Domain registrar Gandi gets bought out, removes free mailboxes
452 points by insomniacity 2 years ago | 336 comments- varun_chopra 2 years agoFull message for others not seeing the page:
So, further to recent changes at Gandi, I've just got some more info from support which I've included below. I've purchased domains from Gandi, pre-paying for multiple years of service such that some domains I have don't need renewing until 2027. When I purchased that service the offer was inclusive of 2 mailboxes for the duration of the contract, and now they're planning to remove those inclusive mailboxes and start charging me extra for them from next month.
To me, this sounds like a planned and fully intentional breach of contract.
"We'll start charging for mailboxes from next month. Our current mail offer will end and will be replaced by our new offer: [...]
What’s going to happen going forward ?
Starting from April 6th, you will have the choice to either : - Keep your mailbox and pay accordingly on a monthly basis. - Refuse the offer and you can have the choice to delete the mailbox or migrate your mailbox to another provider. In that case you will have a two months window to migrate before the deletion of your mailbox - Forwarding address remains free
How ? - You will receive ln the 6th of April a mail with a link to make your choice.
How much it will cost for me ? - It will depend on how many active mailboxes you own. A mailbox costs £2,99 so if you have 2 mailboxes, you will be billed £5,98 monthly."
- motrm 2 years agoAs some comments have mentioned the pricing will increase for domain names too, not very explicit in their email on Tuesday evening "Gandi.net - Update":
Renewing a .com at these new prices is now £24 per year inclusive of tax and .uk domains £12.Domains We remain committed to offering you the largest portfolio of TLDs, customized TLD suggestions and best-in-class anycast-level primary DNS servers. In addition, we will step-up our effort to unburden you by introducing new managed features: Advanced and easy to use account security Proactive notifications on changes and important events Better rights management Easier domain transfers with continuity of service Best-in-class anycast-level secondary DNS servers You can find the associated new pricing for your domains here[0].
Annoyingly my previous registrar raised prices last year and I thought that, hey, I'll pay a few quid extra and support Gandi as they generally have a decent reputation. Now with this move I'm the fool!
Like others in this thread I've moved to Porkbun, the .com renewals are now about £8.50 and .uk about £5.50 which is much more reasonable and much closer to their cost price.
I'd like my registrar to make a reasonable amount of profit to make staying in business worthwhile but that doesn't make sense when the registrar wants to double or triple the pricing for their bottom line.
Shame, but there we go.
[0] https://www.gandi.net/static/documents/2023-march-gbp-renew-...
- btown 2 years agoGandi 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.
- hyperhopper 2 years agoI mean they got sold. A company is only as honest as who currently runs it.
Same thing with people saying "I trust company X with my data." Do you also trust the next 4 CEOs and the next 10 governments who will have authority over them?
- benhurmarcel 2 years agoI fully agree, I paid more for years because they provided email hosting, and more importantly they were seen as trusted all around.
Now with this move I have no reason left to pay extra, I'll renew somewhere else.
I'm a bit upset that I learn about this on HN too, I wonder when I'll get an email. They didn't even update their own website yet.
- hyperhopper 2 years ago
- callahad 2 years ago> 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.
- rendaw 2 years agoBased 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)
- imilk 2 years agoI'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.
- tolien 2 years ago> 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.
- btown 2 years ago
- mikea1 2 years ago> I've purchased domains from Gandi, pre-paying for multiple years of service such that some domains I have don't need renewing until 2027.
Just in case you did not know: if you transfer to a different registrar, you will not lose the extra years of registration. You can confirm the expected expiration date of 2027 at lookup.icann.org.
- bambax 2 years ago> 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)?
- cortic 2 years agoAs an ex-customer, I'd avoid namecheap. They are expensive and have given me no end of trouble.
I currently use porkbun and namesilo with very few issues so far (about 3 years). You will need to unlock your domain and get an authorization code (EPP Key) from Gandi and then go to your new registrar and select Transfer Domain. Its fairly straight forward.
- _carbyau_ 2 years agoRecently moved to Porkbun. Can confirm positive impressions so far. Reasonable pricing. Straight forward webforms. 2 factor. No trying to slip extra bullshit in.
