At work we use RapidSSL (a division of GeoTrust) for a handful of certs. Last night I received an email with a banner warning me, "Your certificate is ABOUT TO EXPIRE". The email goes on to list the expiration date as "Oct 12, 2011". Four months is certainly generous notice, but I've always taken this as a simple marketing attempt to maintain customer loyalty.
Usually I take these emails as tickler reminders and delete the first couple. When I eventually decide it's time to renew, I pull up the site by typing the URL into the browser. Upon reading this article, I wondered whether following the link in the email would result in a different pricing structure. As it turns out, the answer is yes, though after playing around, it doesn't appear to have anything to do with the email link.
The first page of RapidSSL's order form handles both new orders and renewals with a pair of radio buttons. Another section of the form allows you to specify the validity period from one to five years. The prices appear alongside the choices, and are currently the same for both initial orders and renewals.
First I visited "www.rapidssl.com" and clicked the "buy/renew" link for a single domain cert. I got an order form with the following prices for 1-5 years:
49, 86, 122, 159, 196
Then I pasted the link from the email (which contains a fairly simple query string that does not appear to have a unique identifier in it) into a different browser. I clicked the "buy/renew" link for a single domain cert, I get the same form with the following prices:
79, 138, 198, 257, 316
It's interesting to me that the difference in price actually increases as the validity period increases:
30, 52, 76, 98, 120
Still more interesting, after resetting the browser and pulling up "www.rapidssl.com" directly, the prices are completely different:
29, 51, 72, 94, 116
I tried the email link one more time and got the 49-86-122 pricing again. Then I tried it one more time and got 19, 33, 48, 62, 76. So clearly RapidSSL is varying their prices on the fly, presumably to gain insight as to what people are willing to pay. I was ready to claim the link in the email yielded higher prices, but that seems not to be the case. So I guess after all that, this isn't particularly interesting. I'll definitely hit the site a few times when it comes time to purchase though.
Unfortunately the pricing structure for a wildcard certificate never seemed to vary.
For what it's worth, I think it's fairly common practice these days. Not long ago I booked a car rental (I think on Avis.com). The first time I got a quote, I didn't book it right away as I was shopping for better prices elsewhere. When I came back the quoted price went up, and it basically went up every time I tried to get a new quote. I had to use Tor to get it to give me the original cheap price.
HAHAHAHA. Well, it actually gets worse. If you cancel the auto renewal, then go into Google and search for "ssl certificate" you'll get a wonderful ad (at the very top) that is for $12.99 (with the quote "why pay more"). You can then buy that cert and it gives you the exact same thing as the renewal (admittedly a bit more work, but is the convenience of auto-renewal really worth $37?).
Been doing this for the last 3 years: they are TRULY retarded for using such a scheme but hey! It catches some people, so I guess tactics like that got them the $2bn "investment" from the friends at Silver Lake.
I never understood why GoDaddy has such a monopoly-like status - even in the startup scene. I've only used their services once (because someone transfered a domain to me and prefered to do this as GoDaddy-internal transfer), but the first thing I did was transfering the domain to another registrar (the one that I typically also use for my other domains).
Reasons why I wouldn't use GoDaddy:
GoDaddy is not really one of the cheapest registrars.
I find their pricing "tactics" (as also mentioned in the article) very questionable.
Their whole website isn't just really appealing to me (I know, very subjective).
I use Dreamhost for all my domain registrations and most DNS. Great admin interface compared to the competition, still very cheap, domain transfer codes plainly visible, no unlocking or calling or any of that. You just transfer it away. They are the most honest of the bunch and you can move each part of your service off them as you outgrow it.
Easiest to setup a domain for Google Apps too, just click a button.
Every so often I have to do some minor maintenance work on a GoDaddy account, I can't stand their interface.
I may have said it elsewhere, but I'm a big fan of DirectNIC even though they are double GoDaddy's price. There interfaces are really clean, and any time I've transferred or sold a domain it has been an absolute breeze. And back in the day, when all the major registrars were shutting down their web-based WHOIS tools (NetSol et al), DirectNIC always kept their WHOIS tool open which always bought them a lot of good will in my book. (I wasn't aware of command line tools like 'whois' and 'nslookup' yet...)
