None of Google Domain's features are novel. In fact the article spent most of its time talking about an up-sell. Which isn't to say Google Domain isn't a good product, just that we now should look at price because nothing else seems interesting...
~ Google Domains charges $12/year for .COM, .NET, .ORG.
~ NameCheap charges $10.69/year for .COM, $11.98/year for .NET, and $11.48/year for .ORG. Sometimes with an 18c/year fee tacked on.
~ GoDaddy charges $12.99-13.99 for a .COM but that might increase randomly because they're scumbags.
So my point is that this article claims that everyone is "rushing" to this new product, and while this product doesn't seem "bad" it also isn't exactly market changing. The prices are well within 10% of the market (sometimes higher, sometimes lower) and the features are pretty generic also.
Can someone explain why Google Domains is compelling and not a "me too!" product?
>One of the headaches of setting up a domain is getting the email sorted correctly. Instant integration to Gmail is a nice feature.
name.com has had that for years. Click a button and it configures all the MX records for you and a few CNAMES on top (so you can do stuff like mail.yourdomain.com and calendar.yourdomain.com).
I've been a beta-tester of Google Domains for months, and it's just such a nicer experience than GoDaddy/Namecheap. Particularly with GoDaddy, I feel like there's always a chance I'm going to click on the wrong thing and then get subscribed to some ridiculous service. With Google, it's a clean, transparent, USABLE interface.
I'd encourage people to try it out with a domain and form your own views. As for me, I'm moving all of my domains over to Google (as they get close to renewal.)
Hey jedc - Tamar from Namecheap here. Can you provide insights into the Namecheap experience? I hear the GD side. Would like to know what you mean from ours.
As far as our dashboard, we're building a better user experience, so that's nothing to fret about. I bet you'd agree when it's live that the experience is far more stellar than anything you'd find anywhere else.
Here's some feedback: your 2FA experience is terrible. I appreciate that you use 2FA, but I have to hit the send button multiple times to get a text message every single time on my US mobile phone. After that the form fails 50% of the time.
I also find it frustrating that the domain dashboard has no clear path to my host record settings, which is 90% of the use case for me. I always have to click four or five times to find it.
Otherwise I love the product and pricing, and I will probably continue to use Namecheap in the future.
>The dashboard is, frankly, out of date compared to the UI experience people would expect from us in 2015. We're building that right now.
As a sysadmin who deals with your website a lot, I actually like the current management UI.
Yes, it could use a few tweaks here and there, but overall I quite like it. I hate websites that update their user interface and hurt my ability to get things done.
I use another registrar for some of my .de domains, and their web interface is horrible. I have ongoing issues with their interface not saving changes to my zone because the button says the zone was saved when it wasn't.
tl;dr - The current interface doesn't look nice but it works damn well and I can find everything. Please don't ruin usability in the new version. I care more about functionality than looks.
I wouldn't hold my breath. Namecheap has been saying they will implement a decent 2FA solution for ages now. I got tired of waiting and have been slowly transferring my domains out.
I'm a current namecheap customer as well. When I have to use your management interface for something, I feel like I've been transported back in time to a cpanel interface ca. 1999. I have 25 some odd domains but you can't show them all to me at once unless I expand preferences and select "all" which, by the way, I have to do every time I navigate back to the list.
It's a minor quip (and just one off the top of my head), granted, and otherwise I'm a happy customer, but am very tempted to migrate as well as my domains come up for renewal.
Any screenshots or other indications of where you might be going?
Nope, I haven't even seen it yet. I know that we have a dedicated team working on the domain dashboard exclusively though. And yeah, 1999... close. 2001. :)
The main thing is just clutter. Google Domains has a very simple user interface. It only has the stuff you need. NameCheap and every other registrar has a million links everywhere and all this random crap you never use, making it hard to find the stuff you do need.
NameCheap is better than most, though. The only reason I don't keep a lot of domains with you is price. Your renewal fee's are significantly higher than budget registrars like Dynadot. And when you own a lot of domains, that extra 10% adds up fast.
Like others have said, it's mainly that the interface looks and feels like something circa 2001. I inevitably click into the wrong menu/interface/page for something I want to do, and it just feels inefficient whenever I want to get something done.
