
Namecheap to Donate $1 to EFF for Every Domain Transfer on December 29th - flueedo
https://www.namecheap.com/moveyourdomainday.aspx
======
nextparadigms
Namecheap is _really_ taking advantage of Godaddy's misstep. I say good for
them! Godaddy deserves whatever is coming at them right now.

~~~
mbrzuzy
I was literally thinking the exact same thing.

GoDaddy is an already shady company, hopefully they take a big hit from this
and change the way they do things.

~~~
rhizome
Think bigger: hopefully they declare bankruptcy and no longer have the
resources to participate in policy decisions.

They should be considered a Corporation Non-Grata.

~~~
betterth
Don't get ahead of yourself buddy.

GoDaddy is the largest and most wellknown registrar out there.

From all accounts, they've lost less since this began than they gain -in a
single day-.

This isn't affecting their bottom line much at all, it's just affecting their
image with the techie/hacker crowd.

A vital crowd to have a good image with, but their business is literally built
on taking advantage of NON-hackers -- let's be honest, how many people here
have ACTUALLY bought anything but a domain from GoDaddy, and MAYBE some
cheap/crappy hosting?

~~~
rkalla
If you look at this specific moment in time on Tuesday, no it hasn't effected
their bottom line _yet_ , but company perception is everything and GoDaddy's
company perception has gone from "gray area that some hate and some don't care
about" directly into _the RED_.

Are any HN'er going to forget this for their next startup? Or their next
contract? Or when their buddy asks them to register a domain for them?

No, we are all going to remember that as long as we don't use GoDaddy we will
be fine.

That is going to cost GoDaddy a lot in the years to come. I don't think
bankruptcy is around the corner, but I think we'll hear about some down sizing
in a couple of years.

FWIW, I am thrilled to see the karma fairy show up and pay GoDaddy in full for
years of garbage.

~~~
rhizome
"Always" and "never" are particularly strong marketing words when uttered by
word of mouth. Non-technical people can easily remember never to use GoDaddy,
much more than "use any of these X registrars depending on what you need."

~~~
epo
Nonsense, non-technical people will be swayed by some initial special offer,
as always. This will all be forgotten about by February.

GoDaddy will just price themselves to be attractive to the vast majority, i.e.
cheapskates. The 'elite' will probably also pile in by rationalising that this
must be costing GoDaddy money, so by registering a domain with them they are
actually costing them money.

Never underestimate the twin forces of "getting a good deal" and geeky self-
deception.

------
dmarble
I've been with Namecheap for most of my domains for a couple years now. One of
the surprisingly awesome extras:

 _Dynamic DNS_

No more need for DynDNS or another third-party DNS service for this simple but
useful feature! Once enabled for a domain, you can simply use an update client
to regularly update the IP Namecheap servers point to.

See Namecheap's knowledgebase articles to enable and use it:
[http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/category.aspx...](http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/category.aspx/11/dynamic-
dns)

Update clients:

ddclient (unixy) - <http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/ddclient>

inadyn (unixy) - <http://www.inatech.eu/inadyn/>

Namecheap's DNS update client (Windows) -
[http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/...](http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/28/11/do-
you-provide-any-dynamic-dns-clients)

~~~
3dFlatLander
I'm a big fan of their free e-mail forwarding and customer support (they got a
domain back for me that I had let expire out of its grace period).

But, I'm surprised so many people tolerated godaddy for this long just because
of their control panel. Every time I have to go in there and help a
client/friend, I begin to feel like an idiot almost immediately. It's
impossible to find anything intuitively and I feel like their design changes
every few months.

Namecheaps panel isn't pretty by a long shot, but it's so clutter free I just
don't care.

~~~
loumf
Not to defend them, but GoDaddy's iPad app is pretty good, and I use that
rather than their control panel whenever I can. I am fed up with them for
other reasons, so this comes at a good time.

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danieldk
That's nice, but it remains to be seen if this is not just cheap (no pun
intended) exploitation of sentiments. Some registrars, such as Gandi have
always supported various causes (such as EFF, Creative Commons, Debian, etc.).
How much does Namecheap donate of regular domain registrations, etc.? What
have they done in the past for digital rights?

Also, as some people said before. This attack on Godaddy maybe a godsent
diversion for SOPA supporters.

~~~
pbreit
I don't understand the notion that this is somehow a distraction to the real
SOPA fight. Maybe I'm alone in this issue having heightened my knowledge,
opposition and action against the bill?

~~~
jedbrown
Go Daddy is totally insignificant in the scheme of things. The list of SOPO
supporters is very deep and monopolizes many industries. Can you work out an
effective boycott of all major record and movie producers, all major
television networks, publishers (Elsevier, Macmillan, HarperCollins, and
various coalitions), pharmaceuticals and beauty products (Pfizer, PhRMA,
L'Oreal, Revlon, etc), banking (Visa, MasterCard, American Bankers
Association), sports (NFL, MLB), Apple, and Microsoft?

