YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Namecheap just seized and disabled all my domains

119 points sashk 2 hours ago 56 comments

CharlesW 2 hours ago | parent

Namecheap cannot be trusted. I purchased a domain for a "normal" price (and yes, I have receipts). Shortly after they realized they fucked up, voided the purchase, and made it a $1,500 premium domain. Obviously, my recommendation is to avoid Namecheap.

reddalo 38 minutes ago | parent

Was the name actually available? Or were they reselling a domain they owned?

throw-the-towel 1 hour ago | parent

There's a reason it's called Namecheap not Namesafe.

bluebarbet 46 minutes ago | parent

Indeed. Personally I would never pay for any service whose name includes the word "cheap" (it's literally why I gave this one a wide berth despite all the breathless recommendations here and elsewhere). Cheapness should never be the declared mission of a business, it should be the incidental by-product.

ericholscher 1 hour ago | parent

Yea they did something like this with us. Fully turned off our business domain because we didn’t reply to a phishing email in 48 hours. We migrated out the next day once we got it resolved. It took over 6 hours from when we noticed the issue and responded until they turned it back on. Absolutely horrible service.

rcleveng 1 hour ago | parent

Who did you move to? I used to use google domains before they sold and and am not sure who is decent anymore

londons_explore 59 minutes ago | parent

Internet.bs

bertt 53 minutes ago | parent

Porkbun has been great.

Faaak 39 minutes ago | parent

infomaniak

nasso_dev 17 minutes ago | parent

i can vouch for porkbun and cloudflare

mnd999 8 minutes ago | parent

Mythic beasts

sirnicolaz 1 hour ago | parent

This gave me the final kick to finally move away from Namecheap

sourcecodeplz 1 hour ago | parent

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)

alterom 1 hour ago | parent

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).

ryandrake 43 minutes 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.

CuriouslyC 32 minutes ago | parent

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).

sourcecodeplz 13 minutes ago | parent

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..

richstokes 24 minutes ago | parent

Ohhh so that’s why I got those price increases emails. Yay. What are some good alternatives?

js2 22 minutes ago | parent

Porkbun. Cloudflare if you don't mind being locked into using them for DNS too.

anamexis 22 minutes ago | parent

I've been very happy with Porkbun. https://porkbun.com

drewtemp 16 minutes ago | parent

Same here. Recently migrated quite a few domains from Namecheap to Porkbun and it only took a matter of minutes.

anonzzzies 14 minutes ago | parent

Yep I moved all namecheap and godaddy to porkbun.

m000 10 minutes ago | parent

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.

chung8123 1 hour ago | parent

Out of curiosity where are people going for their domains. I have a GoDaddy because changing seems like a task that would be more annoying than it is worth and that is even if you can find a place that is better.

jordanb 1 hour ago | parent

I've always used Joker. Never heard anything bad about them or had any problems.

masfuerte 37 minutes ago | parent

Same here. This is the first time I've ever heard anyone else even mention them!

kardianos 1 hour ago | parent

porkbun

mat_epice 1 hour ago | parent

I've used porkbun.com for a bit. I've had no complaints, and at least when I looked initially their prices were pretty good.

reddalo 39 minutes ago | parent

+1 for Porkbun

The only downside is that they use Cloudflare DNS behind the scenes, so when Cloudflare goes down, your website goes down too unless you use third-party DNS.

ranger_danger 31 minutes ago | parent

But for end-users not using CF DNS... if the domain used third-party DNS, wouldn't that be enough? Since the TLD servers keep their own mapping of authoritative DNS servers for every domain, it's not asking CF to resolve DNS for your domain.

ssl-3 11 minutes ago | parent

Yes.

You can always use third-party DNS if that's what you wish to do. That should be a supported configuration with ~any registrar (and if it isn't, avoid them).

You can run your own (first-party!) authoritative nameserver(s) for your domain, if you want to, and you can even do this on hardware that you can see and kick. A nameserver isn't particularly hard to set up in a sensible fashion.

However it happens, eliminating Cloudflare's DNS from the equation is easy. The TLD nameservers (for .com or .net or whatever) will cheerfully direct resolvers towards whatever nameserver(s) you specified as part of your domain registration.

After that, when Cloudflare DNS dies on any random Tuesday afternoon, your domain will still work. (Maybe it won't work for those using Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1, but those people may have bigger issues on that particular Tuesday.)

janalsncm 28 minutes ago | parent

Have you dealt with their customer service? Namecheap also seems fine to me, but I have also never been in a situation like OP’s.

Bender 51 minutes ago | parent

This is just my jaded take but I suspect that whomever is good today may be gone in the not too distant future. I have been watching registrars get gobbled up by investment groups that have no knowledge of or interest in DNS. They seem to be milking these registrars and leaving behind broken husks.