I think you just explained peoples problems in your own post. "we're building a better user experience, so that's nothing to fret about". People have the option of "good right now" or "good in the indefinite future", and the decision is pretty obvious. Not saying Namecheap is bad (I use them myself), but the crux of this argument is that GD has the right interface NOW, while Namecheap will have it EVENTUALLY.
Good point, but along the same lines: Namecheap existed as a registrar when I purchased my domains, and GD did not. The interface isn't enough to make me want to go through the hassle of switching.
I use Namecheap for SSL certificates (we have domains and hosting elsewhere).
The old interface within the redesign is jarring and, as you know, that old interface is pretty ugly! I love how it will show me the first 10 in a listing and then offer paging rather than showing 100 or all by default. Will be happy to have that fixed.
Other than that, I have at times found the split between the old (customer) and new (sales) interfaces confusing. I'll often be clicking through SSL info in the sales interface when I'm trying to remember where to get my client SSL lists.
Apart from that, I've been happy with the pricing and when I've needed support via live chat it's been really polite and quick. I recommend Namecheap despite that interface issue.
I would be interested to know Google's plans for selling SSL certs, if any. They have been quite vocal that sites should switch from HTTP to HTTPS at the risk of having their Page Rank downgraded if they don't, but this requires paying for and deploying an SSL certificate.
So, if Google is so interested in seeing universal HTTPS, what sort of SSL cert carrot will they provide to their registered domains to go along with the Page Rank stick?
I've been a Namecheap customer for years and a GD user since the early beta. For my purposes, the only real advantage of GD is the free WHOIS privacy with every registration. I have many domains and this adds up significantly. I will probably move over at next renewal, simply to save money.
Private registration usually costs extra, but not with Google domains. That is a compelling reason to me. I also like the clean interface, some of the other vendors have horrible interfaces.
$15-17 for .com/net/org, but as well as whois protection you also get a 1 year SSL cert. Unlike StartSSL, this includes fee-free revocation. Probably not worth much given that 'Lets Encrypt' is just around the corner, but it's still a respectable gesture. They also have a really good management UI, responsive customer support, free (roundcube) webmail, and DNSSEC management (Namecheap lacks this). Also, they're French, if you're feeling a bit US-wary lately.
It's free on Dreamhost. I don't use them for hosting anymore, but still keep a few domains there. 10 bucks a year for .coms.
The interface is ... almost ok. It's cluttered because it's used for more than just domain registration (think it's cPanel, actually) but the registration part is ok.
With standard registration, the site is registered to you with ICANN. With private registration, it is registered to your registrar and you are provided access. Whois will show their info.
Note that this means you are technically not the owner of the domain, and you may be limited in your ability to transfer it, sell it, or do other things with it. Permissions are limited to what the registrar allows instead of what ICANN allows, although in most cases they give you nearly full control. You'll just have to read their terms if you want to know what you can do with it.
> Note that this means you are technically not the owner of the domain, and you may be limited in your ability to transfer it, sell it, or do other things with it.
This is a myth. ICANN has published requirements on how private registrations must operate; ownership of the domain always goes to the paying owner, not the registrar.
That's interesting. Do you know where the requirements are published? I've read language recently from at least one registrar specifically stating that private registration prevents transfers to other registrars. Maybe this was before these new requirements were published.
Registration without revealing your private information in the whois database. Providers usually put their own details there and forward emails to the end user.
Depending on the registry, it's unavailable or at least against the rules for some tlds.
> Depending on the registry, it's unavailable or at least against the rules for some tlds.
And yet other TLD registries are sensible enough to make privacy the default for private individuals. .EU isn't bad in this regard, and others like .SE even go so far as to hide your name (most only hide your postal, email, telephone)
Frankly I don't know why anyone who can avoid it would want to touch Verisign TLDs with a barge pole... they have the continued gall to keep putting their prices up despite more competition than ever, and fail to raise the bar on basics like whois protection. Even .UK domains can be had for $5/year with registry level whois protection for heavens sake.
If you don't have private registration a whois query on the domain shows the public your name and address. If you do it shows some nominee company instead.
It's an add-on service that domain registrars offer which hides your personal information from the public.
