Domain registrar Gandi gets bought out, removes free mailboxes (opens in new tab)

Gandi was always a premium provider at premium prices. But I was pitched them, years ago, by someone who knew someone at the company that they were worth the extra price... because there would be no BS. No hidden pricing, no sniping of domains based on searching for them, all that. Everything in this thread, frankly, is a breach of that trust.

> I'd like my registrar to make a reasonable amount of profit to make staying in business worthwhile

Ditto. Moved 11 domains from Gandi to Porkbun today. But... for the lot of them, Porkbun was only $9 more than Cloudflare, which charges straight wholesale prices and takes no profit.

I'm glad Porkbun isn't gouging, but less than $1/domain/year markup still feels a bit thin and leaves me worried that I'll be doing this dance again in a few years.

Based on advice here I just tried Porkbun. A not-quite-professional website that prefers making jokes to fixing layout bugs, I try to sign up and the symbols in my password cause it to fail with a 403 (!!). I'm super scared about their technical abilities and general security. Are we going to see another Gandi 6 mo down the line?

Domains are the keys to the internet atm, it would be nice to see someone take it seriously.

Edit: I guess I'll try realtimeregister, since I haven't seen anything negative and they support U2F per Yubikey's catalog.

Edit2: Cool, cool, when you sign up they assign you a non-random password which anyone can use to log in and view your personal information.

Edit3: Others with u2f support that aren't MAMAA: Cloudflare (close), OVH, DNSimple (accounts are $60/year)

I've been using Porkbun for years and it's been great. Good prices, reliability, security, and they don't push nonsense add-on services on you like a lot of other domain providers.

> Porkbun [...] .uk about £5.50

Porkbun do .uk domains now? TIL!

I moved some domains from Gandi to Porkbun before as part of a plan to ditch Gandi and when I asked (almost 3 years ago to the day), they didn't support .uk.

> if you transfer to a different registrar, you will not lose the extra years of registration

I did not know that. But how do you do it? And where to find a list of reputable registrars (which seems the rarest of species)?

Cloudflare domains are sold at cost, and CF is a very rock solid platform (for DNS/registrars at least)

It depends on the registry, but you cannot extend a domain out past 10 years.

We're getting bitten by this in the Netherlands as well. Two domain registrars, PCExtreme and Neostrada, merged with Versio, and Versio is now owned by TWS.

My company has domains registered with Versio (and PCExtreme and Neostrada), but the control panel was showing multiple domains wrongly flagged as 'processing', and actually getting through to customer service takes the better part of day by now. I'm not looking forward to our domains getting migrated due to these mergers.

Start looking for alternative registrars if your domains are hosted by Versio, Neostrada, or PCExtreme! The competent staff of PCExtreme and Neostrada seem to have evaporated in these mergers.

Where the hell is the date on this press release...

> "Gandi SAS (“Gandi”) and Total Webhosting Solutions B.V. (“TWS”), today announced"

when was "today"?

Interesting bit of backstory. That reminds me how one of the frequent complaints about Gandi have been its unusual terms of service, having fairly extensive "morality clauses" in there

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

http://www.gandi.net/static/contracts/en/g2/pdf/MSA-1.3-EN.p... (note that new versions seem to not have the clauses anymore..)

I wonder if that history has something to do with that...

Wow, good old memories!

(btw, it was Estelle Halliday, not Laetitia Halliday. But your uchrony is perfectly right)

TIL.

(for those also out of the loop: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altern )

Ah, tldr:

Valentin Lacambre hosted a website where you could post stuff

Estelle Halliday was revenge-porned by someone who posted on this website

French courts ruled that the host was liable (this was back in the day)

Valentin settled and shut down his site and started Gandi

I personally prefer keeping domain registrar separate from dns host separate from server host, and probably email host separate from the others, too, but on the other hand, you now have several different vendors that can ruin your day.

