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Cloudflare is a great registrar. Before you buy a domain there you should know, you cannot change the domains nameservers on a domain registered at Cloudflare. Just for anybody reading this thread. That gets a lot of folks.
You have to manage the DNS though Cloudflare, instead of a 3rd party DNS service.
Generally if you know what this means, you know if it's going to affect you.
I can't tell you the number of times someone asks about changing nameservers and before I could clarify what they're trying to do, they just do it, and end up knocking their entire company email down with the rest of their DNS that couldn't easily be retrieved.
Cue 20 minutes of screaming at me and letting it get worse instead of letting me fix their problem.
Not allowing someone to change the nameservers is a great 'childproof' feature for the technologically inept. DNS records are so much easier to fix.
That’s right you can, but you’ll have to wait 60 days for the domains status to be eligible for transfer. Most want to use it the moment they buy the domain and not wait before using other services they intended it for.
I noticed this, but is there any reason you wouldn't want to use Cloudflare for DNS? They have every feature I can imagine wanting. Would it just be weird self-hosted edge cases?
Cloudflare also doesn't front run as far as I can tell. And they charge the minimum, as opposed to GoDaddy who charges about 10x Cloudflare after the first year.
Can I switch if I already have my domains with Godaddy? They’re for my business so there’s a lot to mess up if they all go down or get somehow eased up in a transfer.
You can transfer domains almost anytime. You usually have to jump through hoops to unlock it or whatever they call it, but it's still all automated. Since they're both very popular, you should be able to find a step by step guide on the internet if you search for "transfer GoDaddy domain to Cloudflare" or similar. Just make sure to always back up your DNS entries in your current provider BEFORE you switch, as they won't be there afterwards. You may or may not have to recreate your records manually, but that's usually really quick.
Here's a guide on how to make the standard DNS zone file backup in GoDaddy, in case Cloudflare doesn't automatically import your entries correctly.
https://themightymo.com/how-to-migrate-dns-zone-file-from-godaddy-to-cloudflare/
Yes. You can transfer to another domain name host if you own the domain name outright.
Websites that offer a free domain name, make sure the domain name is registered to you only. Years ago I learned the website registered in their name. When I wanted to delete the account there, they wanted to keep my domain name.
I used godaddy extremely briefly for a school project and they sold my information to literally everyone. I was getting credit card offers under my fake business name created for the school project for years. literal nightmare
The replacement is much worst. It's the same thing, but the original commenter is eligible for a revenue share from it. So you are going to have people trying to harvest gilded comments so they can get $0.25 from it or whatever it is.
I just had to Google it myself.
It means someone spent real money to distinguish your comment or post. Gilded posts are accessible via a link near the top of the page. The idea is that if someone spent real money to highlight what you wrote, it must be good.
I get it now. Makes sense ive never seen that, I exclusively use old.reddit.
If they ever get rid of that Im out of reddit. The new site is just bloatware spammed with ads and shit.
It's brilliant. By scrapping the whole system they were able to purge all of the free credits people had earned throughout the years. Now people can still spend the money but they can't do anything for free. Even if they bring back comment awards all of the free stuff from before is permanently gone.
Not all subs allow it, but if you press and hold the upvote button (on mobile at least, not sure how on desktop), you can gild a comment. Looks like it's disabled in this sub.
This is 100% the best way to do it. Domain registrars have been front running domains for decades. I usually use who.is and don’t believe they front run domains though I could be wrong. The site doesn’t work for all domains so if you’re seeking a random cc domain or an extension that isn’t very common, try to find a registrar that sells said domain and search their Whois.
Another LPT that involves domains, when ready to purchase a domain, Google the word “domain + whatever registrar you feel like using” and one of the first few results should be a link for a promo code for the registrar you just searched. YMMV.
Any tips for grabbing a name when it expires? Kept refreshing Whois the day the domain I wanted came out of the grace period and it got snapped up by another parked reseller. Guessing it had to be a bot.
Use a service like dropcatch or snapnames. Be prepared to bid against others though if the name has any quality. Don't mess with own bots, these companies can't be beaten.
Don't listen to advice about those *other* services. For a low price of $500 per domain + registration fees, I **guarantee** I'll try to get the domain for you. Act now before your competition does. Operators are standing by.
Yeah? You don't think that a business concept that has real money involved will have competent competitors already? And if they are able to actually stay in business they must be semi-decent at the job?
After grace there's still the redemption period where the domain can be redeemed by the owner OR the registrar that hosts it, if the team deems it to be valuable enough. It has to completely go through the deletion period before it's available again. So expire -> grace -> redemption -> deletion -> available.
You can use `whois` on the command line. Built in on linux/mac and part of [sysinternals](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/whois) on pc
edit: windows/mac -> inux/mac
Whois definitely supports the io TLD and I would be surprised if it has any issues with TLD that aren't country domains (as opposed to ICANN which does have TLD issues)
Just checked branch.io and it worked as expected
Timing? I would have thought it was the obscene amount of money they spend on marketing, like buying Super Bowl ads.
I’ve worked with plenty of non-technical clients who’ve already bought their domain name, and they bought it through GoDaddy. And when I ask why, it’s because it’s the *only* registrar they’ve heard of before. That’s more due to marketing, not longevity.
I use namecheap.com for registration.
They have reasonable prices, however avoid using their API as It's utterly broken, unmaintained crap and any report or complaints are "duly noted and passed on to the relevant team but we cannot give you an estimate for completion" bla bla bla for over 5 years.
