Tucows (OpenSRS)

[RJ]

Thread is for reviews of Tucows (OpenSRS)

 

[vip-ip]

I really like their control panel for domains, vry plain but easy to use, has all the functions I need. The only glitch: after registration it takes some time for the domain to register, 20-30 minutes. The rest is

 

[Robert Palmersheim]

Domain Direct sells Tucows service under their own name

No listing for Domain Direct, a reseller of Tucows, so adding the review under Tucows. Domain Direct does have a phone number but it is impossible to get through. Get lots of SPAM through Domain Direct.

 

[future assassin]

Pretty good

Although OpenSRS have been around for a while I don't think too many people know about them. They were also the first Registrar to offer domain name reselling.

Overall I've been pretty satisfied with OpenSRS domain reselling service. What I like is that the domain management interface is not super glitzy and gets the job done. Although some might find it lacking. Making a payment into your reseller account is painless and they don't charge no service charges like others do.

Customer service is a bit lacking and they have been saying for a while now that its being overhauled, time will tell. I've personally had tickets go missing and unanswered. If all else fails you can get a response pretty quickly at http://www.discuss.tucows.com

I find the price is good but if you're a bottom feeder looking for $5 domains sold below cost look else were, I'd like to know the company I resell and trust my clients domains to is also making money and not run on a loss leader bs business plan. They also offer free whois protection which make their domain pricing pretty good.

I"d like them to improve on their domain management interface a little (multi domain management for end users) and really improve on support system. Tickets should be at least acknowledged by someone with in a few hours.

 

[xous]

My OpenSRS experience

Hi,

I recently became responsible for handling all OpenSRS issues when the company I work for bought out another hosting company that used a OpenSRS reseller account to manage domain registrations.

Overall I think my rating has been negatively affected more by the management policies of OpenSRS. Technical support, although clearly outsourced, was fairly decent and I have no complaints on that end. The low Customer Service rating is for the compliance department which has numerous problems with ticket backlogs and actually responding to open tickets.

The user interface isn't pretty or very easy to use for anything but the most basic stuff but it gets the job done.

Last I checked they were charging a full $3 on top of the registry and ICANN fees which only included WHOIS privacy.

My main complaint with OpenSRS is that they do not want to handle any end-user support issues which I don't mind but they INSIST on handling all registrant contact changes even though their arrangement is with us and not the end user. This becomes a big problem when most of your users are too inexperienced to understand the importance of keeping up to date contact information.

All in all if you don't mind spending up to a month or so dealing with a single lost password and invalid email address issue it isn't that bad. I recommend forcing your clients to use your info as the admin contact or placing all the domains under one account.

I'm just beginning the process of transferring all the domains out to a different registrar as frankly it just isn't worth it when there are cheaper registrars that provide better all around support and allow me to manage my own customers.

 

[reseller1]

Review

We were a reseller for IYD and in Sept 07 decided to go with goDaddy API as IYD did not have an API (this was at the time that IYD was being acquired by Tucows). We were content to let existing domains remain with Tucows.

However, in the last couple of months, we have seen a number (we don't know exactly how many - only that our commission checks have dropped in half) moved to Hover retail (a division of Tucows).

This is made out to be our fault. Tucows tells us that our customers could not reach us and thus reached out to IYD (this is, in our view, nonsense as our customers were not aware there was someone on the other side of us). Thus our customers ended up in the arms of Hover.

There is not a lot of money involved here and we will advise the rest of our customers who are still with Tucows and Hover, to transfer, but there is a cautionary tale here which we are happy to share with others looking at being resellers for Tucows.