Using bundled services from your domain registrar is especially problematic though, because when you switch registrars, you usually lose those bundled services, even though you already paid for them. Often, there's similar services available at the new registrar, but there's a cost to switch, and it's much more difficult to switch because the service provisioning is often tied to the domain process; service at registrar B won't be online until the domain is moved, and service at registrar A may be turned off immediately after the domain is moved, so you have no way to make an orderly transition.

Infrastructure best practices have gone out the window, haven't you heard? Most people who use AWS/$cloud_service use it for everything, best practices be damned. Many new projects start their working thinking about how to scale, before making it simple and before having paying users.

Is there not some way to undue that? I'm sure it would be a hassle, but hacking someone's account and transferring their domain name is a crime, it also leaves a very obvious paper trail. Seems like the registrars involved would be willing to reverse transfers under such circumstances.

Is there any indication that Gandi is insecure?

For email it is sometimes useful to only have a host handling things like reputation and crypto/protocols (DKIM, SPF, DMARC, DANE, MTA-STS, etc.) while doing the actual handling of data yourself.

I'm not sure that gandi's email fits that purpose, but specifically for email it can be a bit more tricky to roll your own than things like HTTPS, so having a hosted solution to handle that can help.

I used Gandi's SMTP servers to relay outbound mail only (through postfix). For inbound mail, I pointed the MX record to my home IP address, where I received it directly on my postfix server.

This avoided my ISP's block on outbound TCP port 25, and it also gave me a reputable sending IP address economically.

Just to be clear, Microsoft and Google don't back up their e-mail services, it's a common misconception about "cloud" services.

Not sure that anyone need a backup if you know how to configure your email clients. Mines gets and keep all the emails so between my smartphone and my 2 laptops + their own backups, I have enough copies.

Well it's a nice way to have a no-reply@ for my side projects and a smtp to send emails from those webapps.

Probably not worth paying the asking price for this usage though.

This is why I live in a society that enforces contracts through a court system.

In a functioning society you can’t sell someone a year worth of prepaid car washes and then decide they need to start paying you again 3 months into your contract.

Will be interesting to see if this touches the courts and, if so, how it plays out.

I use service A for domains, service B for DNS and service C for emails.

Always separate vendors for separate services.

Choices of convenience will always be waiting in the future.

Choosing a path that is not the most convenient (just slightly less) can go a long way.

If you believe every acquisition PR saying “but nothing will change at all, we’re committed to run $bought_company as an independent entity” then I have a bridge to sell you!

Company A never buys company B to let it do its thing.

>Even last week they were saying nothing would change

If you want to be dishonest but not explicitly lie, there are almost always ways to do it. For example, "I believe access to healthcare is a human right" to a normal person sounds like the person is saying that healthcare is a human right, but "access" can mean anything at all and in reality they are saying nothing.

I would not be surprised at all to find that similar inconspicuous weasel words were used.

Often, and even more so in corporate PR, things are said precisely because they aren't true.

OP's original issue had to do with changes to Gandi's included email service specifically.

Perhaps the title should indicate that Gandi is rugpulling email accounts from people who have prepaid for domain registrations.

They haven't told me I'm losing my mailbox yet but I'm on the lookout.

The free mailbox was honestly one of the biggest reasons I chose Gandi, and I would not mind paying for it at all - preferably not under duress though!

how about: "Domain registrar Gandi gets bought out, removes free mailboxes"

Gandi buyout brings unwelcome changes (Could also add "for some" to limit the scope if that is too broad.)

Same here, I'm registered until 2025 and make heavy use of the free mailboxes. I thought this was a good move because by registering a domain I became a paying customer, even if I was also using free-tier services.

Haven't heard any communication from Gandi yet but maybe I can update here if/when it happens.

I have not yet either. Customer for 10+ years. If they go through with this, I will have to consider small claims court in Taiwan or Japan.

The service being taken away is the free email for the duration of your registration. If you don't use it, you're likely unaffected.

Same here. Maybe it's happening by region?

Same here.

