Alternative Registrars to GoDaddy?

Futurepower(R) wrote in to ask for your suggestions about reliable domain name registrars. With GoDaddy, the one-time favorite registrar, suspending domains based on the wishes of the Irish High Court, and 'requests' from MySpace, is it any wonder that people are starting to lose faith in it? A word of warning from the last article linked in the last sentence: "(GoDaddy) reserves the right to terminate your access to the services at any time, without notice, for any reason whatsoever." Chilling words from a domain name registrar. So what registrars would you recommend for people looking to replace GoDaddy, and how would you suggest they go about transferring their domains in a hassle-free manner?

RegistryRocket.com

[dosius]

Well, there's a small annoyance, that if you get a domain, they default-direct it to one of those generic squat pages until the first change perks down, and it has an expire time of about a week. So rotate your dns servers in that case.

Any rate, I bought from them through a reseller, who a friend of mine was using (I covered his domain renewal, then bought a domain of my own), other than this, seems to be not bad, not much trickier than the dyndns way and a lot cheaper than buying a domain through them or through my ISP, the $9.96 I paid was prolly comparable to GoDaddy...or not much more...

-uso.

Re:1and1

[MysticOne]

I'd steer clear of 1and1. While I don't know if this is indicative of a pattern in dealing with problems, they cut off Spocko's Brain [spockosbrain.com], a weblog, due to a nastygram from ABC regarding an interesting radio show controversy. Since the purpose of avoiding GoDaddy is to get away from these knee-jerk responses, I'd not recommend 1and1 based on these recent actions. You can check the blog for information on what happened in more detail.

Absolutely

[XanC]

I used their free dynamic services, and now they've earned my business long-term. Great registrar, no gimmicks, no games. Even if it's a few dollars a year above some of the other places, it's absolutely worth it.

GoDaddy stable too...

[SuperKendall]

It depends on what you are doing. If you don't own any domains someone might accuse you of squatting on, GoDaddy is quite stable. I have a number of domains registered through them and have never had any issues. Even if that might be an issue I'm not sure GoDaddy is quite so complacent as is made out.

They make it a little more cumbersome to order a domain than you might like, but once you have the domain I think the managemnet tools are OK - though I've never used other registrars very heavily before I moved to GoDaddy.

Support userfriendly.org

[satherto]

I have so far had good luck with register4less, http://uf.r4l.com/ [r4l.com]. I mainly started using them as a way to support User Friendly.

I had an interesting problem with GoDaddy. I had a number of domains registered with Domain Direct, and had good luck with them, though I started to find them expensive, so I started registering domains through GoDaddy. I had a domain expire that was originally on GoDaddy, but didn't really care about it, then about 8 months later I wanted a domain to do some testing, and figured I'd re-new my old domain. When I tried to renew through GoDaddy, they said that it was on hold, and it would cost $$$ extra to release it, tried some other domain registers, and they said GoDaddy had locked the name. A month later, I checked on it using register4less.com, and it was available, so I renewed through them. I then checked a different old domain name on Register4less, and Domain Direct, both showed the domain available. Went to GoDaddy, and it was held, due to it being expired, and would need extra $$$ to purchase it.

I will never use GoDaddy to register another domain again.

Re:I'm very happy with dyndns.com

[iminplaya]

And how's their record on dealing with legal threats?

Nearlyfreespeech.net

[CliffSpradlin]

http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ [nearlyfreespeech.net] -- these guys are the best. Check out their site, you'll understand.

Re:Directnic

[wickedsteve]

One great thing about directnic is that if your paid for hosting gets used up from too much traffic (say you get slashdotted) they just switch it to free hosting with a banner. They are affordable and great for small sites if you do not need CGI, ASP, JSP, PHP, MySQL, ColdFusion or FrontPage extensions.

Re:1and1

[linkedlinked]

I don't have a lot of dirt myself on 1and1, but I used to work for a good-sized hosting company, and whenever a customer asked about buying a domain from 1and1, my boss would crap out a community of small woodland animals. He didn't necessarily hate them, but he was pretty convinced that they were a load of bad news, and it was corporate policy to do whatever we could to keep the customer away from that registrar.

Also, we'd get lots of testimonials from old 1and1 hosting customers who had venerable horror-stories, complete with "site offline for 5 days+", "wont answer my emails" and "took my money and ran" situations.

Avoid Yahoo Domains!

[amaupin]

Whatever you do, no matter how good a deal they offer, NEVER register a domain through Yahoo.