For me the purpose of a registrar is to register a domain. Porkbun might have other capabilities, but for this purpose it was wonderfully singleminded for me.
- chillfox 2 years ago+1 on the issues with NameCheap.
1. They routinely fail to auto renew domains despite correct billing details and auto renew being on (I lost some domains to this).
2. They support premium domains, so you can be struck by lightning and randomly have the price of your domains dramatically jacked up (had to drop a domain due to this).
3. The name (NameCheap) no longer checks out, they are not cheap anymore.
They stopped being good about 2 years ago.
- Alupis 2 years agoYou might need to elaborate on what problems you experienced with Namecheap before promoting two relatively unknown registrars. Although, my only experience with Namecheap was for SSL certs back in the day.
What happened that drove you away?
- CyberShadow 2 years agoI use NameSilo but am 50/50 on it. Their control panel does not send a "Content-Type" header, which is effectively mandatory, and the support team flat out could not understand what I was talking to them when I was trying to point it out to them. It "worked" in Chrome and Firefox without add-ons and that's as far as their concern ended.
- srik 2 years agoCould you share what troubles you had with namecheap, in vague terms at least if you don't want to be specific?
- _carbyau_ 2 years ago
- Jiocus 2 years agoAs a long time customer, I would recommend Namecheap. I was trying out Gandi since a couple months. On the bright side, they have a lot of additional international TLDs, but that's about it. Gandi has been noticeably more expensive when comparing equivalent domains.
- Penguinx628 2 years agoStrong disagree. Migrated off namecheap after their support left a bad taste in my mouth. Also they had a data breach and did NOT notify me as a customer of theirs.
https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/116j7iq/fyi_namech...
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/namecheaps-em...
- Penguinx628 2 years ago
- mikea1 2 years ago> But how do you do it?
Any registrar that receives the transfer will automatically have the extended expiration date. (The expiration date is actually tracked at the registry.)
For reputable registrars, I think you could gather a list from HN comments and then "do your own research" to whittle down the list.
- andrewxdiamond 2 years agoI moved from Gandi to Google Domains, then later to Cloudflare Domains.
CF has the most serious product out of any of them, and they sell domains at-cost as a loss-leader to get you in.
- ajaimk 2 years agoGoogle Domains has yet to cause me angst
- mkl 2 years agoAssociating domains with a Google account that is subject to arbitrary automated banning seems like a bad idea to me. It would be fine until it's suddenly not.
- htrp 2 years agoUntil your entire google account is suspended.
- dahdum 2 years agoI hope you didn’t register a critical and/or revenue driving domain with them, as others pointed out you are taking a larger risk than you may think.
- mkl 2 years ago
- cortic 2 years ago
- andrewxdiamond 2 years agoCloudflare domains are sold at cost, and CF is a very rock solid platform (for DNS/registrars at least)
- mike_d 2 years agoIt depends on the registry, but you cannot extend a domain out past 10 years.
- bambax 2 years ago
- kikoreis 2 years agoFor those curious about what's going on (the post was removed) they merged with TWS: https://your.online/press-release/
- Freak_NL 2 years agoWe'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.
- VoxPelli 2 years agoAny suggestion of a good serious independent European registrar?
- bauruine 2 years agoI'm using Infomaniak. I especially like their renewal warranty [0]. It's a few bucks more a year but they renew the Domain even if you are not paying and try to contact you by phone, snail mail etc. They also support IPv6 and DNSSEC.
- Tijdreiziger 2 years agoI used to be on Versio, but moved to TransIP after the acquisition of Versio by TWS.
TransIP is not exactly the cheapest, but they work fine. Vimexx (which is under the same company as TransIP) is cheaper (closer to pre-TWS Versio pricing), but I'm a bit hesitant to trust a 'budget' registrar again.
- corford 2 years agoNot sure if it meets the European criteria but I use a combination of DNSimple and Porkbun and am very happy with them both.
For less common ccTLDs, Gandi is still hard to beat since they support virtually everything. Apart from that, I have no regrets moving... I saw the writing on the wall about 2 years ago and moved virtually all my domains away from them.
- Freak_NL 2 years agoI wish I had something useful to recommend now, but we've only just started looking.
