Good-Bye GoDaddy

RJM62

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Jun 15, 2007
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Geek on the Hill
All 43 of my owned domains have now been moved to NameSilo. Yay! No more of GoDaddy's annoying nagging, upselling, and constant GUI changes that waste my time.

The only domain I have left on GoDaddy is one I hold in trust for a client who is this close ->| |<- to getting fired. His renewal for my services is up in July and his domain name in October. If he's late (which he's always been before), I'm going to terminate him and tell him to open a GoDaddy account so I can transfer his domain to him. If he doesn't, I'll let it expire.

Rich
 
Cool, I also dislike GoDaddy. NameSilo really does have cheap domains...I looked at networksolutions.com where I used to register stuff back in the day and they want like 4 times as much!
 
There is no magic bullet. They all suck, and 80% of them are owned by the same few groups. And if they haven't been assimilated, they will be. Google any hosting/name provider and the words "sucks" or "problems" and you'll see. At least with GoDaddy, they have clear-speaking clear-thinking techs and customer service people.
 
There is no magic bullet. They all suck, and 80% of them are owned by the same few groups. And if they haven't been assimilated, they will be. Google any hosting/name provider and the words "sucks" or "problems" and you'll see. At least with GoDaddy, they have clear-speaking clear-thinking techs and customer service people.

I prefer hostgator, less up selling crap. Although, it normally takes two tries to get a tech who speaks geek.

Tim
 
I've been a reseller with Tucows for almost 20 years now. Never had a single problem with any of my personal or client domains or security certs. If you're in the business, you might want to check them out. ;)
 
I've been a reseller with Tucows for almost 20 years now. Never had a single problem with any of my personal or client domains or security certs. If you're in the business, you might want to check them out. ;)

Tocows, Hostgator and many others are actually the same company behind the scenes :D

Tim
 
Not a fan of GoDaddy either.


And on the day that Gary DeCarlo passed, I think that's only appropriate.
 
There is no magic bullet. They all suck, and 80% of them are owned by the same few groups. And if they haven't been assimilated, they will be. Google any hosting/name provider and the words "sucks" or "problems" and you'll see. At least with GoDaddy, they have clear-speaking clear-thinking techs and customer service people.

That actually was one of the reasons why I stayed with GoDaddy for so long. On those rare occasions when I actually needed support, it was available and usually competent. Nowadays, not so much. The last time I had to call them I spent an hour and a half on hold and wound up being connected to a moron when I finally got through.

The client had both lost access to their former email address and had lost their login password, and so had to re-establish ownership of the domain. In the past, this would have been an easy thing: Fax or email them a copy of the registrant's driver's license and the business's license, and that would be that. And actually, that's still the way it's done, in theory. But the idiots he talked to at GoDaddy didn't know that.

Because I was listed as both the tech and admin contact for the domain, I figured I could at least pay the renewal fee to get the site back up. I'd done that in the past in similar situations. There's no ICANN rule against someone other than the regisrant paying the renewal fee, especially when that someone is also one of the WHOIS contacts for the domain. But it was no-go. They wouldn't take the payment.

In the end, I registered a similar domain (on NameSilo) and uploaded his site to it while the client continued duking it out with GoDaddy. When it was finally resolved, I parked the old domain on the new one because the new one was actually better. But It took about a month -- plus a hefty redemption fee -- before it was all sorted out.

I honestly wonder whether the delay was intentional so they could collect the redemption fee. I mean, the procedure for re-establishing ownership is not complicated. It could have been done in minutes. But they dragged it out for a month.

That experience put the kibosh on my relationship with GoDaddy. The only reason I'd put up with their upselling, nagging, and incessant UI changes for ~15 years was because their support, when needed, was decent. Take that away, and there's no point in dealing with them -- especially since their prices are higher than most other registrars nowadays. I figure I'll be saving about $400.00 - $600.00 / year by having switched to NameSilo between the basic registration fees and the free WHOIS privacy that NameSilo offers. GoDaddy charges $9.95 / year per domain for the privacy service.

Rich
 
Is there a point where it makes sense to rent your own server to run your clients sites rather than dealing with a retailer like GoDaddy ?
 
Is there a point where it makes sense to rent your own server to run your clients sites rather than dealing with a retailer like GoDaddy ?
There is a difference between domain registration, DNS hosting and website hosting. I think Rich does have his own web hosting server, though the low cost of that at places like Bluehost.com make that not worth it most of the time. Domain registration requires a third party and DNS hosting is usually best done by a third party (often the same party). I personally use dnsmadeeasy.com for DNS. It is cheap and they offer some enterprise features, such as low TTLs and failover, plus an easy to use web interface.
 
