Hacker News Reader

Comment by markbao | Hacker News Reader

I cannot believe how many people are using the worst domain registrar in existence, even if you don't consider SOPA support. Out of all of the domain registrars, why GoDaddy?

View on HN

Because it's cheap, popular, and most people don't interact with their domain registrar aside from registration and renewal.

Why do people buy clothes made in sweat shops or from chains that are terrible to it's employees? A lot of it just comes down to cost.

And even if you know how terrible something is (morally or ethically), some people aren't willing to change.

I don't think markbao was referring to their morality in his post, simply their terrible, terrible usability. I think also cost is not the reason, especially for the low numbers we're talking about. I would say people use GoDaddy because of GoDaddy's successful online and on air advertising campaigns.

"I think also cost is not the reason, especially for the low numbers we're talking about."

While I agree that their campaigns have been effective, I tend to disagree that cost isn't an issue. Heck, even I was informed of other registrars a few years back when I was first starting to host my own sites but GoDaddy was cheaper than my webhost for domain registration. Plus easy to find coupon codes also give additional value. Why bother paying an extra 5-10 dollars when, for most people, there isn't much difference after the initial registration? (I ask that rhetorically)

Inertia. GoDaddy was great back when the other main option was Network Solutions. If you registered for multiple years, or simply forgot to transfer before the renewal period, it was easy to stay.

Not to mention that even many reasonably technically inclined people don't realize that you don't have to wait until your expiration date to transfer to another registrar.

Name another registrar that is cheaper and comes with DNS?

eNom, Namecheap, like all of them?

This is something I never understood. I am not a sys-admin by any means, but I have never used a registrar, or host that does not have free DNS.

However, I have seen people pay for DNS hosting, separate from their registrar... which is odd to me.

Is this one of those things that was not available back in "good ol-days", so all the sys-admin thinks you have to worry about it separately?

Or is there some sort of benefit to having multiple DNS providers?

* Ability to set a low TTL (usually temporarily) if you need to servers quickly.

* Often better uptime and fast

* Easier to change registrars

* A central place to manage DNS if you end up with domains spread across many registrars

Ability to set SRV records, geographic dns, an API,... lots of reasons.

Why do people equate registrars with DNS? Wherever you're hosting your site is where you should be handling DNS.

That is not particularly rational. It makes moving hosting providers harder and many provide very different dns services. You might want an api or support for different record types that otherwise good hosting services dont provide. I use zerigo just for dns because they are really goid at it...

Managing DNS completely separately is fine, too. I just don't think it's a particularly good idea to use your registrar as your DNS provider unless you're also using it for hosting. I'd much rather point my registrar at my host's DNS than to have to update DNS records every time something changes on the host.

> have to update DNS records every time something changes on the host.

On the other hand, you might want to be able to do that rather than not be able to.

I'm thinking of the situation where your host goes down. If it is host-wide, your (their) DNS servers might be down too.

I intentionally use a different company for DNS than hosting, so if the host goes down I can point my DNS to somewhere else.

Every registrar that I have used in the last decade has come with free DNS. Why in the world do I need something cheaper than the ~$10 that most registrars charge?

hear, hear! Hard to believe StackExchange used them in the first place.

Imagine a world where GoDaddy was the only major registrar not supporting SOPA.

Oh wait it's Christmas, not Halloween. Sorry.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com