- OoooooooO 2 years agoI use INWX for some years for 2 domains and can't complain about anything.
- lostfocus 2 years agoI'm happy with INWX
- uselpa 2 years agoI am happy with OVH. Only bit that’s missing is IPv6 for dynamic IPs.
- bauruine 2 years ago
- ikekkdcjkfke 2 years agoIs it printed so much money that they just buy up everything and jack up the prices?
- VoxPelli 2 years ago
- chunk_waffle 2 years agoWhere the hell is the date on this press release...
> "Gandi SAS (“Gandi”) and Total Webhosting Solutions B.V. (“TWS”), today announced"
when was "today"?
- bombcar 2 years agoThis reposting - https://news.knowledia.com/US/en/articles/gandi-and-tws-join... indicates it was Feb 23, 2023
- bombcar 2 years ago
- Freak_NL 2 years ago
- sam_lowry_ 2 years agoThus is all the fault of Laetitia Halliday, ultimately.
If she did not sue Valentin Lacambre, he would not have abandoned altern.org.
If he kept altern.org, gandi would have been an association, not a corporation.
And the world would be a slightly better place.
- zokier 2 years agoInteresting 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...
- ploum 2 years agoWow, good old memories!
(btw, it was Estelle Halliday, not Laetitia Halliday. But your uchrony is perfectly right)
- sam_lowry_ 2 years agoTrue, it was Estelle. Thanks.
- jacquesm 2 years agoMaybe edit the original in case there is someone with that actual name?
- jacquesm 2 years ago
- krsrhe 2 years agoUchrony? Fictional?
- sam_lowry_ 2 years ago
- Thoreandan 2 years agoTIL.
(for those also out of the loop: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altern )
- ignoramous 2 years agoFor those out of French: https://archive.is/b0qY9 (Valentine Lacambre, co-founder of Gandi.net) / https://archive.is/rxDO1 (AlternB)
- sundarurfriend 2 years agoAn English article on this (from 1999): http://www.praxagora.com/andyo/ar/anonymity_snare.html
- ignoramous 2 years ago
- renewiltord 2 years agoAh, 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
- sam_lowry_ 2 years agoNot just any website. Altern.org was pretty much the Gmail of the day for French speakers. Web hosting offer was also free and minimal.
- sam_lowry_ 2 years ago
- zokier 2 years ago
- bhartzer 2 years agoIt sound like they’re hosting at the same place (gandi) where they registered the domain. This is absolutely never recommended, for security purposes. If someone gains access to your hosting account you’ll likely lose all your domain names.
Transfer the domains over to a better more secure registrar. Then set up a server or vps and set up as many mailboxes or emails that you need.
- toast0 2 years agoI 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.
- jacques_chester 2 years ago> you now have several different vendors that can ruin your day.
The point is that a single vendor for everything can ruin your life.
- jacques_chester 2 years ago
- capableweb 2 years agoInfrastructure 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.
- Strom 2 years ago> thinking about how to scale
Having a good plan for scaling is absolutely a great move. Changing fundamental architecture later isn't easy. Implementing it all immediately however ..
- capableweb 2 years agoSure, I agree, some sort of plan is a good idea. What I've seen many times though is engineers building systems for supporting 100k daily users while the product hasn't even found market fit yet, wasting lots of time on building complicated distributed systems way too early.
- capableweb 2 years ago
- Strom 2 years ago
- jeffreyrogers 2 years agoIs 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.
- devmor 2 years agoAnd until that reversal is done, you've exposed all the users of your domains (including yourself) to security issues, potential data theft, and destroyed your own website's reputation.
- bhartzer 2 years agoI've been running a stolen domain name recovery service for a few years now. Even though hacking into someone's account and transferring the domain name to themselves or transferring it to another domain registrar is a crime, it's never prosecuted (when they come to us the first thing we have them do is file a police report).
The problem is that most domain registrars won't help get your domain name back. Many domains are stolen because they hacked the email address and not the domain registrar account (even though that's how they got access). Most domain registrars don't care at all, and won't help. And there are no current ICANN policies for dealing with stolen domain names. Even UDRP is not set up for dealing with stolen domains. Although we were successful getting one back via UDRP since the business was using the domain previously and we ended up claiming 'commonlaw trademark'.