Good day, all ... I consider the computer, the internet, and isp/hosting like a mechanic considers a screwdriver. I don't need to know the metallurgical makeup of the bit nor the temper, nor the chemical properties of the handle. If the sucker tightens and loosens screws, that's all I need.

Same for the geek stuff. I've got my web hosting, ISP, and all that stuff through 1and1, but lately they have played some shenanigans with passwords, web access and such that I'm considering moving. However, I'd like the move to be as reliable, painless and ungeeky as possible. Any suggestions?

Jim
 
There is a difference between domain registration, DNS hosting and website hosting. I think Rich does have his own web hosting server, though the low cost of that at places like Bluehost.com make that not worth it most of the time. Domain registration requires a third party and DNS hosting is usually best done by a third party (often the same party). I personally use dnsmadeeasy.com for DNS. It is cheap and they offer some enterprise features, such as low TTLs and failover, plus an easy to use web interface.

Ah, I understood him to use GoDaddy for web-hosting as well. I use an outfit called dotster for the DNS related stuff.
 
Jim,
It's like you're asking to drive, but don't want to know about all those goofy pedals and controls. Sometimes domains/hosting/DNS gets complicated. Or txt records, Cname records, or MX records. It can take numerous calls and/or emails just to transfer a domain, or fix something that "the guy next door" did. You either have to understand it, or pay someone else to deal with it.
 
Good day, all ... I consider the computer, the internet, and isp/hosting like a mechanic considers a screwdriver. I don't need to know the metallurgical makeup of the bit nor the temper, nor the chemical properties of the handle. If the sucker tightens and loosens screws, that's all I need.

Same for the geek stuff. I've got my web hosting, ISP, and all that stuff through 1and1, but lately they have played some shenanigans with passwords, web access and such that I'm considering moving. However, I'd like the move to be as reliable, painless and ungeeky as possible. Any suggestions?

Jim
I have always thought it was a bad idea to use your ISP as your web hoster / DNS hoster. It is a lot easier to make changes where necessary, if these things aren't connected. The downside of that, is you do need to have some level of understanding on how the three things play together. It isn't terribly complicated and you really don't need to know the difference between a CName and an MX record, just that those are DNS records and need to be hosted somewhere, in order for people to find the services your domain provides (email, web hosting, etc.).
 
I have always thought it was a bad idea to use your ISP as your web hoster / DNS hoster. It is a lot easier to make changes where necessary, if these things aren't connected. The downside of that, is you do need to have some level of understanding on how the three things play together. It isn't terribly complicated and you really don't need to know the difference between a CName and an MX record, just that those are DNS records and need to be hosted somewhere, in order for people to find the services your domain provides (email, web hosting, etc.).

I used to do that. However, in the last decade it has become very standardized how to move stuff. In fact GoDaddy, Hostgator and many others include directions on how to move from one provider to another. Many of them use cpanel with minor tweaks...
I have switched or helped multiple people switch, that I no longer bother with keeping it all separate. I put it with one vendor, one throat to choke, and if I get ****ed migrate to a new one.
 
I used to do that. However, in the last decade it has become very standardized how to move stuff. In fact GoDaddy, Hostgator and many others include directions on how to move from one provider to another. Many of them use cpanel with minor tweaks...
I have switched or helped multiple people switch, that I no longer bother with keeping it all separate. I put it with one vendor, one throat to choke, and if I get ****ed migrate to a new one.
He isn't talking about web hosting and DNS living at GoDaddy. He uses a small ISP for his Internet access and that is his all in one solution. I am guessing no cpanel or any self help tools at all. I have had nothing but trouble with these types of providers. You end up with DNS outages when you move email or web hosting. They fat finger a record and then no one is there after 5:00 to fix it and when they do they have a 24 hour TTL on the record, etc. It is pretty easy to move DNS off to an inexpensive third party, such as dnsmadeeasy.com and avoid those costly hassles. DNS is the first thing I would move and you want to do it at least a week ahead of any other changes (such as moving email). That way, you DNS records run parallel, while the TTL expires and the transfer happens.
 
I still have a few GoDaddy domains. I quit using them a long time ago when they played a Superbowl TV commercial that contrasted their marketing department with their software developers.

