
Why is it so hard to be a good domain registrar? - blazamos
http://www.marco.org/2011/04/14/why-is-it-so-hard-to-be-a-good-registrar
======
pge
The article answers its own question. It's hard because it's a commodity
business. Customer acquisition costs eat up all the margin. Trying to
differentiate the product costs money which would result in raising prices,
which results in losing customers, most of whom choose on price and then
complain about quality. So, it's a race to the bottom - everyone trying to cut
costs (other than marketing) to the bare minimum so they can reduce prices as
far as possible. All the money goes to marketing, and none goes into improving
the quality of the offering.

It's very similar to airlines. We all complain about bag fees and charging for
meals or extra legroom, but it's we the customers who have driven them there
by making price our primary, if not sole, criteria for vendor selection.

~~~
lsc
> It's hard because it's a commodity business ... >All the money goes to
> marketing, and none goes into improving the quality of the offering.

Personally, i disagree that all commodity businesses need to be that way.
Higher quality and lower prices (/especially/ lower prices) are marketing in
and of themselves. For most of the time I've been in business, my model has
been to take the marketing costs and just apply those to discounts.

Now, this is much easier in the VPS business than in the registrar business,
'cause as far as I can tell, the VPS business is much higher margin. Really,
it's pretty easy, in this market, to differentiate yourself on price, just
because retail prices are so much higher than the cost of goods sold.

when you sell a .com domain, the lowest your costs can ever be is $6.25 a year
(or, at least that's what it was last time I looked) and the retail prices
aren't that much higher than that, so without using domains as a loss leader,
it's pretty difficult to differentiate yourself through price. Heck,
considering the margin there, if you have much by way of customer acquisition
costs or /any/ customer support costs, you are either charging an
uncompetitive rate or you are losing money (and needing to make it up
somewhere else)

I think the problem with the domain registrar business is that instead of
costs being dominated by equipment or something else where you can innovate
(or that just automatically becomes dramatically cheaper year over year) costs
are dominated by administrative fees you have to pay the next guy up the
chain.

~~~
nevinera
>Personally, i disagree that all commodity businesses need to be that way.
Higher quality and lower prices (/especially/ lower prices) are marketing in
and of themselves.

If that's true, it's not a commodity business.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity>

~~~
lsc
From your wikipedia link:

"There is a spectrum of commodification, rather than a binary distinction of
"commodity versus differentiable product"."

~~~
nevinera
So your argument could have been phrased 'Personally, i disagree that all
commodity businesses are really commodity businesses'?

What you were actually challenging was his characterization of domain
registration as a commodity business; I don't disagree with you there, I just
wanted your point clarified.

~~~
lsc
>So your argument could have been phrased 'Personally, i disagree that all
commodity businesses are really commodity businesses'?

Well, no. It's a continuum, rather than a black and white thing. I wrote a
long argument then edited it back to the wikipedia quote, as that mostly sums
things up.

My business is more 'commodity' I think, than slicehost, mostly because of the
marketing angles we take. Obviously, the market for a certain grade of steel
is far more of a commodity, though I suspect that if I knew more about that
market, I'd find it was less than an absolute commodity.

------
Legion
NearlyFreeSpeech is, IMO, the only registrar worth using.

It is simple, and the site is clean to a fault. There is zero advertising or
service upselling - each page contains what it needs to and nothing else.

They're not the place to go to get cute with your TLDs, but for the standard
TLDs, I refuse to go anywhere else. Even well-liked registrars like NameCheap
are a big pile of spam in comparison.

~~~
ewams
Does their DNS do MX records? It only mentions A, AAAA, and SRV.

~~~
shii
I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but I was able to quickly and painlessly
update my MX records for all the domains I have with them to my Google Apps
setup. I recently noticed that Google Apps even setup a custom how-to page for
NFSN users: <http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=54719>

------
die_sekte
I've tried NearlyFreeSpeech, Gandi, Joker and InterNetworX. Gandi and Joker
are expensive, inwx is so-so and NFS is cheap but has an extremely limited
selection of TLDs. NFS and Joker have terrible interfaces, Gandi's is somewhat
nice, however it's just way too big, inwx's is nice (somewhat unintuitive, but
fast and compact). Joker makes accidentally deleting something hard, inwx
makes it way too easy. Gandi pollutes your default zone file, NFS puts a SPF
record there (which I like).

If you've just a few .com domains and don't need a registrar outside the US,
use NFS. Otherwise, for the time being, I'd recommend inwx.

