Poll: Will you move your domains from GoDaddy today?
Today is a day. What is your choice?
With the stories I've heard since about how GoDaddy already handles copyright complaints and otherwise mistreats customers, not to mention Parsons' support of torture, and of course SOPA, I can't imagine why I would ever consider giving them money—especially with how well NameCheap has treated me since I joined them.
Not only is GoDaddy a morally reprehensible company, but more disturbingly they're not even a good registrar. They constantly try to upsell you, they plaster your domains with ads. They don't even allow certain certain kind of DNS records… (their UI doesn't allow for a wildcard CNAME for example). I don't need elephants or congress bills to stay far away from GoDaddy, their crappy product is more than enough.
For what it's worth, I use domainsite.com. They're a solid and cheap registrar, and though their UI isn't the prettiest, managing domains and DNS records is fantastic. I use them for everything.
Yeah, they suck, but in the last 5 years I've logged into godaddy exactly 5 times to renew all my domains and then forget about them for the next 11 months.
Its easier than transferring.
But I moved my domains away about a week ago. No discount is worth supporting GoDaddy.
That's when I discovered that if you call Network Solutions in person, and tell them you're leaving for a cheaper registrar, they'll match the price. I kept my dozen or so domains there, and now have a locked-in price of $9/year with Network Solutions.
I still feel some loyalty to them from the early days when they were the only registrar. For some reason, I felt like they were more credible. I know they've actually got their own skeletons in the closet, but old habits die hard.
I hope this list is complete:
1) Cheap beats a lot of things.
2) They give you minimal trouble if you only use their registration services (I hear that their other offerings are terrible).
3) Popular and well known also attracts people -- "I need a domain name, hmm, this company sounds familiar, and almost everyone else is using it".
4) Domain registration is not something you're going to thoroughly evaluate. It's a 5 min process that doesn't cost that much anyway.
5) A hacker guy feels "clever" when he can navigate through all their extra offerings, specials, trap checkboxes etc and just order what he needs, like he somehow "beat the system".
6) Popular and hugely successful means they are going to stick around. People have been burned by web hosting/registrars/similar services that closed business after a while.
When you transfer a domain the expiration date is increased by at least a year (more if you chose so). You do not double pay for the time that is remaining. It is basically renewing just with a different registrar.
I don't give a rip about the low-brow ads or the elephant hunting - I just don't like supporting businesses that operate like Go Daddy, and I certainly have no interest in trusting one as skeezy as them for something as critical as domain registration.
I already moved a few that were close to expiry, but this whole thing started to feel like a witch hunt and a little hypocritical since I don't think I've heard anyone boycotting the Super Bowl because of NFL support or using AmEx because of Visa (two things that would be very easy to boycott).
So they either: don't understand their own business, they don't care about their customers, they have no ethical standards, or all of the above. Whichever it is, it's clear that they're run by truly horrible people.
Couldn't care less if their CEO likes hunting, or if they help the US government with its internet censorship agenda. Hate the US government for that, not random companies.
> http://droplabs.net/events/2011/12/29/leave-godaddy-day
The plan is to help anyone who drops by to move their GoDaddy-registered domains and GoDaddy-hosted sites.
So "no" for today, but "most likely" in the near future.
Do it and I promise a high five at the next Salem build guild.
If your DNS is at godaddy see http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/...
http://hover.screenstepslive.com/s/hover/m/927/l/7788-GoDadd...
They do have an exceptionally crappy web interface, and their marketing is distasteful. On the other hand, I've called them several times over the last couple years for random support, and my experience with that has always been excellent.
So yeah, still on the fence. And all this Godaddy backlash has just a tad to much witch-trial feel to it. But man their web interface sucks...
Basically, the CEO hunts elephants ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/31/bob-parsons-godaddy... ), they helped redact SOPA & support it, they are exempt from SOPA, have a bad attitude, refuse to respond to requests at random / throttle ( http://rscott.org/dns/GoDaddy_Selective_DNS_Blackouts.htm ).
What else do you need to hear to not "be on the fence" any more?
P.S.: I don't have domains at godaddy and never will. I also don't tell you or anyone else to what company to switch, just to switch from them.
So yeah, go enjoy on the expense of other people both money-wise and liberty-wise, support the damn bastard
I plan on moving mine but won't until I settle back in at home after Holiday travels.
Immediately before the domain transfer, I received an e-mail indicating that GoDaddy was sorry to see my one sad domain go away. I replied asking if there is a way to completely eliminate my account with them.
