I guess this is a cautionary tale.
I was recently having issues with my Gmail account that’s tied to my Epik ( a domain registrar ) account, so when I was supposed to renew my domain, I didn’t receive any e-mails about it. When I decided to randomly check on my website, it seemed to be down. So I checked Epik and a domain that usually cost £15 a year to renew now cost £400 to renew as it was expired.
As a teenager who does not have £400 to spend on a domain, I decided to just wait until the domain fully expired and buy it for a cheaper price.
After some time, the domain fully expired and GoDaddy decided to buy it as soon as it did, and charged me £2,225 to renew the domain. I don’t understand how a price that large is justified, considering that my website gets barely any visitors and I basically only use the domain for hosting stuff. No idea how hiking prices this much is legal
kitnaht@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Sorry, but chalk this up to lesson learned. It’s almost always been this way. Domain squatters will do this all the time. In fact, some domain registrars will use you searching their site for an ‘available’ domain, and if you don’t buy it up right away – will buy it and hike the price and sit on it for years in order to lock it down, knowing you wanted it.
hddsx@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
Time to register that domain before OP gets it…
mal3oon@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Gohddzsx?
iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Have also had good experience using namecheap for years.
gofsckyourself@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Namecheap is alright, but Cloudflare only charges at cost with no markup.
sturlabragason@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Thirded for Namecheap.
morriscox@lemmy.world 3 months ago
So search for a lot of domains at random to cost them some money?
kitnaht@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Absolutely. But I think it might be more advanced than that. They might have some sort of analytics that measures how long people stay on the page, etc to inform their purchasing decisions.
lemmyvore@feddit.nl 3 months ago
Namecheap has extra rules if you want to use an API (minimum money spent with them, minimum of domains managed with them etc.) — GoDaddy style.
Keep that in mind, if you need an API (for DDNS or for obtaining wildcard TLS certificates) you’ll have to use a separate service for DNS.
chiisana@lemmy.chiisana.net 3 months ago
You really should have separate services for registration, DNS and hosting. That way you’re not held hostage by a single provider.
kitnaht@lemmy.world 3 months ago
DDNS with Namecheap is as simple as hitting a URL with a /GET request. No limitations.
Ptsf@lemmy.world 3 months ago
+1 for namecheap. They’ve been reliable and fair to me for years.