domains Spaceship.com (by Namecheap) Launch

[branding]

Seems like Namcheap launched spaceship (early beta). Early beta, some UI stuff to be done but it looks promising:

Welcome to Spaceship! EARLY BETA LAUNCH!

As an early beta tester you will have access to our new domain registrar and digital product platform. While it’s still a work in progress, you’ll have a front row seat to see it’s evolution into what we expect will become a seamless and powerful domain and digital product marketplace.

You’ll also be helping us by guiding us with your feedback and questions as to how we can make things better for you. Our number one job for now is to monitor your experience and gather your feedback to see how we can improve things and make the experience better for you.

At this point you can expect some things to be incomplete and some areas of the experience to not fully be represented.

Sometimes things just won’t work correctly as what we’ve built under the hood is completely new and complex and sometimes that requires some things to fail or be adjusted. Not to worry though, we’ll be standing by ready to fix and improve things as fast as we can.

You can reach us via email, Discord, or Twitter with your requests, questions, and feedback. 24‌/‌7 support is also on its way, so watch this space.

Spaceship - a new frontier in domains…
Our goal with Spaceship is to drastically improve how you use, configure and manage your domains and digital products. Some broad areas of new functionality are Unboxing, Conflict Resolution, our new App Library, Launchpad, and Connection Manager.

Spaceship is a smart system that recognizes when there are issues with your domains and services, such as propagation, payment issues or configuration issues. Automatically, Spaceship will notify you if it finds an issue and will give you an easy way to fix it.

Unboxing enables you to connect and set up your products with just a few clicks, without ever having to touch complex settings like DNS records yourself. Our wizards will easily guide you through the process and save you time, even if you’re already a pro. Don’t worry, we also provide you direct access to the core tools, in case you still want to do things the old way.

Conflict Resolution understands when there may be issues using your products together, and helps you fix them automatically - when you’re trying to use two e-mail products on one domain, for example. The system will notify you and provide you options so that you can easily and seamlessly switch between products and services for your domains, without any configuration hassles.

App Library is a searchable database of products and useful tools that empower your domains. in a few clicks you can select, pay for and connect useful applications to your domains with automatic configuration.

Launchpad is our full featured dashboard that allows you to easily view and manage all of your applications. You’ll also have the freedom to choose and customize what information around your products you’d like to see when you access the launchpad via our product quick widgets.

Connection Manager allows you to easily see and manage the connections between your products and domains. We’ve also set up nodes across the world that constantly monitor your domains and products so you know when things are connected and operational or if there is an issue that needs addressing.

Easy Subscription Management for your digital products. An all in place to manage and upgrade your products. We also make it easy to cancel or even pause your subscriptions.

Notification Center. A smart and aware platform requires an easy and organized way to communicate things to you so that you are always easily informed. Notification Center makes communication easy and allows you full customization to be communicated with in the way to prefer most.

Finally, we’ve made it easy to pay any time, anywhere within our platform and within the context of where you are. Easily pay for things like upgrades, add extra space, more users or renewals right on the spot and without having to navigate to a separate payment page.

How can we expect things to evolve?
While we’ll continue to build and make the experience of the platform better and built around you, we also have many products coming on the horizon:

Expect fast improvement on our secure and privacy focused Spacemail product.

Our managed and dedicated hosting products will continue to evolve and you’ll see more and more of our own tools built into them including an in house built control panel.

We expect a full suite of marketplace and aftermarket tools so that you can easily buy and sell your valuable domain names to be ready early next year (1st quarter).

More hosted products to make getting online easier such as our EasyWP product and website builders.

Our domain to domain powered communication app so that you can set up your domains to receive calls and texts direct to your domain without ever signing up or using phone numbers.

More handshake and decentralized integrations that will include a wallet and full digital ID integration for easy login.

And more….

These are just a few of the new and exciting things we are bringing to you. You can expect more as we continue to build and add to our platform to serve you.