Same here

That comes with its own set of issues when google decides to block your account for reasons only known to their algorithms and there are no humans to talk to. You end up locked out of your business email with no recourse.

The problem with Google is that if your account gets blocked/banned for whatever reason, you can just say goodbye to it. Minor companies like Gandi do have human customer service, so there's always the chance to recover the account (and move on to another service one you make a dump of your data and all).

You still own the domain and are free to setup another hosting with the same address. With Gmail if you're banned it's over you lose access to everything and have to manually reach to all your contacts.

what's amazing to me is that the only reason you would pay up to double what other registrars charge is because of the free services they throw in.

I have a feeling Gandi is going to go down the tubes very fast.

It's still visible to me in an Incognito browser window.

Crunchbase says leveraged buyout by private equity firm Montefiore Investment in 2019

https://www.crunchbase.com/acquisition/montefiore-investment...

If that's the case I'm surprised it took 4 years for me to hear anything about it turning shitty

Why Porkbun? What makes a good domain registrar these days (almost everyone is or has been acquired by someone doing something questionable)?

It is not free, it is included with the purchase. I think that is quite a difference.

I personally use Namecheap and Name.com for a few other domains. My rule of thumb is domain registrars only get to manage my domains. Registrars love to upsell you on email and hosting but in my experience that's where all the bullshit starts. If you just buy a domain, you could go to place like GoDaddy and probably have a decent experience.

EDIT: Just like I said, in the original thread they are talking about Ghandi screwing customers on email inboxes. Follows my rule of "anything outside of domains and the bs starts".

Also been at Gandi over a decade, this really sucks.

Dynadot

They are just as cheap as the often-mentioned NameCheap, but a much better UI.

Dynadot also lets you "domain taste" that is get a refund in credit if you change your mind after buying a domain within I think 72 hours.

They also are one of the largest domain registrars.

I use cloudflare, and their prices are unbeatable.

porkbun is nice has been nice for registrations, migadu for email

I still like namesilo and porkbun.

There is none. Any registrar has their own shitty stories. Sad times.

I'd say Google. They have incentive not to play games like this as that could jeoparadize their control of .dev and they don't need to juice profits on a minor service.

I am not sure if cloudflare is liked by HN this week, but so far, I’ve not had a bad experience with their registrar.

Fast and cheap.

They merged with Total Webhosting Solutions B.V., which is a Dutch company that buys up web hosts and then increases prices:

https://your.online/press-release/

The story on Mastodon is that they are axing free mail boxes that you'd get with every domain registered at Gandi, even if you had paid several years up front.

There's a little toast/growl message thing that says that toot has been rate limited. As of now it says try again after 30 minutes past the hour.

EDIT: It works briefly every 5 or 10 minutes, until it gets rate limited again.

The original post was someone having registered their domain for many years in advance and Gandi planning to yoink the included email service and replace it with one that they would have to pay extra for

It’s flickering up and down so I don’t think it was intentionally removed.

Mirror: https://archive.is/w3yZy

I didn't get an email, there's no news, and AFAICT this story hasn't been picked up by any other news outlets at all (nothing on Google News at least). There are a couple individual anecdotes, and off topic discussions about domain prices.

Gandi obviously has issues, but is the thing about email real? Are there _any_ sources that can confirm it?

Also, no email in my inbox about the merger.

I generally open up https://tld-list.com/ (which lists most registrars for any given TLD, along with the prices). I then choose the cheapest non-shady looking one. Porkbun, NameSilo, and Epik are fine options usually.

Recently went with Porkbun. Their interface is simple and functional, and they have good support for most 2FA interfaces (including passkeys).

> What registrars has HN been using lately?

ycombinator.com itself is on 81 "Gandi SAS", although they use AWS DNS, so chances are it's through Route53 (since AWS isn't an ICANN registrar, they have other registrars actually handle the registry ops)

Over time, I've been migrating from Gandi to Porkbun. I've been happy so far.

Route53 is Gandi under the covers

Hetzner. Their functionality for this is clunky as heck, but I have more trust in the company than other registrars.

