I’ve got some domains in Cloudflare and some in Porkbun. No issues yet. I also like how straightforward Porkbun is while still supporting API automation and team accounts.
opengrass 17 minutes ago [-]
Amazon Route 53, Cloudflare and NearlyFreeSpeech
S&Ps use MarkMonitor.
KronisLV 2 hours ago [-]
Porkbun was very pleasant to use, would definitely recommend them!
I wanted something in the EU, so I went with INWX - their UI is quite unintuitive/bad in my eyes though. I guess Hostinger/IONOS/Gandi/... would also be pretty popular for anyone like me.
hectormalot 1 hours ago [-]
I have good experiences with both porkbun and INWX as well. INWX could indeed use a UX update.
I used to use TransIP.nl and while they are still good, they’ve gotten expensive over the last few years.
rapnie 30 minutes ago [-]
Yes, TransIP is good, but expensive. I always liked their service, when you have questions getting an answer within the hour via their online support interface. But I'm migrating away now (esp. with VPS'es as the prices here are waaay too high). Using OVHCloud now.
iLoveOncall 2 hours ago [-]
CloudFlare
suprjami 1 hours ago [-]
Then you need a new username
slekker 3 hours ago [-]
Porkbun
leptons 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I'm not waiting around for Namecheap to screw me, I'm moving to porkbun. They do all the stuff Namecheap does for me now.
I've been waiting for the "porkbun screwed me" stories, but haven't seen any yet.
krick 39 minutes ago [-]
There are in that very Reddit thread though.
rationalist 3 hours ago [-]
Dynadot
krick 31 minutes ago [-]
It asks you to choose 4 (four!) "secret questions" as a "security" measure. I decided that keeping your domains with an organization that insists on idiotic practices that are firmly forbidden by every sensible security practices guide (OWASP, NIST 800-63, anything, really) since like 2015 is not a very wise choice.
rationalist 16 minutes ago [-]
Tell that to the banks, alarm companies, etc that do the same thing :-/
I just always use a plausible but false and unique answer, which I just keep track of in my password manager.
krick 7 minutes ago [-]
You do you, but that is enough of a red flag to actually mention when somebody recommends Dynadot to everyone else without much elaboration.
Also, banks are really different from domain registrars in several important and relevant respects, but, for the record, I don't have to tell it to the banks I use, and if I did, I'd probably be looking for a bank that I don't have to tell it to.
brie22 3 hours ago [-]
joker.com
Beijinger 1 hours ago [-]
internet.bs
ofjcihen 2 hours ago [-]
Hilarious because namecheap is the number 1 provider of lookalike domains that we see in our incident response actions.
TZubiri 3 hours ago [-]
If your business strategy involves going with a vendor with 'cheap' in the name, that's probably the Root Cause of most issues that arise from that vendor
neya 2 hours ago [-]
They used to be great, I had 30+ domains with them and support used to be great. They got acquired by PE and went downhill.
freecodeio 3 hours ago [-]
namecheap was decent, unfortunately the lesson people need to learn is that not everything stays decent, not in the current share-holder asskissing climate
TZubiri 4 minutes ago [-]
If the business proposition is being "cheap", then they will have to undercut everyone
If you undercut everyone, they will undercut competitors with the same strategy
If a cheap competitor undercuts a cheap competitor margins will tend to zero
If a competitor is pricing at zero and you need to undercut them, you will operate at a loss
Eventually the company will either shut down, or be liquidated, its valuable assets (the existing contracts and list of customers) will be bought by competitor or Private Equity.
This is common in domains, thousands of registrars get acquired by a megacorp, see NewFold Digital.
So in essence, when the business proposition is being cheap, the natural consequence is the business dying and being sold for parts to a purchaser that will have to degrade the cost to value relationship that got the customers in the first place.
teddyh 3 hours ago [-]
Like I have said previously¹ about choosing a registrar: If you have regular backups, and if some downtime is not really a problem, it might be fine to use web site hosting, e-mail (and in extreme cases even DNS hosting), from some fly-by-night el cheapo provider. But your domain name registrar? Pick them carefully, don’t skimp, and make sure they have good support. Because when things go pear-shaped, you really want to be able to actually talk to someone to change your web server or e-mail DNS records (or even DNS servers) to somewhere else.
Big registrars can’t afford any support costs since they prefer to squeeze the price down as far as possible, and therefore they prefer to simply lose or outright drop any customer in case of any and all problems. Conversely, small registrars may charge more, but have better (i.e. actually existing, and sometimes even dedicated and personal) support for when things go wrong, and have a vested interest in keeping you as a customer.
A small registrar might also be so small as to know you personally, which will help monumentally against any social engineering attacks.
Full disclosure: I work at such a registrar, but you’re probably not in our target market.
I have used gandi.net for many years. They provided good support and offered things like free email forwarding. Then they were bought and the new owners just double or more prices and made anything extra including email a ridiculously expensive extra.
mrloop 2 hours ago [-]
Same here, migrated off of them shortly after they announced there first price hike.
vanviegen 3 hours ago [-]
Picking a small registrar to optimize for reliability seems iffy. Perhaps today there's a passionate and knowledge owner personally picking up the phone (or empowering a small custom service department). But will that person still be doing that in 3 years time, or will they have moved on?
harvey9 3 hours ago [-]
I was pleasantly surprised at how good the support was for my budget personal vps with a big provider, but I agree with your argument; if I was in charge of a business-critical domain then I would be arguing for a budget to cover something more boutique.