I had problems with my Yahoo Domains account's email (web service was fine) - basically 1 out of every 5 emails sent from my Yahoo purchased domain's account would not be delivered to Yahoo or Hotmail addresses. I'd get a message 2 days later saying hotmail.com couldn't be found, or yahoo.com couldn't be found. I went back and forth with Yahoo support. Eventually they told me the addresses of my friends (the Yahoo ones, at least) didn't exist or weren't valid Yahoo accounts. These were people who regularly send me mail. So I made a test free Yahoo account of my own and got the same result - sometimes mail I sent to the account didn't go through and I didn't get any clue that something was wrong until a nondelivery message came 2 days later. Again customer support told me the address didn't exist, so I sent them email FROM that address, and then they completely stopped responding to all customer support mails I sent from that point on. I was amazed.

So I decided to switch my domain to Godaddy, the registrar I have been using recently. I made a transfer purchase order through Godaddy's site and all I needed was the authorization code for my domain from Yahoo.

And thus began the hell that is trying to transfer a domain away from Yahoo.

Buried deep down in Yahoo's Website Services help pages were the directions to contact Melbourne IT, the registrar Yahoo uses to purchase domains. (Yes, Yahoo is not a registrar.) I emailed Melbourne IT asking for my code. They said to contact the reseller. Yahoo sent me email that I should contact Melbourne IT. Another person at Yahoo said I should cancel my Yahoo Domains account and they'd send me the information I needed to login to Melbourne IT's site and get my code. This sounded dubious.

But searching online revealed that's what other people had ended up doing. So I tried to change my domain's contact email address to a temp gmail address, so that when Yahoo canceled my account they wouldn't send email to the just-canceled email service. Yahoo's contact address change form returned, "Unable to modify contact information at this time. Please try again later," no matter when I tried using it. Finally I got someone at Yahoo to change the address for me. I cancelled my Yahoo account.

True to their word, Yahoo sent the login information for Melbourne IT to my domain's contact address after closing my website services account. I logged into Melbourne IT's site and there was no way to request the authorization code other than entering a basic help ticket. I did, and got no response. After a few days I sent another request. Again, no response.

One day I was reading complaints on message boards about Melbourne IT and saw a link to a login URL I hadn't seen before. I logged in there and had access to to my domain's code! Apparently Melbourne IT's support pages are partitioned with no links between each other... I sent the auth code to Godaddy and they began the transfer. Four days later, Melbourne IT responded to my original request for the authorization codes.

(I have omitted the dozens of useless exchanges with tech support people asking me for information I had already given to one of their coworkers. There is nothing more frustrating - and Yahoo was really bad at this - of starting over in a process because the person who responds to your message today doesn't understand what their coworker began two days previous.)

Total time to transfer a domain from Yahoo Domains: 1 1/2 months

Re:GANDI

[hords]

One of my friends had well over 50 domains with Gandi. There was a dispute with one of his domains and they shut them ALL down. He did get them to turn them back on, but after some hassle. My biggest complaint with Gandi when I was using them was that they took forever to implement domain locking when pretty much every other registrar offered it, and their control panel was a bit lacking. Other than those experiences, I enjoyed their service. You just can't beat GoDaddy's price, especially with bulk discount.

Re:I'm very happy with dyndns.com

[Anonymous Coward]

And how's their record on dealing with legal threats?

Several years back, dyndns.org cut my account for providing a copy of DeCSS. How's that for sticking up for their customers?

Alternatives to go for and to avoid

[KitsuneSoftware]

Main topic: I've not had any problem with HostIreland, though as you may be able to guess from the name they like to combine domain registration with hosting. One (host) to avoid at all costs is NetPivotal: they reverted my site to a week-old backup without telling me, then randomly merged the front page with my first page, a placeholder that had only been up for a few days. Oh, and to upload pages securely, the only option is* a bloated geocities-style file manager. Aside: I can understand being upset by the MySpace issue, but seriosuly, a High Court order? They have to simultaneously obey all laws of every country in which they operate. *or was, at the time.

one more to add to the list

[wfberg]

A quick google turns up a lot of registrars.

I had a domain name registered at godaddy for a while, but I left, exactly because of the horror stories from their (alleged?) "we'll pull any site that generates complaints without investigating one bit" policy. I don't host anything controversial (in fact, I use my domainnames almost exclusively for e-mail), but all it takes is someone deciding to (fake) some spam advertising your domainname, and you can kiss it goodbye.

Something godaddy pulled on me was that when it came time to renew, the registration rates offered to me were higher than for new customers - and no discount for 10 year registrations.

