[happytoexplain]

Just a few weeks ago I moved from Namecheap to Porkbun. That's not an advertisement - I simply Googled popular registrars. But it is an indictment of Namecheap. They are going the way of GoDaddy. Please move away from them immediately. They are shifting to short-term strategies (high prices, immoral data practices, etc).

Edit: Apparently they were bought by private equity just weeks before I noticed something was wrong. Not a coincidence, I'm sure. We need to legally destroy private equity takeovers. They are pure evil and nothing but a negative force, at least in the USA.

[rickydroll]

Is it time to change registrars already? I fled Gandi a while ago because of private equity fuckery. And now I need to go somewhere else. Who won't adopt enshitification-as-a-business-plan for a few years?

No wonder people are leaving tech to go be goat farmers.

[NetOpWibby]

Gandi got EXPENSIVE which is unfortunate because they often had TLDs no one else had first. I'm still with them for a single domain. Once Cloudflare supports .se, I'm outta there!

[em-bee]

namecheap has had a mixed reputation for several years now. when i took over responsibility for a domain registered on namecheap the first thing i did was move it off there (to gandi, because that was before gandi was sold) because i heard some problematic stories about namecheap. it baffles me everytime i see namecheap recommended.

[happytoexplain]

Namecheap was one of the popular alternatives to GoDaddy, recommended by techies. That's changed now, but I'm not surprised people haven't all caught up to its new reputation.

[js2]

> Who won't adopt enshitification-as-a-business-plan for a few years?

I don't have a crystal ball, but NearlyFreeSpeech was recommended to me in 2010 and I've been using it since 2012. I don't think it's changed at all in that time.

https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/services/domains

https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/services/respect

[acidburnNSA]

Their FAQ says they use Public Domain Registry to actually buy the domains. They are a wholly owned subsidiary of The Endurance International Group, who is owned by Clearlake Capital, a PE firm! So while it may shield you a bit, if you're moving from namecheap just to avoid PE then that may not be the most obvious choice.

https://faq.nearlyfreespeech.net/q/difftos

https://publicdomainregistry.com/about-us/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearlake_Capital

[js2]

Thanks for digging into this. Somehow I'd never checked. I moved my domains to porkbun since I wasn't otherwise using NFS for anything else.

[happytoexplain]

I use NFS for hosting, and I agree they are still good. But it's just a matter of time. Always be ready to move.

[chrismarlow9]

I am also looking for something that will last for a good while.

[dgudkov]

What makes you think the same can't happen with Porkbun?

[happytoexplain]

I never implied that. It seems unrelated to what I said.

[dgudkov]

The question remains without your implication.

[fsuts]

It may, but what’s that got to do with moving away from namecheap?

Namecheap is not even cheap for names anymore, their renewal prices made me transfer elsewhere