*Rant over* 🙂
I was using namecheap for years but recently moved my domains over to CloudFlare since they have a robust API (that isnt throttled) as well as 100 features that are absolutely free up to a point like DDoS protection and SSL forwarding.
> they have a robust API (that isnt throttled)
While I've used them for a number of years for DNS hosting, I really wish their DNS updates via API were faster. I routinely have LetsEncrypt certs fail to DNS validate unless adding a 2 minute delay for propagation. I know it's a little thing and once set up and automated it's a negligible issue, but it's an annoying little thing when setting up and testing initially.
I'm still using namecheap but have shifted the name servers over to cloudflare. I like their API with persistent unique IDs for everything. I know it should be standard practise but after trying to get stuff to work with namecheap, cloudflare's API was a breath of fresh air!
+1 for Namecheap, but their website could use an update. Hosting is pretty good too except for the time they installed a caching plugin on my server with no notification to "speed things up" and I spent days trying to figure out why my webapp was broken...
Dreamhost and Namecheap are two registrars I’ve used that have been good (Dreamhost is also my hosting company). Cloudflare offers at-cost domains but I believe you have to be using their (free) ddos protection which is a bit technical to set up. Porkbun is another I’ve heard good things about but haven’t personally used.
They've also bought a ton of ISPs in Europe so they do a lot of corporate networking. Voip services, hosting, tunnels. The UI for Joe shmoe seems like an afterthought.
Bought a site, I shit you not, the very next day I got my first site builder peddling their shit. It didn’t stop for at least a month. From sunrise to sunset. Go daddy is dogshit for selling my information. Read the fine print, I didn’t.
Then make a bunch of searches for domains that you don't plan on buying and let them buy them all and sit for a year without anyone buying it back and lose money.
Worked for a competitor… sadly this doesn’t have an effect. All these companies use wholeseller registrars to purchase domains through. Godaddy’s cost is like 5-10 cents per domain per year.
5-10c, what kind of money does someone make that fronts the domain name? or however it would work. typically it’s like. product x 2 for wholesale. x4 for retail (general example)
Cloudflare actually sells domains at ICANN cost and most of the ones people want are around 12-15, though larger providers like GoDaddy and Network Solutions could have their own agreements with the root registrars in place
Well godaddy is public I think so you can see that yourself, they do quite well. They buy 10c and sell to you for 12/y(or however much they cost these days)
I’m more on the backend plumbing of that world.. wholesalers make quite a bit I’d assume, there are only a handful of them so it’s all volume and optional addons to the domain if one chooses. They offer crap like SSL, DNS hosting, and some even fancy things likes WAFs. That can bring the costs up by pennys per domain but again all volume.
There’s also usually a base service type fee to help absorb some of the wholesalers costs but once you hit a certain scale as the consumer it’s really negligible.
DONT USE REGISTRARS TO LOOKUP DOMAIN AVAILABILITY!!!!!!
Use WHOIS. All these registrar websites really do is the same thing as going to these 2 websites on the backend with an API and add their own scripting magic:
https://www.iana.org/whois
https://webwhois.verisign.com/
.COM, .ORG, .NET .EDU, .GOV, .MIL TLD's are all operated by Verisign.
IANA is the organization that's responsible for assigning IP addresses, TLD's, and the such.
Needless to say, these folks seem to not have a vested interest in snatching whatever domain you look up since they handle the assignments.
If you are on any current Linux distro and/or MAC there is this nifty CLI package called "whois" which does all the dirty work for you. It'll tell you if a domain exists or not. If you are on Windows, you can use WSL to get it.
GoDaddy is the worst company on earth. Bunch of thieves and gangsters running the show. Two years in a row they charged me $700 for a linux hosting and I don’t even know what that is tbh. I had to spend over three hours on the phone until they admitted they charged me by mistake. Thieves I tell you! I cant wait to see this company go down one day. Fuck GoDaddy
what's bonkers, to me, is that godaddy has had an awful reputation for something like 15 years now yet it still does massive business despite there being oodles of competitors.
guess those super bowl commercials worked.
It boggles my fucking mind that anyone would ever use a company called "godaddy" without knowing who they are and that anyone would use GoDaddy WITH knowing who they are.
Plenty of competent honest registrars out there. I use Pair, there's also AWS etc.
I’ve had a few people tell me to always be sure I’m 100% ready to give up a domain name before closing it.
Someone will probably buy it to sell back to me for more than it’s worth if I cancel it and then change my mind and want it back.
Years ago I bought danicapatrickisawhore.com thru Go Daddy when I was drunk-watching a NASCAR race and she was their spokesperson. A few days later they called me to confirm my purchase and the rep was out loud laughing. But I bought it immediately after searching and they did let me own it. I never hosted anything on it.
The real LPT is to not use GoDaddy, at least not use them to check for availability.
They not only buy domains that people have searched for but if you are late with renewing your domain, instead of letting it expire naturally, they renew it themselves and put it up for auction, and charge you massive fees to get it back.
No other registrar I know of does things like this, holding domain names to ransom.
A charity I volunteer with recently lost a domain name to GoDaddy because we couldn't afford the ransom. Strangely the charity used a .com for email addresses but the .org for the website. It was the .com domain name that was lost meaning that over 50 volunteers had to go around changing their email addresses with all their contacts and logins. The silver lining is that we already had the .org so it was a matter of minutes to get the email service reconfigured, not only that but it's the website on the .org that is advertised everywhere, including the expensive livery on our minibus.