Why is Spaceship important to us?
We believe deeply in a free and open internet. Spaceship is the first step toward a giant leap forward in internet freedom.

In a world of closed ecosystems and platforms with limited flexibility, our goal is to bring together many products and services and empower them to work seamlessly together. The focus of our entire business is user choice and ease of use, placing full ownership and power in the hands of our customers.

We’re building an exciting future together and we’re glad to have you on board!

Promo:
https://www.namepros.com/threads/3-08-com-registration-at-spaceship-com.1300151/

Thanks @aelko

 

[cabotower]

are they part of the sedo mls or afternic premium networks?

 

[branding]

Auth code received, transfer initiated. Took them a while but it's working.

They're in early beta, I would recommend them automating the basics before focussing on the cool features

That being said, obviously domainers aren't their target audience. Wish them look, will be following how they evolve.

 

[Peak.Domains]

I really wanted to love Spaceship. I'm super bummed out they had the same issues that ultimately pulled me away from NameCheap for hosting and domains. NameCheap used to be my main.

The name is great, I love the theme. I loved using EasyWP on NameCheap and this feels like the next step foward from there. This is the sizzle, it attracted me in right away. I love everything about Spaceship except one of the most important things :\

They're doing something unique with the interface that has a ton of potential. I wanted Spaceship to be my entire hub for hosting, domains, managing my portfolio of websites and domains. I was going to pay and transfer over a ton of email addresses. It all seemed great at first impression.

You know what would be really cool, too? Imagine they had a portfolio management widget kind of like Domain.io, where you could enter your names from all different registrars and track upcoming expiration, budget, track profits / costs, manage offers, ensure you're properly listed in each marketplace without errors, etc. Spaceship could have a little "transfer in" button next to each external domain to make it worth their effort. Actually, maybe they should reach out to Domain.io, maybe they can acquire and integrate it. Seems to me the domain.io guy is pretty busy and hasn't had much time to work on it. Anyways...

I love to see and support innovation from companies that aren't going to get bought out and systemically destroyed by GoDaddy. I believe that GoDaddy buys competitors in order to maintain the status quo and stifle innovation, but that's a rant for another day.

Unfortunately, Spaceship does the same annoying thing that made me move away from NameCheap, which is making it a huge pain to use third party SSL, so you end up having to pay $11 per year per hosted domain for something that's free almost everywhere else.

I'm only taking the time to complain about this since they're in Beta and MAYBE... Just MAYBE... they'll decide to take a different route on Spaceship than they did with NameCheap. I would love that, I'd be their number 1 fan. Remember my buddy @Samer when Epik was in their hayday? That'd be me, for Spaceship

No support for Let's Encrypt, and couldn't find AutoSSL in cPanel so if you manage to jump through all the hoops of setting up your own SSL in this nerfed version of cPanel, you still need to mess around and renew it every few months manually, as far as I understand.

Most hosts have support for Let's Encrypt built in, NameCheap chooses not to. They've said it's because it's less secure if you have a huge site that runs your own payment processing etc, but I think the fact that they want to upsell their own SSL is a bigger factor because users have been begging NC to support Let's Encrypt for what, 8 years at this point?

In response to it being less secure, Let's Encrypt is funded by Mozilla, Cisco, EFF, Amazon, Google, Shopify, IBM, and countless other massive orgs who see the value in a more secure internet.

NameCheap/Spaceship sees more value for themselves in actively discouraging a more secure internet by putting up a totally unnecessary paywall. Even if their third party SSL was more secure than Let's Encrypt, that doesn't really matter for the vast majority of sites/blogs, and ultimately it results in less websites having SSL, making NameCheap/Spaceship customers more vulnerable overall since many will opt not to pay for the upsell of SSL.

