~ Google Domains charges $12/year for .COM, .NET, .ORG.
~ NameCheap charges $10.69/year for .COM, $11.98/year for .NET, and $11.48/year for .ORG. Sometimes with an 18c/year fee tacked on.
~ GoDaddy charges $12.99-13.99 for a .COM but that might increase randomly because they're scumbags.
So my point is that this article claims that everyone is "rushing" to this new product, and while this product doesn't seem "bad" it also isn't exactly market changing. The prices are well within 10% of the market (sometimes higher, sometimes lower) and the features are pretty generic also.
Can someone explain why Google Domains is compelling and not a "me too!" product?
If you want privacy protection on your whois lookups, then Google would be cheaper than the other providers, as they sell it as an add-on.
I also trust Google to have speedy DNS servers, if you're leaving the defaults in place. GoDaddy's DNS can be quite slow.
Perhaps not a "mind-blowing" product, but one I'd consider using.
name.com has had that for years. Click a button and it configures all the MX records for you and a few CNAMES on top (so you can do stuff like mail.yourdomain.com and calendar.yourdomain.com).
Godaddy also sells this as an addon, actually, every domain seller does, I don't know what is so special about Google's offert.
I'd encourage people to try it out with a domain and form your own views. As for me, I'm moving all of my domains over to Google (as they get close to renewal.)
As far as our dashboard, we're building a better user experience, so that's nothing to fret about. I bet you'd agree when it's live that the experience is far more stellar than anything you'd find anywhere else.
The interface is ... almost ok. It's cluttered because it's used for more than just domain registration (think it's cPanel, actually) but the registration part is ok.
it's a classic google "me too" project. i always get the feeling a lot of google projects come up because someone somewhere is going to be in a high level meeting with execs, and one exec sees something interesting and asks "why aren't we doing this?" and then someone gets to chime in "we already are!" and then they check the box for DONE and never look back.
Let's Encrypt is going to be doing that later this year anyway.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/certificate-authority-...
They no longer have to send people across the street for this critical part of hosting and can also easily integrate it with their other services, such as gmail forwarding.
Edit: oh, and it's fast to update, especially if you use Google as DNS server as I do.
It doesn't have to be anything more than a "me to" product.
Noting that if you google "domains" they now come up as the 2nd organic link. Nice to be king, eh?
Edit: I own a registrar and we compete with them (if you want to call it that). Obviously I am just referring to the fact that they can instantly rank high with what amounts to a beta product hence the "king" comment. Of course they need to be more than "me to" but that ranking goes a long way in getting them business even if they do very little.
They come up as the 2nd for you. Google Search results are personalized. It's 6th in mine, behind Hostgator.
It seems to me that Google is just trying to throw their enormous weight into every space now and it sickens me. This is how we end up with mediocre goods and services... No thanks Google.
They are much, much more than a monopoly at this point.
Not to mention, with Namecheap, GoDaddy or really any other company, you can probably get ahold of tech support 24/7. Good luck getting that from Google... Not that I've tried yet, but my experience with them in the past has been that it's mission impossible to talk to a human being in charge of something there, unless you're trying to hangout with the devs on Google+ or something for smalltalk, which seems to always be available.
That's quite the Google way, they are not looking for the one-time immediate profit, but for customers that will somehow generate income in the long term. It seems it's not working bad for them.
Oh, and if you renew for several years at a time, the cost per year goes down too.
Disclosure: Namecheap employee
$12 is really expensive...
- if you are paying google on an ongoing basis for something (adwords for example) they are very pro active with support.
- if you are using a free product, expect 0 or less support
- if you are receiving money from google, expect active hostility.
If I was a developer bringing in several thousand a year on the Play Store, I'd happily shell out $99/year for better support. I imagine I am not alone in that.
It would be nice if I could refer to a parent company with a more appealing name.
We did eventually go with NameCheap and had no issues. But the name definitely does them more harm than good for business users.
The brand grew from there. That's why Namecheap is still called Namecheap.
Disclosure: Namecheap employee/personal experience
I've been using Namecheap for a few years, and have (for the most part) been pretty happy. Their SSL certificate service is super clunky, but the domain stuff is decent.
I don't care for the name NameCheap either. On the other hand it's been easy to remember.
I recently had an issue with Google Apps, and contacted them via email for support.
I received a phone call almost immediately and the issue was resolved in minutes. I live in Fiji.
The Google Domains Support Team is available every day from 6am to 9pm PT.
Chat with us Email us Call us Generate PIN
I once had to transfer a domain for a client that Google had registered with Godaddy. Google blamed Godaddy and Godaddy blamed Google. What a nightmare.
Recently, I had to contact support for a failed payment (obscure domain extension, some address verification error), and the experience was great. I got it fixed in less than 5 minutes by contacting their live support.
Will keep using them. Their name doesn't do them justice, they are an A player in the domain space.
Backstory: I have five .io domains, three that I registered with Gandi, and two with Namecheap. When the expiration period for the Gandi ones was coming up, I got an email saying "the domains expire on xx/xx/xxxx, renew by then if you want them to stay active. If you don't renew, you can renew then any time up to 90 days after the expiration date".
As it happens, I let the three with Gandi expire, and then logged into their dashboard, renewed them about 60 days after the expiration date, end of story.
