Support EFF: Move Your Domain Day on Namecheap (1/22) | Hacker News Reader

Support EFF: Move Your Domain Day on Namecheap (1/22)

namecheap.com

58 pointsted022 comments

Namecheap is still a good registrar (I've been with them for nearly 7 years), but they've gone downhill a little lately. I see more ads than I used to when I go to change a DNS setting, including ones that look like application alerts but are really ads for hosting or SSL certificates.

I had the same experience with Namecheap--I frequently have to change my records, but it was a deep dive past a lot of layers of fluff to get to that part of the control panel each time I wanted to do it.

Oddly enough, though, the process became a lot more pleasant when I began using CloudFlare, purely as a side-effect: my domains are still registered with Namecheap, but since CloudFlare requires you to host your DNS records through them to do their magic (I grumbled at the time, I admit), you do all your little zone-record edits through their DNS control panel instead. And it's a nice control panel. Now I only have to deal with Namecheap when I actually need to renew/buy/transfer something, which seems about right.

Not many know about http://www.badger.com. What I love them is that they're a no-frills registrar. Been pretty happy with them.

P.S. Most of their front-end code is on Github.

I'll just put this here: http://plaintextoffenders.com/post/39285063264/namecheap-com...

Hey omer - I'm Namecheap's community manager and just want to clarify some things:

I investigated this as soon as it was brought to our attention a few weeks ago. First, this is NOT Namecheap's control panel. This is Kayako, our support system, and only is created when one does not have a Namecheap account. Therefore, your account data on Namecheap is completely secure.

Second, as soon as we were alerted to this being an issue, I brought it to Kayako's attention. They replied and told us that the information is stored in a hash.

More info in these tweets: https://twitter.com/Kayako/status/288304914151661568 https://twitter.com/Kayako/status/288305161737220096 https://twitter.com/Kayako/status/288306260644880384

We value customer privacy and security and hope that Kayako will resolve this as soon as possible.

Still hoping/waiting for some sort of two-factor authentication at Namecheap. They don't offer it yet.

They suggested they were looking into it in 2011, but nothing yet. GoDaddy offers it. :)

It'll be ready soon.

Damn. I just moved 4 domains to them earlier today, would have waited if I'd had known about this.

In case it's useful for anyone else, I moved them because they're currently running a promo for transferred domains where they'll throw in a years whois privacy for free and a discounted SSL cert.

You could always donate two to six dollars to the EFF directly for the same effect- or round up to $10 just to one up them.

I still have a domain or two on GoDaddy that I keep meaning to move. This is the impetus I needed, I think.

Namecheap is a decent registrar, and I'm glad to see they support a free and open internet.

But if you want a good registrar:

[1] https://iwantmyname.com

[2] http://www.gandi.net

iwantmyname has a refreshingly clean interface and absolutely no frills. Register a domain (tons of TLDs), set DNS. Done.

gandi claims it's a "no bullshit" registrar. More features, like auto-setup of vanity nameservers, but less focused on domains.

Both better than all the alternatives. You pay ~$5/year extra for the lack of features (how ironic), but it's well worth it. No intrusive interstitial ads, no sad excuses for DNS managers, no cluttered control panels, and no constant upsell attempts.

Gandi is a little too good for those of us running anything other than a comment-free religious blog.

The contract you agree to when purchasing a domain legally binds you to observe, uphold, and enforce on your visitors a code of ethics. That code involves, among other things, fighting "deviant uses of the internet" and "protecting public order and good moral standards". That's just the beginning of your extensive moral policing duties should you not want to give Gandi the right to steal your domain from you at any time.

Good luck explaining that your post about hacking on a Raspberry Pi is not the type of hacking they prohibit you from discussing using a domain you purchased from them. There's virtually no way to run a forum, blog with open comments, or anything else enabling user-generated content without breaching your contract.

I'm not making this up. I think their "no bullshit" policy is marketing bullshit considering the actual stuff they put in their TOS. The terms are ridiculous for the service they're providing -- commodity domain registration, which is the updating of tiny records in a database at Verisign. Read it yourself:

https://www.gandi.net/static/contracts/en/g2/pdf/MSA-1.3-EN....

While in practice I don't think it'd be much of an issue, that's really scary.

Thanks for pointing that out.

What about Hover? I've been hearing good things about it.

[1] http://hover.com

Unfortunately, doesn't include .io domains. Anyone know a good place that handles those?

I personally like: https://www.gandi.net/

See dangrossman's comment below. [1] (I was shocked too.)

iwantmyname [2] is great and supports .io registrations, but you'll pay a little extra for the clean interface.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5085850 [2] http://iwantmyname.com

I've transferred about half of my domains from godaddy to namecheap at the end of last year. It looks like I have a great excuse to transfer the rest of them now.

Would love to switch, but for some reason they don't allow whois privacy on .ws domains, unlike a number of other registrars.

There are other good registrars. I use Gandi.

How much will be the renewal fees?

$10.69/year for .com without a coupon. It's a fair price for working with a good company that's stood up for its customers in court, whereas a certain top-selling budget registrar frequently does the opposite.

http://www.namecheap.com/domains/domain-pricing.aspx

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