This is one reason why we've been so successful getting stolen domain names back for clients: we use some alternative methods, such as actually talking to people at the registrars involved and talking with the domain thief, to get domains back.
- xoa 2 years ago>Most domain registrars don't care at all, and won't help.
Don't leave us hanging like that! Which are the registrars that do care, and will help then? Even if they cost more.
- xoa 2 years ago
- TylerE 2 years agoSeems like the definition of a pyrrhic victory.
- devmor 2 years ago
- justeleblanc 2 years agoIs there any indication that Gandi is insecure?
- mbreese 2 years agoNot that I know of, it’s just good practice to separate services like this (even if it can be more expensive and logistically difficult).
- justeleblanc 2 years agoI'm asking because the GGP wrote "better more secure registrar". Since I'm using Gandi right now (and I don't care about their mailbox offer), I wanted to know if it was really insecure.
- justeleblanc 2 years ago
- mbreese 2 years ago
- toast0 2 years ago
- throwaway81523 2 years agoGandi email has been useless from the start. They say right in the contract that they don't back up their email servers. Isn't the host handling chores like backup part of the point of a hosted product? Of course you can and should distrust the host's backups and have your own in addition, but that's way different than the host not doing them in the first place.
Maybe they have fixed that (I don't see it on their site any more) but I have a screen shot of the old contract provision and I complained to them about it in 2017, and they ignored the complaint.
- SahAssar 2 years agoFor 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.
- behringer 2 years agoPretty sure gandi doesn't do much of the above either. Gandi email hosting is generally not worth paying for.
- branon 2 years agoI've been using Gandi's free mailboxes since 2019 when I de-Googled, they provide easy setup for SPF/DKIM/DMARC. Not sure about the other two. No significant deliverability issues to report. They offer IMAP and a choice between two web UIs which is all I need.
I'd be more than happy to pay for their service in general, just not under duress. If they'd have given me 6 months to onboard I'd have been perfectly fine with $3/mo for email. If I'm going to be abused with a false sense of urgency and pushed to make a quick decision, I'll just leave.
- PaulKeeble 2 years agoAs a bundled service it was fine, I have a complete copy of my emails on my client(s) anyway so what it really did was give an IMAP interface to use for sending and receiving emails under my domain that dealt with the entire "Google et el are pretty evil about personal email boxes".
Its not worth £3 a month per box when previously the Gandi markup was £4 a year or so for the extra services on top of the raw domain price.
- branon 2 years ago
- behringer 2 years ago
- Denatonium 2 years agoI 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.
- jonathantf2 2 years agoJust to be clear, Microsoft and Google don't back up their e-mail services, it's a common misconception about "cloud" services.
- mnordhoff 2 years agoIn 2011, Gmail accidentally some people's email and restored it from tape. https://gmail.googleblog.com/2011/02/gmail-back-soon-for-eve...
- jonathantf2 2 years agoThey'll restore from backups if they screw up but won't restore them from customer request: https://support.google.com/a/answer/9223653?hl=en
- jonathantf2 2 years ago
- mnordhoff 2 years ago
- prmoustache 2 years agoNot 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.
- conradfr 2 years agoWell 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.
- SahAssar 2 years ago
- pricechild 2 years agoThis is really frustrating. I'm only a small customer but it doesn't seem right that they could take away part of the deal if I have multiple years pre-bought prior to the change.
The email I received is slightly different and doesn't include set dates, it just says "after the first year" which could be tomorrow.
I've emailed them asking for clarification.
I pay for Fastmail, but use several of the gandi basic mailboxes for other reasons. I could live with those disappearing. I hope this doesn't also remove the 'forwarded addresses' though.
- WirelessGigabit 2 years agoThis is why I only use service A for domains. And service B for emails.
- r3trohack3r 2 years agoThis 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.
- ryandrake 2 years agoContracts are only as good as the wealth, power, and ability you have to fight in court and ensure they get enforced. Which is why they 1. usually have lopsided boilerplate terms that protect only the powerful party, 2. are usually largely written by the wealthy, powerful corporation, and 3. usually only enforced against the relatively powerless consumer.
