I actually had no idea such TLDs existed, but apparently they do [1].
[1] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/do...
Massive price inflation seems to happen with new or trendy TLDs, where an initial $5/year can become $50/year or more.
With domains being a digital home, it seems it would make sense to have laws in place that would treat them the same way.
Cloudflare is the go to unless they don't have the tld.
> Registrant agrees to use Cloudflare’s nameservers. REGISTRANT ACKNOWLEDGES AND AGREES THAT IT MAY NOT CHANGE THE NAMESERVERS ON THE REGISTRAR SERVICES, AND THAT IT MUST TRANSFER TO A THIRD PARTY REGISTRAR IF IT WISHES TO CHANGE NAMESERVERS.
So it's a no-go if you want to use Route 53 or something like that.
[1] https://www.cloudflare.com/domain-registration-agreement/
I learned this the hard way when I had to use route 53 dns and had to wait 60 days to transfer.
I don’t know how this is allowed, registrars should be required to let you set custom dns.
To a French one =)
https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/psa-gandi-net-bought-o...
When I got it, it was only allowed to register subdomains in the form of firstname.lastname.name and I even had to provide my ID card to be able to register the domain name. The deal then was that I could use DNS zone of the subdomain, and in addition got an email redirection from firstname@lastname.name to whatever email address I would choose.
A few years after that, VeriSign suddenly stopped supporting the email redirection feature, with not even a single warning sent to customers like me. From one day to another, I lost the main email address I used to communicate and for all of my online accounts. It was a mess to deal with this.
To this day, I was never able to get hold of my lastname.name, to be able to restore my email address. Even though I'm the only one in the world using a subdomain of it. The only solution that has ever been suggested to me by VeriSign customer support would be to let it expire, and hope that no squatting bots get it before me so once the grace period expires, I can try to register the first-level domain. But that would mean several weeks where my website would be down, and all that with the uncertainty of actually being able to actually get it back.
Anyhow, first level domain were to be "shared", non directly registrable, domains.
Since they decided to open it up for first level registration, there has been no way to get a once-shared first level domain, even when you're its only user.
If you attempt a whois on omg.lol you get a normal whois. If you do a whois on a shared .name domain you get this:
Not available for second level registration.
Third level registrations may be available on this shared name.
To request access to data listed as “Redacted” or “Redacted for Privacy” in the
above WHOIS result, please contact Customer Service at info@verisign-grs.comI've peeked at omg.lol and it looks like they aren't in the business of registering subdomains per se. They try to sell you a bunch of services that resemble a paid social network, and they provide you with a subdomain along with the deal. For that subdomain they charge you with about double what you would pay for an actual domain name.
Sometimes ccTLDs bind you to a country you don't live in, and it also signals that you may like/honor that country's practices and history (which you probably don't).
What I do is, choose generic TLDs like .blog and .dev. In the past .tk was considered low-rep because it was free, and it raised red flags, so at least pay for a domain. They're the same price as a T-Shirt!
I'd rather suggest that using the very cheapest service providers means you're risking problems when you need customer support — in this case because notifications were missed due to a broken phone or whatever.
Besides, it's highly unlikely you are ever going to have a problem with geopolitics and instability. For most countries it's just free money flowing in, especially with the trending ones (.ai, .io, .tv, .fm).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagos_Archipelago_sovereignty...
Isn't that the whole purpose of ccTLDs? In fact, are you sure that your use case for ccTLDs for countries you have no connection with is actually allowed or legitimate?
Every single time I registered a ccTLD the registrar required me to provide documentation that attested I had in fact a relationship with said country, either a valid passport or business details. Frankly, I thought any other scenario was automatically deemed invalid.
some ccTLDs in the EU require you to be a citizen in any EU country. (So .fr or .eu for example)
Examples of the latter are for example .to or .ag, that do not have such requirement.
I don't know about .fr but the .eu ccTLD is literally the European Union's TLD. The same exact requirements are applied: you need to either be a citizen or have a business there. If you attempt to register a domain with the .eu TLD you must provide an European ID card.
It's the same thing.
> whoa there, pardner! Your request has been blocked due to a network policy. Try logging in or creating an account here to get back to browsing. If you're running a script or application, please register or sign in with your developer credentials here. Additionally make sure your User-Agent is not empty and is something unique and descriptive and try again. if you're supplying an alternate User-Agent string, try changing back to default as that can sometimes result in a block.
These kinds of blanket bans on data center IP's ignore the fact that real humans do use them. As for user-agent, I'm using Firefox on OSX with no user-agent obsfucation plugins.
I need PDF invoices with VAT/VAT-excemption sent to me for business reasons. Most have only an HTML which often gets wrangled with Print-to-PDF. Some don't have invoices at all :-(
[Edit] Got a comment on Reddit to try inwx.de - moved one domain, they seem to have PDF invoices in mail, 90s UI (which is a good thing ;-) and very technical status update messages (which is also a good thing)
Invoice n°FRxxxxxxx of January 30, 2024 Total invoice excluding tax €4.99 VAT (20%) €1.00 Total invoice including tax 5.99
Subscription €7.79 Offers -€2.80 Price excluding tax €4.99 VAT (20%) €1.00 Total including tax €5.99
That PDF has my name and address at the top though.
Incredibly dishonest or incompetent company.
As far as I remember, the standard average price for a .com back then was like $10 and route 53 was $12. Wasn't a big problem considering how robust the dns panel was compared to everything else at the time.