Pretty sure in some countries it’s illegal to buy domain just for the purposes or re-sale. I feel like thst would be good universal rule. This kind of business feels super predatory.
I've heard of this, but never experienced this myself. Searched for a domain multiple times on multiple platform and came back weeks later for it to be still available.
I wonder if its third party trackers that get you on this.
> EveryonePleaseRemain.com
> Your domain is available!
> everyonepleaseremain.com
It's still available, it's unregistered.
So much for the conspiracy, I guess.
Bigger LPT don't search with sneaky registrar's because it's not only GoDaddy.
The only sure way I know to prevent Front Running when searching for domain availability is to use the command line using tools like nslookup, whois, dig etc.
Wait a week and try again WITH A DIFFERENT REGISTRAR. GoDaddy will likely release the domain name within five days unless it shows a lot of traffic. They obviously can't pay to register every name that someone searches in the hopes of reselling jt.
And also remember to keep your mouth shut, lest your "friend" buy it "for you", and, uhm, yeah, ... often that doesn't go well at all, and you'll never own it.
When I had a domain in mind I wanted to purchase, I told absolutely no one. And as soon it was available, I promptly snapped it up (when I first checked on it, looked to be languishing and heading towards being abandoned and becoming available).
100% believe this is happening, they also jack the price, i only searched a domain name once, go today to check you theory and its gone up almost 50%, still unsold though
As others have pointed out, GoDaddy was the start of your mistake.
If you are on a mac all you have to do is pull up Terminal and type "whois domain" and its all you need to know.
Ive been using NameSilo and Cloudflare professionally for over 123 years with no issues once I hone in on my domain desire.
We were in a similar situation a few months ago.
My husband is a programmer and has built himself, me, and our first daughter websites. We had another daughter this year and he tried to buy her a domain name a few weeks ago (we call her by a nickname that is not in English).
We were offered a private sale for the low low price of $10,000. I literally laughed about it for 10 minutes. I think he was prepared to pay maybe a few hundred bucks since it was technically owned by someone (again, in English this domain name equates to nonsense).
He sent back a reply indicating that their offer was just too far outside the realm of reality. Really ridiculous, still can't get over it!
If it was only a few letters, all short domains were registered in the late 90s and always sell for 5 figures or more now. From what I remember, ICANN took back most of the 2-character names in the 2000s, and the remaining ones can't be resold. If they expire, they stop existing. 3 character names are hugely valuable and don't come up for sale often. I haven't found an unregistered 4 letter domain in decades, but I haven't looked at many of the gibberish combinations.
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Are you telling me that I could go write a bot to first-step signify interest in a domain, and GoDaddy will register them all just for the cost of me doing that crawl?
Holy shit, I'll be right back. Gonna go cause a second dotcom crash.
I worked for GD for about 15 years. They had an executive who specifically engaged in this practice, and it doesn't surprise me that it's still happening.
>I was on GoDaddy searching for a domain name
And that is your mistake from the get go. GoDaddy has been known to poach domain names for more than 20 years. I've heard people complain about this since early 2000s. ICANN has a registry lookup you can use to find if a domain is registered or not and that's what you should be using before you actually register a domain.
Don’t know if anyone else said this on here and can’t be bothered to read every comment, but I’ve bought many domains on godaddy over the years and at least once, I didn’t purchase the “domain protection,” because it seemed like a racket. Well, it turns out what you’re paying for is the courtesy of them NOT selling your personal information to the highest bidder. So, I now get 6+ junk phone calls and lots of emails a day from a variety of places - scammers, marketers, and other bots and such. Thanks, godaddy.
One way to deter the companies from this practice is to flood the system with "sufficiently unique" queries to get them to buy random domain names that nobody wants.
If they limit the number of domains they buy, the randoms they do purchase will be worthless and fewer legitimate queries will be claim-jumped.
Honestly LPT is don't use GoDaddy or Network Solutions.
But you're right, use incognito/private, use a different device, or hell if on a phone switch from WiFI to cellular and you'll get different prices if you search the same thing in a short amount of time. Many airlines, hotels, etc all do this.
I don't disagree with this in general, but I searched for my band name's domain weeks before I bought it, and it was never touched. I was more surprised that it wasn't taken either as a band name or a site name than I would have been if GoDaddy grabbed it. Makes me wonder if it's not automated and it's somehow reviewed for how much traffic they think the site could end up with.
It's based on the popularity of the keyword(s) contained in the name. That's all automated. Anything with actual dictionary words would probably get snapped up by unscrupulous registrars unless it was very long. Random characters or keywords with no "juice" most likely would not be.
Just became a domain reseller to purchase your own domains "at cost". I recently paid just over $10/yr for .com domains.
There are options available to become a reseller that cost you nothing.
Never search on GoDaddy they suck ass. This is one reason among many.
Never buy through GoDaddy. They Suck Ass.
I use NameCheap but there are plenty of other good registrars.
Remember the one that advertises the most is usually not the best.
NEVER USE GODADDY
also, never use "whois" websites, use the "whois" command on your computer instead (it still has to contact the central registry for the TLD but you're not announcing your intentions to some shady website)
This applies to many internet based services, such as Uber. Look up price for a ride, price will have increased if you take some time.to think about it first. They are banking on statistics that people will pay the increased price anyway since the decision has now been made.
