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Comment by blakewatson | Hacker News Reader

You get a surprising amount of functionality for $20. I just got an account and I've been poking around for about an hour. I'm seriously impressed. You get:

- a webpage

- DNS

- email forwarding

- a statuslog

- url shortener

- a pastebin

- a weblog

- an optional Mastodon account

- optional IRC/Discord

- and probably some more stuff I missed

And all of this stuff is much more configurable than it would typically be on other services. It is ripe for creative integrations. Oh and the whole thing can be interacted with through an API. Pretty cool for $20. Definitely not the same as "just getting your own domain."

https://bw.omg.lol/

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It's not $20. It's $20 per year. I know that might be semantic for some people, but for much of these services, I wouldn't want it going away after 1 year if I'm unable to pay that cost again. And for that reason, I think it's worth noting.

These are ongoing services so a once off payment doesn't make sense for the business. The alternatives are self-hosting and free services, self hosting is great. If you are using free services though, they could disappear too, and you have to question the business model of anyone givingyou something for nothing.

At least if you are paying for it you are entering into a contract of service from the provider which gives you a lot of legal recourse and leverage and also supports the business so that they do keep providing you the service.

Domain registration has to be renewed, either per year or per <x> years if you buy a bunch of licenses up front. So what's the alternative to this then? A lot of domains can cost around $20 per year.

It is totally reasonable to charge a recurring fee for providing an ongoing service, but to be clear you are not buying a domain that needs registration. You are buying a subdomain of the domains that this company already owns. Some other sites give those away for free because there is no marginal cost per subdomain.

Which in the end is true for domains as well. Someone decides to sell subdomains of X, weather X is com or omg.lol.

Com could be free as well. The only real difference is choice.

Or to put it differently, you say it doesnt need registration. Well, it does. They require it. So what.

I think the main difference is a proper domain from a major registrar grants you ownership rights that you don't get from leased subdomains like OP's (mainly the ability to keep the domain even if the registrar goes out of business; and moving the domain between registrars).

You can move between registrars, but the registrar's not the one that you're leasing the domain from; they're just a reseller.

The entity that you're actually leasing the domain from is the registry operator-- such as Verisign for .com or PIR for .org. And, yes, it's still a lease relationship-- while there are some ICANN-mandated consumer protections around your "purchase" of a domain, if you stop paying your annual renewal (or run out of whatever amount of time you've prepaid), that domain isn't yours any more.

Omg.lol is operating the same way (albeit not under ICANN oversight, as they're not running a gTLD); they've just cut out the middleman and are leasing subdomains directly rather than via third-party registrars.

> Omg.lol is operating the same way

Not entirely true; I'd argue it's closer to subleasing a part of the property they're currently leasing from an ICANN accredited registrar.

> they've just cut out the middleman

Quite the opposite! They've just introduced themselves as yet another middleman on top of the already existing middleman (there's still a value proposition to this, but it's not the same).

TL;DR: subtenant rights ⊈ tenant rights

EDIT: typing mistake: replace ⊈ with ⊊ (proper subset)

What do you mean “ownership rights”?

If you buy a gTLD domain through a registrar, your ownership of the domain is bound by the rules established by ICANN [1][2]. If you purchase an eTLD+1 [3] subdomain from omg.lol (as part of the offered services) you're not covered by [1][2] but instead by [4, Section 1.5 part B, Section 3.2 part A].

What this means is OP can arbitrarily shutdown their offering at their sole discretion and, as a result, you'll lose access to the eTLD+1 you've purchased (domain, email, all gone). However, if you purchase a gTLD domain through an ICANN accredited registrar, the registrar can't unilaterally do the same (even if the registrar implodes, you still own the domain and you can move it elsewhere).

[1] ICANN Registrants' Benefits and Responsibilities: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/benefits-2013-09-16-en

[2] ICANN Registrar Compliance Program: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/registrar-2012-02-25-e...

[3] https://jfhr.me/what-is-an-etld-+-1/

[4] Neatnik LLC (the company behind omg.lol): https://home.omg.lol/info/legal

The only real difference is that Verisign makes more money than omg.lol, hence they have more resources and incentives to not screw you over. That, of course, has incredible weight, and indeed I'd not trust omg.lol while I do trust Verisign.

I run a SaaS product and I do not charge my customers extra for a subdomain of their choice (if it has not been claimed by someone else already.)

> but to be clear you are not buying a domain that needs registration

Ah, good point.

> You are buying a subdomain of the domains that this company already owns.

All domains are like that, though, even TLDs.

Creating a subdomain once you have the domain is free, probably for the domain omg.lol they're paying $20 / year.

omg.lol was probably a premium domain of some kind. Random three-letter .lols seem to go for about $150/yr (according to gandi).

Yeah but they probably have more than 6 users? This is cool and shit, but they're profiting and I guess I'm fine with that.

What if they offered a 'lifetime' rate which is the NPV of $20 over 20 years, so like $1000 or something? You pay once and get it forever.

Of course, only as long as they can operate the service forever...

That’s the main issue I see, they can stop the service at any time and then you’ll have no chance to get the subdomain back. You’re in a much better position with an actual second-level domain, because you can move the domain between service providers and registrars, and depending on locality you may also have actual legal rights to keep owning the domain.

