GoDaddy

Posted byRandall 290 Comments on GoDaddy

xkcd.com is registered with GoDaddy. This is an artifact of my registering my own domains nearly ten years ago, back when I was completely new to making websites.

I’ve always been a little uneasy about having all my domains with them, since they’ve got a long history of screwing over domain owners, but never got around to doing anything about it. A little while back, as the SOPA thing blew up, I poked davean, the xkcd sysadmin, about whether it was time to make switching to someone more geek-friendly a priority.

He’s also wanted to switch away from GoDaddy for years (and recently met with the reddit folks to chat about SOPA stuff). He’s periodically done surveys of the alternatives, but—strange as it sounds—he’s actually had trouble finding an affordable registrar with the feature set we needed. In particular, he said he had trouble finding any that support IPv6 Glue and DNSSEC via a control system that doesn’t rely on filing and waiting on support tickets, which he says (and I quote) “freaks me out” as a means of handling registrar stuff (he’s very much an xkcd.com/705 style of administrator). The ones that did offer those features tended to be a little too high-priced for our large number of domains.

We’ve had a number of alternatives recommended in the past week or two, but none have quite satisfied davean’s criteria. If you know of any registrars that might work for us, you can email us at contact@xkcd.com and he’ll take a look.

We’re being cautious about how we handle this switch, since GoDaddy has seemingly been obstructing transfers in a way that can leave the sites trapped in limbo. But don’t worry—it’s in the works!

290 replies on “GoDaddy”

  2. Namecheap is the only one I would use. Look into them? I don’t know if they have the feature set you need but they’re stand-up. (..also offering a ‘SOPA discount’ to people migrating from GoDaddy, which is entertaining)

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  5. What domains do you have other than xkcd.com?

    I’m also very curious about support for IPv6 and DNSSEC. I am teaching myself the details of those technologies right now. Will be very interested to learn what worthy registrar(s?) you come up with. Your sysadmin’s opinion will likely carry a lot of weight with me.

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  6. Gandi.net is awesome. Fantastic support and a history of siding with it’s clients.

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  7. I’ve been using Dreamhost for the last 8 years & have never had a problem. A little googling tells me they do support IPv6 & I believe DNSSEC. Good kuck!

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  8. I use DynDns myself. I believe they can cover both areas you mention. They have also spoken out against SOPA.

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  12. Those features would need to be supported by your DNS provider, not your domain registrar. They don’t need to be one and the same. You can transfer your domain registration to another registrar, and locate a separate DNS host to use (DynDNS would meet your requirements, I believe).

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  15. My life got much better when I separated my DNS hosting from my domain hosting. I now host all of my important external production DNS with Zerigo and have been very happy with them.

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  17. Try OVH, I had a couple of GoDaddy domains that ended in OVH…

    I also have my dedicated servers with them.

    They have IPv6 support (iirc) and their support team is the best that I’ve tried.

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  18. I work for Dyn.com (aka DynDNS), we’re not the cheapest registrar on the block, but we do support IPv6 glue records and publishing DS records for DNSSEC for a number of TLDs, including .com.

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  19. I currently use Dyn.com (DynDNS) as suggested above. It appears that while they meet most of your criteria, they currently only support DNSSEC on .se and .org domains.

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  21. Or nevermind I guess. Since an employee has said that is fixed. I’ve not been able to set one up on a .cx or .us though.

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  24. I’m going to second (or third, or fourth, or whatever) Namecheap. They’ve got not one, but two discount codes for people switching from GoDaddy: BYEBYEGD and SOPASUCKS.

    if I remember correctly, BYEBYEGD gets you the biggest discount.

    HOWEVER! While SOPASUCKS doesn’t get you quite as big a discount, it does tell them to donate part of the transfer/registration fee to the Electronic Frontier Foundation on your behalf.

    Either way, though, it’s a win for you.

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  25. I’m looking at moving away from Gandi. They’ve been promising DNSSEC support for ages but it’s still not present.

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  26. I’ve been using GKG.NET for about 50 domains since before GoDaddy even existed. They are great. Not sure about your feature set because I only use basic features, but they are worth looking into.

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  27. Stay away from DynDns (or Dyn.com). They’ll shut down your DNS hosting WITHOUT WARNING if they receive an abuse complaint (no due process, just like SOPA). I’ve had it happen to me and it turned out to be a false positive… still took me a week to get my DNS reactivated, and I had a premium account!

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  28. Love your site. In some ways your success inspired me to create a site as well. I use hostforweb.com and hfwdomains.com for registering and hosting. I don’t know if they can meet your needs, but they’ve been affordable and reliable for me.

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  29. I *would* recommend Enom but it seems that they don’t do DNSSEC. I bought a reseller account with them years ago and have over 400 domains there. Their prices and support desk responsiveness have been great.

    I only had a handful of Godaddy domains but I’m proud to say I moved them away when the SOPA thing blew up. You’re making the right choice moving your domains away.

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  34. Make sure you split your URL provider from the Hosting company. Otherwise you can too easily become a hostage. Of course, you double your chances of picking a problem company by accident…

    Curious why your “705” partner doesn’t set up your own servers to self host?…
    I’ve been playing with Linux + WordPress Network / MutliUser lately and it’s pretty amazing as a platform to manage the huge number of sites you might want, on one server, or even several virtual machines. You’d need a big Internet pipe though.