In the marketing department their then CEO and his buddies had hookers on their laps and were swilling booze and (if I recall correctly) sniffing lines of cocaine in an opulent hotel suite.

The devs were in a cube farm, and all were skinny nerdy guys with birth control glasses and narrow black ties. I was a dev. If the CEO is going to have hooker/booze/drug parties I should be invited also!! And I don't wear birth control glasses, ties, I have my own office, and I'm not skinny! The devs do the work and are hard to replace, marketing guys are a dime a dozen. It's the dev's who should get the best hookers!

It PO'd me. I still have one or two domains left there, but the rest have all been moved.

Now I use hover.com . Hover has a super clean fast UI. They don't nickle and dime you. That have knowledgeable tech support using native English speakers.

I did once have a GoDaddy person call me to ask how I liked the service or something. I gave them my hookers/booze/drugs rant. She said she understood, and that the CEO in that commercial had left the company. I told her when they cleaned up their web page I'd think about it.
 
Is there a point where it makes sense to rent your own server to run your clients sites rather than dealing with a retailer like GoDaddy ?

I run multiple servers. I was just using GoDaddy for domains, which is part of the problem. They make you click through three pages of upselling **** every time you register or renew a domain. It gets tiresome. I would just click through them without reading them, but I wouldn't put it past them to check "Yes" by default for some useless service or another.

They also start nagging you to renew 90 days before the domain expires, nag you to set all your domains to auto-renew, nag you to join the Discount Domain Club (which usually winds up costing more money than not joining once you add it all up), and other such petty annoyances.

I put up with it for years because their support, when needed, was top-notch. But now that sucks, too.

Rich
 
Jim,
It's like you're asking to drive, but don't want to know about all those goofy pedals and controls. Sometimes domains/hosting/DNS gets complicated. Or txt records, Cname records, or MX records. It can take numerous calls and/or emails just to transfer a domain, or fix something that "the guy next door" did. You either have to understand it, or pay someone else to deal with it.

I see it as like learning to fly and not having to learn about cable tensiometers, leak-down compression gauges, and antenna diversity couplers for ATC.

Jim
 
@weirdjim isp is up to you, but they tend to be rubbish for anything but sending your bits around. If your website is on your computer, then leave it alone. If it is on theirs, really depends on how it was built to if you can move it. Using one of those fancy website builders tend to be a one way street. If it just HTML, web hosts are a dime a dozen, and you may want to spin up a cheap computer with Linux to act as your web server. Domain hosts, plenty of options above or my favorite is namecheap.com.
 
I have always thought it was a bad idea to use your ISP as your web hoster / DNS hoster. It is a lot easier to make changes where necessary, if these things aren't connected. The downside of that, is you do need to have some level of understanding on how the three things play together. It isn't terribly complicated and you really don't need to know the difference between a CName and an MX record, just that those are DNS records and need to be hosted somewhere, in order for people to find the services your domain provides (email, web hosting, etc.).

I never found DNS to be at all confusing. Tedious, yes, but not confusing.

Actually, the only aspect of hosting that I'm often tempted to offload is mail. It's really not difficult per se; but between the spam, the anti-spam, and clueless clients, it just takes up an inordinate amount of my time.

Rich
 
I used to do that. However, in the last decade it has become very standardized how to move stuff. In fact GoDaddy, Hostgator and many others include directions on how to move from one provider to another. Many of them use cpanel with minor tweaks...
I have switched or helped multiple people switch, that I no longer bother with keeping it all separate. I put it with one vendor, one throat to choke, and if I get ****ed migrate to a new one.

I have cPanel installed on about half the servers I run (the ones that clients have access to). It does simplify some otherwise tedious chores. The move function works very well, especially if you're leaving the old server up for a while until DNS re-propagates. It points requests to the new server to avoid client-side caching errors. I've done hundreds of moves using cPanel and I don't remember having problems with any of them. It's pretty much idiot-proof.

Setting the TTLs on the old server to something absurdly low like 600 well before the move also helps a lot.

Rich
 
Setting the TTLs on the old server to something absurdly low like 600 well before the move also helps a lot.
Rich

See what I mean? To me, TTL is Transistor-Transistor-Logic (the old 74xxy series). We all have our little lingo in our areas of expertise and trying to translate between the languages is somewhat confusing. There is a world of difference between ignorant and stupid. We can fix ignorant with a little education.