TZubiri 3 hours ago [-]
>But your domain name registrar? Pick them carefully, don’t skimp,
Especially because domain names are not expensive anyways, a dot com (gold standard of domains) has a cost to registrars of like 11 USD right now, so registrars can charge anywhere between 15 USD and 25 USD, maybe you can find one selling at cost at 11USD or at a loss with promotions even!
But we are talking about saving 10$/year? That's less than 1$/mo. Trying to save 1$/mo is strictly in the terrain of underfunding your business, if you can't allocate enough funds so that Domain costs become a non-issue (and a provider like namecheap stops being attractive) then you will fail in a thousand ways, it's not just about domains at this point.
sourcecodeplz 6 hours ago [-]
namecheap purchased by private equity CVC in 2025 for $1.5B
so costs need to go down (-human support + ai automation)
and prices go up (they increased i think .com 3 times this year alone)
m000 5 hours ago [-]
Is there a directory of private equity acquisitions? Maybe even a browser extension that flags the websites of acquired companies.
Such acquisitions are often due to founders cashing out or retiring, and the first thing private equity does is switch gears to "extraction mode". As such, I would think twice before (a) making a long-term commitment to their services, or (b) spending time applying for a job there.
To give people a bit of insight into the domain registry industry, when a registrar increase domain prices there are generally four reason why they do it.
1) The registrar want to increase its margins.
2) The registry upstream increased their price. For .com, Verisign agreement with ICANN allow Verisign to increase the price by 7% in each of the final four years of every six-year cycle. As such they increased it in 2024 and will do so again on November 1, 2026.
3) The registrar is not a direct registrar and uses a middle man, and the middle man want to increase its margins.
4) The buyer or the registrar is operating on a different currency than the registry, and the registrar is compensating for changes in the currency valuation.
Geezus_42 3 hours ago [-]
Thanks for explaining how markets work. Not really a response to the OPs complaint.
richstokes 5 hours ago [-]
Ohhh so that’s why I got those price increases emails. Yay. What are some good alternatives?
I moved my domains to Porkbun some years ago when Google sold their domain stuff to Squarespace. Absolutely no headaches, and the one time i got double-charged after an API error during checkout, it was solved within 15 minutes with a human. I recommend them a lot.
0x38B 2 hours ago [-]
I enjoy the warning in the footer:
"WARNING: This site has been known to cause a mind blowing experience. We recommend you prepare yourself mentally and if possible be sitting down. Side effects may include saving money, letting out a chuckle, and sporadic oinking."
Domain related: I regret getting a .io domain for my email and website; with the price increases, it's not far from $100/year. I'm looking to move from Namecheap to Porkbun and to move to a .com domain.
gonzalohm 4 hours ago [-]
Do you know if they support dynamic DNS? I self host most of my stuff and I have a dynamic IP at home
anamexis 4 hours ago [-]
Yes, in that they have an API for their DNS service. It's supported by ddns-updater.
FlyingAvatar 3 hours ago [-]
Really wish they would allow creating limited scope API keys though. You can only limit keys by domain, not by action or record which would be ideal.
drewtemp 5 hours ago [-]
Same here. Recently migrated quite a few domains from Namecheap to Porkbun and it only took a matter of minutes.
anonzzzies 5 hours ago [-]
Yep I moved all namecheap and godaddy to porkbun.
T1ny 4 hours ago [-]
I also moved over and have been very happy.
petesergeant 4 hours ago [-]
Moved over after Gandi’s acquisition by PE and then price hikes. Hope Porkbun stays legit for at least another decade.
gruez 4 hours ago [-]
And porkbun, a seemingly privately owned company, isn't private equity?
Krutonium 4 hours ago [-]
Private Equity vs Private Ownership
The first is a vampire looking to take what was publicly or even privately owned, extract every last dollar and leave the shell with the debt of buying the next victim.
Private Ownership is Valve or Porkbun - The people running the business want to make a profit but not to their own or their customers determent.
SoftTalker 2 hours ago [-]
> The first is a vampire
I mean not always, but that does happen and that's what you hear about.
anamexis 4 hours ago [-]
Not in the sense that anyone means when they say private equity?
gruez 4 hours ago [-]
You mean how it's always used post hoc (ie. "ah ha! the company was owned by private equity! you should've known!") or as a generic kneejerk reaction, neither of which has any rigorous criteria for what the "bad" sort of private equity is?
Yeah people generally mean PE investment firms that are in the business of moving around and sucking up companies for short terms and stripping them to squeeze all the money out and then moving on to the next one. Not simply that a company’s equity is privately held, not publicly traded.
anamexis 4 hours ago [-]
Yes.
petesergeant 4 hours ago [-]
Which Private Equity company do you think owns them?
somat 4 hours ago [-]
I abuse https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ as a domain registrar. I really like their astetic(pre pay, simple, no fluff) but it turns out the sort of stuff I want to run on the internet is a poor match for their infrastructure so don't actually use nfsn in their primary web host role.
jason_oster 2 hours ago [-]
Wait, you consider that abusive? I have only used NFSN as a registrar for two decades. Always had hosting and DNS managed elsewhere.
analog8374 4 hours ago [-]
I use nfs as host too. Didn't know they did registrar. Thanks.
Ya every time I installed a slightly involved CMS it was a broken headache for some technical reason, so I gave that up. Made my own superuninvolved CMS and that works fine.
js2 5 hours ago [-]
Porkbun. Cloudflare if you don't mind being locked into using them for DNS too.
cobertos 4 hours ago [-]
Id caution against using Cloudflare for DNS. They rewrite your CAA record so multiple other CAs can sign certs on your domains. It's non-obvious unless you query your own CAA record
indigodaddy 4 hours ago [-]
Source/writeup somewhere? The amount of domains that use CF must be staggering, so if this was a real threat being leveraged in the wild you'd think it would be an epidemic no??
kbolino 4 hours ago [-]
It's not a threat.