There should probably be a deadpool board that lists all the registrars and lets people bet on which will be the last ones standing. I am going to guess a couple of the last ones standing (that still have something resembling technical staff) will be Amazon and Cloudflare and to be clear I did not say anyone can reach their technical staff.

Whatever the consensus will ultimately be in this thread this week will probably be registrars we perform libation for in the coming years.

MisterMunchkin 26 minutes ago | parent

Cloudflare. They sell at cost, and their entire business is around DNS and caching so they have no reason to decide to stop selling domains in the future or mess with us.

bel8 14 minutes ago | parent

I went GoDaddy -> Namecheap -> Cloudflare.

daneel_w 4 minutes ago | parent

Porkbun. Do not go with Cloudflare. At some point you may want to run your own name server, and Cloudflare does not allow this for domains you keep with them, because the traffic data is of obvious interest to them.

blinding-streak 1 hour ago | parent

What are good alternatives to namecheap?

tarr11 1 hour ago | parent

Cloudflare is pretty affordable and it seems unlikely to be bought by PE

mat_epice 1 hour ago | parent

Porkbun has been good to me.

rwyinuse 1 hour ago | parent

Hetzner, OVHcloud are decent European options. I migrated to them after geopolitical risks with US providers got too high. No problems so far.

ivan_gammel 50 minutes ago | parent

I'm on EuroDNS as domain registrar for many years, parked there a couple of companies where I worked. They don't have scammy vibe of other registrars, have multi-user accounts, which is convenient for businesses.

bluebarbet 45 minutes ago | parent

Dynadot. Over a decade without issues.

Faaak 38 minutes ago | parent

infomaniak.ch is swiss, and (relatively) good. Lacking features overall (though their domain+DNS is solid), but at least no bullshit like this

convolvatron 1 hour ago | parent

this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but this was the inevitable result of changing a function with trivial cost and broad social utility (name registration) from a public service to a commercial one. at the time we heard a lot of standard arguments about the innovation and competition that only a market based solution could bring. its really not a surprise that this is the kind of innovation that resulted.

londons_explore 55 minutes ago | parent

Yes - domain registries should be run by the government.

DNS etc can be run by third parties

proxyscore 23 minutes ago | parent

Nominet does yet they outsource.

Besides, which government do you want to run .com domains

Muromec 10 minutes ago | parent

UN of course

ranger_danger 6 minutes ago | parent

How would that help? The government could still block domains registered by people in adversarial countries.

Personally I would not want the US government controlling and micro-managing who gets to have a .com domain.

farlight 1 hour ago | parent

If you still did business with them after this, it's your own fault and you deserve everything they're doing to you:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30504812

(Before reacting to the headline, please read at least some of the discussion.)

tbrownaw 47 minutes ago | parent

Are you trying to suggest that the issue in the current post has the same underlying cause (not doing business with countries on the other side of a war)?

Sparkle-san 42 minutes ago | parent

I read this particular comment[0] and I can't say that I understand the connection you're suggesting. If I ran a company and a country was directly attacking the city were ~1k of my employees live[1], I wouldn't want to continue to do business with them either.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30507103

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namecheap#Termination_of_servi...

janalsncm 30 minutes ago | parent

No, I don’t see how one follows from the other. Most of us are not Russian and don’t have websites NC would consider relevant to the war.

On the other hand, most of us probably can imagine not checking our email for three days, getting caught up in some automated purgatory, and experiencing customer neglect. We can imagine this because it is the default customer experience these days.

ManuelKiessling 21 minutes ago | parent

Mh, if anything, this would make me want to do business with them more.

Now what?

andrewstuart 49 minutes ago | parent

I’ve found really great but quite unique .com domain names available on name cheap then mysteriously gone registered to name cheap within hours, available for purchase at thousands.

Always strenuously denied by the name cheap CEO “we do not front run domain names!”.

I’d never do a domain name check there again.

pmkary 17 minutes ago | parent

I'm an Iranian---which is something you have no choice in, you just turn 4~5 and understand enough language that they tell you that you are an Iranian. And well out of believing namecheap is a good company (since I had my DNS there) I purchased my domain from them. Then one day these fuckers banned my domain, and my access to the dashboard without any warnings or headsup, didn't even allow me to move my domain to somewhere else, and those vultures from GoDaddy bought it in the auction and have put it for 3500€... Horrible people

r_lee 5 minutes ago | parent

this is one of the worst trends in modern time - "AML" and "KYC" being shoved into everything, requiring you to attach your own identity into everything and send your ID/passport to vendors left and right, no right to privacy at all.