'Scam' is a really strong word and denotes an illegal action.
While these are shady practices, they are not illegal.
And the 1-month ahead renewal is not shorting you of a month. It's preventing you from getting into a situation where your cert expires because your CC details were invalid and it took to long to replace them. It also gives you time to configure your server, etc.
They are hardly the first company to offer a different initial price than the renewal, either. I hate that tactic, and watch for it, but it's not even unethical unless they don't tell you about it.
I had the exact same thing happen to me. One of many reasons why I've not only stopped using GoDaddy for myself but also why I've decided to REFUSE to work with them for my clients. If my clients use GoDaddy, they can either get off GoDaddy or find another developer. Sometimes you have to force morality upon those without. :P
Okay, I use godaddy for domains and DNS. Never had a problem with them. But these 'godaddy sucks' posts and the godaddy buyout are starting to worry me. Who would you recommend as a replacement for registration and DNS?
I can't recommend DNSimple enough (http://dnsimple.com). Pretty straight forward pricing, nice one-click integration with stuff like Google Apps and they'll even give you a discount if you transfer domains off GoDaddy.
I've used http://www.1and1.com/ for registration ($10/yr normal prices) for some time. The UI is awful, but aren't they all, and I basically never need to use it once it's set up, so it's OK by me.
The commonly named alternatives seem (all for .com):
Namecheap $10
Name.com $10
Moniker ???
DNSimple $14
Gandi 12,00 € (~ $17)
Joker.com $12.80
Name registration is a commodity. I go with the cheapest provider.
http://www.startssl.com/ will give you a free ssl certificate for a single domain (actually, they'll give you one that covers a domain plus a single subdomain). Handy if you want to setup your own mailserver somewhere: the root certs are in all the main browsers & mail clients. You'll need to have your (web|mail)server serve up the intermediate cert as well as the leaf cert which can be a slight pain to setup, but apart from that it all works just fine.
The website http://www.sslcertificatereviews.net/ lists the prices of the different certificate authority's SSLs. Plus there's coupons on the site too. Looks like a good place to do some SSL homework.
All profits come from cross-selling, up-selling, and shady tactics.
A registrar that has sold 1 million domains at $10/year price, and does nothing else, is one that will make at most about $25,000/year in profit max after various costs (reg fees, support, etc), but more likely will be in the hole.
I stopped blaming GoDaddy a long time ago. This is just the nature of the game.
GoDaddy doesn't take a month off the length of the cert. They do start sending you reminders 60 days ahead that say your cert needs to be renewed in 30 days, but you get your full extra year. I've had the pleasure of doing this dozens of times for our certificates, the last thing we buy from GoDaddy after moving our domain business elsewhere.
Never liked GoDaddy's service. There are several reasons why. So moved to namecheap.
But the point here is GoDaddy by default puts all your services on auto-renewal. I am a bit paranoid over what goes on in my accounts ( especially PayPal) so i had disabled the auto renew when i saw it.
Talking about price hike, thats a marketing strategy. You usually don't get coupon codes for renewals ( if you do get, those are usually for bulk renewals ).
These service providers always lure you to register at special prices so you stick with them forever and in this case it auto renewed :\
About the cert. expiration, that seems a bit odd but better talk to GoDaddy Support, they would help you out.
Same thing would have happened to me but my credit card on file expired. Talked to customer service and was never charged. Despite some of the obvious disadvantages of using GoDaddy, I've always gotten great customer service from them.
Was start date of the renewal term synced to the end date of the expiring term? If so it doesn't sound so shady to me. It seems logical that they would notify you and confirm your desire for a renewal prior to the end of the previous term rather than wait until the absolute last moment, especially with something like an SSL cert.
I'm not saying GoDaddy isn't shady. And they certainly are aggressive with their auto-renew policies. Heck how do you think they afford Superbowl ads and Danica Patrick at the prices they charge :) But the experience you described doesn't sound like a scam to me.
The same thing happened with a Network Solutions hosting plan I had. They auto-renewed me when I had over one month before renewal. Their service had been horrible on Drupal sites. Just the DNS resolution to my hosting account was taking 2-3 seconds. I enlisted an up-time monitoring service and found that my site was down frequently even while I was paying for this renewal I did not want. Shame such a dominant company in the 90s has basically laid the road map for shady hosting.