Most websites don't use CAA records at all. The records can only narrow what CAs are acceptable down from the end user's root trust store, they can't add new CAs to it. And CloudFlare is typically in charge of managing its customers' certificates, so they add CAA records for their own CAs.
If you don't trust CF to manage your certs, you are not in their target market and generally should not use their products.
Many people use cloudflare for DNS. Few people use cloudflare for domain name purchases as that feature is much newer.
indigodaddy 4 hours ago [-]
OP specifically said "using Cloudflare for DNS..." ? I wasn't talking about domain name registration and don't think OP was either?
dv_dt 3 hours ago [-]
Well and dns service is reasonably easy to switch
bityard 2 hours ago [-]
They were already a sub-par registrar a decade ago, or more. You can find many namecheap horror stories without much trouble. I moved away from them years ago due to various shenanigans and never looked back.
alterom 6 hours ago [-]
And well, business goes down.
I purchased a domain name from them yesterday, in addition to a few I already had.
This will be the last purchase unless I see some significant traction in the case we're discussing in particular, and company wide in general.
Hope others will do the same. Not punishing this behavior is encouraging such abuse in the entire industry (if Namecheap gets away with that, everyone else will follow).
ryandrake 5 hours ago [-]
I remember years and years ago moving all my domains to Namecheap because they were considered "the good guys." I suppose I'm going to have to start looking around once again to see who are currently the good guys.
sourcecodeplz 5 hours ago [-]
yep, social approval and good faith will always get you constant business (word of mouth - recommendations).
but "numbers guys" say no, we need squeeze profits short term..
dylan604 3 hours ago [-]
To that end, Network Solutions is still around
CuriouslyC 5 hours ago [-]
IMO Cloudflare is the closest thing to a "good guy" these days. Very customer friendly, affordable and generally fairly ethical (if you pass over the part where they share data with the NSA).
yurishimo 4 hours ago [-]
I like Cloudflare as a company but I’d be weary about paying for my domains and hosting my DNS with the same publicly traded company with a severe lack of public customer service outside devs getting mad on twitter (guilty!).
If cloudflare gets mad at you (even accidentally) and cancels your account then you lose everything. At least if you separate them, there is a chance that you won’t lose access to both at one time. Given that domains are generally a one time setup after purchase (especially if you use cloudflare for DNS) then I think the minor inconvenience is worth it, personally.
ryandrake 3 hours ago [-]
I feel the same way. I think I want three different companies to be my domain registrar, DNS provider, and VPS host, for redundancy. Putting all eggs in one basket seems like a bad idea.
robotnikman 4 hours ago [-]
>namecheap purchased by private equity CVC in 2025 for $1.5B
Ahhh crap, there goes the company down the toilet. And they were the place I trusted to buy my domain names from.
rkagerer 4 hours ago [-]
Damnit. I liked them for their simplicity, lack of bullshit, and cheaq costs. Know any recommended alternatives? (Edit: Nevermind, I see are suggestions elsewhere in this discussion).
pelagicAustral 3 hours ago [-]
I dont have a horse in this race, but it used to main namecheap since all the way back to 2015, support was the best, prices and offerings too, but they really fucked me over a few times, were i did ended up losing a good domain name and then they sniped 2 domain name searches i had locked in but failed to buy... that one is absolutely truthful, if you land on something good you either pay for it or some mysterious squatting entity will get them in matter of hours.
These days I just use Cloudflare and Marcaría for stuff thats not available on Cloudflare. CF may not be the most trustful company out there, but it is nice to have everything in one ecosystem. Plus, you can deploy a site using their workers, so essentially you can go from domain name to website in 5 minutes including ssl and whatever else you can think of, including bot protection and good metrics.
nikolay 1 hours ago [-]
Namecheap is the worst! Our CTO left and our account was tied to his phone. Our CEO didn't want to talk to him, so, over chat, I made them remove the phone 2FA. They didn't authenticate me in any way - only gave them a good story and our username. I know people trash talk GoDaddy, but I've been the most happiest with them - they have support, if you have lots of domains, they assign to your an account exec that can do stuff for you. I've dealt with literally all registrars as I own thousands of domains. Nobody else comes close to GoDaddy - they have APIs, they have support, they listen. Plus, they are big and you can sue them - try suing company abroad if they mess up!
As far as I recall, Namecheap was based in Eastern Europe - as an Eastern European, I can tell you that I would never put anything important in an Eastern European company! Their new Spaceship offshoot is lipstick on a pig, literally.
Cloudflare is also not a good choice - you have no support! Porkbun may seem cool, but I'm not impressed as they lack some basic features such as profiles, let's say.
ericholscher 6 hours ago [-]
Yea they did something like this with us. Fully turned off our business domain because we didn’t reply to a phishing email in 48 hours. We migrated out the next day once we got it resolved. It took over 6 hours from when we noticed the issue and responded until they turned it back on. Absolutely horrible service.
rcleveng 6 hours ago [-]
Who did you move to? I used to use google domains before they sold and and am not sure who is decent anymore
bertt 5 hours ago [-]
Porkbun has been great.
nasso_dev 5 hours ago [-]
i can vouch for porkbun and cloudflare
classictraffic 4 hours ago [-]
Same! Both are great
mnd999 5 hours ago [-]
Mythic beasts
petesergeant 4 hours ago [-]
Not currently using any of their services, but I’d trust Mythic Beasts a very great deal based on previous dealings.
koralatov 4 hours ago [-]
Also Porkbun. I really can’t fault them.
musabilhan 3 hours ago [-]
Damn I didn't even know about them. Thanks for sharing and thanks to OP for this post. Gonna move out of namecheap asap.
