| ▲ | sourcecodeplz 5 hours ago |
| namecheap purchased by private equity CVC in 2025 for $1.5B so costs need to go down (-human support + ai automation) and prices go up (they increased i think .com 3 times this year alone) |
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| ▲ | m000 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Is there a directory of private equity acquisitions? Maybe even a browser extension that flags the websites of acquired companies. Such acquisitions are often due to founders cashing out or retiring, and the first thing private equity does is switch gears to "extraction mode". As such, I would think twice before (a) making a long-term commitment to their services, or (b) spending time applying for a job there. |
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| ▲ | belorn 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| To give people a bit of insight into the domain registry industry, when a registrar increase domain prices there are generally four reason why they do it. 1) The registrar want to increase its margins. 2) The registry upstream increased their price. For .com, Verisign agreement with ICANN allow Verisign to increase the price by 7% in each of the final four years of every six-year cycle. As such they increased it in 2024 and will do so again on November 1, 2026. 3) The registrar is not a direct registrar and uses a middle man, and the middle man want to increase its margins. 4) The buyer or the registrar is operating on a different currency than the registry, and the registrar is compensating for changes in the currency valuation. |
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| ▲ | Geezus_42 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Thanks for explaining how markets work. Not really a response to the OPs complaint. |
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| ▲ | richstokes 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Ohhh so that’s why I got those price increases emails. Yay. What are some good alternatives? |
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| ▲ | anamexis 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I've been very happy with Porkbun. https://porkbun.com | | |
| ▲ | harrisoned 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I moved my domains to Porkbun some years ago when Google sold their domain stuff to Squarespace. Absolutely no headaches, and the one time i got double-charged after an API error during checkout, it was solved within 15 minutes with a human. I recommend them a lot. | |
| ▲ | 0x38B 44 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I enjoy the warning in the footer: "WARNING: This site has been known to cause a mind blowing experience. We recommend you prepare yourself mentally and if possible be sitting down. Side effects may include saving money, letting out a chuckle, and sporadic oinking." Domain related: I regret getting a .io domain for my email and website; with the price increases, it's not far from $100/year. I'm looking to move from Namecheap to Porkbun and to move to a .com domain. | |
| ▲ | gonzalohm 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Do you know if they support dynamic DNS? I self host most of my stuff and I have a dynamic IP at home | | |
| ▲ | anamexis 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, in that they have an API for their DNS service. It's supported by ddns-updater. | | |
| ▲ | FlyingAvatar 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Really wish they would allow creating limited scope API keys though. You can only limit keys by domain, not by action or record which would be ideal. |
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| ▲ | drewtemp 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Same here. Recently migrated quite a few domains from Namecheap to Porkbun and it only took a matter of minutes. | |
| ▲ | anonzzzies 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yep I moved all namecheap and godaddy to porkbun. | |
| ▲ | T1ny 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I also moved over and have been very happy. | |
| ▲ | petesergeant 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Moved over after Gandi’s acquisition by PE and then price hikes. Hope Porkbun stays legit for at least another decade. | |
| ▲ | gruez 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | And porkbun, a seemingly privately owned company, isn't private equity? | | |
| ▲ | Krutonium 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Private Equity vs Private Ownership The first is a vampire looking to take what was publicly or even privately owned, extract every last dollar and leave the shell with the debt of buying the next victim. Private Ownership is Valve or Porkbun - The people running the business want to make a profit but not to their own or their customers determent. | | |
| ▲ | SoftTalker 36 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > The first is a vampire I mean not always, but that does happen and that's what you hear about. |
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| ▲ | anamexis 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Not in the sense that anyone means when they say private equity? | | |
| ▲ | gruez 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | You mean how it's always used post hoc (ie. "ah ha! the company was owned by private equity! you should've known!") or as a generic kneejerk reaction, neither of which has any rigorous criteria for what the "bad" sort of private equity is? | | |
| ▲ | petesergeant 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > the "bad" sort of private equity People mean "acquired by a Private Equity firm". You can learn what one of those is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_equity_firm | | |
| ▲ | krferriter an hour ago | parent [-] | | Yeah people generally mean PE investment firms that are in the business of moving around and sucking up companies for short terms and stripping them to squeeze all the money out and then moving on to the next one. Not simply that a company’s equity is privately held, not publicly traded. |
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| ▲ | anamexis 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes. |
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| ▲ | petesergeant 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Which Private Equity company do you think owns them? |
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| ▲ | somat 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I abuse https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ as a domain registrar. I really like their astetic(pre pay, simple, no fluff) but it turns out the sort of stuff I want to run on the internet is a poor match for their infrastructure so don't actually use nfsn in their primary web host role. | | |