~~~
zdw
I'm a Joker user too. They're pricey but they haven't ever let me down.

------
jsdalton
Not to turn this into a recommendation fest, but I've used DynDNS
(<http://www.dyndns.com/>) for DNS hosting, and it appears they offer
registrar services? <http://www.dyndns.com/services/domains/>

It's a great, reliable DNS service in my experience, more geared toward
hackers than the GoDaddy crowd (e.g. you can edit your DNS records directly
with fine-grained control over TTL).

~~~
dadro
I've had great luck with dyndns.com too. They charge ~double ($15) what
GoDaddy does for domain reg but the service has been solid in the 8 or so
years I've used them.

~~~
snowwindwaves
They charge 30 a year more to use their dns servers which others include in
the domain registration

Still worth it

------
getsat
Perhaps it's not that it's _hard_ to be good but rather it's far more
_lucrative_ to be bad?

I recently moved all my domains from GoDaddy to <http://internet.bs> because
they don't do any funny stuff, they're very inexpensive, and they're outside
the jurisdiction of belligerent and unfriendly Western governments.

~~~
wewyor
If you want to be out of the jurisdiction of western governments make sure you
are also buying domain names that are out of that jurisdiction (.com et al.).

~~~
die_sekte
.is is good. Very safe, and still has two-letter domains available.

------
fredleblanc
I use GoDaddy for all of my domains and I don't understand what all of the
complaints are about. I may host 40ish domains through them, and I've never
had a problem with price, support or control over any of my domains.

These days it seems like leaving GoDaddy is the cool thing to do. If a
company's marketing tactics or a CEO's out-of-office actions put you off, then
that's one thing, but as for the product itself and how well it performs:
GoDaddy performs as well as anything else I've seen for what I consider a fair
price.

(Their hosting, however, is a totally different story…)

~~~
lubos
this is true. I have more than 100 domains through them across various
accounts. The service works, the only complaint I have is that to change
something in DNS record, it takes at least 30 clicks to get through all their
crap. However if I would have to choose again my domain registrar, it would be
probably NearlyFreeSpeech.net, they are way cooler than GoDaddy.

------
ender7
It makes me wonder why Google doesn't create a registrar service. Not to make
money - perhaps they'd even run at a loss - but to offer a service that
doesn't make you hate yourself every time you have to interact with them.

Considering the fact that Google depends on a rich, diverse internet (rather
than a clumped, Facebook-y internet), this seems like a natural move for them.

~~~
gigawatt
They have one: <http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/domain.html>

I've never used it, so can't speak for the quality/services though.

~~~
wewyor
I believe they just resell through enom (and maybe godaddy).

~~~
gigawatt
Ah, good to know. Though I guess GoDaddy with a better admin panel wouldn't be
the worst thing. Looks like they also have free whois privacy.

~~~
foxylad
Yes, they would still be the worst thing! I know, I used to use Godaddy, for
my sins.

Strike one: I messaged their support asking when they'd get a usability expert
to look at their awful interface. Response was basically "get used to it". So
don't expect it ever to change.

Strike two: the maddeningly pervasive upselling. Wading through 500KB pages of
desperate attempts to sell you hosting, SSL certs, and steak knives sapped
most of my will to live.

Strike three: Trying to spin hunting a endangered species in a corrupt banana
republic as a heroic and selfless deed made me vomit.

YOU'RE OUT, GODADDY! And I feel so much cleaner now my domains are with
Namecheap.

------
simcop2387
I've been using DynaDot.com myself, prices seem decent. originally picked them
because they took paypal (i had some free money in a paypal account from
selling my opinion). Haven't used them for dns so i don't know if they do any
funny stuff though like some users report other registrars doing.

