
Namecheap now offer .io domains - kintamanimatt
https://www.namecheap.com/domains/extensions-tlds/cctld/io.aspx
======
larrys
Competitor to namecheap here. [1] [2]

We don't offer .io domains. Nor do we offer any of the TLD's that seem to be
popular with some startups. Even though we could make money selling them. Like
our competitors do.

Although popular (with startups) they aren't mainstream with the public. If
you become successful you will just end up buying (at a much higher price) the
.com equivalent. Or end up having misdirected mail and/or users or investors
or bloggers or reporters etc. Whatever .com you can buy now will be much more
expensive once the .com owner sees you have funding and a business model and a
website.

I've been doing domains since the mid 90's. My strong advice is to stay away
from anything but .com for your startup.

Despite what you may think there are plenty of .com's you can register (try
leandomainsearch.com for ideas (I have no affiliation to that at all but use
it from time to time).

And not all people holding domain names are vultures, cybersquatters whatever
you want to call them. Some are actually fairly reasonable (I do some
consulting on the side where I help people buy domain names).

[1] No we are not looking to get HN business if we were I'd have who we are in
my sig.

[2] We aren't cheap.

~~~
crisnoble
>My strong advice is to stay away from anything but .com for your startup.

If you make it big enough to have to buy the .com from the current owner, then
you are probably going to be able to buy it. When I discovered that new
domains cost about 2 packs of cigarettes, I became a compulsive domain buyer.
If the .com for my crazy idea isn't available, then I try .co, then basically
whatever I can find. I use a combination of [http://domai.nr](http://domai.nr)
and [https://iwantmyname.com/](https://iwantmyname.com/) to see weird
combinations. I think you would be hard pressed to find a startup can
attribute its failure to the fact that it had a fancy TLD.

Odd tlds that hit it big: del.­icio.­us, bit.ly

Odd tlds that I visit often: github.io, any.do, 500.co, domai.nr

I think in a world where non-technical people use google as their address bar,
we should fee free to use exotic TLDs. Not to mention with the upcoming
release of new TLDs .com is about to be as important / common as www.

~~~
larrys
"If you make it big enough to have to buy the .com from the current owner,
then you are probably going to be able to buy it. "

Let me address that specifically. First, you get people who are unreasonable
and perhaps would think that because you are valued at a billion you will pay
them 500 million or something stupid like that. They are wrong but their
irrationality is not going to make it easy for you to get the domain when you
want it.

I have a case right now where a startup is willing to pay, say, $100,000 for a
domain. But the domain (not being used) is owned by a company in Europe. And
they aren't interested in selling at any price near that. And the domain is
not worth $100,000.

Second, your thoughts assume either "make it or don't".

There is an in between state. Where you appear successful and profitable but
you don't have unlimited google resources. And actually I think it's quite
obvious that there are a few companies that fall into this category. Since of
course most people are not going to be "big enough" to buy what they want "at
any price".

~~~
crisnoble
I agree that squatters can be unreasonable or downright insane. I think that
my main argument is that owning a ".com" neither helps nor hinders a startup
and its quest for eyes. I could never remember how to spell del.icio.us, but
it didn't matter, I bookmarked it. If I was on another computer, I googled it.

~~~
smtddr
_> I agree that squatters can be unreasonable or downright insane._

There use to be a company called songbirdnest.com that made something that
could be described as an open-source version of iTunes(but they preferred it
wasn't thought of that way). The person who owns songbird.com refused to sell.
Apparently a very hansom offer was made too...

[http://songbird.com/](http://songbird.com/) site looks the same as it did
back in 2008. Considering that the site doesn't look like anything that's
generating revenue, I don't understand why that person refused to sell...

~~~
username223
> Considering that the site doesn't look like anything that's generating
> revenue, I don't understand why that person refused to sell...

Maybe because unlike you, he's not an unquestioning whore to the almighty
dollar. (I expected a small bird-feeder business before I clicked, but the
point remains.)

~~~
smtddr
_> username223 33 minutes ago | link

Maybe because unlike you, he's not an unquestioning whore to the almighty
dollar. (I expected a small bird-feeder business before I clicked, but the
point remains.)_

Ouch. You've hurt my feelings. Just like to add that if he said something
about sentimental value or some such, I'd understand. Otherwise, why refuse
_just for the sake of refusing?_ But, seeing as you're already on insult-mode,
probably nothing good will come of this discussion.