As I don't expect a reply, does anyone know if GoDaddy provides a way to eliminate your account completely? I'm planning on removing saved Credit Card information and setting a random, max-length password. Far from bullet proof, but I expect I won't be doing business with them again and don't want some random hack to result in account disclosure and some troublemaker deciding to buy a bunch of services in my name. The probability is low, but the amount of anger resulting from this SOPA nonsense has to have made them a bigger target for such nefarious activities ... I'm thinking Sony from recent memory.
Long answer: The best you can do is delete all services on your account, delete your payment information, and trash the registered name and address.
One thing I haven't seen out of the hundreds of comments about moving off of Godaddy the last few days is any mention of Email. Call me stupid, but I was using Godaddy's email service for really simple email accounts (ie. catchalls on personal domains). I'm using Google Apps to manage some of my email, but I found just going with Godaddy to be much simpler on non mission critical stuff. Was nobody at all, not one person using Godaddy's email service?
Also, I'm on Name.com which I like a lot, but they use Google Apps for email, I've got some dumb domains that I want to run email through (as I described above). Can anyone tell me if Namecheap approaches email the same basic way that Godaddy had (ie. free email credits with each domain registered, pop3/imap, etc..).
* I never had problems with it.
* I registered my domains via google, I have no idea how to move to a different registrar, and I'm not motivated enough to find out.
* If I started to stop using services where I don't agree with either the company's decisions, or whatever their prominent staff members chose to do, I would have to stop using all such services, not only one. I would have to go offline and live in a cage, pretty much.
Just because I am using a service does not mean I agree with whatever choices the provider makes. As long as those decisions don't affect me, I honestly don't care, because doing otherwise leads to a path of constant anger and depression. Don't need that, thank you.
Their CEO is a bad person, they do a lot of bad things, they're exempt from SOPA, they support it, they helped redact it, they never withdrew SOPA support for real.
They threaten the 1st amendment of the US constitution - except it wil affect far more people than just the people of the US, the people for whom the US constitution was written for.
Please take these arguments somewhere else where they hold.
Just boycotting one SOPA supporter won't buy you anything, either.
Do tell me though, why GoDaddy is exceptional, and why the same treatment doesn't apply to the rest of the SOPA supporters.. because I honestly don't see the difference: they're all bad.
Please feel free to list up others along with what they did / are doing and I will support actions against all of those as well.
I only said the boycott against godaddy is OK for many reasons.
However, I didn't say the boycott wasn't OK, either. It sure is, and it's well deserved.
I just said I'm not participating in it. If others do, that's their choice, and I don't see anything wrong with doing so, either. I just said I'm not going to, because (among other things) I consider it wrong to select one from the many, and punish only that, when there are others who are guilty of the same thing (and some even guilty of more).
Too often people think inaction implies neutrality . It does not. It's an enabling behavior. Passivity is a free permission slip for the status quo to persist onward.
In the end you do have to pick and choose your battles. For me personally, this time I simply had to do it -- I transferred. It was a very clear choice for me, frankly I don't see why it isn't also a clear choice for you either (it's not that difficult to make the change, if you have the docs handy, etc.), but hey, whatever suits you.
Because, as I wrote, I'd have to do the same thing with every other company who's services I use, when I don't agree with their decisions, or find their CEO someone who should be locked away and never spoken of ever again.
If I'm starting to boycot companies based on what they support, then I will do it with all of them, not just a single one. However, that is not possible.
I'm not neutral, either. I'm not going to use GoDaddy for any more domains in the future (partly due to their support for SOPA, partly for other reasons). I just won't move my domains from there, because it's not worth the effort.
It's basically saying you can't pick any of the cherries off of the tree, because some are on much higher branches than others.
That's fine; if you don't have the time to clamber around on a ladder -- e.g., research the ethics behind every company you give any money to -- you pick the low-hanging fruit. So when you can make a fairly low-cost choice to move away from a company with a history of dubious ethics that you already know of, you do it.
Or if you have an hour to spare, you can choose the single largest flexible expense in your life and improve your related decisions based on a little research.
There's always low-hanging fruit. If you want to make your life (and the world) a better place, that's where you start.
So you found solace in the notion that apathy is the exemplary path to happiness? I'm not religious, but I'll borrow a saying
Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
I find it unfortunate that more and more people are not granted that proverbial wisdom.
I use NameCheap only, have for 6 years.
I have noticed a few promo emails from Godaddy in recent days though. More than usual I couldn't say - this whole situation may make them stand out.
I'd like to see how high we can get that total.
Now the elephant killing is kind of a Voight-Kampff test I use. Anyone who isn't bothered with the elephant shooting wouldn't be my friend. I wouldn't want that type of person as a business partner or employee either. I don't think I could trust them.