~~~
tortilla
I've moved all my domains over to DynaDot (with them over 3 years total). I
use DynaDot's DNS for some of my domains and they don't do any funny stuff.
Haven't had any problems with DNS outages, transferring domains--in or out, or
any billing issues. Their interface is fairly straightforward and clean.

DNS Interface: <http://img806.imageshack.us/img806/8523/dynadot.png>

------
peterlind
I've only heard good things about DNSimple <https://dnsimple.com/>

Customer comment on the front page "Thanks for the escape ladder from
GoDaddy!"

~~~
jseifer
I have yet to register a domain through them but the DNS services are
fantastic.

------
rdl
I use Tucows OpenSRS (I'm a reseller, but otherwise, just find someone
reasonable who is a reseller -- it used to be free to join, then $100, now I
think $250).

Basically direct access to both a website and an API for registry functions.
If you register enough domain names internally, it's totally worth it. I've
never had a problem with them.

They started out as a linux-friendly ISP in Canada, I believe, and have become
basically a reasonable registrar -- one of the first group of 34 independent
registrars approved by ICANN, and I think the first to really work with
resellers.

Hover, which Marco suggests, seems to be a retail part of Tucows.

~~~
dmpatierno
I've used SRSPlus for years and my only complaints are with their DNS hosting.
It sometimes fails for a few minutes at a time, returning no results for a
simple dig. I've personally noticed it 2-3 times in the last year so I can
only imagine how much it actually happens. There's also no support for TXT
records or anything else aside from A, CNAME, and MX.

I've been considering a switch to Hover, but haven't done a trial run yet.

~~~
bonkabonka
I'm not a fan of Hover though I have all my domains registered with them right
now. They store your password in cleartext and their website is downright
bizarre - it wants to be iGoogle, I guess.

They're less obnoxious than GoDaddy but that's not saying much.

~~~
warren_s
"They store your password in cleartext" Do you have a reference for this to
back up your claim? Preferably _before_ I sign up.

~~~
davidcann
They email your password to you when you use the "forgot" form.

I notified support about this and the representative said he agrees that it's
a security flaw and that he had "sent it up the chain", although this was last
year.

Despite this, they're still my preferred registrar.

~~~
warren_s
Yeah, I had wondered if it was something like that. It IS a tad concerning.

------
jdietrich
In other words - Pay peanuts, get monkeys.

------
larrys
The article stated: "and it can cause an hours-long DNS outage if it’s not
done perfectly.".

The only case where there would be any dns outage is if the registrar is
handling the dns. If the registrar isn't doing the dns there is zero dns
outage. Part of the transfer process is that the old dns automatically gets
carried over.

(I am an ICANN Accredited registrar one of the first..)