When you register a domain, it's a requirements that you list contact information publicly. Companies usually don't mind doing this but many people don't want to list their home address and phone number for the world to see. Private registration lists a proxy company's information as the contact for the domain and they forward the information to you.
I don't agree. I have a one-man online business, which means I can operate from home to save a lot of money, making it possible to charge less to my customers while still making a profit. I really would rather not have people who are angry at the business, for whatever reason, have easy access to my home address.
There's no requirement that you use your home address for registrars (or the IRS, for that matter). It's also not terribly expensive to get a PO Box/virtual office address, and if you're concerned about privacy then it sounds like it'd be worth it to you.
(d) A vendor conducting business through the Internet or any other electronic means of communication shall do all of the following when the transaction involves a buyer located in this state:
(1) Before accepting any payment or processing any debit or credit charge or funds transfer, the vendor shall disclose to the buyer in writing or by electronic means of communication, such as e-mail or an on-screen notice, the vendor's return and refund policy, the legal name under which the business is conducted and, except as provided in paragraph (3), the complete street address from which the business is actually conducted.
(2) If the disclosure of the vendor's legal name and address information required by this subdivision is made by on-screen notice, all of the following shall apply:
(A) The disclosure of the legal name and address information shall appear on any of the following:
(i) the first screen displayed when the vendor's electronic site is accessed,
(ii) on the screen on which goods or services are first offered,
(iii) on the screen on which a buyer may place the order for goods or services,
(iv) on the screen on which the buyer may enter payment information, such as a credit card account number, or
(v) for nonbrowser-based technologies, in a manner that gives the user a reasonable opportunity to review that information. The communication of that disclosure shall not be structured to be smaller or less legible than the text of the offer of the goods or services.
(B) The disclosure of the legal name and address information shall be accompanied by an adjacent statement describing how the buyer may receive the information at the buyer's e-mail address. The vendor shall provide the disclosure information to the buyer at the buyer's e-mail address within five days of receiving the buyer's request.
(C) Until the vendor complies with subdivision (a) in connection with all buyers of the vendor's goods or services, the vendor shall make available to a buyer and any person or entity who may enforce this section pursuant to Section 17535 on-screen access to the information required to be disclosed under this subdivision.
(g) Any violation of the provisions of this section is a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding six months, by a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars ($1,000), or by both that imprisonment and fine.
they do include private whois, and X subdomains for your domain, X emails available... but game changing would include SSL for all, or free hosting from your google drive - even if it was just static content.
it's a classic google "me too" project. i always get the feeling a lot of google projects come up because someone somewhere is going to be in a high level meeting with execs, and one exec sees something interesting and asks "why aren't we doing this?" and then someone gets to chime in "we already are!" and then they check the box for DONE and never look back.
I think this product is about filling a hole in their lineup of products, more than it is supposed to be innovative itself. The other products are innovative, this supplements those products.
They no longer have to send people across the street for this critical part of hosting and can also easily integrate it with their other services, such as gmail forwarding.
I found the console way better than Gandi, that I was using before. A few other integrations are simpler and quicker, such as creating email forwards. It seems also really well integrated with Google Cloud, but that's only relatively useful :)
Edit: oh, and it's fast to update, especially if you use Google as DNS server as I do.
It doesn't have to be anything more than a "me to" product.
Noting that if you google "domains" they now come up as the 2nd organic link. Nice to be king, eh?
Edit: I own a registrar and we compete with them (if you want to call it that). Obviously I am just referring to the fact that they can instantly rank high with what amounts to a beta product hence the "king" comment. Of course they need to be more than "me to" but that ranking goes a long way in getting them business even if they do very little.
It's not compelling, it just fills the gap, as mentioned. It gives them more info to adjust their search algorithms and weed out bad apples imo. Now they know who has registered even private domains. Make an inadvertent "bad move" on one domain/site, and they will be killing traffic to everything you own.
Namecheap includes WhoisGuard with all their domains for those prices, so they're even LOWER than they seem.
It seems to me that Google is just trying to throw their enormous weight into every space now and it sickens me. This is how we end up with mediocre goods and services... No thanks Google.
They are much, much more than a monopoly at this point.
