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…
The spirit of GoDaddy's founder soldiers on in it's current policies and behaviors. Disappointing but unsurprising.
Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
441–450 of 751 posts
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#442Earlier 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.
I use a combo of porkbun, Namecheap, Google domains (primarily all the .dev stuff from that landrush), hover (some legacy stuff) and Isnic (the Icelandic registrar for .is domains). I like Porkbun quite a bit but sometimes Namecheap is cheaper or it’s easier to just add to that account. I think I can proudly say I’ve never used GoDaddy as a registrar, but I’ve been with some bad ones over the last 20 years so I can’t…
But Ted's comment implies you can register .is through Namecheap. I wonder how/if they get around the Icelandic NS host problem.
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#443Ted 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…
It's funny, I don't even remember why I moved to Namecheap, but I remember years ago getting angry at Godaddy, and then transferring everything. You guys have a great service. No regrets since the move.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/wikipedia-is-leaving-go-daddy-...
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#444Ted 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…
A happy namecheap customer here. Moved from Godaddy to namecheap because they revealed me as the owner of a domain I was using for activism. Caused me a lot of harassment.
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#445Earlier 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…
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#446Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whenever I talk to startups, I check their domain. If they are on GoDaddy, it means that they are technically incompetent.
What if a non-technical co-founder bought the domain?
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#447Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about discord has been horrible for you?
No ability to use third-party clients without being banned.
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#448Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#449Ted 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…