I think what people have to understand is that all registrars pay the same
price for domains. Whether you are godaddy or the smallest. (The other costs
are fixed). So I think it is obvious that you aren't going to have "price
quality speed" all from the same place. Additionally registrars charging no
money are either making money elsewhere or they are going to go out of
business or using domains as a loss leader.

~~~
joeyh
For maximum safety from registrar screwing up, don't put your main domain name
in the glue records either, just ns1.example.com.

But, it appears to be in the registrar's best interest to not encourage users
to run their own DNS server -- as the article points out, that contributes to
their lockin.

------
michaelpinto
I keep my domains at pairnic — they're a geeky small company, but they're good
enough to do the trick. Granted you can get all of the fancy domains, but what
I've learned is that less is more when going to register a domain.

------
forwardslash
I too finally moved away from GoDaddy and had trouble finding a good domain
registrar. I ended up going with EasyDNS after I saw how they handled being
wrongly associated with pulling Wikileak's domain.

------
kierenmccarthy
The reason is because it's a very difficult and competitive market and the
step up from good to excellent customer service isn't worth the extra cost.

You can go for low-cost, high-volume (GoDaddy and most others) or high-end,
higher cost, lower volume (Network Solutions and a few more).

Because the end user experience of getting a domain - as you point out - is
pretty much of buying and then only very occasionally making changes, there is
no real middle market. Every registry charges a wholesale price and you can
charge only a tiny margin before you are priced out the market.

The reason that good registrars get worse, ironically, is because they become
successful. Once you start dealing with larger and larger volumes, it gets
harder to maintain your customer service and price.

And the one thing that you don't hear about - but registrars will tell you
privately - is that as soon as you get broader public awareness you end up
with really difficult customers who chew up alot of time, are usually wrong,
or have a complete misunderstanding of how it works, and make life difficult
for your customer service teams. It's the curse of being popular in a
commodity market.

In that sense, GoDaddy does a good job balancing price with level of customer
service given the huge numbers of interactions it has to deal with.

Personally, I have my domains split over a number of different companies:
GoDaddy (US), Heart Internet (UK), Network Solutions (US) and Blacknight
(Ireland). If anything I'd give Heart Internet the edge.

------
csomar
I don't think I agree with the article. I moved from my old registrar to
namecheap because my registrar really sucked (and yet I consider it better
than GoDaddy). I didn't move immediately, I moved the next year, but I planned
the move and before the domains re-new I hit the transfer button. While it was
a little bit awkward, it was completely worth the time.

If I found a better service than namecheap, then I'll happily move to them the
next year.

------
duodecim
I've been dealing with at least 6-7 registrars during the years – all the way
back to Network Solutions – both professionally and for personal use, and
honestly never had any real problems with any of them. I've always avoided and
advised others to avoid the cheapest options though. They might work fine for
just an email address or website forwarder, but do you really want to trust a
serious business to a company called GoDaddy?

Just don't ever forgot to prolong a domain name – keep your (company's)
contract information up to date.

My personal domains are hosted at Gandi. They seem most aligned with the open-
source philosophy and community, and they feel geek-friendly and less
corporate and spam-like. They are located in Europe, which somehow makes me
feel safer regarding DMCA take-downs or whatever suing troll pops up from
nowhere. I don't feel very strongly about it, but I am happy with their
services.

As I already said, I've never had any difficulties with any of the major
registrars, so it doesn't really surprise me that most people don't have
strong opinions or incentives to change.

------
tcgore
I am implementing some domain monitoring tools on my site, ParkedAvenue, and
this gives me a good idea. I will monitor my customer's domains, and then will
be able to let them know when they are up for renewal, and hopefully offers an
easy for them to migrate to better registrars!

Would this be a good addition to <http://ParkedAvenue.com>?

~~~
shii
Definitely. Do the Right Thing like NearlyFreeSpeech and I'll start doing
business.

------
charliepark
I'm always surprised in these conversations that Dreamhost never gets
mentioned. I've had nothing but great experiences with them for registrar
work. They also have $15 SSL certs that cover both the root and the www
subdomain. And one of the things I love most about them is how easy they make
it to leave, should you ever decide to do that.

~~~
edanm
I'd love to know why the op was downvoted. I've only had experience with
Dreamhost and they've always been good, but then again, I'm not even sure what
I'm supposed to be looking for. So any explanation would really come in handy.

------
cowpewter
I have all my domains with Dotster. They're a little expensive, and over the
years their site has gotten spammier looking (always have to say no to the
add-ons when buying a domain, no I do not need shitty hosting), but I first
signed up with them in all the way back in 2000, and like the article says -
the lockin is pretty high. All my domains are on auto-renew on my credit card,
and I only login to their site maybe about once a year?

Never had any noticeable outages or anything with them, but I don't have any
big sites either, just personal stuff. I've never had to contact their
customer support, so I don't know if it's good or bad. Occasionally I think
about switching to someplace a few dollars cheaper, but most of the registrars
that don't have reputations for horrible customer support tend to be near the
same price ($15ish/year) so I haven't bothered.

------
rcanine
I register all of my domains a Dreamhost—they're a hosting company and their
core business is not registration. No problems testing domain availability, no
squatted urls even after things expire. Reg. is something like $10, and I'm
not going to sweat $1 - $2 over the piece of mind.

------
brianbreslin
Can someone correct me on this: was hover originally called mail bank or name
bank? And had a practice of registering peoples last names as domains? I
recall this because I tried to register my last name through mail bank in 1998
and they registered it for themselves...