Remembering full well the expert mathematician (Euclid? Archimedes??) who told the king that there was no royal road to learning math, can anybody point me to a good reference to let me educate myself as to options? I wouldn't mind setting up a machine to run my own server, with the exception of the facts that (a) I'm on a relatively slow (6 down, 1 up) microwave link to the 'net and (b) I'm honestly starting from pretty much ground zero. Yes, all my web pages are html and I write them all. However, ftp uploading them to the 1and1 server is pretty much the end of my network competence. I don't even know what the alphabet soup y'all are throwing around really mean. YEs, I know dns (domain name server), ftp (file transfer protocol) and a few more, but I know the NAME, not the function, and how they all inter-relate. And what I can do on my own and what I have to farm out.

Any takers to point me in the right direction?

THanks,


Jim
 
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See what I mean? To me, TTL is Transistor-Transistor-Logic (the old 74xxy series). We all have our little lingo in our areas of expertise and trying to translate between the languages is somewhat confusing. There is a world of difference between ignorant and stupid. We can fix ignorant with a little education.

Remembering full well the expert mathematician (Euclid? Archimedes??) who told the king that there was no royal road to learning math, can anybody point me to a good reference to let me educate myself as to options? I wouldn't mind setting up a machine to run my own server, with the exception of the facts that (a) I'm on a relatively slow (6 down, 1 up) microwave link to the 'net and (b) I'm honestly starting from pretty much ground zero. Yes, all my web pages are html and I write them all. However, ftp uploading them to the 1and1 server is pretty much the end of my network competence. I don't even know what the alphabet soup y'all are throwing around really mean. YEs, I know dns (domain name server), ftp (file transfer protocol) and a few more, but I know the NAME, not the function, and how they all inter-relate. And what I can do on my own and what I have to farm out.

Any takers to point me in the right direction?

THanks,


Jim
If you are coming back down the hill anytime soon, I can meet you for lunch again.
 
See what I mean? To me, TTL is Transistor-Transistor-Logic (the old 74xxy series). We all have our little lingo in our areas of expertise and trying to translate between the languages is somewhat confusing. There is a world of difference between ignorant and stupid. We can fix ignorant with a little education.

Remembering full well the expert mathematician (Euclid? Archimedes??) who told the king that there was no royal road to learning math, can anybody point me to a good reference to let me educate myself as to options? I wouldn't mind setting up a machine to run my own server, with the exception of the facts that (a) I'm on a relatively slow (6 down, 1 up) microwave link to the 'net and (b) I'm honestly starting from pretty much ground zero. Yes, all my web pages are html and I write them all. However, ftp uploading them to the 1and1 server is pretty much the end of my network competence. I don't even know what the alphabet soup y'all are throwing around really mean. YEs, I know dns (domain name server), ftp (file transfer protocol) and a few more, but I know the NAME, not the function, and how they all inter-relate. And what I can do on my own and what I have to farm out.

Any takers to point me in the right direction?

THanks,


Jim

In simple terms, TTL (time to live) specifies how long a value in DNS is to be considered valid. It's measured in seconds, so a TTL of 600 is 10 minutes.

Client operating systems maintain local DNS caches of domain IP information. When you move a site to another server with a different IP, it may cause computers that have cached the old IP to not be able to find the site on its new IP. By setting the TTL very low for a time before the move that is at least as long as the longest existing TTL, the clients will expire their locally cached entries more quickly. That's what you want when a move is planned.

If you're going to have control over the old server for at least as long as the longest TTLs, you also point all the relevant DNS entries on the old server to the new server's IP when you've moved the site. This is a good way to do it when you're just moving sites around between servers that you own, not retiring the old server; or if you're willing to keep paying to keep the old server up for a while after moving the site(s) to the new one.

The practice of shortening the TTLs before a move applies even when using a third-party DNS service. The clients will still have the old IP cached for the length of time specified by the TTL regardless of who is providing DNS. You want that caching time to be as short as reasonably possible when planning a move.

600 seconds is a common TTL for Web sites that are scheduled to be moved because most visitors spend well under 10 minutes per visit on a typical site, so they'll only need to query DNS once at the beginning of the visit. If 10 minutes passes before they visit again, their cache entry will have expired, so they'll make another DNS call. If the site has moved by then, they'll just pull the updated IP information. DNS calls use resources, however, so you don't want to set the TTLs too low.