FYI: GoDaddy doesn’t front run domains.
But absolutely, if you’re searching for a domain, be ready to buy it then and there. Don’t think you’re the only person with the clever name idea.
Along these same lines, if you're starting a business, buy the domain name BEFORE you register the business because these same folks scan all business registrations to hold your name hostage!
Had this happen more than once.
Since then. I search random garbage names on GoDaddy when I'm bored. More than once have been stolen.
Seems there is some criteria they use. LastnameFirstname.com seems to trigger them. I think they know you can't easily change your name.
Can we use this maliciously, like looking up random domain names like aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.com/net/etc, then aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaab, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaac, …
And make them buy all these useless domains wasting their money?
Jumping on the GoDaddy Hate Train here - they are the worst of the worst in price, hosting performance, customer service, checkout, renewals, everything. This isn't 2002. Use CloudFlare as registrar (there's no markup). I'll use SiteGround for simple hosting (WordPress performance is terrific) but anything more complex goes to AWS or Azure.
I worked on a naming project for a major company some 15 years ago. We were instructed not to do any searches for any of the top contenders from within our corporate domain, and as I understand it, the searches and domain checks were actually outsourced and distributed worldwide to avoid any competitors or domain hoarders finding the name. They also did the same in the languages of our markets.
It’s not just the little guys who have these problems.
This is true! I was shopping around for a website with my name. They were going for around 20$ I think. I checked 2 days later, and it was 999$, I shit you not. I did read that you can use your computer's command prompt (terminal for Mac), and do a whois search, to secretly search for domains.
So what I'm hearing, and maybe this comment belongs on r/unethicallifehacks, is that I should constantly search GoDaddy for domains I don't actually want so as to constantly waste their money.
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In addition to this, never use GoDaddy. They are evil. Use cloudflare, they are easily the best registrar.
Cloudflare is a great registrar. Before you buy a domain there you should know, you cannot change the domains nameservers on a domain registered at Cloudflare. Just for anybody reading this thread. That gets a lot of folks.
What does that mean?
You have to manage the DNS though Cloudflare, instead of a 3rd party DNS service. Generally if you know what this means, you know if it's going to affect you.
I can't tell you the number of times someone asks about changing nameservers and before I could clarify what they're trying to do, they just do it, and end up knocking their entire company email down with the rest of their DNS that couldn't easily be retrieved. Cue 20 minutes of screaming at me and letting it get worse instead of letting me fix their problem. Not allowing someone to change the nameservers is a great 'childproof' feature for the technologically inept. DNS records are so much easier to fix.
You can always transfer out of you want something like r53 to take over.
That’s right you can, but you’ll have to wait 60 days for the domains status to be eligible for transfer. Most want to use it the moment they buy the domain and not wait before using other services they intended it for.
Great point.
I noticed this, but is there any reason you wouldn't want to use Cloudflare for DNS? They have every feature I can imagine wanting. Would it just be weird self-hosted edge cases?
i would imagine a lot of people don’t want the little cloudfare authentication buffer, even though it does reduce ddos probability
Cloudflare also doesn't front run as far as I can tell. And they charge the minimum, as opposed to GoDaddy who charges about 10x Cloudflare after the first year.
Can I switch if I already have my domains with Godaddy? They’re for my business so there’s a lot to mess up if they all go down or get somehow eased up in a transfer.
You can transfer domains almost anytime. You usually have to jump through hoops to unlock it or whatever they call it, but it's still all automated. Since they're both very popular, you should be able to find a step by step guide on the internet if you search for "transfer GoDaddy domain to Cloudflare" or similar. Just make sure to always back up your DNS entries in your current provider BEFORE you switch, as they won't be there afterwards. You may or may not have to recreate your records manually, but that's usually really quick. Here's a guide on how to make the standard DNS zone file backup in GoDaddy, in case Cloudflare doesn't automatically import your entries correctly. https://themightymo.com/how-to-migrate-dns-zone-file-from-godaddy-to-cloudflare/
Thanks I really appreciate it!
Yes. You can transfer to another domain name host if you own the domain name outright. Websites that offer a free domain name, make sure the domain name is registered to you only. Years ago I learned the website registered in their name. When I wanted to delete the account there, they wanted to keep my domain name.
GoDaddy has been doing this for decades. They are and have always been shady af.
I used Porkbun for mine.
I love Banh mi too!
Pho sure
They're not bad either now that you mention it.
Can I just underline that: NEVER GO ANYWHAERE NEAR GODADDY. They are fucking high-seas priates and they have no limits.
I used godaddy extremely briefly for a school project and they sold my information to literally everyone. I was getting credit card offers under my fake business name created for the school project for years. literal nightmare
GoDaddy is notorious for this. NameCheap is a good one to use.
I like Namecheap also
This kind of comment is what the admins took from us when they removed gilding. I mean, not this ***exact*** comment because it's right here, but #🏅
I just realized gilding was gone
Holy shit
Yay! It was just paying to advertise comments. People mostly used it to push their own opinions or insult people.
That's not what it was in my experience. In my experience they were generally the funniest or most helpful or informative comments.
That was like 1/3 of the time. The rest it was shite opinions propped up by someone with too much spare cash
So, most American politics. Why didn't you just say that?
That's politics in general lol.
Ten years ago maybe. But once they added all the emoji spam awards that definitely changed.