Even for newer second-level domains like .lol and cool-looking ccTLDs like .io, the possibility that the registrar is going to end it, become unstable, or change policy is real. They’re marketing gimmicks.

The thing with a domain registration is that you know if you pay for ten years in advance, you WILL have it for ten years. With most SaaS, you have absolutely no guarantee this is going to be the case.

You will have it for 10 years unless they decide to take it from you. That doesn't happen often, but it certainly can.

My domain is 26 per year. This is cheap af and I'm reconsidering ditching my domain in favour of this.

What if this service stops to exist after 2 years? Then any place you advertised/published this subdomain will need to be updated. With your own domain you won't have that issue, ever. Why would you give that up?

Worth noting many of the services on omg.lol support custom domains, e.g. https://zwe.st/omglol is on the URL shortener.

I extensively use the API for pastebin and URL shortener. It's very much a selling point for me -- love being able to control things on the command line with a few simple scripts.

Great package of tiny little web apps for a good dollar amount and a great author.

https://zac.omg.lol/

I love the service, I hate the name. It's got too much cute/whimsy for my taste, and it just makes me feel like the "hello fellow teenagers" guy. If they had the same everything but it was a "short and easy to spell/pronounce" domain service, I would 100% go for it.

It doesn't have to be entirely boring, but less... cute. Also I think that meme language has a high risk of drifting into the cringe zone, and then that will feel bad too. I would have the same problem with lit.lol or yeet.lol.

Am I alone in being willing to pay more for less whimsy? Give me the $30/year plan where I can pick bucket.web or tiny.star or something less of the moment.

I'm sorry for the quality of this comment, but boo hoo.

oh same. I'm not sure I'd want this with anything other than my own domain name anyway, but definitely I wouldn't want "omg.lol". I hate that internet-ass humor.

You can use your own domain, you're not tied to omg.lol

Where does it talk about using your own domain?

https://home.omg.lol/info

I can't find it in the Help docs.

https://home.omg.lol/info/switchboard, the "external domains" section

That section reads more like you can just have another domain redirect to omg.lol profile, as opposed to be served from that external domain.

Am I reading that correctly?

Meaning, your profile wouldn't be served from "example.com" but instead, "example.com" would simply do a browser redirect to "omg.lol/example"

No, that's not what those docs say you can do. It looks like you can either use a DNS A record to point "example.com" directly to omg.lol's IP address, or use a CNAME record to point "example.com" to whatever IP address "example.omg.lol" points to. In both of these cases, your browser's url bar would still say "example.com".

Yes that. But also in addition to that you can set A or CNAME records and do whatever you want. Just like with any domain. You can even set NS records and manage records with cloudflare.

So yes you can use your own domain but edit the profile with omg.lol

That's actually a shockingly decent list of provided features for $20 a year. A more than fair price, and worth every dime as long as the servers are at least semi-reliable. I pay $12 a year for a domain, and another $5 per month for a VPS to host services on that domain, and even that's totally worth it to me, so $20 a year for all that they're offering (even if it is only on a subdomain)? Quite good indeed…

And Fastmail. Fastmail is to programmers what Superhuman is for salespeople.

What is so great about fastmail? I keep hearing people talk about it but haven’t “gotten it” yet.

I tried fastmail once when I was looking for a new provider. Free trial, they said. So I created an account, switched over my MX records, changed my mail client, etc. Seemed fine.

That is, until I received an email from my father. I couldn't open it. It was so perplexing that I eventually opened a ticket with support to see what I screwed up. Turns out their "free trial" only worked with other fastmail addresses until verified my account. The only supported method of verification was to create a paid account. Support wouldn't or couldn't help until I verified. I was pretty pissed; felt like I got bait and switched. What good is a trial that only works with a service that (relatively) very few people use? I closed my account, moved to purelymail, and haven't looked back.

I still have no idea what email my dad sent me. They might be a great service otherwise, but this gave me a very sour experience.

I'm on a FastMail free trial and have no restrictions like that. It's been great. Maybe they've updated their free trial policy since you've tried it.

I would be very curious to hear from a Fastmail rep on this as my demo account never did anything like this to my recollection, though that was a long time ago at this point and I’ve been a happy subscriber for 5+ years.

It's just really good at being an email provider. Reliable, privacy-respecting, good support, and with a webmail client to rival (or beat) Gmail.

Plus they frequently develop new useful features, like partnering with Bitwarden and 1Password to generate throwaway email address on the fly at your domain.

I have been a paying customer for years, and I don't expect to ever leave. My favorites are: - DNS capabilities - Friendly and fast customer support - Great, smooth, pretty UI on all platforms

See, I don't get this. Last time I tried fastmail I ended up on proton because it was just slightly... Kludgy. DNS was slow. Webmail was a mess. And the mobile client scene wasn't worth it.

That said, the billing side wasn't bad.

That's fascinating. My experience is exactly the opposite - Proton is slow and awful, and Fastmail is fast and clean.

Mine lines up with yours: Fastmail has been great, Proton started okay and has gotten progressively worse.

Fastmail is just normal IMAP unlike Gmail, so it works with email clients without weirdness around folders and archiving. It also supports native push notifications on iOS, which Gmail does not. And it works well with your own domain names.

That said I switched to using iCloud mail with my own domain as soon as it was available.

I find latency on gmail (for work or otherwise) makes gmail unusable. I am more latency sensitive than most of my colleagues though.

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