In the ideal fantasy world, contracts are supposed to be "meeting of the minds" between parties of equal power and benefitting parties equally. But when I think of "contract" today, I immediately think "weapon used by a company to beat up a consumer".
- JumpCrisscross 2 years ago> when I think of "contract" today, I immediately think "weapon used by a company to beat up a consumer"
This view is unsupported by the facts in all competent jurisdictions. It’s a convenient one, however, for certain people to spread.
- garbagecoder 2 years agoIn California at least, a small claim is pretty efficient as long as the claim is more than the modest filing fee. They can't hire an outside lawyer to handle it, either. If they have an inside one they can use that, but anyway.
I've had great success this way against United Airlines, Toyota, and other bigs.
- Macha 2 years agoDepending on how many domains he's registered and how much the value of that service for the remaining years is, this may be eligible for small claims.
- falcolas 2 years agoSeeing how Nintendo and the courts screwed around with the stick drift class action lawsuit (the parents can’t be in the class since their kids use it, yet the parents were the ones bound by the forced arbitration), and how clickwrap EULAs have become largely accepted as fully binding in courts…
100% this
- JumpCrisscross 2 years ago
- j45 2 years agoOP: Have you enforced a contract through a court system? Would love to hear more about that.
- ryandrake 2 years ago
- KingOfCoders 2 years agoI use service A for domains, service B for DNS and service C for emails.
- aidenn0 2 years agoI reached that by accident. Service B for DNS was just a more pleasant product to use than service A, and service A didn't offer certain features I needed for emails.
To bring it back on topic, this made it easy when I switched service A from Gandi to something else a year or two ago because a few things I was seeing from them "smelled funny." I don't remember the details, just that I wanted to switch.
- yepguy 2 years agoDNSControl[1] or another similar tool also helps a lot when moving. My DNS records are configured by a small JavaScript file in a git repository, and I can very easily point it at another DNS provider.
- imwillofficial 2 years agoSame, swapped over to PorkBun. Much more pleasant experience.
- yepguy 2 years ago
- duiker101 2 years agoSuggestions for service B? Every single service I can find always seems such a pain to go in and add a subdomain and change something.
- rascul 2 years ago
- basch 2 years agoIf you just care about user interface, Cloudflare is pretty stellar.
- doodlesdev 2 years agoHonestly I think it depends where you are deploying to. I was previously using Netlify DNS for instance since most of my domains had static websites hosted on Netlify, this meant that they could manage quite a lot of records for me, I was also a fan of having CNAME-flattening which isn't available at domains.google (for reference I'm using the .dev TLD which is owned by the Google Registrar), but I've recently switched to using Google's name servers and even though I have to use a hard coded IP for the Netlify load balancer and I lost CNAME flattening I'm pretty the DNS requests are going MUCH faster (as in a few tens of milliseconds faster LOL). The reason I'm using Google's name server is because Netlify DNS doesn't support DNSSEC which for me is simply absurd in 2023.
Anyways, if you don't have a specific reason to pick any specific nameserver go with the easiest one or if you want to have the most features and portability go with Cloudflare.
- tracker1 2 years agoI've been relatively happy using digital ocean for DNS.
Even run a dyndns script to have a subdomain for my wireguard connections to home.
- ipaddr 2 years agoDigitalocean.
- rascul 2 years ago
- hartator 2 years agoI use service A for domains, service B for DNS, service C for emails, and service D for WHOIS privacy protections.
- Idiot_in_Vain 2 years agoHow do you prove to service B that you own the domain?
- zenexer 2 years agoYou don’t need to. Your registrar tells the registry which nameservers you’ve chosen. You specify the nameservers that belong to your DNS provider, which causes DNS clients to query that DNS provider.
There’s nothing stopping you from paying for service with a DNS provider for a domain you don’t own, but nobody will actually query those nameservers for your domain, so it doesn’t matter.
- rcme 2 years agoYou usually need to update the name servers with service A to point to service B.
- zenexer 2 years ago
- mike_ivanov 2 years agoCould you disclose what B is? Pretty much please?
- KingOfCoders 2 years agoDNS Made Easy - perhaps too costly now, and not the best, but I use them since 10 years and had no issue with them. But might be oversized, I've started to use them for a startup b/c they had failover to point to another load balancer if one balancer/data center is down.