I certainly wouldn't want to do business with a company that endorses or associates itself with killing intelligent, peaceful animals.
Personally, I want GoDaddy to GoDead.
I don't think it's quite as one sided as you propose.
This whole elephant thing is ridiculous.
If they kill animals for fun, yes.
He paid $70,000 to shoot the elephant. He's sick.
I really wish I could've downvoted him.
I personally think how much of the video is spent justifying it is quite pathetic, and can also see how others might be offended by the great white hunter style.
The process of whipping up an internet hate mob with the aim of destroying <person>/<company> etc is one of the parts of the internet I detest the most. It's ugly bullying.
It rarely concerns itself with facts, just how big the internet hate mob can grow to and whether they can succeed at destroying their chosen enemy.
If you don't like GoDaddy, or disagree with some of their policies, don't use them. It's the whipping people up into an internet hate mob unconcerned with any facts that I find distasteful.
... that's exactly what we're doing. What, do you think we're firebombing GoDaddy's headquarters and killing its executives?
It's ironic you should say this. The type of people who think exactly this, is imo the reason nothing ever gets done as well. What I'm seeing is people doing something (voting with their wallet). As the saying goes All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
If you don't like GoDaddy, or disagree with some of their policies, don't use them. It's the whipping people up into an internet hate mob unconcerned with any facts that I find distasteful.
You may have a point. Many people don't take the time to check facts, they instead rely on the moral compass of their peers to take a direction. That's how the world usually works and it won't change tomorrow. However, in this case precisely, I fail to see which facts you'd like to bring to light, that would play in GoDaddy's favor, or how someone would take the time to move their domains without some prior understanding of why they're doing it. Also, what exactly qualifies this as a 'hate mob' rather than an angry mob?
GoDaddy needs to learn their lesson for the mistakes they did in the past and for SOPA.
I wish I could have downvoted you.
If I go out and do bad things, I go to jail, people will hate me / dislike me and wish that I stay in jail for a long time because I'm a criminal.
Why should people & companies who threaten important civil rights and liberties be treated differently? It's not OK to do crimes which affect 1-100 persons, but it's OK to affect the basic civil liberties & free speech of hundreds of millions, perhaps even billions?
Any entity, a company or a number of individuals, which does something like this should suffer consequences. If it's a company, then it should really go away.
A company is responsible for its image. People don't owe them anything, so that the said company deserves the money of their clients. They must have a good image and keep their customers happy. Either they do that, or they should go out of business.
All in all, keeping customers happy means you must also uphold some moral values and protect civil liberties.
Law? You mean like the 1st amendment of the US constitution? Yeah, we can see how easy new laws can override the previous laws.
Actually, the law has a funny way of working. It seems it works for you when you're rich and against you when you're not a millionaire.
Keep talking about the law & due process.
I choose to tell everyone I possibly can about these companies and not use their services & not buy their products.
And then they only made things worse by flip flopping on their stance with a thinly veiled, half-hearted attempt to win customer support back.
I think that's the difference between GoDaddy and most of the other SOPA supporters -- this hate was there all along, this is just bringing it out of everyone.
Sure, it's not 100% representative, given that people that have/had GD accounts are more likely to even opt to read the poll than people without those, but still, a large number of HN readers use GD.
http://mashable.com/2011/12/23/breaking-godaddy-no-longer-su...
That's fairly useless, because the damage is already done (and anything they put now in a press release is obviously -- even to senators -- just GoDaddy's PR folks "managing" those excitable internet users and their cause du jour (secret: say whatever you have to today, let it blow over, and go back to business as usual next month).
Instead, it's more worthwhile to watch the history of decisions, lobbying, etc. by a company, and avoid them as needed based on that. A company can change, to be sure, but not through vague press releases -- only through building up new history.
To put it another way, moving domains as a way of expressing displeasure over SOPA legitimates the very logic which created it; that internet users in the US are merely consumers, not citizens. Move your domain day id premised on the idea that consumer choices are our most effective political act and accepting that premise is done at the peril of losing our legitimate political power.
supreme executive authority derives from a mandate from the people, not some farcical shopping ceremony to paraphrase Dennis.
In a system where economics and politics so thoroughly mix, I can't see how you can draw such a line as the one you claim to draw. It would make you indistinguishable from an uninformed buyer. And essentially that's what you're saying: you make purchases as if you had no information as to how the money might be used, even when you know it may be applied to goals that you feel would limit your freedom (or however a person might phrase this.) Your only concern when making a purchase is getting the best value.
Moreover, registering a domain is hardly "consumerism", unless you want to conflate the term with any act of purchasing.