OT- Domain name renewal cost and transfers

I have 3 different domain names, two registered with GoDaddy and one with Network Solutions. Is it my imagination, or is Network Solutions now $35 a year and GoDaddy is $10 a year for exactly the same thing ??

If so, can I transfer the NetS name to GoD and if so what is the process ? And is there any "advantage" of staying with NetS ?

If it is a domain name that you really care about, I would not move it to godaddy. Godaddy makes it too easy to transfer it away and they are not very helpful in getting it back (I do internet engineering as a day job). As much as I hate netsloth, they are the safest for a name that you value a lot and gets a lot of traffic. Now, if you just want to register something like "mystupiddogatemyhomework.com" to host your junk on, godaddy is fine.

Network Solutions is a large group of crooks. They are far and away higher than anyone else. Also, NEVER go to there web site and search for a domain, because they will immediately put an "administrative hold" on it so that it can only be registered though their site at much higher rates. They justify this as a way to protect customers from just such a practice.

when my friend closed up his hosting business i move my two domains to dreamhost. they have been a decent company to deal with.

Check out www.hostmonster.com. you can host unlimited domains on one acct. Unlimited everything.

Don,

FWIW, I had several domains registered at GoDaddy, and I didn't like the way they sneakily tried to register my domains and get an $80 additional fee to get them back. I let them have the names, and registered 2 others at Domain Discover, who I have been using for a long time. I also don't care for all the SPAM they always sent me.

Domain Discover used to be about $25/year when I first started using them but are only $10.95/year now, and offer a discount when registering new domains.

You will also find that it could be much cheaper for some to buy blocks of 10 years, the price is often much less when buying in bulk. A friend of mine did that at Network Solutions and doesn't need to worry about it for 10 years now. Food for thought...

I registered at verio.com , renewed once after 5 years, no problems at all. My host merged with another about 5 times so far, now it's web.com, no problems there. One time I had to change something with the IP host, turned out the actual URL registrar was located in Australia, and it took a while to get a response and get it changed.

I transferred two domains from Netsol to Godaddy a couple years ago to take advantage of cheap one-stop shopping for domains and hosting, and have had no troubles, at least not with domains. I just filled out the transfer form at godaddy, made sure the netsol accounts were not "locked", and that was it. When I actually changed the hosting, there was a period of a few hours for DNS to propagate.

Godaddy does offer the basic $9/yr .com registration, but they *want* you buy optional services like domain-locking and privacy that brings the cost up to netsol. (I don't bother. Does netsol charge extra for that?)

I found godaddy's email hosting to be unusable - they are used by too many spammers and so many sites categorically rejected *my* email, I gave up and moved my email to Google Apps (via MX record in DNS) but still use the godaddy hosting.

One thing I like about godaddy is that I'm only paying for 1 hosting plan for 1 domain, and 3 other domains are hosted for free as subdirectories of the main one. Maybe everyone offers that, I wouldn't know.

I use 1and1.com, and have since about 2001. No complaints. $6.99/yr per domain, no extra fees or monkey business that I ever noticed.

I use Fortune City since about 2003. Never had an issue with them at all. Something like $7 a year or so, I can't remember, cheap though. They have been excellent on service with what interaction I've had.

They are bastids with a poor service record: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Solutions

Transferring is common place and chances are more than excellent GoDaddy has a link on your account page that will walk you through the process. NSI has a monopoly on several top level domains (.com, for example) and sublet registration authority to GoDaddy and other registrars. They get a bulk discount and pass that savings on to you. NSI still gets some of your money when it's all done.

Don,

I've worked/used Netsol for a long time, re-upped for the 10 years a while back. I've recently taken to using Yahoo for domain registrations since they seem to have their crap together the most. Yahoo is also not a service provider like GoDaddy is. The problem with GoDaddy is that they have a vested interest in keeping the domains there.

Verio uses Melbourne IT, same as Yahoo. Melbourne IT is one of the companies that won a seat at the table when IANA broke up the Netsol love fest. Every registrar pays the same price to IANA for domains, so the playing field is equal. This is a case where you know what they are paying and can positively determine their markup.

I'll cast a vote of "crooks" for GoDaddy. As others have mentioned; they will do "shenanigans" to corral domain names and then auction them off after they've expired.

I'll cast a vote of "extremely professional" for ViaVerio. I've had a virtual server there for many years, and manage a decent collection of domains through their DNS interface. It's painless and top notch.

I had one domain name that I obtained through an auction at GoDaddy (there was no other way), and it took me over 6 months to wrestle control of it away from them so I could move it to Verio where all my others are. They tried every trick in the book to circumvent what should legally be possible... I persisted, and eventually won, but it was a LOT of work. I do not like GoDaddy.

They ARE inexpensive though, I'll give them that. But as the old saying goes: "you get what you pay for".

Thumbs down for GoDaddy
Thumbs up for ViaVerio.

my 2 cents