Not to mention, with Namecheap, GoDaddy or really any other company, you can probably get ahold of tech support 24/7. Good luck getting that from Google... Not that I've tried yet, but my experience with them in the past has been that it's mission impossible to talk to a human being in charge of something there, unless you're trying to hangout with the devs on Google+ or something for smalltalk, which seems to always be available.
Trust in the brand is negated for me by the fact that if this doesn't go well, I know they'll just shut it down or neglect it in a year or two. You want to know your registrar will be there in 10 years.
I pay $8.19/.com with GoDaddy with the Domain Club - nobody can touch their prices, but GoDaddy doesn't have an API and according to their account executives I spoke to, they won't offer one anytime soon.
Because once they have the Credit Card number from a customer it is extremely easier to sell him other products.
That's quite the Google way, they are not looking for the one-time immediate profit, but for customers that will somehow generate income in the long term. It seems it's not working bad for them.
I believe when you add whois guard to NameCheap, it actually comes out a little more than Google Domains, which I think offers free private registration.
No offense to you or your firm, but fuck coupon codes. When I go to Trader Joe's for groceries, I work out what I want to eat and note the prices. When I make one of the occasional trips to Safeway I spend half my time trying to match up what I went there to buy with the particular coupon that's running this week or that my wife added to loyalty card, and more time attempting to decrypt my receipt after I get home to see if I succeeded.
Coupons are just a way of creating psychological anxiety about missing a good deal, an archetypal 'dark pattern'. That sort of thing actively drives people like me away from your business. I know I'm not a mainstream consumer, but IMHO neither is the average domain registrant.
You can say that to any firm then. Given our razor thin profit margins, the pricing is there for a reason. The coupon codes are also there simply to sweeten the deal.
Bear in mind the products we're mostly represent cost a low $10. If we had more wiggle room on pricing, we'd offer low pricing all the time. It's just not feasible for a business like ours to do 24/7.
What I'm saying is that I am more quality- and convenience- sensitive than I am price-sensitive. Not because I'm rich, but because the mental overhead of coupon deals etc. carries a cost that typically exceeds the saving on the coupon. If you make the service sufficiently attractive, you can raise your prices. Admittedly this is a bit challenging when your firm is branded as 'namecheap' in order to attract the most price-conscious consumers, but companies can and do rebrand themselves.
I mean, Google is charging more than you, and it's not like they couldn't win a price war if they were so inclined - they could probably sell domains for $1/year without significant damage to their bottom line. Maybe it's time to get out of the 'cheap' box.
This is partly why they should add "premium" support to the Play Store for developers. Right now their free support for their almost free developer accounts (one time $25 is "free" in this context) is just atrociously bad, and the only way to fix it is to fund more human support personnel.
If I was a developer bringing in several thousand a year on the Play Store, I'd happily shell out $99/year for better support. I imagine I am not alone in that.
I agree. Both devs and Google earn money from Play Store& Admob. Right now with their intelligent algorithms, Google behaves as only devs are earning something.
This has been very much my experience. With paid products I had a Google representative actually on the phone and then following up after to make sure I was set. That payment part is key, and not unexpected given the HUGE number of unpaid people using their service.
I like everything about namecheap, except the name. I hate having to mention their company name to a customer who I'm managing the domain for. It sounds like I'm using a discount service from the bottom of the barrel when that's really not how the company operates.
It would be nice if I could refer to a parent company with a more appealing name.
Funny you should mention that. At my previous employer I needed to buy some domains and our current registrar was simply horrifyingly terrible (like $30 per sub-domain, yes you read that right: sub-domain. Bad support. Payment issues. Their website had issues in general) so when they asked me for alternatives I gave them NameCheap, and the biggest sticking point was the name (and how it didn't sound professional).
We did eventually go with NameCheap and had no issues. But the name definitely does them more harm than good for business users.
It is fascinating that people look past that, it's far worse than Name+Cheap. I imagine it's due to the very large brand recognition they now possess.
When Google first launched and I tried referring friends to use it, as a superior search service to AltaVista et al., friends would give me a look of "what the hell?" due to the name. Back then it wasn't uncommon to see media stories referencing Google's childish / baby sounding name, and how it was a ridiculous name for a service, and that the logo made it come across even worse.