Yes, network solutions is also terrible. I still have a domain with them, and it takes five clicks just to get to the DNS management interface. Every step in the way they try to make as unclear as possible by flashing banners and shiny buttons in your face to get you to buy more of their services.
Another "scam" I associate with GoDaddy is that when you pick to pay for the Whois Privacy protection, you also get a 'Business Registration' fee added (like $5/year or something trivial).
All this fee does is list your domain name or something similar in a GoDaddy ran business directory -- useless.
It's an extra charge they hope you don't notice, and it's only added to your cart when you add Whois Privacy protection.
I also use GoDady because they are cheap and it does the job. For DNS, I use DNS Made Easy because it's never a good idea to have your DNSes at your registrar (if you ever need to move).
The trick with GoDaddy, don't check the box to leave your credit card with them. You'll then have to manually renew all services and you never run into the risk of forgetting to uncheck some auto-renew option...
I don't really see the problem here. GoDaddy products can be had very cheaply, they are so cheap with coupon codes the probably potentially make very little per sale.
All insurance companies work the same way, try hard to get a new customer, milk them dry on the tail end because they are too lazy to search out a better deal.
This isn't really a scam. I have dozens of domains with GoDaddy, as well as some of their other services. "How can I get the cheapest price" is a game we all play with them. Revision3 has a handy page with GD discount codes, and I've been referring to that page for years. I am helping keep Digg in business from the affiliate fees.
Can we agree the "auto-renew" was not scammy? They didn't rip you off a year. Just reminding you 60 days early as they should.
Can we agree its not shady or unethical to charge different prices for 1st year versus a higher price for subsequent year renewals? Or different prices for different people, in some type of A/B test? Everyone does that. Even amazon.com shows different prices to different people.
Can we agree their customer support was really helpful to you?
It's unethical to charge someone one price for a recurring service and then more than triple the price, in an opt-out fashion.
If you raise prices, you need to do your due diligence to make sure your customers are aware they're paying more. This kind of a price increase should really be opt-in rather than opt-out.
Yes, it's a scam. The fundamental basis of a contract is a meeting of the minds. If people think they are buying a cheap thing and then it turns out to be expensive, then there wasn't a meeting of the minds.
It happens to be a legal scam, but that doesn't make it much better.
It's ethical to auto-renew. It's ethical to raise prices. It is not ethical to auto-renew a raised price. Just because the pieces are OK doesn't mean the whole is.
I had the same problem, signed up last year, set it up a month later and now I'm getting time to renew emails. Also although its 'easy' to disable the auto-renew I've had products that still renewed after disabling the auto-renew.
For anyone who needs SSL certificate without perks, consider free one from http://www.startssl.com/
It do not offer strong encryption and do not do personal identification (obviously - it is free), but it is very cost-effective solution to have https:// on your website to prevent eyes droppers sniff traffic.
(not sure if it is enough for e-commerce, like google checkout tho)
Now you have no excuse to not have https:// in your website where people enter their passwords =)
The $12.99 price is a special price and always has been. You can still find discount codes and apply it to them when you renew to get it at the same price.
Godaddy can be insanely cheap if you never auto renew and always manually renew with discount codes.
Though yes you need to get off Godaddy. As do I. Just waiting for a little more revenue from my site to move to Rackspace Cloud :)
[+] [-] ilikepi|14 years ago|reply
At work we use RapidSSL (a division of GeoTrust) for a handful of certs. Last night I received an email with a banner warning me, "Your certificate is ABOUT TO EXPIRE". The email goes on to list the expiration date as "Oct 12, 2011". Four months is certainly generous notice, but I've always taken this as a simple marketing attempt to maintain customer loyalty.
Usually I take these emails as tickler reminders and delete the first couple. When I eventually decide it's time to renew, I pull up the site by typing the URL into the browser. Upon reading this article, I wondered whether following the link in the email would result in a different pricing structure. As it turns out, the answer is yes, though after playing around, it doesn't appear to have anything to do with the email link.
The first page of RapidSSL's order form handles both new orders and renewals with a pair of radio buttons. Another section of the form allows you to specify the validity period from one to five years. The prices appear alongside the choices, and are currently the same for both initial orders and renewals.
