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”

  1. Basically, if you want both DNSSEC *and* IPv6-glue, there are only about 4 or 5 to choose from, and once you eliminate GoDaddy from that list, youre looking at 3 or 4:

    Dyn – Probably best option. More expensive than GoDaddy, but still likely cheapest option for DNSSEC. DS records on .com , .net, and .org (possibly others too, idk)
    MarkMonitor – Expensive as fsck, but can do both DNSSEC and IPv6.
    CSC-Corporate-Domains – Similar situation as MarkMonitor
    NamesBeyond? they definitely supports DNSSEC on .org, but their site makes no mention of DNSSEC on other TLDs, and I’m not sure if they do the IPv6 glue.

    WRT Gandi, Namecheap, etc….. highly awesome registrars, but not what you’re seeking (due to lack of DNSSEC support and/or lack of support for IPv6 glue).

    Full disclosure: I’m a customer of Dyn. Been very pleased with them.

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  3. We use dyndns – they have a wide array of managed services but they also do just plain registrar stuff. I’ve never used DNSSEC but the relevant control panel subpages look like this:

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  5. Namecheap is OK, except it is braindead when it comes to IPv6 – you can have either IPv4 *or* IPv6 in the glue records. I’m currently testing gandi.net for my domains and they seem to be a bit smarter – you can edit it in a point and click way (there’s two levels of difficulty for point and click) or you can go to the ‘expert’ mode and edit Bind-like zone files. in their web interface.

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  6. I’ve been very happy with the control of everything through https://www.pairnic.com/ and most of all I love the complete lack of upselling at Pair. I’ve never had to ask PairNIC support staff for anything, but Pair Networks support stuff are all Unix geeks ready to solve your problem (you can hear the keyboard clacking away in the background). I don’t know about DNSSEC — never looked into that.

    PairNIC is not the cheapest, but current sales are at $10/yr

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  8. So, for registrar’s, I’ve been a big fan of dynadot. I like them better than namecheap both from an interface perspective and customer support.

    As to the DNSSEC/IPv6 glue when using your own domain as the nameservers… xkcd isn’t even doing that today… so that should be irrelevant to the discussion.

    Registrant:
    Domains By Proxy, LLC
    DomainsByProxy.com
    15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
    Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
    United States

    Registered through: Go Daddy
    Domain Name: XKCD.COM
    Created on: 25-Jan-03
    Expires on: 25-Jan-19
    Last Updated on: 11-Aug-11

    Administrative Contact:
    Private, Registration XKCD.COM@domainsbyproxy.com
    Domains By Proxy, LLC
    DomainsByProxy.com
    15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
    Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
    United States
    (480) 624-2599 Fax — (480) 624-2598

    Technical Contact:
    Private, Registration XKCD.COM@domainsbyproxy.com
    Domains By Proxy, LLC
    DomainsByProxy.com
    15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
    Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
    United States
    (480) 624-2599 Fax — (480) 624-2598

    Domain servers in listed order:
    NS1.SCIESNET.NET
    NS2.ISOMERICA.NET

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  9. If you *really* want to go cheap, there’s always Google Sites….. however, no clue if they support what you mentioned. (Don’t laugh at me, I’m not much of a web designer or computer scientist.) GSites is $10 per year.

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  10. I would have to put in my support for dyndns, they have 24 hour support and focus on uptime (although, a while back they did go down briefly during a DDoS attack, but came back up quickly).

    Registrations are a little more expensive, but they are reliable and aren’t going anywhere.

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  11. on an unrelated topic…. xkcd was on the rachel maddow show. did anyone else see this?

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  12. Unfortunatelly the SixXS list also includes the DNSSEC-ticket type registrar (Joker.com is one of them), so it’s quite useless for xkcd.com.

    On a related note I wonder why people recommend registrars with unclear DNSSEC support when the request is very clear on mandatory IPv6 _and DNSSEC.

    BTW would this be OK for your sysadmin: http://www.gkg.net/ws/ds.html
    (quick googling around found Slashdot discussion recommending GKG.net and they support IPv6 as well according to a few articles on the web)

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  14. Is there any reason in particular my post pointing out that XKCD doesn’t currently actually even use DNSSEC or IPv6 glue was deleted? Other than the fact it makes the admin in question look bad for using an excuse that doesn’t even apply to this domain.

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  16. This has nothing to do with GoDaddy; I just wanted to let you know that you are referenced in the wikipedia entry on “meta.” Happy New Year.

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  17. Just go to Gandi.net

    As already mentioned the management interface is perfect (3 modes; beginner-> expert, any kind of record, etc, etc), they support worthwhile projects (Debian, EFF, CC, WWF, etc).

    GoDaddy is horrible at least just by their name and Hooters like image.

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  19. I’ve got over 300 names on godaddy, and move sites in and out without any problems whatsoever. Been with them 8 years, and tried 4 others before that which all had problems.

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  20. I’ll be really interested to see you do a followup blog post with all the companies you considered, who you choose, and why. Thanks.