If Host A keeps Let's Encrypt/AutoSSL support in cPanel, and host B removes it and charges for SSL instead, then host B is going to have fewer customers using SSL. I just don't buy "security" as the reason Spaceship does this, because if they wanted to protect more of their customers, they wouldn't disable the cPanel features that make it easy to use third party SSL for the average user. Most users don't need some fancy premium SSL, Let's Encrypt is perfectly fine. Also, your SEO is going to take a hit if you aren't using https, so to extrapolate further,
Namecheap/Spaceship is setting their customers up for failure by paywalling this basic feature.

======​

Now for my less important feedback. Having upsells at the top of the dashboard is annoying when the ability to customize the dashboard is such a big feature. I'd love to be able to remove the "What's new" section or move it to the bottom, or replace it with shortcuts to my actual services. That was another issue that moved me away from NameCheap for my domains, not just my hosting, was having all this "Hey, you own domain.com? Why not buy domain.icu!??" Just let me manage my stuff in peace lol. Let me opt-out. I'll sign a blood oath promising I would never, ever buy an upsell from my dashboard if I can just remove them.

Again, I really really want to love Spaceship. I could deal with the upsells if they would just adhere to the industry standard of supporting Let's Encrypt. Hundreds of millions of websites are using it. It's not about security, imo. Free SSL = more Spaceship customers with better security. Paid SSL = fewer customers will have proper security. I don't mind them offering the premium SSL at all, just don't take away the ability to easily use Let's Encrypt.

FWIW, Spaceship's support was helpful, friendly, proactive, and they didn't have any problem issuing me a refund for my first hosting package once I realized they were doing the Namecheap thing.

I'll always caveat that I could be entirly off-base and clueless here, maybe there is still an easy way to use third party SSL and I just couldn't find it - I would love to be wrong and I'll start shuffling everything over to Spaceship today if that's the case

 

[phaethon]

are they part of the sedo mls or afternic premium networks?

Are they?

 

[jbhaire]

What is the story with Spaceship's .com domain pricing? Their pricelist shows .com new registrations and transfers at $7.88 and .com renewals at $8.80. That appears cheaper than GoDaddy's Discount Domain Club and below the wholesale costs charged right now by VeriSign as the .com TLD root authority. Is that pricing at a loss to attract new subscribers during beta?

 

[Hypersot]

are they part of the sedo mls or afternic premium networks?

Afaik, they are not.

On Sedo, you can easily see if they are part of their network by the (S) next to the name of the registrar in the registrar column:

 

[fame01]

Does spaceship has a marketplace by now?

 

[Constellic]

I really wanted to love Spaceship. I'm super bummed out they had the same issues that ultimately pulled me away from NameCheap for hosting and domains. NameCheap used to be my main.

The name is great, I love the theme. I loved using EasyWP on NameCheap and this feels like the next step foward from there. This is the sizzle, it attracted me in right away. I love everything about Spaceship except one of the most important things :\

They're doing something unique with the interface that has a ton of potential. I wanted Spaceship to be my entire hub for hosting, domains, managing my portfolio of websites and domains. I was going to pay and transfer over a ton of email addresses. It all seemed great at first impression.

You know what would be really cool, too? Imagine they had a portfolio management widget kind of like Domain.io, where you could enter your names from all different registrars and track upcoming expiration, budget, track profits / costs, manage offers, ensure you're properly listed in each marketplace without errors, etc. Spaceship could have a little "transfer in" button next to each external domain to make it worth their effort. Actually, maybe they should reach out to Domain.io, maybe they can acquire and integrate it. Seems to me the domain.io guy is pretty busy and hasn't had much time to work on it. Anyways...

I love to see and support innovation from companies that aren't going to get bought out and systemically destroyed by GoDaddy. I believe that GoDaddy buys competitors in order to maintain the status quo and stifle innovation, but that's a rant for another day.

Unfortunately, Spaceship does the same annoying thing that made me move away from NameCheap, which is making it a huge pain to use third party SSL, so you end up having to pay $11 per year per hosted domain for something that's free almost everywhere else.