I was actually running a hosting company in 2006 and we had a lot of domains under management at eNom. ENom charged us $8.95 per domain per year, and we charged our customers $15 per year for registration through us. (I went back and looked up our prices back then just for this post.)
Domains haven't been $70 each since around 1996 or so.
Maybe they could rename to Nameaffordable. Amusingly enough, Googling for "nameaffordable" does, in fact, show Namecheap (for me): http://i.imgur.com/BCV8aXG.png
I've been using Namecheap for a few years, and have (for the most part) been pretty happy. Their SSL certificate service is super clunky, but the domain stuff is decent.
+1. As much as I like the idea of managing everything from one place, Google's propensity to have crap-tier support and their other propensity to drop services with little warning means I've got no desire to even try this.
I hadn't considered Google's lack of commitment to their non-core services, but that's a good point. Over the years I've consolidated at Namecheap while several other providers shut down. For me, domains are a long-term service.
I'll stick with NameCheap. All else being equal, I prefer the vendor whose core business is the service I'm seeking. They can neither drop the service nor quintuple the price (a la Google AppEngine). Same reason I use DropBox.
Also an issue is what ends up becoming benign neglect after the new shiny ball is no longer fun. That actually is my biggest concern. Example is google voice which is frozen in time.
With Google's track record of customer service and product abandonment, I can't see doing business with them, except when there is no alternative.
Why would a company as rich as Google want to be in the domain business? It can't ever be material to them. I wouldn't be surprised if Google abandoned this business and transferred domains to, say, Godaddy.
No kidding. The integration with Google Hangouts has been a disaster, and me moving to iOS has made it even worse. Of course, there are no good competitors, so I'm stuck in the holding pattern just hoping some of the ridiculous issues get fixed.
As a long-time Google Voice user, I've been pretty happy with Hangouts integration. Texts, VoIP, cross-platform use... could still use invisibility and a (much) better set of "stickers," but I'm otherwise pretty happy with it and Google ecosystem integration. Admittedly, I'm on a Galaxy Note right now and can't attest to the iPhone experience.
GVoice used to have ATROCIOUS call quality that seems to have been ameliorated by Hangouts. Calls within the US and Canada are still free, voicemail service is second to none, and I'm extremely happy with the texting integration with Hangouts. What else do we want?
Here's a simple thing: I want to SMS a friend. I type in their name in my Hangouts OSX app. It brings up their GTalk interface. No. I want to SMS. In iOS texting or Android texting, all I need to do is search the name (obviously) to call/SMS. In Hangouts I need to know the person's number, so what I do is open the Google Voice app (which is deprecated), search their name, copy/paste their number into Hangouts, and SMS them. Ridiculous.
EDIT: Also, the OSX Hangouts app crashes about every 2 hours with no error message. This is a "known issue" of varying types on Google's site, but customer service with them, well, you know how that is.
Google has the worst customer support I have ever seen.
I once had to transfer a domain for a client that Google had registered with Godaddy. Google blamed Godaddy and Godaddy blamed Google. What a nightmare.
Same experience, I spent probably over an hour trying to get a domain off Google where Google went through GoDaddy. Wasn't able to make it work, gave up. Tried again a year or two later and did it after maybe 45 minutes.
I've been using Namecheap consistently for more than 8 years, in combination with Gandi. Never had any issues.
Recently, I had to contact support for a failed payment (obscure domain extension, some address verification error), and the experience was great. I got it fixed in less than 5 minutes by contacting their live support.
Will keep using them. Their name doesn't do them justice, they are an A player in the domain space.
I have limited experience with Namemcheap, but my most recent experience was not exactly a positive one.
Backstory: I have five .io domains, three that I registered with Gandi, and two with Namecheap. When the expiration period for the Gandi ones was coming up, I got an email saying "the domains expire on xx/xx/xxxx, renew by then if you want them to stay active. If you don't renew, you can renew then any time up to 90 days after the expiration date".
As it happens, I let the three with Gandi expire, and then logged into their dashboard, renewed them about 60 days after the expiration date, end of story.
Compare: I accidentally let the two I had registered with Namecheap expire. "OK" I figured, "not a big deal, they probably have some kind of grace period as well." No. I got an email saying "these domains expired and you cannot renew them through your Namecheap account. You can contact support and they might be able to help you renew them." So, I contact support and they write back and say "we'll try, but it's going to cost $XXX.XX (somewhere around $250, if memory serves) to renew".