[http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/Rogue%20Websites/SOPA%20Su...](http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/Rogue%20Websites/SOPA%20Supporters.pdf)

Hurting Go Daddy over this is fine, but I suspect it is inconsequential to
whether SOPA passes, and most of the key supporters aren't concerned about
boycotts anyway.

~~~
pbreit
The point isn't how significant GoDaddy is. The point isn't how much business
damage GoDaddy is suffering, if any.

The point is about how much awareness this event is raising and how much of an
impact it is having on encouraging people to do something (anything) to
express opposition to the bill. One example: I had not seen SOPA on the
nightly news until now.

I don't think this event has been or will be considered "inconsequential".
There's a small chance it will be one of the more important events in the
opposition.

------
nickpinkston
I've used NameCheap ever since I found out how horrid GoDaddy's service and
slimy policies were. NameCheap has always answered my noob questions with
haste, and I've never had any issues with them. I have no connections with
them other than being a happy customer. If I didn't already have all my
domains through them, I'd switch them over.

------
jamesbritt
I couldn't be bothered waiting. I've some domains due for renewal at the end
of the year and decided to beat the holiday rush and just move then all over
to namecheap.com.

I started the process yesterday afternoon. Still haven't seen anything on the
GoDaddy side indicating any pending transfers. I imagine this sort of delay
will only be worse come the 29th.

Update: just got a slew of form mail from namecheap. Apparently every
EPP/authorization key code I entered, taken from the list generated by
GoDaddy, is wrong. Now I have to re-do every transfer.

~~~
Natsu
> Apparently every EPP/authorization key code I entered, taken from the list
> generated by GoDaddy, is wrong. Now I have to re-do every transfer.

They sure have had a lot of funny accidents lately....

~~~
jamesbritt
It _may_ be that I entered the domain and EPP info into the namechaep form
with some spaces (foo.com, x$fo!ss) and the namecheap form code was too
clueless to realize that no EPP code is going to start with a space.

I also discovered that I cannot automatically transfer azhackers.com,
apparently because it triggers some "bad, evil, we don't like it" domain name
filter.

Are they really that upset with Arizona? :)

~~~
lusr
I transfer domains regularly between registrars because the transfer costs
tend to be cheaper than the renewal costs. I've noticed that the last
character of EPP values tend to be minor punctuation ([,.] etc.), which is
ignored whenever I double-click to copy & paste.

I'd be certain this is intentional since those characters are ALWAYS (20+
domains transferred over a period of months) at the end of the code, although
I cannot fathom the purpose since at that point you've already paid for the
transfer and aren't going to give up the money you just spent.

Anybody know WTF the registrars are playing at?

~~~
jamesbritt
_I've noticed that the last character of EPP values tend to be minor
punctuation ([,.] etc.), which is ignored whenever I double-click to copy &
paste._

I took the CSV exported from GoDaddy, striped it down to multiple lines of

domain, EPP domain, EPP domain, EPP ..

and pasted that in.

That failed.

When I removed the space between the comma and the first character of the EPP
key, it worked (so far for the few I retried).

My guess is that the space confused the form parsing code. Or maybe it was
just a glitch.

In any event, I've been now moving domains successfully, and in the morning
I'll be re-trying the bulk of the remaining names.

BTW, in my initial retry attempt I noticed that some domains were being
flagged as not transferable, something I didn't catch when i attempted to moe
30 names at once.

One name was "questionable", two others were too close to the expiration date.
I got in touch with Namecheap support and they arranged to get these names
transfered as well.

And once all the ducks were in a row I've been getting pretty quick turnaround
times from both namecheap and GoDaddy.

So, so far so good.

------
juddlyon
This incident will in a public relations textbook as a case study in ten
years.

------
ck2
Just keep in mind if you transfer to NameCheap - make sure you are happy with
their full price for renewals - because you will NEVER get a discount for
renewing. They only give new transfers in special pricing.

Ironically you'll be able to transfer back to GoDaddy in a year when they make
some kind of "come back to us" offer for a few dollars to transfer in.

~~~
pbreit
Namecheap's posted renewal rate is less than GoDaddy's. Does GoDaddy discount
on renewals? Other registrars?

~~~
rkudeshi
Coupons for GoDaddy renewals are generally available if you check
RetailMeNot.com or other such sites. The codes tend to change every
month/quarter, but I don't think I've ever renewed with them for more than
~$9.

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abcd_f
Can anyone explain why would one want to transfer a domain from one US-based
registrar to another given that all recent domain-related issues are US-
centered?