Cloudflare Registrar, no markup and a reliable company.

Gandi actually. So far so good. Need to check if what OP says is true, though.

I've been using namecheap.com for 10 or so years quite happily and haven't felt the urge to move that whole time.

DNSimple is excellent. I don't recommend using Route53, while their GUI and features are good they charge per DNS query. I had someone trying exploit that and ended up with a 100x higher bill than normal in one month. It is impossible to do anything about it except purchase AWS Shield Advanced which costs $3000 per month.

I've been with joker.com for more than 20 years. Not a single problem ever.

I love EasyDNS - not the cheapest, but the service is EXCELLENT. Over 10 years or so, I've had to call support a couple of times to setup new features, and not only do they answer the phone - but you get a real engineer!

It costs me about $40/year for domain (.org), dns, backup MX/mail spool, and a couple of other bits and pieces. It's been well worth it for the piece of mind.

I use hover, they are a tucows reseller, sort of.

porkbun is awesome and pretty much the cheapest for all tlds, and name.com has a nice simple interface. happy with both of them.

Personally been a happy hover.com customer. Definitely not the cheapest but I like that they don't try to upsell me crap.

Pair. More or less forever. Nothing particularly special, but never so busted there’s been a reason to bother changing.

I've only got just one, but I'm pretty happy with Google. I mean, I know it's Google so there's always the worry they'll get bored with the product, but it works fine and has integration with my Asus router so I can dynDNS my home for my kids' minecraft server.

I’ve been using https://hover.com (domains only) for over a decade and have had zero issues. They never bother me and only email for things I’d want to be notified (e.g. domain expiring).

Dynadot

They are just as cheap as the often-mentioned NameCheap, but a much better UI.

Dynadot also lets you "domain taste" that is get a refund in credit if you change your mind after buying a domain within I think 72 hours.

They also are one of the largest domain registrars.

I use infomaniak.com. Prices are reasonable and their API is somewhat ok

I have a few domains on gandi (they support .ie unlike a lot of big registrars), but my primary registrar is still namecheap.

Namecheap/porkpun

I like name.com, I also often hear namecheap recommended

Yes, they dumped their basic free email for a 30 day trial of Office365 and an offer to pay monthly for Office365 through them. That's why I moved from GoDaddy to Gandi, so that's annoying.

Check your domain expiration in the whois. For most registries, the domain should keep its expiry, but you would need to pay one year extra when moving them.

inwx supports basically every TLD I've looked at and the acme.sh support will be based on where you have your DNS which can be separate from your registrar (I've used acme.sh on cloudflare, rage4, and many others. I've also used it with a local bind9 DNS server)

There's things like

purl-dot-org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_uniform_resource_lo...

or

.onion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.onion

e.g. http://p53lf57qovyuvwsc6xnrppyply3vtqm7l6pcobkmyqsiofyeznfu5... will be up even if the propublica.org domain is broken / disabled.

Think I found atleast one answer from: https://www.expressvpn.com/blog/how-to-create-a-onion-addres...:

When you type a .onion address into your Tor browser, unlike with a regular domain, you are not looking up an IP address on a DNS server. Instead, you are asking a Hidden Service directory, which anybody can volunteer to run.

Maybe like ENS? https://ens.domains/

Neither do I.

Would be really upset if they start charging for the two included mailboxes.

> I need to bookmark this page to cite every time we end up in another giant front-page argument about "I don't use GMail because I don't trust Google; I have my own domain with some tiny provider with human support where this can never happen."

This is about them changing the pricing of their service. The part about doing it to customers who have paid in advance may be fraud, but it's still miles better then google randomly locking you out of your account without recourse. You don't have to use Gandi for your email (why would you even except for it being "free" which you now have learned it is not) and you can transfer your domain to another registrar.

Are you calling Gandi “some tiny provider”?

