
Namecheap has rebranded - aroman
https://www.namecheap.com?rebrand
======
nostromo
I think "Register your domains from just $3.98 a year" was better than "The
Internet Needs People. To tell stories, open stores and share what matters."

~~~
patio11
Dirty little secret of the domain registration industry: all the money is in
upsells to email, shared hosting, pre-rolled $30 a month shopping carts, etc.
Domains themselves are cheap and fairly low margin.

You know who buys those comparatively expensive high-margin services? SMB
owners and people planning to be one. Suffice it to say that Oprah is slightly
more well-known than (pick a tech personage) in that demographic.

This is also why GoDaddy brands with supermodels rather than with "You'll love
our automated tools to assist with SSL renewals." (Which, FWIW, are pretty
good.)

P.S. Fun fact about GAAP revenue recognition which Bob Parsons hates with a
burning passion: Suppose I spend $1,000 on domain purchases or renewals this
year. How much revenue does GoDaddy book? Answer: $200 or so, because I renew
for 5 years at a time, and they can only book a prorated amount of the $1k per
day. The remaining $800 sits on their balance sheet _as a liability_. If they
spend the corresponding cash prior to 2018, as an accounting matter, it looks
like they are in debt to Kalzumeus Software. This is crazy to me as an
operator, because I cannot ask for that money back and because I know that the
carrying cost of my business to them is so close to zero as to be
unmeasurable, but it makes the business look artificially over leveraged.

~~~
yummyfajitas
That fact of GAAP accounting actually makes sense. Suppose after 1 year,
GoDaddy screws up and botches your registration. Your domain is permanently
gone. Now GoDaddy owes you $800.

So yes, booking it as debt GoDaddy owes you which they pay down in services
actually does make sense. It's extremely low risk debt, but debt nonetheless.

~~~
lostlogin
Thanks. Accounting isn't my thing at all. I recently heard that a previous
employer of mine was begging staff to take some leave as all the leave on
their books is somehow counted as a debt and it makes the books better if
people burn off some of their accrued leave. People were forced to take 2-3
month holidays to clear their 10+ years of leave they had saved up. Quite how
the workplace functioned with so many on leave at the same time is beyond me.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Prepaid services are technically a debt, but a very low risk one. In contrast,
paid leave is a high risk liability - an employee with 4 months accrued leave
can quit at any time and they are owed 4 months of pay when they do.

(I _think_ the company can opt to pay out their 4 months of leave over the
course of 4 months to smooth cash flow issues, but I'm not sure of this.)

~~~
Khaine
Companies allocate money into a contra account (to the leave liability) each
period (i.e. monthly) so that its all "accounting money". Otherwise companies
would go bankrupt if too many staff took leave at a time.

That is while staff with large leave balances look bad, they don't effect the
profitability of the organisation.

~~~
yummyfajitas
In that case there is something I don't understand. If the company has a debt
and an offsetting asset pegged specifically to that use, why does it look bad?

If anything, that should look good: "we owe $X to employees at 0bps interest
and we have $X in the bank at 40bps."

~~~
Khaine
It looks bad because they have a large liability on there balance sheet. Also
you have to remember that your leave entitlement stays the same if you get
promoted/ pay rise so the organisation actually has to pay more then what
they've offset

------
ChrisNorstrom
Happy NameCheap customer with 35+ domains here.

This is the worst redesign I've seen in a long time but has a really well
redesigned logo. Sorry. Looks like they're trying to fit their content in one
of those Generic Fad Layout Templates you find on ThemeForest. The LOGO is
awesome though.

● Registering a domain is now harder. Before I could select a dropdown menu
and see all the TLD options. Now I can't.

● Did you know that NameCheap sells .es domains? Guess how many screens you
have to click through to find that out.

● Did you know NameCheap .coms are only $10 while other sites sell them for
$14. Because this design doesn't tell you anything.

● I have to scroll so much to get so little. White space is good in moderation
but this is just overdone. There's so little content and so much white space
and meaningless grey elements and slideshows and giant icons that it makes the
site look sterile.

● There's a slideshow with only 2 slides, one of them talking about Web
Hosting (to sell web hosting plans), the other about Security (to sell ssl
certificates). No other data. No other info. How many people do you think are
going to click the second slide and find out that NameCheap sells really cheap
ssl certificates.

● Lots of garbage information is taking up space.

● Less functional than the previous design.

● Some of the worst copywrite I've seen. "The internet needs people" and
"Getting your site online is easier than you think."

● It tries to advertise NameCheap (poorly) and what it does (poorly) rather
than letting me do it. Look, you guys won, I'm already ON your site. Stop
selling your "image" to me and start selling your products and services.

Hopefully when their sales drop they'll revert to the previous layout and work
off of that.

~~~
goldenkey
As a customer with over 100 domains, the new redesign is quite the eyesore. My
main reason for choosing Namecheap was because it was technically designed,
minimalistic, and had good prices. The new design says flat hipsterism with a
splash of web 2.0 fruityness. It's not in the spirit of Namecheap. Something
tells me that this design came from an external source. Why change for
changesake? Eek.

~~~
hdra
How is the old website minimalistic? While I do agree the new design is
confusing and put too much in form over function, the old website is way too
cluttered IMO.

------
sergiotapia
Aw shucks - I thought it was a complete site overhaul judging by their new
landing page.