First I visited "www.rapidssl.com" and clicked the "buy/renew" link for a single domain cert. I got an order form with the following prices for 1-5 years:
49, 86, 122, 159, 196
Then I pasted the link from the email (which contains a fairly simple query string that does not appear to have a unique identifier in it) into a different browser. I clicked the "buy/renew" link for a single domain cert, I get the same form with the following prices:
79, 138, 198, 257, 316
It's interesting to me that the difference in price actually increases as the validity period increases:
30, 52, 76, 98, 120
Still more interesting, after resetting the browser and pulling up "www.rapidssl.com" directly, the prices are completely different:
29, 51, 72, 94, 116
I tried the email link one more time and got the 49-86-122 pricing again. Then I tried it one more time and got 19, 33, 48, 62, 76. So clearly RapidSSL is varying their prices on the fly, presumably to gain insight as to what people are willing to pay. I was ready to claim the link in the email yielded higher prices, but that seems not to be the case. So I guess after all that, this isn't particularly interesting. I'll definitely hit the site a few times when it comes time to purchase though.
Unfortunately the pricing structure for a wildcard certificate never seemed to vary.
[+] [-] cedsav|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dpapathanasiou|14 years ago|reply
I suppose they think that since you're visiting their site directly, you wouldn't think (or know) to visit one of their reseller partners instead.
[+] [-] pavel_lishin|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fomojola|14 years ago|reply
Been doing this for the last 3 years: they are TRULY retarded for using such a scheme but hey! It catches some people, so I guess tactics like that got them the $2bn "investment" from the friends at Silver Lake.
[+] [-] keltex|14 years ago|reply
http://help.godaddy.com/article/1042
[+] [-] kijinbear|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gst|14 years ago|reply
Reasons why I wouldn't use GoDaddy:
GoDaddy is not really one of the cheapest registrars.
I find their pricing "tactics" (as also mentioned in the article) very questionable.
Their whole website isn't just really appealing to me (I know, very subjective).
[+] [-] sjs|14 years ago|reply
I use Dreamhost for all my domain registrations and most DNS. Great admin interface compared to the competition, still very cheap, domain transfer codes plainly visible, no unlocking or calling or any of that. You just transfer it away. They are the most honest of the bunch and you can move each part of your service off them as you outgrow it.
Easiest to setup a domain for Google Apps too, just click a button.
[+] [-] Shenglong|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kleevr|14 years ago|reply
I may have said it elsewhere, but I'm a big fan of DirectNIC even though they are double GoDaddy's price. There interfaces are really clean, and any time I've transferred or sold a domain it has been an absolute breeze. And back in the day, when all the major registrars were shutting down their web-based WHOIS tools (NetSol et al), DirectNIC always kept their WHOIS tool open which always bought them a lot of good will in my book. (I wasn't aware of command line tools like 'whois' and 'nslookup' yet...)
[+] [-] beedogs|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wccrawford|14 years ago|reply
While these are shady practices, they are not illegal.
And the 1-month ahead renewal is not shorting you of a month. It's preventing you from getting into a situation where your cert expires because your CC details were invalid and it took to long to replace them. It also gives you time to configure your server, etc.
They are hardly the first company to offer a different initial price than the renewal, either. I hate that tactic, and watch for it, but it's not even unethical unless they don't tell you about it.
[+] [-] onomojo|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CoffeeDregs|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtogo|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fbuilesv|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arantius|14 years ago|reply
The commonly named alternatives seem (all for .com): Namecheap $10 Name.com $10 Moniker ??? DNSimple $14 Gandi 12,00 € (~ $17) Joker.com $12.80
Name registration is a commodity. I go with the cheapest provider.
[+] [-] stanleydrew|14 years ago|reply
I use name.com and have been very happy. A lot of people here use namecheap. I bet other people will reply to this comment with more options.
[+] [-] jeffbozek|14 years ago|reply
https://www.coffeeanddomains.com
[+] [-] enneff|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alifity|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bcl|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sandaru1|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pja|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chappi42|14 years ago|reply
if you register the domain with them, a standard ssl cert is included. Not sure if they issue certificates if the domain is somwhere else.