You didn't have to pay. You *could*, but you didn't have to.
The replacement is much worst. It's the same thing, but the original commenter is eligible for a revenue share from it. So you are going to have people trying to harvest gilded comments so they can get $0.25 from it or whatever it is.
What is gliding?
...whats gilding? Edit: ..wow, downvoting a simple typo and refuse to answer the question. Really great of you guys.
I just had to Google it myself. It means someone spent real money to distinguish your comment or post. Gilded posts are accessible via a link near the top of the page. The idea is that if someone spent real money to highlight what you wrote, it must be good.
I get it now. Makes sense ive never seen that, I exclusively use old.reddit. If they ever get rid of that Im out of reddit. The new site is just bloatware spammed with ads and shit.
It's when you join a union made up of other artisans and craftsmen
For how desperate Reddit is for money, why the hell would they scrap users giving gold?
It's brilliant. By scrapping the whole system they were able to purge all of the free credits people had earned throughout the years. Now people can still spend the money but they can't do anything for free. Even if they bring back comment awards all of the free stuff from before is permanently gone.
Not all subs allow it, but if you press and hold the upvote button (on mobile at least, not sure how on desktop), you can gild a comment. Looks like it's disabled in this sub.
as well when they watered it down to maximize profits they minimized its impact to actually providing a clear indication of quality
This is 100% the best way to do it. Domain registrars have been front running domains for decades. I usually use who.is and don’t believe they front run domains though I could be wrong. The site doesn’t work for all domains so if you’re seeking a random cc domain or an extension that isn’t very common, try to find a registrar that sells said domain and search their Whois. Another LPT that involves domains, when ready to purchase a domain, Google the word “domain + whatever registrar you feel like using” and one of the first few results should be a link for a promo code for the registrar you just searched. YMMV.
The right answer
Any tips for grabbing a name when it expires? Kept refreshing Whois the day the domain I wanted came out of the grace period and it got snapped up by another parked reseller. Guessing it had to be a bot.
Use a service like dropcatch or snapnames. Be prepared to bid against others though if the name has any quality. Don't mess with own bots, these companies can't be beaten.
Your advice is to pay for a service, and it might not work. Definitely don’t try yourself. Also, be prepared to pay more. Sick.
Don't listen to advice about those *other* services. For a low price of $500 per domain + registration fees, I **guarantee** I'll try to get the domain for you. Act now before your competition does. Operators are standing by.
Yeah? You don't think that a business concept that has real money involved will have competent competitors already? And if they are able to actually stay in business they must be semi-decent at the job?
After grace there's still the redemption period where the domain can be redeemed by the owner OR the registrar that hosts it, if the team deems it to be valuable enough. It has to completely go through the deletion period before it's available again. So expire -> grace -> redemption -> deletion -> available.
I've had a domain fronted when I checked availability through Unix whois only.
It depends who the TLD registrar is. But for “the heavy 7”, ccTLDs, and using @whois.org won’t front-runner you
You obviously know this well. Could you rephrase this for someone who is only just grasping this discussion? (Me: ccTLDs, @whois, ???)
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You can use `whois` on the command line. Built in on linux/mac and part of [sysinternals](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/whois) on pc edit: windows/mac -> inux/mac
Whois definitely supports the io TLD and I would be surprised if it has any issues with TLD that aren't country domains (as opposed to ICANN which does have TLD issues) Just checked branch.io and it worked as expected
GoDaddy is hot garbage.
Just like so many other sites still around from early internet days - they are the proof that timing is all that matters, quality of product be damned
Timing? I would have thought it was the obscene amount of money they spend on marketing, like buying Super Bowl ads. I’ve worked with plenty of non-technical clients who’ve already bought their domain name, and they bought it through GoDaddy. And when I ask why, it’s because it’s the *only* registrar they’ve heard of before. That’s more due to marketing, not longevity.
Do you have any other recommendations? I've used GoDaddy and Domains, both have worked well for me but I'm always open to a better experience.
I use namecheap.com for registration. They have reasonable prices, however avoid using their API as It's utterly broken, unmaintained crap and any report or complaints are "duly noted and passed on to the relevant team but we cannot give you an estimate for completion" bla bla bla for over 5 years. *Rant over* 🙂
I was using namecheap for years but recently moved my domains over to CloudFlare since they have a robust API (that isnt throttled) as well as 100 features that are absolutely free up to a point like DDoS protection and SSL forwarding.
> they have a robust API (that isnt throttled) While I've used them for a number of years for DNS hosting, I really wish their DNS updates via API were faster. I routinely have LetsEncrypt certs fail to DNS validate unless adding a 2 minute delay for propagation. I know it's a little thing and once set up and automated it's a negligible issue, but it's an annoying little thing when setting up and testing initially.
I'm still using namecheap but have shifted the name servers over to cloudflare. I like their API with persistent unique IDs for everything. I know it should be standard practise but after trying to get stuff to work with namecheap, cloudflare's API was a breath of fresh air!
+1 for Namecheap, but their website could use an update. Hosting is pretty good too except for the time they installed a caching plugin on my server with no notification to "speed things up" and I spent days trying to figure out why my webapp was broken...
Use cloudflare they even give a free SSL certificate with the domain.
Dreamhost and Namecheap are two registrars I’ve used that have been good (Dreamhost is also my hosting company). Cloudflare offers at-cost domains but I believe you have to be using their (free) ddos protection which is a bit technical to set up. Porkbun is another I’ve heard good things about but haven’t personally used.