Might be relevant for others looking for alternatives
brie22 3 hours ago [-]
I've been using joker.com for ~25 years - solid registrar.
leptons 2 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure which name I hate more - porkbun or joker. It looks like I'll be picking one of them though.
greyface- 4 hours ago [-]
Dynadot
Faaak 5 hours ago [-]
infomaniak
londons_explore 5 hours ago [-]
Internet.bs
drpixie 18 minutes ago [-]
And NEVER use an email address on some domain/service for administration of that domain/service.
AndrewKemendo 5 minutes ago [-]
Nearlyfreespeech.net is the only safe DNS provider in my estimation
I’ve used them exclusively since 2011 and it’s been nothing but wonderful
chung8123 6 hours ago [-]
Out of curiosity where are people going for their domains. I have a GoDaddy because changing seems like a task that would be more annoying than it is worth and that is even if you can find a place that is better.
MisterMunchkin 5 hours ago [-]
Cloudflare. They sell at cost, and their entire business is around DNS and caching so they have no reason to decide to stop selling domains in the future or mess with us.
TZubiri 3 hours ago [-]
It's not a bad option nowadays, but I feel the strongest option is going with a provider that charges money for the service provided, not someone that does it for free and has other priorities and monetization streams. That is always going to lead to suboptimal service
Bender 5 hours ago [-]
This is just my jaded take but I suspect that whomever is good today may be gone in the not too distant future. I have been watching registrars get gobbled up by investment groups that have no knowledge of or interest in DNS. They seem to be milking these registrars and leaving behind broken husks.
There should probably be a deadpool board that lists all the registrars and lets people bet on which will be the last ones standing. I am going to guess a couple of the last ones standing (that still have something resembling technical staff) will be Amazon and Cloudflare and to be clear I did not say anyone can reach their technical staff.
Whatever the consensus will ultimately be in this thread this week will probably be registrars we perform libation for in the coming years.
mat_epice 6 hours ago [-]
I've used porkbun.com for a bit. I've had no complaints, and at least when I looked initially their prices were pretty good.
reddalo 5 hours ago [-]
+1 for Porkbun
The only downside is that they use Cloudflare DNS behind the scenes, so when Cloudflare goes down, your website goes down too unless you use third-party DNS.
ranger_danger 5 hours ago [-]
But for end-users not using CF DNS... if the domain used third-party DNS, wouldn't that be enough? Since the TLD servers keep their own mapping of authoritative DNS servers for every domain, it's not asking CF to resolve DNS for your domain.
ssl-3 5 hours ago [-]
Yes.
You can always use third-party DNS if that's what you wish to do. That should be a supported configuration with ~any registrar (and if it isn't, avoid them).
You can run your own (first-party!) authoritative nameserver(s) for your domain, if you want to, and you can even do this on hardware that you can see and kick. A nameserver isn't particularly hard to set up in a sensible fashion.
However it happens, eliminating Cloudflare's DNS from the equation is easy. The TLD nameservers (for .com or .net or whatever) will cheerfully direct resolvers towards whatever nameserver(s) you specified as part of your domain registration.
After that, when Cloudflare DNS dies on any random Tuesday afternoon, your domain will still work. (Maybe it won't work for those using Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1, but those people may have bigger issues on that particular Tuesday.)
janalsncm 5 hours ago [-]
Have you dealt with their customer service? Namecheap also seems fine to me, but I have also never been in a situation like OP’s.
bel8 5 hours ago [-]
I went GoDaddy -> Namecheap -> Cloudflare.
jordanb 6 hours ago [-]
I've always used Joker. Never heard anything bad about them or had any problems.
daneel_w 4 hours ago [-]
I was a Joker customer for more than 20 years, since the early 2000s, but recently switched because of a series of compounding bad experiences in just the past 3 years on top of their unusually high prices.
Edit: I feel that it's pertinent to point out one of these experiences that were particularly bad. About two years ago I tried to register an IDN (internationalized domain name) with them. The registration succeeded according to their interface. Money was deducted. The domain did not appear in my inventory. My support ticket took several days to receive attention and was just closed with the almost arrogant response, "you probably did some mistake", with no further information or support. My second support ticket, too, took several days to get a response, and it was then revealed that the problem was that they weren't capable of registering IDNs under that specific TLD, for unknown reasons. That support ticket was also closed without allowing me to respond, so I had to open a third ticket just to get my money back.
masfuerte 5 hours ago [-]
Same here. This is the first time I've ever heard anyone else even mention them!
internet101010 3 hours ago [-]
Used to use Porkbun but now I just use Cloudflare because everything goes straight there anyway.
NetToolKit 4 hours ago [-]
I have used NameSilo for a long time. Not fancy, but no complaints.
ufmace 3 hours ago [-]
I'm all "well shit" reading this, I must have missed all of these issues. I'm not 100% sure, but at the moment, I'm thinking, AWS.
I know, Amazon isn't super cool, and are imperfect in a bunch of ways. But at least it appears to be highly configurable and cheap, and Amazon ain't gonna get bought out by private equity and enshittified, legally bullied into oblivion, generally has pretty good quality and competent support, and has plenty of experience in not handing the keys to your castle of services to any random phone caller with a sob story.
daneel_w 5 hours ago [-]
Porkbun. Do not go with Cloudflare, even if their at-cost pricing seems attractive - at some point you may wish to run your own name server, and Cloudflare does not allow this for domains you keep with them, because the traffic data is of obvious interest to them. Last I checked (admittedly not recently) they were also incapable of holding premium domain names, which may or may not matter to you.
sashk 4 hours ago [-]
mix of Cloudflare, porkbun and Dynadot (for olds other two doesn't support).
aspect0545 4 hours ago [-]
inwx.com, gandi.net
kardianos 6 hours ago [-]
porkbun
syntex 3 hours ago [-]
I had a similar experience with Namecheap. Their bot crawled my website while it was still under construction and apparently reported it to some security databases, causing my domain to be flagged as suspicious.
