[duggan]

iwantmyname was bought out by a conglomerate, “Team Internet[1]”, a few years ago.

Prices went up, service went down. I’d recommend moving your domains when you can (Porkbun have been good, though I haven’t had any incidents like this).

Best of luck!

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Internet

[betteryet]

Same thing with Gandi, which is a shame. Domain renewal price silently went up 3x or so last year after getting acquired.

[colejohnson66]

Check out Porkbun.

https://porkbun.com/

[bovermyer]

How is Porkbun compared to Namecheap?

[no_wizard]

Porkbun is best on the market at this point.

Namecheap I find is less easier to use and sometimes higher cost over time. I also haven’t had reliable domain renewal service from them when I used them.

Granted this is all a few years back. I was at Cloudflare until this year when I switched to Porkbun and I’ve been very happy

[pengaru]

I tried porkbun after comments like yours when one of my domains needed renewal, but had to transfer out after one year when their payment gateway refused to work and was very poorly handling the situation while my domain risked expiration.

dynadot.com has been superior in my experience.

[derefr]

Why'd you switch away from Cloudflare['s registrar]?

[no_wizard]

Nameserver lock in. While I use Cloudflare right now for most things, I value the decoupling. Cheap way to make sure that my services aren't in total control of my domain.

[qingcharles]

I use Spaceship now for everything, which is actually Namecheap but cheaper.

[username135]

I like namecheap. It serves its purpose.

[adastra22]

I also like supporting a Ukrainian company. Only downtime I had was when their offices were being bombed, and they were quick to both restore services and make their infrastructure resilient to future such… interference.

[xproot]

Which company?

[franciscop]

Yup, I've been migrating out of Gandi because of this, I was okay with up to ~50% over the base price but I'm seeing 100%~200% overcharge. I did have to let go of one domain though since Cloudflare doesn't support .jp yet

[robin_reala]

In the same way that “Don’t be evil” has disappeared, Gandi’s “No bullshit!” is no longer a thing.

[kmlx]

does anyone here use cloudflare as a registrar?

i’m interested in any potential negatives.

[thomasfortes]

You're stuck with cloudflare nameservers¹, so if you want to change nameservers you need to transfer them to other registrar, how much of a deal breaker this is is up to you, to me is project dependent.

1. Section 6.1 of https://www.cloudflare.com/domain-registration-agreement/

[red-iron-pine]

> 6.1 Nameservers. Registrant agrees to use Cloudflare’s nameservers. REGISTRANT ACKNOWLEDGES AND AGREES THAT IT MAY NOT CHANGE THE NAMESERVERS ON THE REGISTRAR SERVICES, AND THAT IT MUST TRANSFER TO A THIRD PARTY REGISTRAR IF IT WISHES TO CHANGE NAMESERVERS.

there are very few parts of that contract in all caps, but that's one of them :/

[iosjunkie]

That's annoying. For some use cases, not a big deal. But I have used the AWS Route 53 'alias' functionality on a number of occasions and that requires the use of Route 53 nameservers.

[seanwilson]

I've helped move a few domains from Gandi to Cloudflare. The move was relatively straightforward (couldn't get the Gandi records export to import into Cloudflare so had to do it manually...), and the new domain and renewal prices are lower.

To replace Gandi email (that Gandi went from free to ramping up the pricing for when they were taken over), Cloudflare offer email forwarding so you can receive incoming mail from a custom domain to e.g. a gmail account, and for sending mail you can pair this with a custom SMTP service like https://www.smtp2go.com (1000 emails/month on the free tier).

Apart from that, DNS is something I barely touch for years sometimes so I don't find much difference between registrars beside their pricing and how much you can trust them.

Being able to point your Cloudflare nameserver records would be nice though, so worst case you'd need to move everything if another registrar had some services you were interested in? Would be curious to know more about how common this scenario comes up and why.

[atkailash]

You should check out something like DNSControl. Makes switching or having multiple easy. I have mine going to a bind zone file and cloudflare, and use the bind file for Unbound

[gregoryl]

FYI, you are hellbanned (your comments are auto [dead], very few people will see them). Email [e-mail] to fix it :)

[technotarek]

I’ve got about twenty domains listed with them. No problems after 2-3 years, but I do wonder whether it’s a good idea to use the same vendor for DNS and domain registration.

[indigodaddy]

Normally a registrar isn't going to have top tier DNS infra so you may as well separate, yes. Exceptions might be CF/Google/AWS/DO, but personally I don't like to use the big guns as registrars in any case. I use Namesilo and never had any issues but on the other hand have never run into any of these sorts of issues either..

[xnyanta]

I am happily using them for all of my domains they support. The problem with Cloudflare registrar is that they flat out don't support many domains/tlds.

[funkdude]

Gandi's prices rose, which sucks, but they were great when I had a dispute with AFNIC over a blocked domain. They won brownie points with that.

[LeftHandPath]

Would you / do you still use them? I like their branding more than PorkBun.

[bambax]

Yes it's despicable. I'm moving my domains from Gandi one at a time and the cost is 4 times less!!

[spondyl]

Oh damn, I didn't know this!

I've used their services for ages and even got to briefly meet the founders once in Wellington who gave a talk on Erlang.

Ah well, while it sucks that the good times may be over, I'm glad the founders got their exit :)

[kaoD]

> I'm glad the founders got their exit

I'm not.

I mean, I am happy for them but this concept of growing a business to an exit is not going well for society as a whole (at least the exits that are in my areas of interest, so I assume it extrapolates to all exits).