Compare: I accidentally let the two I had registered with Namecheap expire. "OK" I figured, "not a big deal, they probably have some kind of grace period as well." No. I got an email saying "these domains expired and you cannot renew them through your Namecheap account. You can contact support and they might be able to help you renew them." So, I contact support and they write back and say "we'll try, but it's going to cost $XXX.XX (somewhere around $250, if memory serves) to renew".
OK, to be fair, I did let the domains expire, so I guess I deserve what I get. But the experience renewing an expired domain with Gandi was so much better than what it was with Namecheap, that I've basically written Namecheap off as a registrar to use in the future.
Namecheap takes great care of me at $10/year though, so I'm not very compelled to switch.
The domain renewal with whois privacy/guard at NameCheap ends up being a little more than Google Domains.
I keep hoping NameCheap will overhaul their control panel design like they did with their main site.
I will probably end up moving to AWS Route53 or Google Domains or to use their DNS and a clean/modern interface and simpler pricing (include whois privacy).
It's been how many years now? And all they say is "we're working on it" and have no ETA. So we moved most things to Gandi.
Feels good having no GoDaddy, however.
* Use code WGSPECIAL for a discounted whoisguard. :)
* Renewals for several years at a time offer a baked-in savings.
* Our control panel overhaul is underway. It's a huge project for us, but we're ecstatic.
If it's an issue of not wanting to deal with certain country top-levels then so be it and simply offer the ones you've implemented already and add in more top levels in the future.
The latest debacle: I can't renew my domain. They started sending me notifications a few months ago that my domain was expiring because my credit card is out of date. I can't sign in because of a redirect bug. There's no support to reach out to, and requests for help on forums have gone unanswered.
Alternatively, dnsimple has been nothing but charming to work with.
I haven't actually tried following through with it, since I don't have any support queries myself, but that certainly /looks/ like a way to directly talk to support.
This is my biggest fear when using anything Google-related.
They are notoriously difficult to get in touch with, and as such I probably wouldn't even considering signing up for this service.
Getting access to a real person when there is a problem with one of my domains is very valuable to me.
- Unlike other domain sellers, Google Domains is NOT trying to sell me anything other than domains.
- Canceling is easy! I don't have to wait in calls with 1&1!
- Customer support was great. They get back to me after an hour if I email and if I call, responses are very fast.
- User interface is clean and clear.
- Simple integration if you are on Google apps (I am grandfathered, using their, old, standard, free Gapps.
- Customer support was superb and instant, via chat, and it was great. The person knew what he was doing.
Definitely a keeper.
Easily buy a domain, have it automatically hooked into the Google Apps suite of products, and easily hook it up with a select number of third party vendors like Wix or Shopify.
That's what this is about. The ability to create something cool, run a business, without having to worry as much about the technical bullshit.
Great product, and for the ease of use it is well worth $12/year. And yea, I know, $2 more a year than namecheap... but $2/year is well worth the time it takes to setup a domain (even if it is only a 2 minute ordeal).
https://support.google.com/domains/answer/6069226?hl=en
I'd expect that the integrations with things like Google Apps will improve before it goes GA rather than open beta -- one of the key reasons to have this service has to be to support one-stop shopping for Google Apps and/or Google Cloud setups.
Agree though - clear instructions are missing.
Soon enough you will store your website entirely on SERPs. Instant load times will mean better user experience. A to Z solution will ease up developers life.
No Canadian support yet.
Soon, eh!
The world needs to resist ceeding every last bit Internet governance to these people.
Centralization is death!
If so, buying your domain here could be worth it for the DNS alone, as they are anycast, DNSSEC enabled, and fairly fast[2].
Am I missing something...? I didn't realise this was a problem - I've never used a domain provider that doesn't let you do this. I currently use Namecheap, which certainly do.
Very few of those services have a good way of dealing with "No, that wasn't their email address they signed up with, it was an alias of mine". And while for some of these, I could presumably click the "forgot password" link and go into their account, I'm not sure that would be legitimate and wouldn't know what their correct email was to change it.
And customer support is something Google doesn't believe in.
Who shat in your cocopops?
On the marketplace, your display name is the same as the username. What a security risk.
And most of all: why charge at all for the domain name privacy option? As if this is such a costly tech thing to accomplish.
So much for being an early adopter :|
You, like me, was an early adopter which provided the platform with traction when it was new.
Now the platform is proven, established and popular.
From an economic point of view we're now merely free-loading leeches, and I honestly don't find it reasonable to expect that we should be given the best treatment at the expense of others.
Google now has a shitload of paying customers, and they are getting prioritized. And I'm completely fine with that. Our reward is that unlike others, we're allowed to go free-loading!
I've noticed too that I'm not getting features and upgrades paying customers get. That's Google trying to give me an incentive to convert to a paid account, because obviously Google wants to convert us free-loaders to paying customers too. And I'm fine with that as well.
Just don't act entitled because you were the first one to sign up for a free product. You don't deserve anything in return for that.
As usual with Google, technical details are scant.
https://support.google.com/domains/answer/6147083?authuser=1
So, not RFC 2136. No standard protocol for you.
Also, fwiw they're fantastic.
Hmm, what does that mean for an average website?
100 readers * 365 days * ~273 (html+css+js+gif/png/jpg) ?
I guess some browsers cache the DNS requests too..
Adding support for more .bullshit TLD's that no one cares about?
Connecting to Blogger?
Yawn...
(edit: actually, they'd never voluntarily transfer your domain; they'd force you to transfer it, at some kind of discount. suffice to say i am less than confident)