OK, to be fair, I did let the domains expire, so I guess I deserve what I get. But the experience renewing an expired domain with Gandi was so much better than what it was with Namecheap, that I've basically written Namecheap off as a registrar to use in the future.
No, all the domains in question were .io. The first few .io domains I registered, I used Gandi, then I thought I might switch to namecheap since they were, well, cheaper. Now, I think I'll stick to Gandi.
My experience with namecheap has been considerably different. Their website for managing my domains never seems to work right and 2 factor auth seems to barely work sometimes. I'm looking forward to moving away from namecheap if it means a better management interface experience.
I started moving all of my domains back to NameCheap from Badger after they raised their prices to what Hover charges.
The domain renewal with whois privacy/guard at NameCheap ends up being a little more than Google Domains.
I keep hoping NameCheap will overhaul their control panel design like they did with their main site.
I will probably end up moving to AWS Route53 or Google Domains or to use their DNS and a clean/modern interface and simpler pricing (include whois privacy).
I always have a hard time understanding why price is such a motivator for people in domain registration, when we're talking about differences of a few dollars a year, and when a bad registrar can screw you over royally. I mean, sure, if you have thousands of domains, it matters. But if you have a handful, isn't it worth paying a bit more if needed to get a better registrar? Not really aiming this directly at the parent; it's just that it seems like price is the main thing that ends up being discussed every time this topic comes up.
But really all registrars boil down to two "types" the sub-$20/year ones (which are like 90% of the market) and then the $1K+/year ones which bundle in all kinds of brand protection products and domain protection stuff (e.g. Mark Monitor).
Neither Google or Name Cheap are different enough for price to be a deciding factor, but NameCheap has a better track record than Google in this specific space. GoDaddy is someone I wouldn't touch even if they were cheaper, I hate their bullshit (e.g. upsell, misleading checkout, misleading prices, etc).
If you could pay $5 extra a year and get better service, if it was a business website I'd definitely consider it, but for personal shit I wouldn't, and in general there is no way to spend just $5 or similar more a year and get any marked improvement.
The only thing which might be an upgrade is $12/year for the registrar and then $6~7 for Route53 on top. That's a nice improvement for an extra few bucks.
Not to derail too much, but I have worked with MarkMonitor, and their price is FAR less than $1k/yr per domain. Much closer to the $20 end, though I'm sure it depends on the specific deal, and I'd guess they probably have some minimum number of domains they'd want to manage for it to be worth it to them.
I agree with you AlyssaRowan. I also moved some domains away from NameCheap/eNom when they didn't provide DNSSEC support.
I did move a couple of domains to Google Domains. While they do not provide DNSSEC in their DNS hosting, they do support DNSSEC records (DS) if you host your domains somewhere else that supports DNSSEC signing.
The last thing I trust Google with is my domains. They can outright ban or disable you just like with any of their products and not offer support or explanation.
So when somebody steals your domain, do you actually get to talk to a person at Google to help resolve the matter, or is it like every other customer service experience they offer?
I have no idea why this is US only other than Google just being extremely lazy. Previously I've always understood why companies couldn't release products internationally or at least in their own continent when it came to rights for content, however I really don't see any reason for this one.
If it's an issue of not wanting to deal with certain country top-levels then so be it and simply offer the ones you've implemented already and add in more top levels in the future.
Don't waste your time on this service. I registered for it years ago while it was still in beta, and it's been nothing but a trainwreck.
The latest debacle: I can't renew my domain. They started sending me notifications a few months ago that my domain was expiring because my credit card is out of date. I can't sign in because of a redirect bug. There's no support to reach out to, and requests for help on forums have gone unanswered.
Alternatively, dnsimple has been nothing but charming to work with.
I haven't actually tried following through with it, since I don't have any support queries myself, but that certainly /looks/ like a way to directly talk to support.