| ▲ | jason_oster an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Wait, you consider that abusive? I have only used NFSN as a registrar for two decades. Always had hosting and DNS managed elsewhere. | |
| ▲ | analog8374 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I use nfs as host too. Didn't know they did registrar. Thanks. Ya every time I installed a slightly involved CMS it was a broken headache for some technical reason, so I gave that up. Made my own superuninvolved CMS and that works fine. |
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| ▲ | js2 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Porkbun. Cloudflare if you don't mind being locked into using them for DNS too. | | |
| ▲ | cobertos 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Id caution against using Cloudflare for DNS. They rewrite your CAA record so multiple other CAs can sign certs on your domains. It's non-obvious unless you query your own CAA record | | |
| ▲ | indigodaddy 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Source/writeup somewhere? The amount of domains that use CF must be staggering, so if this was a real threat being leveraged in the wild you'd think it would be an epidemic no?? | | |
| ▲ | kbolino 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's not a threat. Most websites don't use CAA records at all. The records can only narrow what CAs are acceptable down from the end user's root trust store, they can't add new CAs to it. And CloudFlare is typically in charge of managing its customers' certificates, so they add CAA records for their own CAs. If you don't trust CF to manage your certs, you are not in their target market and generally should not use their products. https://developers.cloudflare.com/ssl/reference/certificate-... | |
| ▲ | yurishimo 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Many people use cloudflare for DNS. Few people use cloudflare for domain name purchases as that feature is much newer. | | |
| ▲ | indigodaddy 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | OP specifically said "using Cloudflare for DNS..." ? I wasn't talking about domain name registration and don't think OP was either? | |
| ▲ | dv_dt 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Well and dns service is reasonably easy to switch |
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| ▲ | bityard an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| They were already a sub-par registrar a decade ago, or more. You can find many namecheap horror stories without much trouble. I moved away from them years ago due to various shenanigans and never looked back. |
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| ▲ | alterom 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| And well, business goes down. I purchased a domain name from them yesterday, in addition to a few I already had. This will be the last purchase unless I see some significant traction in the case we're discussing in particular, and company wide in general. Hope others will do the same. Not punishing this behavior is encouraging such abuse in the entire industry (if Namecheap gets away with that, everyone else will follow). |
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| ▲ | ryandrake 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I remember years and years ago moving all my domains to Namecheap because they were considered "the good guys." I suppose I'm going to have to start looking around once again to see who are currently the good guys. | | |
| ▲ | dylan604 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | To that end, Network Solutions is still around | |
| ▲ | sourcecodeplz 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | yep, social approval and good faith will always get you constant business (word of mouth - recommendations). but "numbers guys" say no, we need squeeze profits short term.. | |
| ▲ | CuriouslyC 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | IMO Cloudflare is the closest thing to a "good guy" these days. Very customer friendly, affordable and generally fairly ethical (if you pass over the part where they share data with the NSA). | | |
| ▲ | yurishimo 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I like Cloudflare as a company but I’d be weary about paying for my domains and hosting my DNS with the same publicly traded company with a severe lack of public customer service outside devs getting mad on twitter (guilty!). If cloudflare gets mad at you (even accidentally) and cancels your account then you lose everything. At least if you separate them, there is a chance that you won’t lose access to both at one time. Given that domains are generally a one time setup after purchase (especially if you use cloudflare for DNS) then I think the minor inconvenience is worth it, personally. | | |
| ▲ | ryandrake 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I feel the same way. I think I want three different companies to be my domain registrar, DNS provider, and VPS host, for redundancy. Putting all eggs in one basket seems like a bad idea. |
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| ▲ | robotnikman 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| >namecheap purchased by private equity CVC in 2025 for $1.5B Ahhh crap, there goes the company down the toilet. And they were the place I trusted to buy my domain names from. |
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| ▲ | rkagerer 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Damnit. I liked them for their simplicity, lack of bullshit, and cheaq costs. Know any recommended alternatives? (Edit: Nevermind, I see are suggestions elsewhere in this discussion). |
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| ▲ | pelagicAustral 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I dont have a horse in this race, but it used to main namecheap since all the way back to 2015, support was the best, prices and offerings too, but they really fucked me over a few times, were i did ended up losing a good domain name and then they sniped 2 domain name searches i had locked in but failed to buy... that one is absolutely truthful, if you land on something good you either pay for it or some mysterious squatting entity will get them in matter of hours. These days I just use Cloudflare and Marcaría for stuff thats not available on Cloudflare. CF may not be the most trustful company out there, but it is nice to have everything in one ecosystem. Plus, you can deploy a site using their workers, so essentially you can go from domain name to website in 5 minutes including ssl and whatever else you can think of, including bot protection and good metrics. |
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