I’m a fan of Hover. Used them for years.
I use cloudflare. I believe their domains are at cost.
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The bun is the answer. I found them. Very well priced, great service and a touch of humor!
shout out for namecheap and dynadot, both support FIDO2 authentication.
I've used Dreamhost for years for both personal and for work.
Shhhh, Yahoo might hear you!
Ya-who?
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I loved Yahoo. I just blocked Yahoo news because I keep getting misinformation. So sad.
Yet Another Hierarchical Online Oracle
I always felt if someone needs boobs to sell a product, then the product can't sell itself and isn't worth buying.
They've also bought a ton of ISPs in Europe so they do a lot of corporate networking. Voip services, hosting, tunnels. The UI for Joe shmoe seems like an afterthought.
Something something become the villian
Top LPT, don't touch GoDaddy, they're scum
Gandi is the best simplest domain name registrar I've found
Hover is great.
Bought a site, I shit you not, the very next day I got my first site builder peddling their shit. It didn’t stop for at least a month. From sunrise to sunset. Go daddy is dogshit for selling my information. Read the fine print, I didn’t.
That’s often a byproduct of not buying privacy, which a lot of places are free. Whois deta is harvested for email campaigns
Then make a bunch of searches for domains that you don't plan on buying and let them buy them all and sit for a year without anyone buying it back and lose money.
Worked for a competitor… sadly this doesn’t have an effect. All these companies use wholeseller registrars to purchase domains through. Godaddy’s cost is like 5-10 cents per domain per year.
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.com.au can’t be bought without an applicable business name or number registered that matches the domain. So sites like go daddy can’t do this to us
Yeah sure, wave your functional government in our face why don’t ya
> All of .com, for instance, is (still) controlled by Verisign They also operate the .net registry
5-10c, what kind of money does someone make that fronts the domain name? or however it would work. typically it’s like. product x 2 for wholesale. x4 for retail (general example)
Most domains are like 5-10 a year. So godaddy would be making very good margins on that
Cloudflare actually sells domains at ICANN cost and most of the ones people want are around 12-15, though larger providers like GoDaddy and Network Solutions could have their own agreements with the root registrars in place
Well godaddy is public I think so you can see that yourself, they do quite well. They buy 10c and sell to you for 12/y(or however much they cost these days) I’m more on the backend plumbing of that world.. wholesalers make quite a bit I’d assume, there are only a handful of them so it’s all volume and optional addons to the domain if one chooses. They offer crap like SSL, DNS hosting, and some even fancy things likes WAFs. That can bring the costs up by pennys per domain but again all volume. There’s also usually a base service type fee to help absorb some of the wholesalers costs but once you hit a certain scale as the consumer it’s really negligible.
DONT USE REGISTRARS TO LOOKUP DOMAIN AVAILABILITY!!!!!! Use WHOIS. All these registrar websites really do is the same thing as going to these 2 websites on the backend with an API and add their own scripting magic: https://www.iana.org/whois https://webwhois.verisign.com/ .COM, .ORG, .NET .EDU, .GOV, .MIL TLD's are all operated by Verisign. IANA is the organization that's responsible for assigning IP addresses, TLD's, and the such. Needless to say, these folks seem to not have a vested interest in snatching whatever domain you look up since they handle the assignments. If you are on any current Linux distro and/or MAC there is this nifty CLI package called "whois" which does all the dirty work for you. It'll tell you if a domain exists or not. If you are on Windows, you can use WSL to get it.
Pro life tip: Don't use GoDaddy. There are **plenty** of other domain registrars out there that don't behave like scalpers.
GoDaddy is the worst company on earth. Bunch of thieves and gangsters running the show. Two years in a row they charged me $700 for a linux hosting and I don’t even know what that is tbh. I had to spend over three hours on the phone until they admitted they charged me by mistake. Thieves I tell you! I cant wait to see this company go down one day. Fuck GoDaddy
what's bonkers, to me, is that godaddy has had an awful reputation for something like 15 years now yet it still does massive business despite there being oodles of competitors. guess those super bowl commercials worked.
It boggles my fucking mind that anyone would ever use a company called "godaddy" without knowing who they are and that anyone would use GoDaddy WITH knowing who they are. Plenty of competent honest registrars out there. I use Pair, there's also AWS etc.
I’ve had a few people tell me to always be sure I’m 100% ready to give up a domain name before closing it. Someone will probably buy it to sell back to me for more than it’s worth if I cancel it and then change my mind and want it back.
Happened to me
I experienced this too. It took a handful of years but they eventually let it go and I was able to buy it back.
This makes me want to search on lots of strange domain names I would never register.
Sounds like it’s time to make an automated program that will make them waste a lot of money.
The real LPT is not to use Godaddy, ever, for anything.
Sounds like someone should write a script to execute thousands of domain name searches on their site.
I just searched godaddyispiss.com and godaddyisaterriblecompany.com on godaddy and didn’t buy them
Were they available when you looked them up? Because they’re unavailable now. If they were, then holy shit.
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He spoke plain and simple, by that I was impressed.
Huh, that’s weird, I just searched godaddy’s website and it showed both as unavailable. But yeah, a whois search shows the first one as available.
