Leaving GoDaddy

[liquidkudzu]

In the next four of five months, my domains are all up for renewal. I was with Yahoo Domains for years, then moved to GoDaddy when Yahoo raised their rates.
GoDaddy has been fine overall, but their control panel is too cluttered and their ads are just too tacky.
I am thinking about moving to another, so I would like some suggestions.
All I need is masked forwarding and forwarded email addresses. GoDaddy offers 100 forwarding addresses per each domain you own. That is kind of nice and fun to play with.
I want something easy, clean, decent customer service (email service is fine), and around ten dollars per year for each .com
I have been looking at name.com and namecheap.com but am open to suggestions.

lk

 

[akcampbell]

I'm thinking of my moving my domains from Godaddy too. Their control panel is cluttered, confusing and painfully slow, they bring up 3-4 pages of unwanted add ons every time you buy something, and default everything you've ever bought to autorenew even though you haven't chosen to autorenew. On the plus side they answer their phones quickly, prices are competitive, and you can always find a 10% off promo code.

 

[Ray]

NameCheap.com <<--- HOT

My favorite is namecheap... their support is excellent and they have competing rates.. Also, their CP is really easy to use

 

[Jaco]

I started using Moniker a month or so ago- purchased 50 or 60 names since then, mostly drops, to try them out.
Had to use customer service one time, not too happy with the overall service provided by agent I spoke with (Hispanic(?) sounding lady...)

Won't give up on them just yet. I like the fact that they have a presence on forums like these and go out of their way to service the domaining community, but I do believe the culture is different there compared to godaddy. Some businesses truly customer service, other businesses pay lip service to the notion, but behind closed doors, really blame customers for everything. Not a commentary on Moniker, but for all GDs faults, customer service isn't one of them in my experience.

 

[athletec64]

If you can get a premimum account at fabulous, there is no comparison. 7.30 reg/renewal for .com, ridiculously good customer service, great interface, and their security is really good - like to push/transfer you can add additional passwords, and they just came out with some USB security thing.

No, I'm not affiliated with them, but I just really like them

 

[johnny6]

Geez. I've probably had 10,000 domains at godaddy over the last 6 years and I've never had a problem. Lucky, I guess.

My 2nd favorite registrar would be namecheap, I think. Dynadot's not bad either.

Don't much care for enom or moniker.

 

[SpareDomains]

If you can get a premimum account at fabulous, there is no comparison. 7.30 reg/renewal for .com, ridiculously good customer service, great interface, and their security is really good - like to push/transfer you can add additional passwords, and they just came out with some USB security thing.

No, I'm not affiliated with them, but I just really like them

I agree if you can get a Fabulous monetization account they rock, they will be coming out with free whois privacy and the usb security lock on July 1st, If you can't get an account with them I would probably look at name.com or moniker.com if security is your #1 concern.

Domain Name Wire » News » Fabulous Adds Physical Security and Whois Privacy - The Domain Industry's News Source

 

[slxzy1119]

At Namecheap.com they give email forwarding, but how many accounts per dotcom?
dynadot.com gives 10 email forwarding accounts per each dotcom

I kind of like those two since they offer PayPal as a payment option.

yes

 

[WORDSWORTH]

My preferred registrars (includes GoDaddy, but I have reasons for being with them):

Dynadot is my personal favorite. They are not the cheapest, but the interface is slick, fast and very easy to use. I have bulk pricing with Dynadot meaning that I get .com domains for $7.75 which is still not the cheapest but I don't mind paying a little more to be with them. Easy API access with bulk pricing. No free email with domain purchase. Support is generally good in my experience (although was poor during site outtage 3 months or so ago).

Name.com .com registrations currently cost $8.99 but there are often discount codes to reduce the cost. Name.com offer free privacy (unlike all of the other registrars I recommend) so you can hide your name and address from the whois. They also offer free email via Google Apps. I'm not sure what this is as I've never used it. The Name.com interface is fairly slick and robust although when changing nameservers, the old ones must be deleted first which is a real pain. Domain pushes are fast and easy. The excellent bulk management options can be used to avoid this though.

I mainly use GoDaddy when selling at eBay because almost every domain buyer has an account with them. GoDaddy support is good in my experience. They also offer a free webmail account with each domain which is handy. There are many discount codes which can reduce the cost of domain registration considerably. The downsides with GoDaddy are that the interface is incredibly slow and unintuitive. I still sometimes forget how to perform the most basic of tasks because the interface is so difficult to use.

NameCheap.com sometimes offer discounts for transfers from other registrars. I moved all of my LLLL.com domains to them from Moniker last year because I only paid $5.99 per domain for another year of registration. Renewals are expensive though. I will transfer out again at renewal time. Nice interface. The best support.

Moniker used to be my main registrar but I hate the fact that they charge a handling fee for buying with Paypal. I have moved most of my domains away. The interface is very easy to use but the support is patchy and sometimes downright awful (although much better with my dedicated rep Bari). They are currently the cheapest registrar for .com and some other extensions without coupons.