Ask HN: Professional Alternative to Namecheap

[raasdnil]

Recently we had an outage where a domain name expired - we didn't get a warning that it expired due to various factors but it highlighted a freaking major flaw in our systems.

Now, we are fixing it internally, but our current registration provider is namecheap (is hosted on dnsimple) for this domain, which "helpfully" put up a parking page when the site expired which meant some of our client websites were being redirected to their competitors! <facepalm />

So question, who do you use for professional domain name registration where this sort of parking page stupidity can be avoided? A company that will call you if a domain name is going to blow up and if there is an expiration, someone that will set the refresh to 60 seconds and contact us?

[indianmouse]

I would suggest to add some money into the account if you are not going to monitor the emails. I have a lot of domains with Namecheap and I've always for plenty of reminder mails from them about expiry.

For me, it looks like the problem is between the keyboard and the chair and not otherwise. Fix the emails and avoid future issues. Namecheap has been one of the best domain providers period.

I have had plenty of bad experiences and predatory and opportunistic billing with plenty of others.

I have been dealing with domains since the early network solutions days (I would comfortably say that it my experience is close to 30+ years and Namecheap as a domain provider is at the top of my list!).

[raasdnil]

Totally PEBKAS!

We’ve fixed our internal issue, hopefully won’t happen again.

What I really want is a hosting provider that just puts up a blank page on an expired domains, not show a bunch of ads.

[indianmouse]

Have said that, one more recent news which I came across is the a PE firm has picked up a major stake in Namecheap.

I just hope they just don't go on to the Godaddy route...

Time to look for alternatives?... Feeling sorry for the above comment though...

[palmfacehn]

Name.com has always been more professional with less trick billing stunts. Easy to reach a human and they're not set on upselling you into garbage. However, if you aren't monitoring your inbox for expiration notices, you're already in trouble.

[raasdnil]

Totally was our fault not namecheap’s. What I don’t like is the parking onto a Google ads ridden page.

[flubbins_groove]

> The biggest issue is with expired domains they park it to a web page that advertises other people. Would like to avoid that.

Even if you find a registrar that claims not to do that. Nothing is stopping another company (such as a competitor) from grabbing the domain once it expires and pointing it at whatever they want.

FWIW: I've been a Gandi user for ~15 years so they're really the only ones I can recommend. I'd avoid GoDaddy.

[muzani]

You can also just turn auto-renewal on Namecheap and put some money in there. I don't check the email where the notices are sent. And I have a lot of domain names I bought on a whim but may not renew. I'll set the important ones on auto-renew, but not the minor ones.

[raasdnil]

Yup, that’s done now. Was an oversight on our part - we screwed up :)

[ttoinou]

For something as important as this you might as well get multiple different alerts. Including custom made alert, right now you can already create one for when the domain will expire since you should know about it

[raasdnil]

Totally, it wasn’t namecheaps fault, was completely ours.

But they parked it on a page that did ads to competitors, I’d like to find a provider that doesn’t do this.

[firefax]

I've had good interactions with gandi.net -- they sent me a reminder ~3 months in advance to the email on file last time a domain was set to expire.

[KomoD]

What were these "various factors"? You get warnings before it even expires.

[raasdnil]

A failure in the way we’re checking our Hotmeister emails. Definitely a problem internally.

We are fixing that.

The biggest issue is with expired domains they park it to a web page that advertises other people. Would like to avoid that.

[cpach]

AFAIK, the most popular service that people use for this is Markmonitor.

[NoahZuniga]

That seems like a corporate ptovider