Since then, my domain's reputation has been affected, and I often get security warnings when trying to access my own website through my company's VPN.
Namecheap simply informed me that it had been a mistake, but the damage was already done, and the issue still persists.
throw-the-towel 6 hours ago [-]
There's a reason it's called Namecheap not Namesafe.
bluebarbet 5 hours ago [-]
Indeed. Personally I would never pay for any service whose name includes the word "cheap" (it's literally why I gave this one a wide berth despite all the breathless recommendations here and elsewhere). Cheapness should never be the declared mission of a business, it should be the incidental by-product.
amelius 20 minutes ago [-]
Well, if a deal sounds too cheap to be true ...
r_lee 5 hours ago [-]
this is one of the worst trends in modern time - "AML" and "KYC" being shoved into everything, requiring you to attach your own identity into everything and send your ID/passport to vendors left and right, no right to privacy at all.
whatshisface 4 hours ago [-]
These companies may as well be citing Ron Swanson's park ordinances for all the relevance those regulations have to their data collection demands.
privacyishuman 4 hours ago [-]
Absolutely agree—it's disgusting. I use Njalla for my domain even though they aren't a free speech provider, at all, I likely won't come into conflict with them and they won't require KYC.
nairboon 2 hours ago [-]
Sounds like Namecheap. They took one of my domains (held for many years) and try to sell it back to me for thousands because now it's a valuable domain.
sirnicolaz 6 hours ago [-]
This gave me the final kick to finally move away from Namecheap
Aardwolf 4 hours ago [-]
If you have still X years remaining of a registered domain, do those years move as well or do you lose them, if you move registrar?
sashk 4 hours ago [-]
Yes. You usually get +1 year to existing expiration date of your domain, at least this is how it works for .com, .us and few other tlds I have.
_hmj 4 hours ago [-]
Between 2014 and 2018, Namecheap was a solid provider, and my experiences back then were consistently positive.
TZubiri 3 hours ago [-]
Right, but they were too cheap and too good, and people that are aggressively fishing for optimal prices went with them, even if the margins don't work out. Then at some point they sell the business to PE who might just have an idea to monetize the millions of clients that signed up for what is effectively a reseller whose core business proposition is having the lowest margins in the market.
I was taught not to count the margin of your vendors, but you at least need to make sure they have healthy margins so they are happy with your business and not constantly hungry and looking for other sources of income, even if it means betraying you.
CharlesW 7 hours ago [-]
Namecheap cannot be trusted. I purchased a domain for a "normal" price (and yes, I have receipts). Shortly after they realized they fucked up, voided the purchase, and made it a $1,500 premium domain. Obviously, my recommendation is to avoid Namecheap.
reddalo 5 hours ago [-]
Was the name actually available? Or were they reselling a domain they owned?
justsomehnguy 38 minutes ago [-]
Hey, reddalo, have this $foobar at $19.95!
Oh, hey, reddalo! We think you should have paid $995.00 for it. Give us that amount while the thing we sold you is hold as a ransom.
blinding-streak 6 hours ago [-]
What are good alternatives to namecheap?
tarr11 6 hours ago [-]
Cloudflare is pretty affordable and it seems unlikely to be bought by PE
ivan_gammel 5 hours ago [-]
I'm on EuroDNS as domain registrar for many years, parked there a couple of companies where I worked. They don't have scammy vibe of other registrars, have multi-user accounts, which is convenient for businesses.
rwyinuse 6 hours ago [-]
Hetzner, OVHcloud are decent European options. I migrated to them after geopolitical risks with US providers got too high. No problems so far.
allarm 3 hours ago [-]
Have you ever contacted their support? I'm thinking about switching to Hetzner.
machomaster 41 minutes ago [-]
Hetzner and other German companies are NOT known for their good service.
sparrish 25 minutes ago [-]
Hetzner support is terrible. Days waiting for a canned response that clearly shows they didn't read the ticket request at all.
gnabgib 20 minutes ago [-]
Facebook/Apple/Amazon/Netflix/NewYorkTimes/Google/LocalGym/CloudFlare/Microsoft too
bluebarbet 5 hours ago [-]
Dynadot. Over a decade without issues.
mat_epice 6 hours ago [-]
Porkbun has been good to me.
Faaak 5 hours ago [-]
infomaniak.ch is swiss, and (relatively) good. Lacking features overall (though their domain+DNS is solid), but at least no bullshit like this
Aardwolf 4 hours ago [-]
Could they also get bought by private equity? It seems a lot of things get bought by this
Havoc 4 hours ago [-]
Short of sanctioned jurisdictions pretty much anything can get purchased. You just get a local corporate lawyer to help straighten things out
jojobas 40 minutes ago [-]
What namecheap is doing seems to be a great way to lose most of the customers and go bankrupt. I don't think that's what private equity funds want when they acquire a business.
bityard 2 hours ago [-]
Friends don't let friends use namecheap.
jojobas 45 minutes ago [-]
Same here, one scam-like email to just one of the connected addresses (renewals go everywhere), 1 week to comply, domains updated Friday night, "risk and compliance" who are supposed to react in 12-24 are still thinking about it.