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  21. You’re transferring because of your concerns about SOPA, and of course I assume that you are knowledgeable on the topic – more so than me, I assume as well. Why would you insist on DNSSEC at these early stages when SOPA might prevent it from working anyway?

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  22. I’m looking into getting a DDNS account myself. freedns.afraid.org seems to offer what I want.

    I’m a newb when it comes to DDNS, so take my opinion with a large grain of salt, please.

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  23. This has nothing to do with this topic but something I need to know and you are the most likely person I know that I can ask. There is someone with the online alias of cumorglas besides what is in his blog is there anything else you know about him. Please contact me at sonofcu@gmail.com if you know anything thanks. Congrats on the marriage by the way.

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  24. I’m hard pressed to think of a more disgusting company over which we lowly IT people have some sway, yet we’re still out here rationalizing our support for them as if it has nothing to do with the fact that they’re showing us porn during the Super Bowl.. sigh.

    Anyway, SixXS has a nice little FAQ about IPv6 glue and DNSSEC support in registrars here: http://www.sixxs.net/faq/dns/?faq=ipv6glue . It seems to be a little bit out of date (at least for my registrar Dotster, who is farther along that they give them credit for), but other than GoDaddy the following appear to meet your requirements: 1api GmbH ( http://www.1api.net/ ), GKG.NET Inc. ( http://gkg.net/ ), Joker ( http://www.joker.com/ ), Name.com ( http://blog.name.com/2010/07/full-ipv6-support-here-at-name-com/ ).

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  25. Slightly off-topic, but . . .

    Congratulations on 1000! Can’t wait for 2^10th! (a nice way to welcome the coming Spring). And no, Randall, you are SO not alone!

    Thanks!

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  28. Congrats on the nice round decimal numbers. Conceptually, zero is pretty huge, too; but I’ll be just as happy in 24 more strips when you hit that “nice round number”.

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  29. I’ll second PairNIC. I’ve had things hosted with them for..well..since they (Pair Networks) were new. And I’ve had things registered with them since that service was new too. Never had a problem in more than a decade. And their support is nothing short of fantastic.

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  30. I’ve been with many registrars and hosting companies, but i’ve found Leaseweb to be one of the best. Currently I own but also manage other people’s domains, dedicated servers and hosting services, and with over 100 domains, I have to say it works flawlessly. Complete support for all record types in the DNS zone for each domain, IPv6 support, and they’ll also be your 2nd nameserver for domains that you didn’t register with them. (So if you own a domain, you point DNS1 to your master, DNS2 to them, and allow their DNS2 to AXFR from DNS1) That’s only for domains you didn’t transfer to them ofcourse, normal domains just use (but this can also be changed) their DNS servers.

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  31. Unrelated comment – as a joke, you skipped #404 in your comic numbering (so trying to find comic number 404 gives a comic not found error). So today’s comic is actually only your 999th.

    Congrats anyway!

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  32. “Steve Singer on January 6, 2012 at 7:10 am said:

    Slightly off-topic, but . . .

    Congratulations on 1000! Can’t wait for 2^10th! (a nice way to welcome the coming Spring). And no, Randall, you are SO not alone!

    Thanks!”

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  34. Try nearlyfreespeech.net–they have a “pay for what you use” business model that keeps things inexpensive for users like me. I don’t know if that would be true for a site of this scope. I’ve been with them for years, and while I don’t have any large websites, I’ve never had any problems with them like I’ve had with other hosts. I know they support IPv6 Glue, but I cannot find any information about DNSSEC on their website. Hope this helps!

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  38. I only have couple of very small sites used for school projects but I do like 1and1.com, I also set up one for a friend with nearlyfreespeech.net which charges you only for what you use which is great if you don’t need much but I’m not sure how well it scales up.

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  39. I’m happy to see that the S1K rollover was handled properly and that the strip numbers did not reset to 000. We can all breathe a sigh of relief.

    PS – congrats

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  40. I was under the impression that GoDaddy rescinded their stance on SOPA due to severe negative feedback.

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  41. Joker.com allows dnssec admin via it’s web interface. I don’t think your assessment of joker.com using “support tickets” is correct.

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  43. @NickP yes, they rescinded their message of support for SOPA, but it is a shallow gesture. Ultimately, the reason stated for their actions was purely that of popularity, not of a change of conscience. GoDaddy at heart still support censorship and the collective interests of Big Media, but hold their own pocket above all else.

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  46. I host with Dreamhost, which enabled ipv6 a while back. If you get a dedicated server you get everything down to root access, and it’s pretty cheap with real unlimited bandwidth. I’d recommend it.

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  47. Check out Route 53 with Amazon Web Services. I don’t think you can register domains through them, but you can use their name servers to administer domains you have registered elsewhere.

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  50. So lets get this straight, you are leaving a company that supports a bill that attempts to keep uphold copyrights for all media-producing people, big or small (not just this ambiguous “Big Media” or “corporations”), all because of the wild baseless speculation and accusations made on the internet by people who want to keep piracy possible in the guise of free speech? Maybe think about what you’re doing and research before you hop on an extremely easy bandwagon – and by research I don’t mean watch biased youtube “summaries” or infographics.

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