- KingOfCoders 2 years ago
- soiler 2 years agoWhich services do you use specifically?
- KingOfCoders 2 years agoNamecheap (I want to get off) and DNS Made Easy (I've started to use them with our startup for reliability)
- KingOfCoders 2 years ago
- Macha 2 years agoI have this, but it's not quite as fully seperated out, as server B is also my server host.
- aidenn0 2 years ago
- j45 2 years agoAlways 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.
- j45 2 years agoAdditionally, DevOps is actually scarier than self-hosting, or self-managing the hosting yourself.
Wherever you register a domain, make sure you practice transferring a domain in, and then out well in advance of ever needing it.
- j45 2 years ago
- r3trohack3r 2 years ago
- conradfr 2 years agoEven last week they were saying nothing would change, that Gandi remained independent inside Your.online.
That may be a new record.
- ornornor 2 years agoIf 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.
- vram22 2 years agoRight.
Or a ship in Arizona to sell you.
GP and others who believe that should google "our incredible journey" - and look at multiple hits, not just the first few. It has become a meme by now.
- vram22 2 years ago
- xnyan 2 years ago>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.
- jrootabega 2 years agoOften, and even more so in corporate PR, things are said precisely because they aren't true.
- ornornor 2 years ago
- dang 2 years agoThe submitted title was "Domain registrar Gandi gets bought out, screws existing customers". The latter bit is linkbait so I've edited it (as the site guidelines request - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). But I realize the OP isn't just complaining about price increases, so if someone can suggest a more accurate and neutral title, we can change it again.
- branon 2 years agoOP'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!
- insomniacity 2 years agoYep, prices are prices, but switch and bait on the mailboxes is the issue here. Really struggled with the title length limit!
- insomniacity 2 years ago
- em-bee 2 years agohow about: "Domain registrar Gandi gets bought out, removes free mailboxes"
- scrps 2 years agoGandi buyout brings unwelcome changes (Could also add "for some" to limit the scope if that is too broad.)
- branon 2 years ago
- deanmoriarty 2 years agoHow do I find out if this change affects me?
I have been a Gandi customer for 5+ years, and I have bought domains til 2026, and I rely on their free email. But I haven't received any communication about changes in pricing.
- branon 2 years agoSame 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.
- aidog 2 years agoI 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.
- judge2020 2 years agoThe service being taken away is the free email for the duration of your registration. If you don't use it, you're likely unaffected.
- deanmoriarty 2 years agoMaybe I wasn't clear when I said "and I rely on their free email". I do use the free email with every domain I buy with them, but haven't received any communication asking me to pay for them.
- deanmoriarty 2 years ago
- angst_ridden 2 years agoSame here. Maybe it's happening by region?
- lgvld 2 years agoSame here.
- onderweg 2 years agoSame here
- branon 2 years ago
- marksbrown 2 years agoI honestly cannot believe the hubris. A 20% price hike and removal of features mid-term. If I don't pay for the email accounts I apparently didn't pay for, I will lose my business email accounts. I get the impression I should just have stuck with : <official sounding>_<country> @ gmail.com and moved on with my life. Maddening.
- ornornor 2 years agoThat 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.
- marksbrown 2 years agoWhat is an SME supposed to do? I need static web-hosting and an email server that will not get blocked by Google!
- jcrawfordor 2 years agoSmaller commercial email providers are probably a good balance of competence and reliability (their email service is their revenue source) and better customer service (they have few enough customers that they care more about each of them). Fastmail is often brought up in this category. I think Zoho is pretty good too if you're looking for more of a complete G-suite like offering with other applications. Both of these companies also increasingly feel like more competent or at least better-run software engineering organizations than Google.
- ornornor 2 years agoHaving your own domain you control the MX record. If google locks you out, you can still move to another host for your email on the same day. You don't get your historical email (unless you backed it up with offlineimap or something like that) but at least you still have access and control over the address. Using @gmail.com for your business (or even personal email) is asking for trouble given how notorious google is at locking people out with no recourse and for mysterious reasons.
- 2 years ago
- tarsinge 2 years agoGmail, Fastmail... with custom domain
- JoshTriplett 2 years agoFastmail.