[+] [-] kels|14 years ago|reply
https://secure.springshosting.net/cart.php?a=add&pid=57
[+] [-] backwardsk|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dpapathanasiou|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colinprince|14 years ago|reply
https://github.com/ioerror/duraconf/blob/master/startssl/REA...
[+] [-] randomstring|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] powertower|14 years ago|reply
All profits come from cross-selling, up-selling, and shady tactics.
A registrar that has sold 1 million domains at $10/year price, and does nothing else, is one that will make at most about $25,000/year in profit max after various costs (reg fees, support, etc), but more likely will be in the hole.
I stopped blaming GoDaddy a long time ago. This is just the nature of the game.
[+] [-] jbyers|14 years ago|reply
GoDaddy doesn't take a month off the length of the cert. They do start sending you reminders 60 days ahead that say your cert needs to be renewed in 30 days, but you get your full extra year. I've had the pleasure of doing this dozens of times for our certificates, the last thing we buy from GoDaddy after moving our domain business elsewhere.
[+] [-] vidyesh|14 years ago|reply
But the point here is GoDaddy by default puts all your services on auto-renewal. I am a bit paranoid over what goes on in my accounts ( especially PayPal) so i had disabled the auto renew when i saw it.
Talking about price hike, thats a marketing strategy. You usually don't get coupon codes for renewals ( if you do get, those are usually for bulk renewals ). These service providers always lure you to register at special prices so you stick with them forever and in this case it auto renewed :\
About the cert. expiration, that seems a bit odd but better talk to GoDaddy Support, they would help you out.
[+] [-] jonathanjaeger|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hughesdan|14 years ago|reply
I'm not saying GoDaddy isn't shady. And they certainly are aggressive with their auto-renew policies. Heck how do you think they afford Superbowl ads and Danica Patrick at the prices they charge :) But the experience you described doesn't sound like a scam to me.
[+] [-] winternett|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wladimir|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] plasma|14 years ago|reply
All this fee does is list your domain name or something similar in a GoDaddy ran business directory -- useless.
It's an extra charge they hope you don't notice, and it's only added to your cart when you add Whois Privacy protection.
You need to remove it from your cart afterwards.
[+] [-] jeromeparadis|14 years ago|reply
The trick with GoDaddy, don't check the box to leave your credit card with them. You'll then have to manually renew all services and you never run into the risk of forgetting to uncheck some auto-renew option...
[+] [-] layzphil|14 years ago|reply
All insurance companies work the same way, try hard to get a new customer, milk them dry on the tail end because they are too lazy to search out a better deal.
[+] [-] unreal37|14 years ago|reply
Can we agree the "auto-renew" was not scammy? They didn't rip you off a year. Just reminding you 60 days early as they should.
Can we agree its not shady or unethical to charge different prices for 1st year versus a higher price for subsequent year renewals? Or different prices for different people, in some type of A/B test? Everyone does that. Even amazon.com shows different prices to different people.
Can we agree their customer support was really helpful to you?
So what's the problem exactly?
[+] [-] lukeschlather|14 years ago|reply
If you raise prices, you need to do your due diligence to make sure your customers are aware they're paying more. This kind of a price increase should really be opt-in rather than opt-out.
[+] [-] wpietri|14 years ago|reply
Yes, it's a scam. The fundamental basis of a contract is a meeting of the minds. If people think they are buying a cheap thing and then it turns out to be expensive, then there wasn't a meeting of the minds.
It happens to be a legal scam, but that doesn't make it much better.
[+] [-] mikeash|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jivejones|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hippich|14 years ago|reply
It do not offer strong encryption and do not do personal identification (obviously - it is free), but it is very cost-effective solution to have https:// on your website to prevent eyes droppers sniff traffic.
(not sure if it is enough for e-commerce, like google checkout tho)
Now you have no excuse to not have https:// in your website where people enter their passwords =)
[+] [-] apedley|14 years ago|reply
Godaddy can be insanely cheap if you never auto renew and always manually renew with discount codes.
Though yes you need to get off Godaddy. As do I. Just waiting for a little more revenue from my site to move to Rackspace Cloud :)
[+] [-] cosgroveb|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtogo|14 years ago|reply