Account of 14 years, always paid from the cards in the same name. Can't think of any valid reason to do this, hope they lose most of their customers and go bankrupt.
I’ve found really great but quite unique .com domain names available on name cheap then mysteriously gone registered to name cheap within hours, available for purchase at thousands.
Always strenuously denied by the name cheap CEO “we do not front run domain names!”.
I repeat. This was on Reddit. Consider what credibility there might be.
pmkary 5 hours ago [-]
I'm an Iranian---which is something you have no choice in, you just turn 4~5 and understand enough language that they tell you that you are an Iranian. And well out of believing namecheap is a good company (since I had my DNS there) I purchased my domain from them. Then one day these fuckers banned my domain, and my access to the dashboard without any warnings or headsup, didn't even allow me to move my domain to somewhere else, and those vultures from GoDaddy bought it in the auction and have put it for 3500€... Horrible people
gruez 4 hours ago [-]
>I'm an Iranian---which is something you have no choice in
Weird argument. Given they're in the US, not complying with US sanctions on Iran isn't an option either.
pmkary 4 hours ago [-]
Yeah, but you don't have to be such horrible people about it. At least give the person a few days to move their stuff. And I wasn't checking it from Iran.
Aurornis 4 hours ago [-]
> Yeah, but you don't have to be such horrible people about it. At least give the person a few days to move their stuff.
That’s not how sanctions work. A company can’t knowingly service a customer under sanctions. If your account was termination for sanction related reasons, they have no choice but to shut it down as fast as possible once they know that fact.
They cannot continue to service it for a few days or even service transfer requests. It’s a hard stop.
Joker_vD 2 hours ago [-]
Hey, it's not enough that your own government oppresses you — you better get some additional oppression from the overseas, just to make sure you know they have your best interests at their heart, honest-honest.
caymanjim 4 hours ago [-]
This is likely due to government sanctions rather than anything the registrar had control over.
justsomehnguy 37 minutes ago [-]
Seizing tge domain to auction it at x100 the price?
No, I don't think so.
pmkary 4 hours ago [-]
Yeah, but their treatment was terrible.
Benard-dev 4 hours ago [-]
Does this mean we should not always entrust our domains with only one registrar?
Aardwolf 4 hours ago [-]
What do you mean, can you entrust one domain with multiple registrars?
Benard-dev 4 hours ago [-]
I meant for people with multiple domains.
TZubiri 3 hours ago [-]
Splitting them round robin, or even in half, sounds horrible.
But maybe if you have 1 (one) backup domain like mydomain.net then you can host that on another vendor. But I'd rather just fail and focus on restoring at that point, you are still losing all traffic to the main domain, and contacting users with a secondary domain they've never heard off is a security posture nightmare and unprofessional.
Terr_ 2 hours ago [-]
There Oughta Be a Law.
OK, but seriously, if my domain name vanishes all the things I won't be able to log into are insane. Over the last thirty years, many many more "little people" have come to rely a lot more heavily (and immediately) on their domains working.
m3047 4 hours ago [-]
They requested presentation of a phone number and ID, so this sounds like info harvesting (for laundering / resale).
charcircuit 3 hours ago [-]
It shouldn't even be possible to seize a domain in the first place. Too often it ends up hurting legitimate actors.
convolvatron 5 hours ago [-]
this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but this was the inevitable result of changing a function with trivial cost and broad social utility (name registration) from a public service to a commercial one. at the time we heard a lot of standard arguments about the innovation and competition that only a market based solution could bring. its really not a surprise that this is the kind of innovation that resulted.
londons_explore 5 hours ago [-]
Yes - domain registries should be run by the government.
DNS etc can be run by third parties
proxyscore 5 hours ago [-]
Nominet does yet they outsource.
Besides, which government do you want to run .com domains
Muromec 5 hours ago [-]
UN of course
lstodd 4 hours ago [-]
this is not even funny.
sieabahlpark 4 hours ago [-]
[dead]
ranger_danger 5 hours ago [-]
How would that help? The government could still block domains registered by people in adversarial countries.
Personally I would not want the US government controlling and micro-managing who gets to have a .com domain.
convolvatron 1 hours ago [-]
I certainly wasn't nominating the US government. something more like international NGO. the us can do whatever it wants with the .us root, just like all the other ISO country code roots.
nulbyte 60 minutes ago [-]
So, ICANN?
convolvatron 41 minutes ago [-]
the internet corporations for names and numbers was established specifically to coordinate the for profit registrar model. but sure, an organization like that with a charter to simply manage the namespace directly.
farlight 5 hours ago [-]
If you still did business with them after this, it's your own fault and you deserve everything they're doing to you:
(Before reacting to the headline, please read at least some of the discussion.)
Sparkle-san 5 hours ago [-]
I read this particular comment[0] and I can't say that I understand the connection you're suggesting. If I ran a company and a country was directly attacking the city were ~1k of my employees live[1], I wouldn't want to continue to do business with them either.
No, I don’t see how one follows from the other. Most of us are not Russian and don’t have websites NC would consider relevant to the war.
On the other hand, most of us probably can imagine not checking our email for three days, getting caught up in some automated purgatory, and experiencing customer neglect. We can imagine this because it is the default customer experience these days.
lstodd 4 hours ago [-]
Well you know I don't see how 'registered in Russia' has anything to do with the war. In 2022 alone about 1.5m people emigrated, and are still 'registered in Russia'.
This was a poorly thought-out virtue-signalling knee-jerk back then and of course everyone in their right mind transferred their domains out because this is not how you do business.