~~~
dangrossman
Your choice of registrar is completely irrelevant; the registry itself is in
the US (Verisign), and the government goes straight to the registry. Unless
you plan to abandon the .com/.net/etc extensions, you're under US jurisdiction
even if you register the domain in another country.

------
jgeralnik
They are being very careful not to mention any specific domain registrars. I
wonder who they are talking about...

------
Samuel_Michon
I just transferred 20 general TLDs from GoDaddy to Namecheap. I did so based
on the positive reviews here on HN, but also because Namecheap has been very
verbal during this SOPA ordeal. The SOPAsucks coupon was a nice perk. Too bad
Namecheap doesn't do transfers for ccTLDs like .nl and .es.

Can anyone suggest a good, affordable registrar with broad ccTLD support and a
decent mobile site/app? Preferably an independent company with phone support
in the US. (I looked into Hover, but they're owned by Tucows. I also looked
into Gandi, but they're based in France.)

------
jeff18
I wish you could just give namecheap your GoDaddy credentials and have them
move your domains properly for you. I am definitely not looking forward to
figuring out GoDaddy's UI for all my domains.

~~~
Nat0
This handy guide should help you through GoDaddy's maze of a UI.
[http://blog.jeffepstein.me/post/14629857835/a-step-by-
step-g...](http://blog.jeffepstein.me/post/14629857835/a-step-by-step-guide-
to-transfer-domains-out-of-godaddy)

------
aiurtourist
I'd like to switch to !GoDaddy, and Namecheap seems popular. Are there any
useful pro/cons I should know about Namecheap before switching?

~~~
rhizome
One con is that unlike Joker and Gandi (and surely others), Namecheap is
located in Los Angeles, CA and is therefore subject to US court judgements, US
Internet policy, and US privacy laws (or lack thereof).

~~~
regularfry
Isn't part of the whole current kerfuffle that the DoJ considers _any_
Verisign tld under US jurisdiction?

~~~
Natsu
And wants a Great Firewall of America to block the sites which aren't under
our jurisdiction....

~~~
rhizome
Sure, but why make it easy for them and keep the domains under US jurisdiction
where they don't even have to go to GFA lengths? Why keep your domain in a
country with poor-to-nonexistent privacy laws?

~~~
Natsu
No argument here! Just pointing out that they've got that covered, even if
they obviously haven't thought it through.

------
dspillett
I'm surprised no other registrars seem to have jumped on this in quite the way
NameCheap have. Is it that they feel too small to take the risk of rocking the
boat?

~~~
freejack
Speaking only for myself, there's only a certain amount of opportunism that
I'm comfortable with in piling on when a competitor stumbles, especially when
it is rooted in politics.

For example, Tucows does a ton of great work to support various causes and
we've always (at least as long as I can remember) supported the development of
the Open Internet but we've never had a huge animal rights component to our
activism, so we didn't feel right adopting an elephant rescue charity for our
giving. A few other registrars did, but it just felt weird for us to change
our stripes for PR & marketing purposes.

Same dynamics at work with this issue (and it is much more of an issue than it
is an opportunity). We do a lot of work with a lot of organizations that
oppose SOPA and PIPA and similarly stupid bits of law that might destroy or
inappropriately restrain the Internet commons and we're going to continue to
do that, but to buddy up to the EFF and promise donations based on business
volumes just isn't something we're comfortable with. We think our activism can
be expressed much more productively.

We're continuing to talk about what works best for us and our customers while
staying true to our values and we may or may not stay our current course - it
is always a live issue, but as one of the largest registrars, I can definitely
say that it isn't a case of being too small or not wanting to rock the boat.
:-)

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Tloewald
And as a bonus they get to stress test their servers ;-)

------
shawnz
I'd like to point out that name.com (my current registrar) has been an EFF
donor for some time already -- but I don't know to what extent.

------
arthurgibson
Why doesn't NameCheap donate a $1 for every domain moved since 12/22 or last
week when all the SOPA issues with Godaddy were presented?

------
Shorel
I transfered from Namecheap to SpeedySparrow a couple of months ago.

Just consolidating vendors (domain and hosting) to simplify management.

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openmosix
A similar initiative: fightsopa.org will donate 5$ to EFF for each developer
solving one coding puzzle

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gospelwut
I recall reading that namecheap stores passwords in plaintext? I'd be
interested if this was refuted. In any case, I'd be a bit wary to go along
with the bandwagon to this particular registrar without further investigation.

~~~
chrishenn
I believe its Hover that you're remembering.

[http://help.hover.com/2011/07/07/hover-secures-passwords-
wit...](http://help.hover.com/2011/07/07/hover-secures-passwords-with-bcrypt-
and-enhances-usability-with-identity-verification-tools/)

~~~
freejack
That article is horribly outdated. Hover does not store passwords in
plaintext.

------
akuchlous
<http://byebyegodaddy.com> now points to <http://namecheap.com>