~~~
jtbigwoo
Are you talking about netidentity? They were bought by tucows a while ago and
then merged with other divisions to become hover. I'm a hover customer and
never had any problems...

~~~
brianbreslin
Yeah mailbank became netidentity.

------
iwjames
I just recently transferred all of my domains over from GoDaddy to Moniker,
which was relatively painless with their site heavily oriented around bulk
transfers. Although the control panel could be better, it is sooo much better
than GoDaddy's. When I logged in to GoDaddy to transfer these domains, not
having logged in for quite some time, and with their ever changing, incredibly
busy design, it took me a good 60 seconds or so to even find the link to the
'domain manager'.

The whole elephant incident alone wouldn't have made me switch, but after
wanting to try something new for some time, that was all I needed to put the
effort in to finding someone else.

~~~
citricsquid
Moniker have comparatively terrible security though, don't keep your important
domains there.

~~~
iwjames
Really?? In what regard?

------
gchucky
Following several recommendations I got on HN, I've moved all my domains to
Namecheap. It's been pretty solid thus far; haven't had any real issues that I
can think of. It'd be nice if their site was a bit less spammy, though.

~~~
earl
edit: nm, thanks bbatsell

original comment: Yeah, except if you use them for dns -- which I prefer to
leave on my registrar -- they're assholes who spam everyone who mistypes a
subdomain. Better yet, they throw ads on there and pocket the money. Cute,
right?

~~~
bbatsell
You're confusing Namecheap with Name.com. Name.com does that. Namecheap does
not.

~~~
earl
ugh. thank you.

------
mgkimsal
I use omnis.com, and I wish they promoted the domain name angle of their
services separately from the rest of their hosting.

The purchase process is straightforward, little upselling (no, I never want
hosting or privacy protection!), and the prices remain the same each year,
unlike godaddy which gets you at a low price then has higher renewal prices.
Example - all my renewing domains are >$10 at godaddy, but omnis.com are
$8.25. I'm getting a discount from omnis because I have >50 with them now.

------
sammcd
I'm working on a registrar that just focuses on domains. I want to be the
Chipotle of domain registrars. Life has been happening and putting me behind,
but if you are interested I'd love some more people to e-mail when I finish
it: <http://nameptr.com>

Sorry for the shameless plug... but this the third or fourth post I've seen,
and I had to mention that I am working on something :)

~~~
shpxnvz
It sounds interesting, but I'm curious what being the Chipotle of registrars
actually means?

------
nikcub
The trick is not to evaluate registrars who play the price game, you get what
you pay for.

joker.com - 10+ years now, over 100 domains, referred dozens of people, never
a problem.

Edit: to add to this, don't host your DNS at a shitty domain registrar and
then complain about it later. Get a proper DNS host like easydns. Keep the two
separate

------
chacha102
Really loved this bit:

    
    
      Oh, and you can’t delete a GoDaddy account. (Really 
      makes you want to sign up, right?) But you can cancel 
      all of your purchased products in it, remove all of your 
      payment information, and change all required contact 
      fields (email, mailing address, phone, etc.) to fake values. ↩

------
epynonymous
i used iwantmyname.com recently. it seems to be a pretty easy to use website
and most importantly for me was that they had .io domain names. the service
has been first rate, i typically get responses relatively quickly.

------
ck2
If you can use minimal interfaces and write your own access to their APIs when
necessary, find an OpenSRS based registrar, problem solved.

------
emehrkay
Sidetrack: there is an .in tld? Nice, I'm surprised by the lack of VERB.in
websites

~~~
TillE
"In" doesn't necessarily lend itself to snappy English phrases like "to" does.
It might also be confused with the gerund, especially when spoken - do I go to
meet.in or meet.ing? And what's your company/product called?

And are there additional restrictions on Indian domains? Not sure. For
example, last time I checked, only Americans could register .us domains.

~~~
emehrkay
it is a great tld (I have one and a whole project that could be formed around
it, just dont have the time to get it done. I need a Zed Shaw crash course on
getting shit done).

------
protomyth
I use Domain Discover. They seem ok and their DNS panel works pretty well.

------
xyzzyz
I recommend OVH, domains are very cheap and the support is quite good.