I'm only taking the time to complain about this since they're in Beta and MAYBE... Just MAYBE... they'll decide to take a different route on Spaceship than they did with NameCheap. I would love that, I'd be their number 1 fan. Remember my buddy @Samer when Epik was in their hayday? That'd be me, for Spaceship

No support for Let's Encrypt, and couldn't find AutoSSL in cPanel so if you manage to jump through all the hoops of setting up your own SSL in this nerfed version of cPanel, you still need to mess around and renew it every few months manually, as far as I understand.

Most hosts have support for Let's Encrypt built in, NameCheap chooses not to. They've said it's because it's less secure if you have a huge site that runs your own payment processing etc, but I think the fact that they want to upsell their own SSL is a bigger factor because users have been begging NC to support Let's Encrypt for what, 8 years at this point?

In response to it being less secure, Let's Encrypt is funded by Mozilla, Cisco, EFF, Amazon, Google, Shopify, IBM, and countless other massive orgs who see the value in a more secure internet.

NameCheap/Spaceship sees more value for themselves in actively discouraging a more secure internet by putting up a totally unnecessary paywall. Even if their third party SSL was more secure than Let's Encrypt, that doesn't really matter for the vast majority of sites/blogs, and ultimately it results in less websites having SSL, making NameCheap/Spaceship customers more vulnerable overall since many will opt not to pay for the upsell of SSL.

If Host A keeps Let's Encrypt/AutoSSL support in cPanel, and host B removes it and charges for SSL instead, then host B is going to have fewer customers using SSL. I just don't buy "security" as the reason Spaceship does this, because if they wanted to protect more of their customers, they wouldn't disable the cPanel features that make it easy to use third party SSL for the average user. Most users don't need some fancy premium SSL, Let's Encrypt is perfectly fine. Also, your SEO is going to take a hit if you aren't using https, so to extrapolate further,
Namecheap/Spaceship is setting their customers up for failure by paywalling this basic feature.

======​

Now for my less important feedback. Having upsells at the top of the dashboard is annoying when the ability to customize the dashboard is such a big feature. I'd love to be able to remove the "What's new" section or move it to the bottom, or replace it with shortcuts to my actual services. That was another issue that moved me away from NameCheap for my domains, not just my hosting, was having all this "Hey, you own domain.com? Why not buy domain.icu!??" Just let me manage my stuff in peace lol. Let me opt-out. I'll sign a blood oath promising I would never, ever buy an upsell from my dashboard if I can just remove them.

Again, I really really want to love Spaceship. I could deal with the upsells if they would just adhere to the industry standard of supporting Let's Encrypt. Hundreds of millions of websites are using it. It's not about security, imo. Free SSL = more Spaceship customers with better security. Paid SSL = fewer customers will have proper security. I don't mind them offering the premium SSL at all, just don't take away the ability to easily use Let's Encrypt.

FWIW, Spaceship's support was helpful, friendly, proactive, and they didn't have any problem issuing me a refund for my first hosting package once I realized they were doing the Namecheap thing.

I'll always caveat that I could be entirly off-base and clueless here, maybe there is still an easy way to use third party SSL and I just couldn't find it - I would love to be wrong and I'll start shuffling everything over to Spaceship today if that's the case

Peace. I just signed up to respond to you. Thank you for an in depth analysis, this was actually a deep-dive and I feel like I have graduated domain school. I sincerely appreciate that you took the time to write all this important details. These are the exact same issues that stopped me from getting on board the Spaceship, no matter how strong was the pull. There is not a single point that you made that can possibly warrant a rebuttal. Instead, these valuable points should be addressed if a company is sincere to their own principles and values. God has taught you well in how to address and handle these challenges that we face everyday while working with our domains that many organizations in the industry don't seem to care about. Without the basics like SSL and other finer details it is difficult for a product to be mass viable even if the first impressions are good. Maybe you need to start your own web hosting service because you would be a fair person to run it and provide real value to your customers. Peace. Imran