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  35. I have a similar problem with GoDaddy… I have many of my domains there, and a LOT of them have been paid-up for years in the future. Moving will cause *zero* loss of income to GoDaddy right now.. But will cost ME money I’d rather not have to spend (transfer fees).

    Additionally, I own a GoDaddy reseller account; so, ‘moving’ from GoDaddy means I lose income–a few thousand a year. It’s enough that I don’t want to lose the income, but, I don’t want to support GoDaddy’s pro-SOPA stance either. Ugh.. I hate decisions like this.

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  36. I’ve used NameCheap for years and years strictly for my domains and had hosting and DNS elsewhere. About a year or so I switched to DreamHost for my hosting and DNS (at the recommendation of a friend who’s had them for years and years). Both have been fantastic companies to work for.

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  37. David: You know that when you transfer a domain, the pre-paid years transfer to the new registrar, right? Hosting is another matter entirely, of course 🙂

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  38. Name.com has been great for me. Moved all my godaddy addresses a year ago. Only problem I had was my own fault — one email to name.com and they fixed it for me.

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  39. With all those requirements.. kind of surprised you guys don’t have your own DNS servers..

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  40. I’ve had great luck with http://innohost.com. Great prices, great support.

    I keep looking at the chart of all the money… but I can’t seem to find SOPA lobbying. It MUST be here somewhere… maybe under billions…

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  41. wait, when you transfer a domain the time you’ve paid for already is transferred as well? that’s awesome! i wasn’t aware. i’ll transfer my domains (i only have a couple) to one of the providers suggested.

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  42. I’ve liked my service from gandi.net, as well — although I’ve never had a need to use their support or anything (which is probably in their favor.) Only complication is my renewal payment always triggers Visa fraud prevention services, since they’re based in France, iirc.

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  43. I’m noticing some misinformation in the comments. Your registrar does indeed need to support DNSSEC, regardless of your DNS provide. If you want to build a full chain of trust your registrar needs to support adding DS records in the parent zone for your domain (ie .com, .org, .net, etc). Similarly for IPv6 glue records, if you want to use name servers with hostnames that reside within your own domain, you need to set glue records with your registrar. If you want to advertise your DNS servers IPv6 addresses and that DNS servers host name is in your domain, then again your registrar needs to support IPv6 glue records.

    Of the organizations recommend so far the following do not support DNSSEC or IPv6 glue records:
    Gandi (No DNSSEC support, IPv6 glue records require a ticket)
    NameCheap (No DNSSEC support, IPv6 glue records require a ticket)
    Dotster (No DNSSEC support, IPv6 glue records require a ticket)
    Register4less (No DNSSEC support, IPv6 glue is available)
    ENOM (supports ipv6 glue, Can’t find any mention of DNSSEC. Waiting to back fro m support)
    OVH – Unclear. Their site is in french.

    easydns – Technically their primary business is DNS hosting, not registration. Forum posts suggest IPv6 glue requires a ticket. It looks like they support DNSSEC on their name servers if you host DNS with them, its unclear if their domain registrar service supports it.
    Dreamhost – Unclear. Waiting on support for answers.

    These are not registrars:
    route53 – They do name hosting only, not domain registration. They allow AAAA records, but DNS Service isn’t available via IPv6 so glue records with your registrar would be pointless if you use route53. Amazon Route 53 does not support DNSSEC at this time.

    Hurricane Electric (HE.net) – To my knowledge they aren’t a registrar, although they might resell someone else’s service. I couldn’t find anything on their site. They offer a free DNS service thats pretty good and available via ipv6, but unfortunately they do not support DNSSEC there at this time.

    These support both IPv6 glue and DNSSEC:
    DynDNS

    GKG.net

    Joker.com – supports ipv6 glue. rumor has it they support DNSSEC as well, but waiting on confirmation from support.

    Name.com (forum posts indicate both are supported, still waiting for an answer back from sales/support)

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  46. hi Randall,

    if you are worried about availability, maybe you want to build (or have someone build for you) a very simple extensions for firefox/chrome that would redirect users to another domain/ip address in case of problems with godaddy. of course, you would have to advertise this extension for a week or two before you attempt the switch..

    (btw, if it is not clear, i am offering to build this extensions. i got the idea because i am currently building/testing another xkcd-related extension: https://builder.addons.mozilla.org/search/?q=xkcd)

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  47. @Ilan: I don’t know where you get your information, but Gandi.net definitely does NOT require a ticket for managing IPv6 glue records. I set up V6 glue for my personal domain chronos-tachyon.net using exactly the same interface used for V4 glue.

    That still leaves a lack of DNSSEC support, of course.

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  48. I’ve heard good things about name.com. As others have said above, it supports IPv6 glue. A friend of mine (excellent sysadmin!) recently transferred his domains to name.com and noted that, while their interface only allows enabling DNSSEC for some TLDs, it’s possible to enable DNSSEC for most other TLDs that support it by some combination of editing hidden form fields, changing the URL, etc.

    Personally, I transferred my domains from GoDaddy to Gandi a couple years back. I’ve been quite happy with them. However, while they do support IPv6 glue, they’ve completely dropped the ball on DNSSEC; if they don’t support it by the time I want to sign my zones, I’ll likely transfer to name.com.

    Good luck!

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  49. I suspect that if you approach the providers that meet your technical requirements, they could well be willing to price-match the cheaper providers (especially if they get to mention on their website that they are the new anti-SOPA registrar for XKCD).

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