~~~
etaty
They will increase the price in one month or two ... (read on ovh forum)

------
16s
I actually liked the elephant commercial. I don't see how that commercial
makes GoDaddy a terrible company.

~~~
foxylad
Ok, I'll bite... First, if you liked the "commercial", you need to know a
little background. Elephants are an endangered species because poachers kill
them for their ivory, and they are protected in most countries. Only in
Zimbabwe, a totally corrupt state that has pretty much collapsed, was Parsons
able to get permission to "hunt" elephants. His attempt to spin it as a heroic
and humanitarian act was pathetic. There are several measures you can take to
prevent elephants straying into cropland, all costing a fraction of what
Parsons will have paid to stage his stunt. So all up, there's not much to
like.

Second, this doesn't make GoDaddy a terrible company. But it does mean that
their CEO has terrible judgement. For most people, the elephant slaughter was
the straw that broke the camel's back. We had endured the awful user interface
and saturation upselling for years, but for all the reasons explained in the
comments above, we didn't switch our domains. But I'm dammed if I'm going to
pay a cent more to such a narcissistic idiot.

Finally, if you still like the idea of hosting at GoDaddy, go for it - that's
your choice, and I respect it. Good luck!

------
vao
i use years without any problem directnic, highly recommended

~~~
Terretta
DirectNIC is fantastic, not to mention they withstood Hurricane Katrina holed
up in their office in downtown New Orleans.

------
martinp
I've had nothing but good experiences with iWantMyName [1]. My experience with
them and GoDaddy has been like night and day. They provide simple, reasonably
priced and to the point registration and management. Couldn't be happier with
them.

[1] <http://iwantmyname.com/>

~~~
utunga
myself also.. definitely would recommend for simplicity and cleanliness of
interface. I've been steadily moving all my domains from gandi to iwantmyname
for a while now... they also have all the tlds

~~~
treitnauer
Thanks guys, glad that you like our service.

To answer Marco's question: It is hard to be a good domain registrar but not
impossible.

Let me tell you my little personal story about bootstrapping iWantMyName. I
left Germany at the end of 2007 after working for a German domain registrar
for nearly 6 years. We were successful (2 million domains under management)
and the big ones GoDaddy, NetSol, eNom, Register.com etc. just started
registering ccTLDs (country code top-level domains) through us.

But something didn't feel right... Domain registrars were getting lots of bad
press (frontrunning, parking) and I started thinking of building a new domain
management service. In the meantime I moved to Australia and after 6 months of
being with an Australian registrar, I had enough. It was time to finally take
the plunge. So I moved from Australia to New Zealand where we launched
iWantMyName with zero dollar investment in December 2008. I knew one of my co-
founders from Germany (luckily he was the former CTO of a registrar back in
Germany and had enough of Europe too).

The first year was hard. Really fucking hard. We still had to do some
consulting jobs to survive and our service could do nothing but register
domains. No transfers, only certain DNS record types were supported, no whois
updates. But for me it was really surprising how few features people actually
need. Our site architecture helps to keep design work at a minimum level too,
it's intentionally kept simple. Actually, we don't even have a designer in our
team.

So where are we now a bit more than 2 years later? Well, we're running a
profitable domain management service which generates six figures in revenue.
This currently supports three founders, one employee and every single cent
that's left will go into improving the user experience. No upselling, no
annoying ads, no parking crap, auctions and what have you. We have decided not
to compete on price, features or add crappy hosting services but only to give
customers what they really need and that is purchasing / managing domains.
Having said that, there's still lots of room for improvement and we will not
stop until we've build the domain registrar Marco is looking for.

~~~
chrismsnz
Awesome! I've been looking at moving all my domains (.com and .co/org.nz to
IWMN for a while - the fact that you're a kiwi with a customer focussed
bootstrapped startup might just tip the scales :)

All the best!

------
drivebyacct2
I understand subscribing to bad registrars. I mean, I don't really understand
why people ignore all of the evidence against GoDaddy until it bites them in
the ass, but it seems to happen a lot.

I may never understand though, why people are using the registrar's provided
DNS services. I shudder writing that sentence. It just makes no sense.