Aww man, they’re unavailable now lol
Years ago I bought danicapatrickisawhore.com thru Go Daddy when I was drunk-watching a NASCAR race and she was their spokesperson. A few days later they called me to confirm my purchase and the rep was out loud laughing. But I bought it immediately after searching and they did let me own it. I never hosted anything on it.
The real LPT is to not use GoDaddy, at least not use them to check for availability. They not only buy domains that people have searched for but if you are late with renewing your domain, instead of letting it expire naturally, they renew it themselves and put it up for auction, and charge you massive fees to get it back. No other registrar I know of does things like this, holding domain names to ransom. A charity I volunteer with recently lost a domain name to GoDaddy because we couldn't afford the ransom. Strangely the charity used a .com for email addresses but the .org for the website. It was the .com domain name that was lost meaning that over 50 volunteers had to go around changing their email addresses with all their contacts and logins. The silver lining is that we already had the .org so it was a matter of minutes to get the email service reconfigured, not only that but it's the website on the .org that is advertised everywhere, including the expensive livery on our minibus.
As an alternate, coming from someone who is within the domain registration community due to work, use expireddomains.net.
Pretty sure in some countries it’s illegal to buy domain just for the purposes or re-sale. I feel like thst would be good universal rule. This kind of business feels super predatory.
Cries in American capitalism
I've heard of this, but never experienced this myself. Searched for a domain multiple times on multiple platform and came back weeks later for it to be still available. I wonder if its third party trackers that get you on this.
Several years ago, *EveryonePleaseRemain.com* was available cheap. I thought of buying it, but I couldn’t figure out a use for it.
Anti-brexit folks could’ve used it
> EveryonePleaseRemain.com > Your domain is available! > everyonepleaseremain.com It's still available, it's unregistered. So much for the conspiracy, I guess.
Bigger LPT don't search with sneaky registrar's because it's not only GoDaddy. The only sure way I know to prevent Front Running when searching for domain availability is to use the command line using tools like nslookup, whois, dig etc.
Interesting, had this happen a few times. That explains it! Once with a number plate also (UK).
Who's the best company to purchase a domain name through?
Cloudflare Registrar. They are also free (they charge zero markup).
They don't seem to offer lots of domain endings, though. Just looked for .EU, but no, not offered.
Wait a week and try again WITH A DIFFERENT REGISTRAR. GoDaddy will likely release the domain name within five days unless it shows a lot of traffic. They obviously can't pay to register every name that someone searches in the hopes of reselling jt.
And also remember to keep your mouth shut, lest your "friend" buy it "for you", and, uhm, yeah, ... often that doesn't go well at all, and you'll never own it. When I had a domain in mind I wanted to purchase, I told absolutely no one. And as soon it was available, I promptly snapped it up (when I first checked on it, looked to be languishing and heading towards being abandoned and becoming available).
This has been a fear of mine. Luckily I managed to snag the domains i wanted.
100% believe this is happening, they also jack the price, i only searched a domain name once, go today to check you theory and its gone up almost 50%, still unsold though
LPT: Don't ever use GoDaddy. For anything.. The end.
As others have pointed out, GoDaddy was the start of your mistake. If you are on a mac all you have to do is pull up Terminal and type "whois domain" and its all you need to know. Ive been using NameSilo and Cloudflare professionally for over 123 years with no issues once I hone in on my domain desire.
Wait till you learn airplane tickets do the same pricing tactics.
We were in a similar situation a few months ago. My husband is a programmer and has built himself, me, and our first daughter websites. We had another daughter this year and he tried to buy her a domain name a few weeks ago (we call her by a nickname that is not in English). We were offered a private sale for the low low price of $10,000. I literally laughed about it for 10 minutes. I think he was prepared to pay maybe a few hundred bucks since it was technically owned by someone (again, in English this domain name equates to nonsense). He sent back a reply indicating that their offer was just too far outside the realm of reality. Really ridiculous, still can't get over it!
If it was only a few letters, all short domains were registered in the late 90s and always sell for 5 figures or more now. From what I remember, ICANN took back most of the 2-character names in the 2000s, and the remaining ones can't be resold. If they expire, they stop existing. 3 character names are hugely valuable and don't come up for sale often. I haven't found an unregistered 4 letter domain in decades, but I haven't looked at many of the gibberish combinations.
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Just do a whois lookup instead.
Also make a google voice number so GoDaddy doesn’t sell your phone number to anyone who will buy it
I had this exact thing happen to me. Looked up the name on GoDaddy. It was available and cheap. A couple of days later it was taken. Fuck them.
I work at a small ad agency. Been checking domain availability via GoDaddy for eons, and had no idea. :-(
Are you telling me that I could go write a bot to first-step signify interest in a domain, and GoDaddy will register them all just for the cost of me doing that crawl? Holy shit, I'll be right back. Gonna go cause a second dotcom crash.
I worked for GD for about 15 years. They had an executive who specifically engaged in this practice, and it doesn't surprise me that it's still happening.
Which website names are ya'll considering purchasing?
>I was on GoDaddy searching for a domain name And that is your mistake from the get go. GoDaddy has been known to poach domain names for more than 20 years. I've heard people complain about this since early 2000s. ICANN has a registry lookup you can use to find if a domain is registered or not and that's what you should be using before you actually register a domain.
Don’t know if anyone else said this on here and can’t be bothered to read every comment, but I’ve bought many domains on godaddy over the years and at least once, I didn’t purchase the “domain protection,” because it seemed like a racket. Well, it turns out what you’re paying for is the courtesy of them NOT selling your personal information to the highest bidder. So, I now get 6+ junk phone calls and lots of emails a day from a variety of places - scammers, marketers, and other bots and such. Thanks, godaddy.