It seems they took the old client area and just plopped it into an iframe. :(

~~~
tamar
As we mention elsewhere in the comments, this is phase one of a multiple-phase
project. Stay tuned, Sergio. ;)

------
tristanperry
As patio11 says, the margin on domains are fairly small and so many domain
companies survive on the upsells instead. Verisign's current .com price is
$7.85 and for .net is $5.62. This is the minimum that the registrars (GoDaddy,
NameCheap etc) need to pay - so when you think that NameCheap sometimes sell
.coms for $8.95, the margin really is small... especially since I've left out
the $0.25 ICANN transaction fee (many companies - GoDaddy aside - include this
in the overall price). So a $8.95 .com sale leaves just $0.85.

So it does make sense for domain companies to market themselves as sellers of
an online presence, instead of a sub-$10 domain name.

But having said that, the website seems a tad... boilerplate. I thought that
big companies were done with rebranding to a Web 2.0 esque corporate web
design?

Also the footer is 865 pixels tall on my 1920x1080p screen - does it really
need to be that big?

I don't mean to be too critical - I do support the change to selling a 'story'
instead of a domain name. But the design just seems... outdated?

------
higherpurpose
It's not too bad. Unfortunately what I _really_ wanted them to change wasn't
just the "face" of their website, but the _whole_ website, especially the
domain managing features and whatnot. Those kept the same early 2000 design.
I'm hoping it's because they didn't have time to finish redesigning
everything, but why not just wait until they did?

~~~
ted0
I'm personally working on redesigning the account panel. We're about 6-8 weeks
out but what we have so far is a huge improvement. Would love to hear your
feedback - ted@namecheap.com

~~~
sn0v
Hey Ted, loving what you and the Namecheap team have done with the website!
Would it be possible to add a few mouseover/overlay tutorials in the control
panel for new users?

~~~
ted0
Yes! We plan on doing such things.

------
MichaelGG
I was hoping it'd be a new name. While Namecheap seems like a great registrar,
the name alone seems to put people off when I recommend them.

~~~
ChrisNorstrom
You know what that's so true. I avoided NameCheap the first few times
specifically because of the name. Sounds like a guy running a company out of
his basement. And with domain names being worth $2,000+ and on rare occasions
getting hijacked and stolen, "cheap" doesn't sound like a good thing.

"I'm looking for a construction company, anyone know a good one.", "Oh yeah I
use Cheap Construction Co. they're great!"... "Yeah no thanks."

------
bosch
Hopefully, they get higher quality support reps with better understanding of
English. I'd also like the ability to be able to call someone, that's
something that GoDaddy does better. I guess they take advantage of the cheaper
technical salaries in Eastern Europe though so that's why customers aren't
able to talk to someone.

------
xref
Oh man, it looks like iOS threw up all over this redesign. What's the extra
popout menu on the right for? it's all the same stuff from your navbar. And
why are all the account management tools shoved in a tiny menu in the corner
of the screen even when I'm logged in?

------
level09
Somehow the logo reminded me directly of "The next web" logo.

------
fire_starter
Affordable & Unlimited Hosting From Escalate is only $1.89/Month. Not only do
they always have a special offer going on, but they have a huge variety of
services and probably the most reliable support I've dealt with (GoDaddy &
HostGator sucked!)

They're honestly worth checking out, if anything else
[http://www.escalatehosting.com/special/645199](http://www.escalatehosting.com/special/645199)

------
asdfs
Hosted e-mail pricing is broken. "/yr" should change to "/<length of time>"
when you change from yearly to monthly/biannual.

------
hierro
Just a heads up if you're planning on using namecheap. I transferred a bunch
of domains (around 70 or so) and they just refused to provide me with an
invoice, so I couldn't deduct the expenses from my company's taxes. They will
only sent you receipts, which are completely useless if you're in EU (and I
think refusing to provide an invoice is even illegal here).

~~~
tamar
We don't and have never had a system for invoices--nor have I seen that
anywhere else. You do get a whole record of your purchases with the full
amount spent.

We do appreciate the feedback though while we build out the interface even
further!

~~~
hierro
I voiced my feedback before I left, several times in fact. Not that it stopped
you from sending me emails asking why I was transferring the domains out.

------
vxxzy
It seems namecheap is more concerned about small business and/or side
projects. The market for small, "I'll try this thing out" sort of people: that
is the market they, NameCheap, seem to be luring. Eventually, except in rare
circumstance, the sites do not do too well and are sent back into Tao.

~~~
tamar
We'd love to hear your feedback on where you get that impression. We speak to
lots of small business owners, but we also speak to everyone. The Internet
needs people--and that is a blanket term. ;)

------
virtualwhys
Namecheap allowed me to escape from GoDaddy; for that alone I am deeply
thankful.

That the transition was seemless and, well, cheap, was an added bonus.

------
ing33k
I like the new design, but they should have done it progressively. ( not
jumping from 95 design to 2014 design at once )

~~~
poopsintub
Seriously? You want them to spend thousands of dollars to show you a site that
looks like it's from 2000 for the next six months, only to redo it more
modern?

------
javajosh
It costs $10 a year for a name. How much computation is Namecheap doing for
that ten bucks, in general?

~~~
ted0
computation?

~~~
javajosh
Oh yes I was idly wondering how much it costs per name to run a registry -
ignoring the e-commerce side.

------
rrpadhy
My first impression was "Are they pivoting to become a social network?"

:( I need to stop thinking pivots.

------
mmanfrin
The account page looks 100% the same as it was, they only changed the header.

Now things look out of place.

~~~
tamar
Two Namecheap employees commented already about this saying that the account
area's redesign is also underway ;)

------
nader
Much better, now they just need to get their client interface modernised :)

------
emocakes
The menu on the right cuts off at the bottom of my screen and there is no way
to scroll it down. Also, the default font size is too darn big, zoom out to
75%, thats how it should look.

They haven't rethemed the manage pages yet, looks hilariously out of place x)