I can confirm that the contact us does connect you to support; usually Google provides at least adequate support options for paid services (e.g., Domains). I spoke with someone over Chat that was surprisingly knowledgeable, and even gave me the heads up that the new features would be rolling out soon (this was a couple weeks ago)
I've been using Google Domains for several months now. I like the simplicity of their user interface and I trust Google to be good at DNS. My biggest complaint is that they don't support very many TLD's. I'd prefer to have all my domains in one place, but they don't support .co yet.
I was a beta tester as well. All the reasons you listed apply. Even before they opened for the masses I have moved all my domains in. Some extra reasons:
- Simple integration if you are on Google apps (I am grandfathered, using their, old, standard, free Gapps.
- Customer support was superb and instant, via chat, and it was great. The person knew what he was doing.
Easily buy a domain, have it automatically hooked into the Google Apps suite of products, and easily hook it up with a select number of third party vendors like Wix or Shopify.
That's what this is about. The ability to create something cool, run a business, without having to worry as much about the technical bullshit.
Great product, and for the ease of use it is well worth $12/year. And yea, I know, $2 more a year than namecheap... but $2/year is well worth the time it takes to setup a domain (even if it is only a 2 minute ordeal).
The techcruch article points out that there is no option yet to buy a domain and do a one-click connect to Google Apps, but it does, in fact, connect to Google Apps (though the process has about 25 more steps than would be ideal):
I'd expect that the integrations with things like Google Apps will improve before it goes GA rather than open beta -- one of the key reasons to have this service has to be to support one-stop shopping for Google Apps and/or Google Cloud setups.
Soon enough you will store your website entirely on SERPs. Instant load times will mean better user experience. A to Z solution will ease up developers life.
I've been using this for a few months now and it's been great. The cool thing is that they allow you to solve the problem of having domain emails pointing to your personal emails so for example blahblah@joeblau.com -> josephblaus@gmail.com. The only challenge with this is that I use Cloudflare as my CDN and Google's email redirects work if you use Google's nameservers.
> The cool thing is that they allow you to solve the problem of having domain emails pointing to your personal emails so for example blahblah@joeblau.com -> josephblaus@gmail.com
Am I missing something...? I didn't realise this was a problem - I've never used a domain provider that doesn't let you do this. I currently use Namecheap, which certainly do.
The painful thing I've found with this is that it leaves myname@gmail.com as a valid email address. So there I am signing up for other services with myname@mydomain.com and meanwhile some typo-ridden fool in the US keeps signing up myname@gmail.com instead of theirname@gmail.com and I end up receiving their hotel receipts, iTunes receipts, etc.
Very few of those services have a good way of dealing with "No, that wasn't their email address they signed up with, it was an alias of mine". And while for some of these, I could presumably click the "forgot password" link and go into their account, I'm not sure that would be legitimate and wouldn't know what their correct email was to change it.
I wish I could somehow post this in really large fonts here that a domain name is a service where you actually need support, "real support". When your account (which is linked to dozens of other services and the reason can be an algorithmic false alert in context of any of those services) is disabled you again need support.
And customer support is something Google doesn't believe in.
I'd never in a lifetime want to depend for something as critical as domain registrations on a company that can't be bothered to answer its customers. Google has an absolutely horrible record when it comes to end user support and if there is one thing you want from your registrar then it is that they actually answer their phones and email.
They have been around for years. Their deisgn is pretty standard for a domain name seller, if you want to talk about web2.0 and cliche have a look at the Google Domain website. Also, .net is the correct tld to use in this situation....
The best feature is that it's not GoDaddy, or NameCheap. Having registered hundreds of domains, dealt with all kinds of customer service and had to perform numerous operations for my domains the user experience matters and though Google hasn't has the best track record with UX they certainly do invest in it more heavily than GoDaddy & NameCheap.
I keep thinking of Peter Theil's analysis of monopolies trying to say they're just a competitor in a larger market. There doesn't seem to be anything special here in this offering from google. As a google developer I wonder if the difference will be in more integration and better API access compared to someone like godaddy.
I think integration with other Google products is the main reason they are venturing here. It can offer one click integration to google apps, app engine, cloud compute and blogger. If they offer free google apps for personal use, I think it can be a major selling point.
I doubt they'll go down that road again (I' ma free Gapps user - grandfathered in). It's also the most terrible experience these days. I still don't have Inbox by Gmail or the ability to view my orders in Google Wallet.
