/$cloud_service use it for everything, best practices be damned. Many new projects start their working thinking about how to scale, before making it simple and before having paying users.

Re: Domain registrar Gandi gets bought out, removes free mailboxes

#232
post #15

So who's the trustworthy, low-bullshit registrar now? I've been using Gandi for over a decade.

I'd say Google. They have incentive not to play games like this as that could jeoparadize their control of .dev and they don't need to juice profits on a minor service.

What? With Gandi and others you get screwed by paying more. With Google you get screwed by losing your account completely not matter if you are willing to pay a million to recover it. Google is the worst by far.

Re: Domain registrar Gandi gets bought out, removes free mailboxes

#233
post #193
post #154

> I've purchased domains from Gandi, pre-paying for multiple years of service such that some domains I have don't need renewing until 2027. Just in case you did not know: if you transfer to a different registrar, you will not lose the extra years of registration. You can confirm the expected expiration date of 2027 at lookup.icann.org.

> if you transfer to a different registrar, you will not lose the extra years of registration I did not know that. But how do you do it? And where to find a list of reputable registrars (which seems the rarest of species)?

> But how do you do it?

Any registrar that receives the transfer will automatically have the extended expiration date. (The expiration date is actually tracked at the registry.)

For reputable registrars, I think you could gather a list from HN comments and then "do your own research" to whittle down the list.

Re: Domain registrar Gandi gets bought out, removes free mailboxes

#234

I see that a lot of us rely heavily on the 2x free mail addresses we got per domain. Is it an idea to join efforts & money and rent a VPS from Hetzner and run our own mail server?

I run my own mail server and it is not an easy task.

First you need an un-tainted ip-address/network. Then you need to get it all right with spf, dkim, dmarc, dane etc. One mistake or misconfiguration and emails from your server will at best end up in the junk folder.

Not to mention the server maintenance.

Even if you think you got it all done, you will not be welcome at all recipients (I'm looking at you Microsoft).

It's quite a pain, but I still keep at it because I have the interest and time.

Re: Domain registrar Gandi gets bought out, removes free mailboxes

#235
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am happy with OVH. Only bit that’s missing is IPv6 for dynamic IPs.

doesn't OVH require ID verification after you pay? and then run off with your money if they don't get it at least, that is my experience

I had to identify by ID iirc because I wanted a .eu domain which is restricted to EU citizens. But I had to give the ID upfront.

Re: Domain registrar Gandi gets bought out, removes free mailboxes

#236
Dont know if its related to the recent changes but I opened a support request that has been open for 3 days now with the only reply being we've transfered you to a different part of the support team. it is related to moving registrar which i can see not being the highest priority but still quite frustrating.

netim replied within 30 minutes of me opening a ticket related to the same issue for context.

Re: Domain registrar Gandi gets bought out, removes free mailboxes

#237
post #211
post #208

The submitted title was "Domain registrar Gandi gets bought out, screws existing customers". The latter bit is linkbait so I've edited it (as the site guidelines request - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ). But I realize the OP isn't just complaining about price increases, so if someone can suggest a more accurate and neutral title, we can change it again.

OP's original issue had to do with changes to Gandi's included email service specifically. Perhaps the title should indicate that Gandi is rugpulling email accounts from people who have prepaid for domain registrations. They haven't told me I'm losing my mailbox yet but I'm on the lookout. The free mailbox was honestly one of the biggest reasons I chose Gandi, and I would not mind paying for it at all - preferably no…

Yep, prices are prices, but switch and bait on the mailboxes is the issue here. Really struggled with the title length limit!

Re: Domain registrar Gandi gets bought out, removes free mailboxes

#239
That doesn't match Gandi's website.

https://www.gandi.net/en-US/domain

> Two, free custom email addresses

https://docs.gandi.net/en/gandimail/index.html

> With every domain name you buy from Gandi you receive two free email inboxes through Gandi’s email service, each with 3GB of storage.

Re: Domain registrar Gandi gets bought out, removes free mailboxes

#240

Gandi email has been useless from the start. They say right in the contract that they don't back up their email servers. Isn't the host handling chores like backup part of the point of a hosted product? Of course you can and should distrust the host's backups and have your own in addition, but that's way different than the host not doing them in the first place. Maybe they have fixed that (I don't see it on their sit…

Well it's a nice way to have a no-reply@ for my side projects and a smtp to send emails from those webapps.

Probably not worth paying the asking price for this usage though.

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