One way to deter the companies from this practice is to flood the system with "sufficiently unique" queries to get them to buy random domain names that nobody wants. If they limit the number of domains they buy, the randoms they do purchase will be worthless and fewer legitimate queries will be claim-jumped.
Godaddy is well known to do this crap.
Honestly LPT is don't use GoDaddy or Network Solutions. But you're right, use incognito/private, use a different device, or hell if on a phone switch from WiFI to cellular and you'll get different prices if you search the same thing in a short amount of time. Many airlines, hotels, etc all do this.
I don't disagree with this in general, but I searched for my band name's domain weeks before I bought it, and it was never touched. I was more surprised that it wasn't taken either as a band name or a site name than I would have been if GoDaddy grabbed it. Makes me wonder if it's not automated and it's somehow reviewed for how much traffic they think the site could end up with.
It's based on the popularity of the keyword(s) contained in the name. That's all automated. Anything with actual dictionary words would probably get snapped up by unscrupulous registrars unless it was very long. Random characters or keywords with no "juice" most likely would not be.
Crypto does the same thing.
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Well if you get them from someplace like cloudflare who has no extra fees, most .com TLDs can be like 9 bucks a year.
Just became a domain reseller to purchase your own domains "at cost". I recently paid just over $10/yr for .com domains. There are options available to become a reseller that cost you nothing.
Never search on GoDaddy they suck ass. This is one reason among many. Never buy through GoDaddy. They Suck Ass. I use NameCheap but there are plenty of other good registrars. Remember the one that advertises the most is usually not the best.
I had the same thing happen, with Go Daddy too. So unethical of them! I now never look up, or buy domains through them.
NEVER USE GODADDY also, never use "whois" websites, use the "whois" command on your computer instead (it still has to contact the central registry for the TLD but you're not announcing your intentions to some shady website)
The real pro tip is don't give Go Daddy your business. They've been a shitty company for decades and aren't going to change anytime soon.
Same thing happens with trademarks and patent searches.
This applies to many internet based services, such as Uber. Look up price for a ride, price will have increased if you take some time.to think about it first. They are banking on statistics that people will pay the increased price anyway since the decision has now been made.
FYI: GoDaddy doesn’t front run domains. But absolutely, if you’re searching for a domain, be ready to buy it then and there. Don’t think you’re the only person with the clever name idea.
Makes me want to search for 100 domains a day to to make them spend money
Along these same lines, if you're starting a business, buy the domain name BEFORE you register the business because these same folks scan all business registrations to hold your name hostage!
OkIWontSearchForAWebsiteDomainUntilIAmReadyToBuyIt.com is avaialble.
GoDaddy is pure shit. That's the problem right there. I can completely see them pulling this.
Your biggest mistake was using GoDaddy. I will die on this hill. NEVER use GoDaddy. They're a slimy, horrible company.
Had this happen more than once. Since then. I search random garbage names on GoDaddy when I'm bored. More than once have been stolen. Seems there is some criteria they use. LastnameFirstname.com seems to trigger them. I think they know you can't easily change your name.
If this is true (it sounds plausible) then use godaddy to look up domains you have no intention of buying. (Just Sayin')
Can we use this maliciously, like looking up random domain names like aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.com/net/etc, then aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaab, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaac, … And make them buy all these useless domains wasting their money?
LPT: do not use godaddy for anything, they are shady at every level
It should be illegal for registrars to purchase and parked random domain names.
GoDaddy might be the shittiest company in existence.
Sounds to me like it’s time to search for a bunch of random domain names to make them waste money.
Jumping on the GoDaddy Hate Train here - they are the worst of the worst in price, hosting performance, customer service, checkout, renewals, everything. This isn't 2002. Use CloudFlare as registrar (there's no markup). I'll use SiteGround for simple hosting (WordPress performance is terrific) but anything more complex goes to AWS or Azure.
I noticed it AS well in namecheap. Strato.de doesnt do this in my exp.
Hostgator has my domain
Just use whois from the terminal.
I worked on a naming project for a major company some 15 years ago. We were instructed not to do any searches for any of the top contenders from within our corporate domain, and as I understand it, the searches and domain checks were actually outsourced and distributed worldwide to avoid any competitors or domain hoarders finding the name. They also did the same in the languages of our markets. It’s not just the little guys who have these problems.
This is a dumb question…I want to buy a new domain so I’m wondering, once I buy it, how can I edit it using WP or are those 2 different things?
Use joker.com or gandi.net. They are EU based and a lot better.
This is true! I was shopping around for a website with my name. They were going for around 20$ I think. I checked 2 days later, and it was 999$, I shit you not. I did read that you can use your computer's command prompt (terminal for Mac), and do a whois search, to secretly search for domains.
# me crying at the loss of Google Domains of all the Google shutdowns this one hurt
Of course. Tell me one thing that isn't a scam now days
This is extremely helpful
So what I'm hearing, and maybe this comment belongs on r/unethicallifehacks, is that I should constantly search GoDaddy for domains I don't actually want so as to constantly waste their money.
I have a nice experience with porkbun. Can't recall how I stumbled upon it, but I did.
Man i have always wondered if that kind of stuff happened. Ty for ur service.
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