Hover has been about as no nonsense as it can get. Not the cheapest, but I'd rather pay a few extra dollars a year to not have to deal with this in the future. I swear I'm the only person I know not constantly switching domain registrars, because I don't want to waste time sweating over maybe tens of dollars a year for something so core to my operations.

The one time many years ago I had to call support for a question a human being answered in 2 rings.

Tucows (which owns Hover) has been around for 30 years. It's likely they'll be around for a long while still.

Name.com is more expensive, but I've never been surprised. Normal ticketing if you do have an issue. No inane chat support, less bloated site and they've never attempted stunt billing.

Dynadot is good

uk is not in the eu anymore?

Correct. They should really update their website at the same time as announcing the upcoming change to existing customers by email.

I run my own mail server and it is not an easy task.

First you need an un-tainted ip-address/network. Then you need to get it all right with spf, dkim, dmarc, dane etc. One mistake or misconfiguration and emails from your server will at best end up in the junk folder.

Not to mention the server maintenance.

Even if you think you got it all done, you will not be welcome at all recipients (I'm looking at you Microsoft).

It's quite a pain, but I still keep at it because I have the interest and time.

this kind of change could definitely upset customer service queues. I don't know if 3+ days is normal for Gandi or not though.

To be fair, they have done a good job with that motto for a long time. I've been with them for 10 years and have recommended and praised them for being "no bullshit" on a few occasions, both here on HN and on reddit.

It sucks how quickly these things can change.

> I let it expire for a few days, now they are charging me $100/year!

It sounds like your domain name entered the redemption period. The high fee to restore a domain in the redemption period is mandated by the registry, not the registrar. So Gandi is not price gouging; they are required to collect that fee for restoring the domain.

You can’t migrate an expired domain. If you’re still within the redemption period to renew the domain by paying a higher fee, you should choose that (unless you believe nobody else will be interested in that domain name once it becomes available for anyone to purchase).

Once you renew the domain, there is an immediate 60-day (?) period when you cannot transfer the domain elsewhere. So you’d have to wait for that duration and then transfer. You won’t lose out on the expiration date though.

When you transfer the domain to another registrar, you’d have to pay a one year renewal fee, which will extend the ownership of your domain by one more year than what it was before.

Yes, I did it for one domain years ago, it was easy, and it can be done can be done completely online.

Contrary to the other reply, I do NOT recommend calling and doing it over the phone, as in my opinion that will just be slower and prone to accidents by adding a human into an otherwise automated process.

Moving from any registars is possible [1] the process is fairly easy and takes a couple of days . You would need access to admin emails you provided for verification.

The process is free as in gandi won’t charge you to migrate but newer registar might , and also if you DNS or other services the new service provider will likely charge for those.

[1] for .come .net .org and many other popular ones it is, however for some of newer Top level domains (TLD) they may have only one domain registrar and you cannot move. .dev is owned and operated by google alone.

Gandi afaik does not have exclusive access to any significant TLD so it shouldn’t be a problem

One can migrate any of their domains from any registrar to another registrar. I do not have a Gandi account so I don't know where in the UI to find this, but you would need to go into the properties for each domain and first unlock the domain and then get the unlock/transfer code. Use that code in your new registrar to move the domain(s). It is best to do this over the phone with the new registrar to ensure a smoother migration.

I confirm that I received email from Gandi about it a couple of days ago, which is annoying because that's why I moved from GoDaddy to Gandi. It said:

> "What hasn’t changed over the last 20 years is our commitment to serving you, and we will continue doing that every day. In order to serve you in the best way in the future, we are announcing changes to our pricing policy effective April 6th 2023. [...] To ensure we can maintain the highest standards in the future we will stop free mailboxes beyond the first year, and price it at £2.99 per month for standard mailboxes and £5.99 per month for premium mailboxes and we will expand the e-mail offering with [...] Better anti-spam and anti-virus protection"

(Which I'm sure has nothing to do with the uptick in spam I've been receiving the past month or so).

I use Migadu and aside from the meh webmail client that's provided for you (which I can't really complain about), the service is impeccable for individual users.