This is unfortunately not a great way to compare providers. After all, who are the people who will come to this site, and leave reviews? Mostly people who had a seriously negative experience, and are keen to fight back by smearing the provider. Perhaps obviously, larger providers will have more of these.
People with normal experiences -- e.g., "it just works" -- will have no reason to find a review site and leave a review, so even though the larger providers will also have lots more of these, you won't see them.
I'm not saying that GoDaddy etc. are wonderful; I left them a few years ago because I don't like the founder, but I never had a problem with the service; it just worked, and it was inexpensive.
A more valuable way to compare (if a representative survey isn't practical) would be to show a walk-through of the various common actions to take at a registrar -- and rate those for usability, price, etc.. I'd be interested to see how registrars vary not just for initial registration price, but also renewal price; for how difficult it is to transfer a domain to another registrar; etc..
Fair point - and I actually do agree with almost all of those. However, I think some of these are inevitable biases that any sort of reviews will face - I think xkcd puts it very well http://xkcd.com/937/ :D
I started the review section as a counter point to the main page, which is purely about comparing prices. For the points in your last paragraph, I fully intend to blog about them where possible. For the time being, I hope that at least some people would share some of those experiences in the review description!
They should remove the privacy protection from whois and state on the site exactly who is behind it. Why should people trust the site and how do they know there isn't a hidden agenda in promoting certain providers? (This was a somewhat frequent occurrence with sites that provided web hosting reviews as only one example.)
Great site - I like the simple straight forward layout/premise. Deciding between domain providers is definitely something that needs to be done by many entrepreneurs and people who need websites.
I think that even having a place for people to complain is useful. If your company is doing a fantastic job, outside of extreme cases, there will be very little complaints. Yes, there may be negative bias, but negative bias will also more heavily manifest the worse the company (generally, don't quote me on that, it's not a theorem or anything)
somewhat in contrast to what has posted -- I actually went to the site and wanted to leave a review for gandhi -- they're actually a great provider, and working with them has been great, and been a breeze. Was glad to see they have 5/5, it's well-deserved.
Left a review, wish you would add an anonymous option
Are users able to add a domain to the list? I didn't see that option to add mine, unless it's behind the login (and I wasn't going to create a login just to find out). I know you could end up with a lot of noise if a provider is added without a review, and adds the need to verify pricing, but maybe only add providers who have a review, as well, to address that. When I was looking for a domain provider, I would have discounted a site that had information exclusively about ISPs that were paying a referral or affiliate fee, since any superior ISP that doesn't pay for referrals wouldn't be included (and I'd probably have assumed the site was owned by one or more of the ISPs).
Great service, and great blog. Really cool to see you blogging about what is going on with your site, really helped me connect with you. BTW don't worry about scumbag copycats, they might squeeze off some biz from you but never end up amounting to anything.
Good job, you made a review site? Sorry I know I sound negative but you made a simple review site for domain registrars in an attempt to make commissions from those registrars, and then attempt to get people to refer others to those registrars through you to get commissions.
Unique, new, or innovative? No
Better than current solutions for finding reviews on domain registrars? No
A simple attempt to earn affiliate commissions with a review site? Yes -- this concept has been around forever in the affiliate world.
Not sure why this link is on hacker news...
My personal advice would be to spend your personal time on something actually productive.
Be respectful. Anyone sharing work is making a contribution, however modest.
Ask questions out of curiosity. Don't cross-examine.
Instead of "you're doing it wrong", suggest alternatives.
When someone is learning, help them learn more.
When something isn't good, you needn't pretend that it is.
But don't be gratuitously negative.
People with normal experiences -- e.g., "it just works" -- will have no reason to find a review site and leave a review, so even though the larger providers will also have lots more of these, you won't see them.
I'm not saying that GoDaddy etc. are wonderful; I left them a few years ago because I don't like the founder, but I never had a problem with the service; it just worked, and it was inexpensive.
A more valuable way to compare (if a representative survey isn't practical) would be to show a walk-through of the various common actions to take at a registrar -- and rate those for usability, price, etc.. I'd be interested to see how registrars vary not just for initial registration price, but also renewal price; for how difficult it is to transfer a domain to another registrar; etc..