So, after some forum reading, and weeding out suspiciously cheap registrars, I decided on namecheap [namecheap.com]. As the name implies, they're cheap, $8.88 per domain per year. At the time they were slightly more expensive than godaddy, now they're slightly cheaper.

They're an eNom reseller, so they probably offer the exact same services as any other eNom reseller, but they're cheap.

Re:Nearlyfreespeech.net

[CliffSpradlin]

This has been discussed several times in the past in an open forum with the people who run NFSN...understand that they are more open about free speech than basically everyone else. The only time they've run into an issue where they've needed to exercise that ability is when credit cards have been used fraudulently to purchase domains and/or web hosting, in order to seize those assets. Since you don't usually find out about a fraudulent transaction until much later, they is unable to get any kind of refund on the domain fees or hosting. The clause is there to protect them financially/legally from these and similar situations.

If you guys have any concerns about this beyond that, I'm sure they'd be happy to discuss it. They are quite simply more responsive to customer concerns, and especially support requests, than anyone else out there.

(and just to be clear, I make no money off of whether or not you guys choose to use them..I don't work for them and they have a philosophical hatred of affiliate programs)

GoDaddy Alternatives -- Try NoDaddy.Com

[fv]

Just a few days ago, I launched a noncommercial site dedicated to this exact purpose -- encouraging and helping people move away from GoDaddy. The site is at NoDaddy.Com [nodaddy.com] (I'm sure Bob Parsons loves the domain name ;).

I launched the site after GoDaddy shut down my domain SecLists.Org [seclists.org], as noted in this /. article summary. The site includes a list of alternative registrars that readers have recommended. It is rather sparse on details right now, but I'm working on that. I'll go through all your comments in this article tomorrow to fish out good ideas for the registrar section of the site. I'm trying to fill up the site as much as possible before GoDaddy's big SuperBowl ads air on Sunday. We are currently seeking a volunteer to set up and run the NoDaddy forums -- write me if you're interested. We're also looking for "NoDaddy girl" models, but perhaps Slashdot isn't the best place to recruit for that :).

Just today, CNET News.Com posted an article where they interviewed many registrars about there takedown policies [domainnamewire.com]. Unfortunately, many registrars refused or didn't bother to respond. Of those who did, the authors "found that the French registrar Gandi.net and New Orleans-based DirectNIC offered the most extensive guarantees against unnecessary domain name suspension."

-Fyodor
Insecure.Org [insecure.org]

1and1 can pound sand

[PopeRatzo]

MysticOne is absolutely right. 1and1 will never get my business because of the way they caved to the cryptofascists at Disney/ABC. I don't care if Disney is the 800lb gorilla, you look out for your customers and you don't pull a registration just because you got one letter from a lawyer. I doubt they spent 5 minutes looking into the matter. As soon as they saw "Disney/ABC" on the letterhead, they were reaching for the plug.

And thanks, MysticOne,for telling me about this Spocko's Brain thing. Living in the cold Midwest, I forget there are also people on the coasts that are trying to stand up. I sent Spocko a few bucks just for being a stone in the shoe of those who would threaten liberty.

Oh, and I am happy with dynDNS, they surprised me with their service and strong policies.

One small issue

[Xenographic]

The only issue I would have with them is a requirement that the Whois information be accurate and that they'll suspend you if it's not. I wouldn't care to put my real name, address & email up there for everyone to harvest, personally.

Re:Gandi.net

[bcrowell]

I used gandi for a while for a couple of domains. The big problem I had with them was that they always seemed to overload their servers. Any time I needed to do anything, like update my contact info or something, it seemed like there was a 50/50 chance that I'd actually be able to do it that day. One domain was expiring, so I switched to a different registrar; unresponsive server, finally got it done after a lot of hassles. The other domain expired this year, and again it required a lot of waiting and retrying and wondering whether I would ever be able to get a response from their server.

Re:WoW! That's some marketing!

[tverbeek]

Ever heard of PageRank?

Ever heard of search engine spamming? Even the best page ranking algorithm cannot guarantee that the policies and practises of the company being linked to are compatible with yours.

Ever heard of contextual advertising?

Ever heard of a company using the money they get from ripping off their customers to attract more customers to rip off?

Just choose one of the bigger names and you are safe, if you want a smaller, there are many other things to check their reputability.

Like posting an Ask Slashdot.

Re:One small issue

[Kalriath]

That's a requirement of ICANN, not theirs. WHOIS information must be Valid, and YOURS (or someone who represents you, privacy services do meet this requirement). So if you don't put your name, address and email, or at least a valid representative of yourself, you can EXPECT your domain to be flushed down the drain.