------
Link-
For what it's worth, I've been using namecheap for over 2 or 3 years now, with
around 10 domains registered with them, and I have to say that their service
is quite good. The support is capable and promptly responsive. Very rarely, if
ever, have I experienced technical difficulties. Even if it's not the cheapest
in the market, the service is worth the extra $

~~~
hardwaresofton
Do they offer proper DNS services?

~~~
jackalope
I moved all of my domains from GoDaddy to Namecheap. I host my own DNS.
Recently, I decided to take a stab at implementing DNSSEC, but one condition
is that your registrar must support it[1], and Namecheap doesn't[2]. I'm in no
rush, but it's a little disappointing. I have no idea if DNSSEC is an option
when Namecheap hosts your DNS. They've also only recently added support for
IPv6 glue records. Nonetheless, I'm happy to be rid of GoDaddy and find the
Namecheap interface to be much simpler and easier to use (concise email
notifications of logins and account changes are also nice, and readable in
more email clients than the noisy upselling HTML garbage that GoDaddy spews
out).

[1] [http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/resources/dnssec-
re...](http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/resources/dnssec-registrars/)

[2] [http://www.icann.org/en/news/in-
focus/dnssec/deployment](http://www.icann.org/en/news/in-
focus/dnssec/deployment)

~~~
cdjk
Don't give up on DNSSEC just yet. You can use DLV (DNSSEC Look-aside
Validation) if your registrar doesn't support it yet:

[https://dlv.isc.org/](https://dlv.isc.org/)

------
dlss
I've never heard of namecheap, but given their name I'm surprised they charge
so much more than gandi.net ($39).

Is it normal for a company branded as the low cost provider to charge above
market for rare goods?

~~~
dangrossman
Maybe that's the price of free speech. Namecheap doesn't have any unusual
restrictions on what you do with your domain after you buy it. Gandi does. You
have to uphold their ethical code and affirmatively fight "deviant uses of the
internet" to register domains through them. Hacker News would violate that
code, and under the terms of Gandi's service agreement, they could revoke
service and cancel this domain if it were registered through them.

[http://en.gandi.net/static/contracts/en/g2/pdf/MSA-1.3-EN.pd...](http://en.gandi.net/static/contracts/en/g2/pdf/MSA-1.3-EN.pdf)

~~~
ogreyonder
I really appreciate you posting this information. I had considered Gandi in
the past and would not have read their ToS; I'll stay away now.

As for our friend jjblue, you can safely ignore his citation trolling. The
rest of us appreciate the warning. There's no point in waiting for victim #1
before telling your friends about danger. Thanks again!

~~~
Maxious
Deviant uses is defined as "spamming, phishing, hacking, cracking, or attempts
at hacking or cracking". That's a pretty standard ToS right?

~~~
dangrossman
Not at all. Neither is that the extent of the agreement. You agree that you
will not use your domain to distribute any information in violation of their
ethical code. You agree that you'll also police any 3rd parties with the
ability to publish content (i.e. blog comments or forum posts). The list of
things you can't talk about on your site include anything "prejudicial", not
just illegal. It includes any discussion that doesn't respect the "image" and
"honor" of any other person. It includes any discussion inappropriate to the
"age and sensibility" of anyone the site is meant to be read by.

That's all from section 3.3 of the agreement. Making your ownership of your
domain name contingent upon active monitoring and censorship to uphold
ambiguous "moral standards" of a 3rd party is NOT a standard registrar ToS.

------
joeblau
I'm using [http://iwantmyname.com](http://iwantmyname.com) for
[http://gitignore.io](http://gitignore.io) and they have been great. They
update their DNS records very quickly and I haven't had any problems with
their service and right now they are $49.

~~~
bnycum
I was actually looking at building a site like that a few weeks back.
Discovered the .io was taken and was what I wanted to build. Thanks.

~~~
joeblau
Hehe sorry :) and You're welcome. The code is all on GitHub and I actually
want to re-architect the site.

------
jscheel
I love the IO ccTLD, but it's just too expensive to justify on a free side
project that doesn't make any money. First-world problem, eh?

~~~
phillmv
Not coincidentally, that's also why so few .io domains are parked. Overall,
I'm OK with this.

~~~
jscheel
It's definitely a trade-off. For me, I just ended up doing -io.com :)

------
firloop
I like the .io TLD but it seems like Namecheap and others haven't really done
much to make it cheaper. I can't see myself paying more than $30 a year for a
single domain registration, so I've simply used other TLDs when I've had
opportunities to register a domain for a project. If .io was cheaper I'd buy a
couple of domains in a heartbeat, though.

