The domain has expired on January 25, on January 26th they sent an expiration notice. But I couldn't find the domain neither in expired nor in active domains.
https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/domain-name-renewal-ex...
I don't know if you have any legal options but according to ICANN, you should be able to renew the expired domain without extortion.
Keep an eye out for renewal reminders
ICANN policy requires registrars to send you two renewal reminders approximately one month and one week before expiration of a domain name. Take immediate action when you receive these reminders to avoid the potential of losing your domain name. Be sure to keep your contact information up to date so that you receive these important reminders.
Additionally:
My domain name has just expired. Can my registrar require me to pay for a renewal before I can transfer the domain name to a new registrar?
No. You have the right to transfer an expired domain. Registrars are not allowed to deny a transfer due to expiration or non-renewal. (unless you haven't paid for a previous registration period).
https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/gtld-lifecycle-2012-02...
Every registrar is required to allow the customer to renew the domain during the 45 day "Auto Renew Grace Period".
A caveat to this, some registrars will have in their terms that after 33 days the domain will be sent to an "expired domains" auction.
That said, since the domain is only a few days into the "Auto Renew Grace Period" you should still have the opportunity to renew the domain.
I've been working in the domain industry for 20+ years, feel free to reach out if you'd like me to take a look at this for you and offer guidance/assistance.
I was thinking about going back to GoDaddy because their customer service was nice in helping me resolve a DNS entry issue. Namecheap appears to have good reviews here but I was also looking into https://porkbun.com but they do not appear to have DDNS.
I ended up solving my issue by inspecting HTTP requests in the dev. console, to find out the error their backend emitted and their frontend wouldn't show.
I would think about actual publicly know IP address (like it is for dynamic DNS) only for things like hosting your own mail server.
I find their freebie DNS to be reliable, and their DNS management tools to be completely adequate.
DDNS just works. I set it up exactly one time with OpenWRT and forgot all about it.
And by "free" DNS, I mean: Literally free. It is a service that they give away at zero cost, and it can be used with any domain (including one registered with porkbun.com or whoever). You don't have to ever pay them a dime to use their DNS indefinitely.
I haven't ever dealt with their support folks so I have no opinion on that. I don't expect that I'll ever need to bother them.
Their website is lean-enough and easy to use. Products and pricing are straight-forward and transparent, and not pushy.
And et cetera. It's pretty nice, I think.
But not everybody is particularly happy with NameCheap: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34768550
edit: or much more recently https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39203315
However STAY AWAY from godaddy!
I moved out to what I consider being extremely stable and easy to chat for help registrar located with staff in USA (contrary to namecheap) that is NameSilo. They are usually $1 more expensive but who cares? I still register with DynaDot sometimes when I see real good deal price wise but if I want to use the domain for live project I transfer it to NameSilo.
I don’t love their prices, especially for some of the newer gTLDs. I use their DNS and have not once noticed a problem, though one might’ve happened without my knowledge.
I don’t think I’d choose them today if I was starting from scratch based solely on pricing but as it stands I don’t plan to move to anyone else at this point.
Sometimes you'd almost think one was reading YouTube comments instead of those written by supposedly adult, balanced tech people.
Don't use GoDaddy. Try NameCheap.
I don't defend what the daily stormer has to say but I would defend their right to say it and not be canceled. To be clear it wasn't only namecheap involved in this effort to cancel their domain but since the name cheap was mentioned as an alternative to GoDaddy that is why I brought it up.
We may not like the consequences of free speech but this mindset that businesses like namecheap simply registering a name so DNS resolution can happen refusing to do that based upon content they disagree with but in no way participate in bothers me a lot. Especially when it seems to be a coordinated effort of all of the registrars attempting to do this. Should the people who hold those beliefs not be allowed to rent housing, purchase electricity, shop at the grocery store, eating the restaurants? It is very dangerous to exclude people from a society based upon their ideology and their speech.
Free speech give you the right to talk but not the right to force me to listen.
The reality was that the bakery was more than willing to sell them a cake but what they were unwilling to do was use their creative expression to support a position they did not agree with.
Because when you say companies in a coordinated effort can exercise their freedoms to exclude people they disagree with from society in a manner that forms collusion so it effectively deplatforms them from being able to express themselves in society that is where it becomes wrong. In the same manner it would be wrong if shops that sell things refuse to sell things to people who lived a lifestyle they don't agree with.
No one is asking and name cheap to use their expressive creative ability or even to host on their own systems content they find objectionable. It is simply asking them to do the one minimum thing which is register a domain name and have some glue records.
The fact you do not see the difference is troublesome. You need to take a long hard cold look at history and how your position has denied people of all beliefs the capability to function in society.
Free speech doesn't mean everyone is required to give you a platform.
They are not giving anyone a platform. Your same attitude means that I'm not required to sell cakes to people I don't like, but I bet you were on the other side of that debate.
And that is the fundamental danger of using ideology to justify denying someone a place in society. It has been used throughout history to deny a minority a place in a society that the majority didn't want. That is not the kind of world we should strive to have where the majority can deny the minority based on an ideology and lock them out of society.
Website hosting, sure, they've got wide latitude to exercise editorial control. DNS services, yeah, I guess.
If your registrar doesn't like your content, maybe they should disallow you to use ancillary services and refund you for the free dns they usually provide, but won't. But I don't think they should be making editorial judgement about the content, all the content they see is your domain name, your contact info, your registered authoritative name servers, and ips for registered name servers inside your domain.
In order for a registrar to be able to make this kind of guarantee, they also need it from /their/ contractors. Specifically, for a registrar to stay in business, ISPs and payment processors should not be able to refuse them service (or, if they are also an ISP in their own right, other ISPs should not be able to refuse connection/peering arrangements).
Otherwise, they're stuck between a rock and a hard place: either they kick out the undesirables to appease their suppliers, or the whole business is forced to fold and cannot serve anyone at all.
A few more steps in this chain and your free market democracy isn't looking so very free any more.
But I think you're making a distinction over what someone believes and the content they want hosted. For example, someone who waves Nazi flags simply wanting to run a non-political website about guitars.
In that case, I agree. They're not hosting Nazi stuff, they're hosting guitar stuff, and the provider should not be refusing service.
The only way to resolve the conundrum is to allow everything except things explicitly disallowed by law. And for those, you need court order to shut down. Otherwise we get bunch of clowns rigged with security guard syndrome shutting whatever they think is "Nazi stuff" left and right. It happens in online communities more often then not, as you likely know.
Not sure which company is more scammy and incompetent. Likely godaddy more scammy, while namecheap more incompetent