Every single business that gets bought out gets instantly enshittified in one way or another, always to the detriment of the customer. Depending on how entrenched it was it takes a different amount of time for people to move on as the new shareholders extract its economical value, but it almost always destroys societal value in the process as the company becomes a shadow of its former self (and hopefully dies, leaving way for the cycle to start again).

I wish there was a way for founders to get rich without the need for an exit, so the business could keep running... but I guess ruthless enshittification is the only way to get rich?

Apologies for the tangent, this is something that's been bouncing in my mind for a while...

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I know that I'm basically being trollbait (around here), by saying this, but I personally believe that the very existence of an "exit plan" is a problem.

A business is supposed to be an ongoing, perpetual enterprise. Maybe it grows, maybe it stays the same, but it isn't something that should (in my opinion) be designed as a product, in itself, with a "sell by" date. If it gets brought up, then that's [maybe] good, but it shouldn't actually be in the business plan. It's just a random lifecycle event. We can plan to be ready for it, but it shouldn't be a corporate goal.

It's quite possible to do that. I worked for nearly 27 years, for a company that is over 100 years old. I think the world's oldest company is over 1,400 years old, and just got brought out, for the first time, about 10 years ago.

[babuskov]

Agreed. Promising stuff like "Hey we built this because everything else is bad" and then years later selling it to a company that turns it bad is somehow even worse than classic bait and switch.

[kiba]

Sell it to the employees? It won't be lucrative to selling it to someone with more cash than sense, but it may be more likely to preserve the value. There's no guarantee of course, and there's so little experience societal wide in running an employee co-op.

[robertlagrant]

There are a few employee co-ops, but I don't know how good they are. Over here in the UK we have the Co-op[0], which is a national chain of small local shops. It's a consumer co-operative rather than a workers' cooperative, though. I don't know how well it works, or what its challenges are, but it definitely exists.

[0] https://www.co-operative.coop

[bluehatbrit]

The Co-op (referred to in [0]) is also a bank, funeral directors, insurer, and solicitor! They're really quite successful to be honest.

Nationwide is another example of a successful cooperative as well (large UK bank, particularly in the mortgage space). They're customer and employee owned I believe, my wife and I got £200 last year as a profit share for being customers.

I'm a huge fan of the model, but it's difficult to get going. I think they're also more expensive to run as their operations tend to be a little more complex.

[Angostura]

Don’t forget John Lewis/Waitrose and the excellent Richer Sounds:

Richer Sounds boss in £3.5m staff giveaway https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48269171

[fallingknife]

Every time that happens it just makes an opportunity for someone else to start a new competitor

[Nullabillity]

It's absolutely tiresome having to keep up with that rat race for everything. And if that principle actually worked then enshittification wouldn't be profitable to engage in to begin with.

[justsomehnguy]

> I mean, I am happy for them but this concept of growing a business to an exit is not going well for society as a whole

The last thing I want is to be a 70 y/o still supporting a registrar. Especially considering the margins.

[dartos]

You can be responsible with an exit and sell to someone you’d believe will keep the company’s mission.

[justsomehnguy]

And what if I can't find anyone? And what if they do 180 a week later?

And it's not like running a registrar is something what can even have a mission other than earning money.

[dartos]

> And what if I can't find anyone?

I would honestly be surprised if that was the case, but if you really tried, then you tried.

You pick who you’d hope would continue the mission OR you try to sell to employees.

> And what if they do 180 a week later?

Then you picked wrong, but the risk of picking wrong is not a good reason to not try to pick correctly.

[fwip]

You can retire or quit, like a normal person. I'm sure you can find a new CEO.

[popcalc]

The Alands Island .AX TLD allows anyone to be their own registrar for free. Only 20euro/year for domains.

[spondyl]

> I mean, I am happy for them but this concept of growing a business to an exit is not going well for society as a whole

Oh yeah, I fully agree with the enshittification sentiment.

Admittedly, a DNS registrar for me personally is something I'd just swap without much thought but I can think of a few services I use where I wouldn't be so loosely coupled from the product if those founders were to exit.

It's a bit paradoxical on my part I think and I do wish we had more lifestyle businesses that don't have to become massive.

Mind you, I would have put iwantmyname in that basket now that I think about it.

[travisgriggs]

Bonus points for using “enshittified”.

[duggan]

Yeah I was a fan, had every domain with them that I could! But once they were acquired their .org renewal prices just did not make sense any more, and they were missing some functionality that I thought was crucial and didn't seem inclined to add it (can't remember what it was now, maybe MFA).

Domains are like car insurance – there's no reward for loyalty, so makes sense to shop around come renewal time.

[thomasfromcdnjs]

aw I've always loved iwantmyname, I haven't noticed any issues other than the price increases.

Though it was the indie/personal feel they had as a registrar, I might look for alternatives.

[donohoe]

+1 for Porkbun

[internet101010]

After so many people in this thread recommended them I decided to make the switch from hover. Their renewal rates have gotten wild.

[raverbashing]

Pro-tip: raise your prices before you need to sell your service to cover expenses

[johnnyanmac]

https://domainincite.com/24614-centralnic-to-pay-3-4-million...

I appreciated the indie feel as well, but I can't blame someone for selling out to the tune of 7 figures when the opportunity arises.

[jen729w]

I see you’re being downvoted on Hacker News for what appears to be an expression of support for founders selling out for millions of dollars.

We have arrived at peak hypocrisy.

[foobarchu]

HN is just a news aggregator. Being a participant does not mean one agrees with YCombinator's business practices, nor does it imply any other requisite opinions.

So I don't see the hypocrisy

[FunnyLookinHat]

Came here to recommend Porkbun - I've had great experience with them and so have all of the friends and family I've recommended.

[esskay]

Another vote for porkbun here. By far one of the best registrars out there right now.