Joker_vD 2 hours ago [-]
Next thing, you're going to argue that when the US sanctioned the whole population of Crimea back in 2014, that also was "a poorly thought-out virtue-signalling knee-jerk" reaction that worsened, for no good reason, the situation of the helpless Ukrainians who had happened to live there and now also had to live under Russia's brutal rule and face the international isolation. But you'd be wrong.
machomaster 37 minutes ago [-]
Explain why this theoretical argument would be wrong.
tbrownaw 5 hours ago [-]
Are you trying to suggest that the issue in the current post has the same underlying cause (not doing business with countries on the other side of a war)?
machomaster 34 minutes ago [-]
I assume that the underlying reason is "badly organized, badly managed, making stupid decisions overall". Certainly sounds like something you should not trust as your business partner.
RoisinSapphire 54 minutes ago [-]
yep, this was the thing that stopped me from using them
ManuelKiessling 5 hours ago [-]
Mh, if anything, this would make me want to do business with them more.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49028037
Namecheap banned a few domain names purely based on an ambiguous tweet that got 6 likes
https://x.com/Namecheap/status/1489485337885921284
Namecheap suspended Imgur in 2013 for 1 CSAM image out of millions
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5276648
Namecheap snipes your domains
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28732510
I'm planning to migrate out.
- Cloudflare
S&Ps use MarkMonitor.
I wanted something in the EU, so I went with INWX - their UI is quite unintuitive/bad in my eyes though. I guess Hostinger/IONOS/Gandi/... would also be pretty popular for anyone like me.
I used to use TransIP.nl and while they are still good, they’ve gotten expensive over the last few years.
I've been waiting for the "porkbun screwed me" stories, but haven't seen any yet.
I just always use a plausible but false and unique answer, which I just keep track of in my password manager.
Also, banks are really different from domain registrars in several important and relevant respects, but, for the record, I don't have to tell it to the banks I use, and if I did, I'd probably be looking for a bank that I don't have to tell it to.
If you undercut everyone, they will undercut competitors with the same strategy
If a cheap competitor undercuts a cheap competitor margins will tend to zero
If a competitor is pricing at zero and you need to undercut them, you will operate at a loss
Eventually the company will either shut down, or be liquidated, its valuable assets (the existing contracts and list of customers) will be bought by competitor or Private Equity.
This is common in domains, thousands of registrars get acquired by a megacorp, see NewFold Digital.
So in essence, when the business proposition is being cheap, the natural consequence is the business dying and being sold for parts to a purchaser that will have to degrade the cost to value relationship that got the customers in the first place.
Big registrars can’t afford any support costs since they prefer to squeeze the price down as far as possible, and therefore they prefer to simply lose or outright drop any customer in case of any and all problems. Conversely, small registrars may charge more, but have better (i.e. actually existing, and sometimes even dedicated and personal) support for when things go wrong, and have a vested interest in keeping you as a customer.
A small registrar might also be so small as to know you personally, which will help monumentally against any social engineering attacks.
Full disclosure: I work at such a registrar, but you’re probably not in our target market.
1. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32095499>
Especially because domain names are not expensive anyways, a dot com (gold standard of domains) has a cost to registrars of like 11 USD right now, so registrars can charge anywhere between 15 USD and 25 USD, maybe you can find one selling at cost at 11USD or at a loss with promotions even!
But we are talking about saving 10$/year? That's less than 1$/mo. Trying to save 1$/mo is strictly in the terrain of underfunding your business, if you can't allocate enough funds so that Domain costs become a non-issue (and a provider like namecheap stops being attractive) then you will fail in a thousand ways, it's not just about domains at this point.
so costs need to go down (-human support + ai automation)
and prices go up (they increased i think .com 3 times this year alone)
Such acquisitions are often due to founders cashing out or retiring, and the first thing private equity does is switch gears to "extraction mode". As such, I would think twice before (a) making a long-term commitment to their services, or (b) spending time applying for a job there.
1) The registrar want to increase its margins.
2) The registry upstream increased their price. For .com, Verisign agreement with ICANN allow Verisign to increase the price by 7% in each of the final four years of every six-year cycle. As such they increased it in 2024 and will do so again on November 1, 2026.
3) The registrar is not a direct registrar and uses a middle man, and the middle man want to increase its margins.
4) The buyer or the registrar is operating on a different currency than the registry, and the registrar is compensating for changes in the currency valuation.
"WARNING: This site has been known to cause a mind blowing experience. We recommend you prepare yourself mentally and if possible be sitting down. Side effects may include saving money, letting out a chuckle, and sporadic oinking."
Domain related: I regret getting a .io domain for my email and website; with the price increases, it's not far from $100/year. I'm looking to move from Namecheap to Porkbun and to move to a .com domain.
The first is a vampire looking to take what was publicly or even privately owned, extract every last dollar and leave the shell with the debt of buying the next victim.
Private Ownership is Valve or Porkbun - The people running the business want to make a profit but not to their own or their customers determent.
I mean not always, but that does happen and that's what you hear about.
People mean "acquired by a Private Equity firm". You can learn what one of those is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_equity_firm
Ya every time I installed a slightly involved CMS it was a broken headache for some technical reason, so I gave that up. Made my own superuninvolved CMS and that works fine.
Most websites don't use CAA records at all. The records can only narrow what CAs are acceptable down from the end user's root trust store, they can't add new CAs to it. And CloudFlare is typically in charge of managing its customers' certificates, so they add CAA records for their own CAs.
If you don't trust CF to manage your certs, you are not in their target market and generally should not use their products.
https://developers.cloudflare.com/ssl/reference/certificate-...
I purchased a domain name from them yesterday, in addition to a few I already had.
This will be the last purchase unless I see some significant traction in the case we're discussing in particular, and company wide in general.