Our most recent renewal cost $12.
https://www.namecheap.com/blog/protect-account-totp-2-factor...
that said, I haven't tried them for key recovery yet... and hope I never have to!
Namecheap had exactly that.
I'd say the ban was 100% justified.
Also the whole thing starts to stink when the company based in Phoenix, Arizona suddenly have 1700 staff nowhere in the US.
> I'd say the ban was 100% justified.
Well, of course, because it never can happen for you, because you are a proud member of a democratic civilization which never partakes in the wars, never brings someone to heel, never ever can be brought to ICC. Right?
When did this happen? Anecdotally, in recent years, I've seen namecheap be the primary recommendation for a domain registrar. When did the public opinion shift like this?
I also don’t use any other services they have.
20+ years, fewer domains. Their expiration process is generous. That said, some international domains they sell have a poorly handled expiration process (as noted by the OP). Their upstream provider has a crappy+short grace system. I think NC could offset the harm by having the expiration 30+ days sooner but they don't.
> I also don’t use any other services they have.
I tried mail their mail hosting 10 years ago. They use an open source server and app plugin to mimic Outlook push. It was a disaster and my customer was not happy with me.
I stick to domains, DNS and DDNS now.
OP gave us good information on what to do if you’re in this situation but to be frank, the entire situation is their fault. If you are using a domain for your email you need to protect it with your life.
No working payment method no auto-renew, that’s on you. Namecheap emails you reminders at 30 days and 15 days ahead of time. “My phone was broken” is a lame excuse: get your ass to the library if you have to.
In my case, I bought my renewals numerous years ahead of time. The price is only going to get higher anyway, might as well buy them now.
edit: officially, merged with TWS
https://domainnamewire.com/2023/03/02/total-web-solutions-ac...
Reminder: move my domains from Namecheap to Cloudflare if prices are indeed lower.
Just don’t deal with euro domains. I learned it the hard way and moved to .com
but... halfway through last year (in May) the domain was suspended, and as DNS caches expired the domain became increasingly unavailable.
I used microco.sm to host an OSS forum platform, and this instance runs over 300 domains.
what then happened was a scramble... Gandi support were effectively non-existent and I was against the clock for those caches expiring.
full incident thread written in public view: https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/386644/
I effectively cut over to a spare domain, but wow... 14h of incident, and about 1h3m of outage, but this was a SaaS platform that had run successfully for more than a decade prior... so that domain name was hard-coded everywhere, and I needed to change everything.
it's an insane DR recovery, I'm not sure losing your primary domain as a SaaS service is on anyone's failure mode, I'm pleased I could respond and get this done... but wow.
root cause? Gandi never said, but a few threads elsewhere on the internet from a few individuals impacted who were Italian suggested that Gandi had failed to pay their annual registration with nic.sm and so nic.sm suspended all .sm domains that Gandi managed... totally unbelievable and also very believable.
Makes me wonder if San Marino was at fault in both of these incidents.
Nowadays I use Porkbun + a local provider for the ccTLD belonging to my own country.
Perhaps a stark reminder that with cheap prices, you get treated like a cheap customer.
[0]: The CEO encouraging an activist hacker/criminal to pentest their webportal without any sort of contract or anything in place to prevent them from leaking out their findings and instead going by "lol, time to shitpost about it on twitter" energy is shameful.
So one year, whenever a domain came up for renewal, I bought a two year renewal on it. And since then, I renew all my domains at the same time every year (first week of January, but you could do it any time) when there's between 1 and 2 years left on all of them. If there's ever a problem dealing with the renewal, I've got plenty of time to sort it out.
Yes, the registrar gets to keep (on average) 18 months worth of registration fees on account, as it were, but for me it's worth the peace of mind.
Is there any way to keep legitimate contacts in the registrar without getting a ton of spam?
There is a ruling that prevents hiding the .us domain registration and contact information or using anonymizing proxy [1]
Your information must be public. Maybe you can try national do not call registry [2] and see if it helps in this particular case.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7251-2005Mar...
I nearly moved my domains away from NC 15 years ago, when I submitted documentation about key domains for malware distribution. NC support blew off my report because they weren't hosting the malware itself.
That long period of ugliness has gotten better.
Customer: I want to do X. (Note: very reasonable request)
Business: You can't do X.
Customer: Why?
Business: Reasons that I can't adequately disclose.
Its getting to a point where the business (or government agency) feels like its spending more time preventing you from doing reasonable thing rather than helping you. The authors case here is a good example. But is this new or has it always been this way?
That said, I wouldn't use a registrar that didn't have good reviews, and I'd look at security policy, privacy policy, renew price, features list, and support options. Sometimes it's worth paying more.
After you have the domain, if it's important to you, try to get support to change it for you or recover your account without a valid email address. You'd be amazed how easy it is to compromise many registrars through support.
And set up auto renew... Once it's gone, you'll regret it.
I know we all hated network solutions when it was the only game in town, but I’m not sure the current flea-market situation is a net improvement.
I get how crap Namecheap are - but presumably they send out reminder emails?
It might cost a few bucks more, but your cloud services provider isn't motivated to squeeze as much money out of you as possible during domain registration/renewal. Say goodbye to all the random upsells you don't need and say hello to straightforward domain/nameserver/DNS management.
Cloud providers make their money from compute, storage, and network. They're motivated to make domain management a good experience so people move/start more projects there.