Rich
 
I can't get past the name, Go Daddy... Then Intuit lol. Anyway, they are certainly better than their rivals around that time. NetSol and Dotster are things I learned about after the fact, thank god. I own several co-located servers so I suppose I'm not a good judge of what other people can do for me, or paying for shared hosting. Go Daddy made it easier to sell domains, their transfer process was pretty convenient. I used to used them as a registrar a few times. I sold a $12 domain, freq411.net through them for $800 USD years ago. I don't know if they still use female racecar driver as their sales pitch, but to me that's a clear indication they're after a certain type of people that don't have a clue. All of that is fine by me, a 30 second wait for a WordPress page to load on their server, is not.
 
I can't get past the name, Go Daddy... Then Intuit lol. Anyway, they are certainly better than their rivals around that time. NetSol and Dotster are things I learned about after the fact, thank god. I own several co-located servers so I suppose I'm not a good judge of what other people can do for me, or paying for shared hosting. Go Daddy made it easier to sell domains, their transfer process was pretty convenient. I used to used them as a registrar a few times. I sold a $12 domain, freq411.net through them for $800 USD years ago. I don't know if they still use female racecar driver as their sales pitch, but to me that's a clear indication they're after a certain type of people that don't have a clue. All of that is fine by me, a 30 second wait for a WordPress page to load on their server, is not.

I sold a domain through them once. It took three or four weeks before they released the funds to me by the time all was said and done. That was the last time.

On the other hand, in terms of traffic, they're one of the best venues for aftermarket domain sales. I've had a few listed on NameSilo for a while with no bites yet. They probably would have gotten more action on GoDaddy. But that's not really what I do for a living, so I'm not too concerned about it. They're just domains that I don't need anymore because I decided not to pursue the projects I registered them for in the first place.

I have one that's a dilemma. The client went out of business because of their own ineptitude, and the company that used to be associated with the domain went down owing everyone in the world money. It's an excellent domain that would probably fetch in the neighborhood of $3K to $5K at auction, and I own it because the client never paid me for it.

I only paid whatever the usual registration fee was because I happened to stumble on it the day it came off redemption. I bought it with the old client in mind and intended to transfer it to him because it was a much better domain than the one he'd been using, but he never paid the invoice for $18.76 for me to transfer it to him (or at least list him as the registrant). So I'm still the owner and registrant.

I'm reluctant to put the domain up for auction because of the fact that the previous business went down the way it did. There could be some carry-over to the new owner. So right now I'm squatting on it until all the dust settles from the previous company that was using it. Then I'll auction it or sell it.

Ethics and having a conscience are such bothers.

Rich
 
Any takers to point me in the right direction?

Yes. When you want an airplane flown commercially, you hire a commercial pilot.

When you want a commercial website done, you hire a commercial website expert.

Not kidding. If 1 and 1's hosting works for you, keep it. They're doing nothing particularly different from any other bottom of the barrel cheap web host and frankly they're not too bad at it. You upload stuff, they handle the hundred other things you don't want to learn.

To learn to do self-hosting on the modern Internet is possible, but not if you're planning on remaining at the Private Pilot level. Comments like "I don't need to know how it works" means you'll be better off paying United to fly you there.

Switching to Southwest probably won't change the experience much.

If you need more customer service than those, you'll pay more, because then you'll need a bizjet. That'd be someone building you something custom and maybe even letting you sit in the left seat of your own jet while keeping you out of trouble. Expensive. But they'd be happy to do it for the right price.

The analogy falls apart in one way... nobody wants the bizjet job in IT and they definitely won't do it for the free flight time. They're going to charge a lot per hour. :)
 
Anyway, back on topic...

GoDaddy. Blows. Top pricing for mediocre service and lots of ads.

Between the multiple companies that make up our building's tenants all owned by the same owner, time, chaos, fiefdoms, and what-not meant they had four domain registrars.

Most stuff was at GoDaddy.

I yanked all of it over to name.com earlier this year as two of the VP's like them, and they're a local company with a clue.

Registered there. Hosted on Route 53. Could have registered at Route 53 but didn't like the process to move them away nor having to ask Amazon if they'd "please" up the number of domains from their paltry and silly limits. Also don't like that those limit raises in their DNS department aren't available 24/7. For enterprise, that's inappropriate. If I need that done on a Friday night after 8 Pacific, or on a Saturday, they have to be there and do it. AWS Route 53 support isn't. Lots of other departments within AWS are available, but not Route 53. So they're a "nope" for registrar. 24/7 required.

The next major attack will be to consolidate the SSL certs. They're all over the place, too.
 
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