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Mint fresh alternative to GoDaddy registrar

kha0s

kha0s

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 23, 2009
40
0
I've been a GoDaddy user four a couple years now. Although I don't have major complaints about the service, the whole "add-ons for special price" clutter has gnawed my patience to the ground. It took me a couple months to make the call, but it's now crystal clear that some serious GoDaddy disruption is in order.

Spent a couple days looking into alternatives. The bottom line seems to be that any "ICANN-accredited registrar" is as good as the next. Notwithstanding, I want to research it right this time. Managed to prune my original list to 3 contestants: Hover, eNom and Network Solutions. Even though 4X smaller than GoDaddy, eNom is the second largest registrar around. Hover (Tucows) trails in third place and Network Solutions closes in 4th.

Hover has an intangible karma that I've found very hard to resist. Their website is sheer antithesis of GoDaddy: fresh, neat and all-around attractive. With Tucows rock-solid backend, I don't foresee "under the hood" reliability issues. Also, considering the cumulative price of "1 year .com registration" plus "private WHOIS", it's the one with the best deal. The only shortcoming I've been able to unearth is that they don't support PayPal. I'm seriously tempted to go full steam ahead with it, but before taking the plunge, would like to hear what you guys have to say about it:

1 - Has anyone tried Hover? If so, do you recommend it? Should I go instead with one of other two alternatives? Should some other registrar be included on my list?
2 - How about GoDaddy "domain name transfer"? Any experience with that? It the process smooth or should I expect some downtime ripple effects on my website/email?

It's worth underlining that I'm only interested on the "registrar" component of the package. Web hosting and email are already covered.


Thanks in advance!
 
Darth.Titan

Darth.Titan

macrumors 68030
Oct 31, 2007
2,905
753
Austin, TX
Thanks so much for this post. GoDaddy as a registrar has not been terrible, but their checkout process and user interface needs a major overhaul. I will be moving my domains to Hover now. I love it.
 
Y

Ynyr

macrumors newbie
Feb 9, 2011
8
0
We had nothing but trouble with NetworkSolutions when it came to transferring domains to another registrar...in one case, it was almost like that recording of the guy trying to cancel his AOL account. I don't remember any problems with the service itself; we were transferring due to the excessive fees.

I agree with you about the GoDaddy upsell process. But it's not irritating enough for me to dump them...we've never had any problems with the service. Other than their checkout process upsells (which I skim/ignore very quickly) have you had any service issues with GoDaddy?
 
AppleNewton

AppleNewton

macrumors 68000
Apr 3, 2007
1,697
84
1 Finite Place
I've had great dealings with hostway.com myself, pretty straight forward and have had good dealings with transfers when need be.

I just couldnt bare to stand GoDaddy, even though I got a great Thanksgiving day deal on domains – it almost was not worth it trying to get through their checkout system and manage the domains..such an eyesore.
 
THX1139

THX1139

macrumors 68000
Mar 4, 2006
1,928
0
It's might also be worth the mention, the CEO of GoDaddy likes to slaughter elephants with shotguns. I support a boycott. There are definitely other alternatives! I usually get my domain through whoever I get my server space from.
 
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