~~~
slig
The upside is that the higher price may be inhibiting squatting and thus
you're more likely to find a good name available.

~~~
larrys
"the higher price may be inhibiting squatting"

The high price is a result of the fact that the base cost of the domain is
much higher than it is for .com/.net/.org/.info.

Here is the wholesale .io pricing which is based on volume (doesn't work that
way for .com/.net/.org/.info)

[http://www.nic.io/join.html](http://www.nic.io/join.html)

So for example nic.io regular price is $60 US.

Even at the top bracket the best a registrar could do is $30 per domain.

This is compared to around $8.xx for .com that a registrar pays (we are a
registrar).

~~~
hoffer
Where do you see the nic.io price is $60? I just paid $96 us dollars last week
from the site. Nic.io prices are in pounds.

~~~
larrys
Your right. I missed the pound saw it for EU but missed it on non eu.

------
clone1018
Doesn't seem to be avaliable for transfers:

"ignite.io cannot be transferred The domain name seems to be invalid or the
TLD is not supported. Please make sure you entered the domain name properly
and don't add www. in front of the domain name."

~~~
dangoldin
Same here. I just chatted with customer support and it's currently not
supported. The guy I spoke with didn't know whether that was something they
were working on.

------
LukeHoersten
I've transferred or am transferring about 10 of my domains from places like
GoDaddy and 1and1 to NameCheap. I love NameCheap. I typically go for whatever
registrar is the cheapest regardless of how crappy the interface is and
NameCheap has successfully become the cheapest registrar for a number of my
TLDs. The benefit is that their service and web interface are great! I highly
recommend.

------
zokier
Bleh. My personal domain renewal is coming up and Namecheap has gotten lots of
recommendations here at HN. But on the other hand I'm bit reluctant to move
domains from (my current) Swiss registar to US one, even if they all
ultimately are based on ICANN.

~~~
sigkill
\- Out of curiosity, who's your current registrar?

\- I don't know if you're talking about a ccTLD or a com/net/org but if it's
the latter I don't think a non-US registrar can help you since those TLDs are
directly under US control.

~~~
zokier
Currently at joker.com, and .net domain. Yes, I know escaping US control is
ultimately futile, but that doesn't mean that I'd be wanting to give in any
more than necessary. Even in the worst-case scenario a Swiss company should be
able to communicate about the circumstances, while US based registar might be
gagged with NSL or equivalent and I'd be left in the dark.

------
danepowell
I switched to Namecheap several years ago and have never looked back. They are
one of the only registrars to offer two-factor authentication.

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easy_rider
Purchased a domain, went through all the steps, account acc. card info,
process transaction. Well funded card etc.

Register <snip>.io 11 Year $58.88 Charged: $0.00 $0.00 There was an error
connecting to the registry. Free WhoisGuard __1 Year $0.00 Charged: $0.00
Related item failed.

------
larkarvin
I've been using Namecheap for five years, but my .io domain is registered at
name.com. I'll move back it to namecheap once it nears expiration just to put
all my domains in one place and of to pay 58USD rather than 99USD.

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joshdance
I use Namecheap for my domains. Been a good company so far.

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mingabunga
Does anyone recall a few months back a 3 and 4 letter .io search engine
someone made and posted here? I can't find it in the HN search.

~~~
kintamanimatt
Here ya go: [http://shortdomainsearch.net/](http://shortdomainsearch.net/)

------
Splendor
I tried to place an order twice and received this error both times: "There was
an error connecting to the registry."

------
MichaelTieso
I use NameCheap because it's simple. Nothing fancy about it. I hate the crazy
amount of popups GoDaddy gives you.

------
caiob
Hey, hover.com offers .io domains as well; and I couldn't be happier with
them. (not affiliated whatsoever)

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kbar13
hexonet and gandi are equally trustworthy and have .io registration for
cheaper

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ape4
I suppose google.io is taken.

~~~
kintamanimatt
Created 2002-10-01!

~~~
lingben
they will automatically buy any and all TLD as a matter of policy

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growt
gandi.net offers a better deal at 29€ for an .io domain.

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hallas
A month too late :-) Gonna have to move it :)

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pkrumins
"as low as $58.88 per year?"

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plink
dang! eie.io is taken.

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blahbl4hblahtoo
Oh good. Now to setup a blog about programming web api's in GO complete with a
little round picture of myself.

~~~
wwwarhawk
Haha. This is the best comment in this thread.