> I' ma free Gapps user - grandfathered in ... So much for being an early adopter :|
You, like me, was an early adopter which provided the platform with traction when it was new.
Now the platform is proven, established and popular.
From an economic point of view we're now merely free-loading leeches, and I honestly don't find it reasonable to expect that we should be given the best treatment at the expense of others.
Google now has a shitload of paying customers, and they are getting prioritized. And I'm completely fine with that. Our reward is that unlike others, we're allowed to go free-loading!
I've noticed too that I'm not getting features and upgrades paying customers get. That's Google trying to give me an incentive to convert to a paid account, because obviously Google wants to convert us free-loaders to paying customers too. And I'm fine with that as well.
Just don't act entitled because you were the first one to sign up for a free product. You don't deserve anything in return for that.
Agreed. On the website, it mentions that it'll integrate with Blogger, Shopify, Squarespace, Weebly and Wix. Integration with App Engine would be a big selling point.
Does anyone know if they support dynamic DNS on subdomains and is it RFC2136 compliant? For example, I have mydomain.com pointing to a standard server, but home.mydomain.com updated from pfSense to point to my dyn IP on namecheap.
As usual with Google, technical details are scant.
The help center page has a lot of info. It does support sub domain support. I don't use it so I'm not sure it follows the spec you mentioned or not but it seems to have a fairly simple protocol.
I'm surprised that so far nobody has mentioned DNSimple in this conversation. They seem the closest to what Google Domains functionality is - domain registration and then easy integration with external services.
They're are already a certificate authority (they issue their own certs for google.com, etc.) and do lots of interesting "tricks" like only issuing them for 3 months at a time so they can roll them over faster as things like SHA1 get deprecated.
You're correct. I was wondering what we could deduce from that 10m number since Google felt it necessary to mention it on the landing page. It would tell us who they intend to market this to. It is a bit weird to restrict DNS requests like that. Or maybe they don't want people to abuse their service to create URL forwarders or some such. I suppose unlike startups, for a company like Google, anti-abuse mechanisms need to be baked into the design/feature set.
More importantly, what happens when you exceed that limit? I don't see any mention of per-request pricing, so will they just shut off your DNS if you exceed the quota?
Funny, I had just switched over my last GoDaddy domain yesterday to start using a different nameserver and finally move it off their system entirely. Might have to give this a try.
I'm just glad Godaddy has some real competition! Get ready
for Godaddy to bring back discounts for annual renewals.
hell, you might get a call from Danika personally?
Ive had beta access for a while now and havent had any problems yet. The main reason why I switched my domain to google was how seamless it works with gmail.
Does anyone know anything about migrating a domain to Google Domains if that domain was originally published through Blogger, then migrated to Google Apps?
I don't think so, I see it on both my work and home computers, both of which are running OS X. Also to clarify I'm talking about the CrunchBase widget on this TechCrunch article, not the entry on the actual Crunchbase website.
Don't use it Google is known for not having great customer support. They like to build big and make you support it. Just like the Google Play store. Notice there is no phone number on the site? Not good if you are doing real business and need to get something fixed ASAP.
This is a welcome news. I've had it with name.com and it's horrible webmail. Unable to send email for weeks, support replying with unhelpful answers every 48 hours. Have to pay for whois privacy and bunch of other stuff most registrars give you for free.
....in before "Google has decided to end support for this product; your 10-year-registered domains that last longer than next month will be moved to GoDaddy."
(edit: actually, they'd never voluntarily transfer your domain; they'd force you to transfer it, at some kind of discount. suffice to say i am less than confident)
~ Google Domains charges $12/year for .COM, .NET, .ORG.
~ NameCheap charges $10.69/year for .COM, $11.98/year for .NET, and $11.48/year for .ORG. Sometimes with an 18c/year fee tacked on.
~ GoDaddy charges $12.99-13.99 for a .COM but that might increase randomly because they're scumbags.
So my point is that this article claims that everyone is "rushing" to this new product, and while this product doesn't seem "bad" it also isn't exactly market changing. The prices are well within 10% of the market (sometimes higher, sometimes lower) and the features are pretty generic also.
Can someone explain why Google Domains is compelling and not a "me too!" product?