Hope others will do the same. Not punishing this behavior is encouraging such abuse in the entire industry (if Namecheap gets away with that, everyone else will follow).
but "numbers guys" say no, we need squeeze profits short term..
If cloudflare gets mad at you (even accidentally) and cancels your account then you lose everything. At least if you separate them, there is a chance that you won’t lose access to both at one time. Given that domains are generally a one time setup after purchase (especially if you use cloudflare for DNS) then I think the minor inconvenience is worth it, personally.
Ahhh crap, there goes the company down the toilet. And they were the place I trusted to buy my domain names from.
These days I just use Cloudflare and Marcaría for stuff thats not available on Cloudflare. CF may not be the most trustful company out there, but it is nice to have everything in one ecosystem. Plus, you can deploy a site using their workers, so essentially you can go from domain name to website in 5 minutes including ssl and whatever else you can think of, including bot protection and good metrics.
As far as I recall, Namecheap was based in Eastern Europe - as an Eastern European, I can tell you that I would never put anything important in an Eastern European company! Their new Spaceship offshoot is lipstick on a pig, literally.
Cloudflare is also not a good choice - you have no support! Porkbun may seem cool, but I'm not impressed as they lack some basic features such as profiles, let's say.
Also found this list: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-domain...
Might be relevant for others looking for alternatives
I’ve used them exclusively since 2011 and it’s been nothing but wonderful
There should probably be a deadpool board that lists all the registrars and lets people bet on which will be the last ones standing. I am going to guess a couple of the last ones standing (that still have something resembling technical staff) will be Amazon and Cloudflare and to be clear I did not say anyone can reach their technical staff.
Whatever the consensus will ultimately be in this thread this week will probably be registrars we perform libation for in the coming years.
The only downside is that they use Cloudflare DNS behind the scenes, so when Cloudflare goes down, your website goes down too unless you use third-party DNS.
You can always use third-party DNS if that's what you wish to do. That should be a supported configuration with ~any registrar (and if it isn't, avoid them).
You can run your own (first-party!) authoritative nameserver(s) for your domain, if you want to, and you can even do this on hardware that you can see and kick. A nameserver isn't particularly hard to set up in a sensible fashion.
However it happens, eliminating Cloudflare's DNS from the equation is easy. The TLD nameservers (for .com or .net or whatever) will cheerfully direct resolvers towards whatever nameserver(s) you specified as part of your domain registration.
After that, when Cloudflare DNS dies on any random Tuesday afternoon, your domain will still work. (Maybe it won't work for those using Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1, but those people may have bigger issues on that particular Tuesday.)
Edit: I feel that it's pertinent to point out one of these experiences that were particularly bad. About two years ago I tried to register an IDN (internationalized domain name) with them. The registration succeeded according to their interface. Money was deducted. The domain did not appear in my inventory. My support ticket took several days to receive attention and was just closed with the almost arrogant response, "you probably did some mistake", with no further information or support. My second support ticket, too, took several days to get a response, and it was then revealed that the problem was that they weren't capable of registering IDNs under that specific TLD, for unknown reasons. That support ticket was also closed without allowing me to respond, so I had to open a third ticket just to get my money back.
I know, Amazon isn't super cool, and are imperfect in a bunch of ways. But at least it appears to be highly configurable and cheap, and Amazon ain't gonna get bought out by private equity and enshittified, legally bullied into oblivion, generally has pretty good quality and competent support, and has plenty of experience in not handing the keys to your castle of services to any random phone caller with a sob story.
Since then, my domain's reputation has been affected, and I often get security warnings when trying to access my own website through my company's VPN.
Namecheap simply informed me that it had been a mistake, but the damage was already done, and the issue still persists.
I was taught not to count the margin of your vendors, but you at least need to make sure they have healthy margins so they are happy with your business and not constantly hungry and looking for other sources of income, even if it means betraying you.
Oh, hey, reddalo! We think you should have paid $995.00 for it. Give us that amount while the thing we sold you is hold as a ransom.
Account of 14 years, always paid from the cards in the same name. Can't think of any valid reason to do this, hope they lose most of their customers and go bankrupt.
Always strenuously denied by the name cheap CEO “we do not front run domain names!”.
I’d never do a domain name check there again.
I repeat. This was on Reddit. Consider what credibility there might be.
Weird argument. Given they're in the US, not complying with US sanctions on Iran isn't an option either.
That’s not how sanctions work. A company can’t knowingly service a customer under sanctions. If your account was termination for sanction related reasons, they have no choice but to shut it down as fast as possible once they know that fact.
They cannot continue to service it for a few days or even service transfer requests. It’s a hard stop.
No, I don't think so.
But maybe if you have 1 (one) backup domain like mydomain.net then you can host that on another vendor. But I'd rather just fail and focus on restoring at that point, you are still losing all traffic to the main domain, and contacting users with a secondary domain they've never heard off is a security posture nightmare and unprofessional.
OK, but seriously, if my domain name vanishes all the things I won't be able to log into are insane. Over the last thirty years, many many more "little people" have come to rely a lot more heavily (and immediately) on their domains working.
DNS etc can be run by third parties
Besides, which government do you want to run .com domains
Personally I would not want the US government controlling and micro-managing who gets to have a .com domain.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30504812
(Before reacting to the headline, please read at least some of the discussion.)
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30507103
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namecheap#Termination_of_servi...
On the other hand, most of us probably can imagine not checking our email for three days, getting caught up in some automated purgatory, and experiencing customer neglect. We can imagine this because it is the default customer experience these days.
This was a poorly thought-out virtue-signalling knee-jerk back then and of course everyone in their right mind transferred their domains out because this is not how you do business.
Now what?