- jcrawfordor 2 years ago
- marksbrown 2 years ago
- dakiol 2 years agoThe 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).
- tarsinge 2 years agoYou 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.
- behringer 2 years agowhat'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.
- marksbrown 2 years agoFor a small business expense and the annoyance of having to extend effort to change something that just works, it was a pretty sensible decision. Now I've got to go down the rabbit hole of playing the free market game for what should just be a damn simple thing. Why is web hosting & email so difficult in 2023!?!
- marksbrown 2 years ago
- ornornor 2 years ago
- TheChaplain 2 years agoNote: the post is deleted from mastodon.
I managed to grab a screenshot earlier: https://imgur.com/a/JB4xpPs
- X-Istence 2 years agoIt's still visible to me in an Incognito browser window.
- X-Istence 2 years ago
- mtlynch 2 years agoI keep seeing unsourced claims on Mastodon that Gandi has been acquired by an unscrupulous entity, but I can't find any official verification.
Is it true?
- wlesieutre 2 years agoCrunchbase 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
- danieldk 2 years agoBecause Montefoire sold them to a scummy company:
- wlesieutre 2 years agoGood find. I've never heard of "Total Webhosting Solutions," anybody had experience with them?
It's a bummer if Gandi goes downhill. I've never used them personally but I heard a lot of recommendations that they were a good registrar.
- wlesieutre 2 years ago
- danieldk 2 years ago
- wlesieutre 2 years ago
- mcsniff 2 years agoI have quite a few domains with Gandi, using their email service on a few because I'm lazy and it's free. Not sure when (or if) I'll receive notice of this change. Maybe it's regional? Seems most of the comments show £ as currency.
This is going to burn all of their goodwill they accumulated with the "no bullshit" slogan. I will be swiftly moving all my domains, likely to Porkbun.
- hrunt 2 years agoWhy Porkbun? What makes a good domain registrar these days (almost everyone is or has been acquired by someone doing something questionable)?
- mcsniff 2 years agoI've seen the name around recently on HN and people never seem to have much to say other than they use it and it's well priced -- which means to me it's "boring" and that's exactly what I'm looking for.
A boring company who does 1 thing and does it so well that people dont say good or bad, it's so boring they barely notice it because it gets out the way.
- Porkbun 2 years agoUs? Boring!? [oinks internally]
- Porkbun 2 years ago
- mcsniff 2 years ago
- aidog 2 years agoIt is not free, it is included with the purchase. I think that is quite a difference.
- hrunt 2 years ago
- swayvil 2 years agoSo who's the trustworthy, low-bullshit registrar now?
I've been using Gandi for over a decade.
- _fat_santa 2 years agoI 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".
- koolba 2 years ago> 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.
That’s the Unix philosophy applied to service providers.
The same logic applies to why you should have a separate cable modem and WiFi router.
> If you just buy a domain, you could go to place like GoDaddy and probably have a decent experience.
No GoDaddy sucks even as just a registrar because even configuring NS records to host your DNS elsewhere is a terrible UX.
- Tyr42 2 years agoYeah, but I just wanted a few accounts I could "send as" in Gmail . No backups or whatever is fine.
- Tyr42 2 years ago
- highclass 2 years agoIf you search on hacker news there are some people including me who have bad experiences with namecheap, as they threaten to cut off domain itself easily when they get complaints. I am not talking about hosting, but the domain itself. For any large enterprise client, I recommend against using them. Right now, I am on Gandi and only use them for domain, even reading this I'd still pick them over namecheap.
- koolba 2 years ago
- chunk_waffle 2 years agoAlso been at Gandi over a decade, this really sucks.
- rationalist 2 years agoDynadot
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.
- mohamedattahri 2 years agoI use cloudflare, and their prices are unbeatable.
- recuter 2 years ago"Cloudflare Registrar is only available for customers that use Cloudflare as their authoritative DNS provider (also known as a full setup)."
Wow. Just wow. What happens if I register a domain via Cloudflare but decide later I don't want to use their DNS offerings?
- recuter 2 years ago
- lagniappe 2 years agoporkbun is nice has been nice for registrations, migadu for email
- stephenhuey 2 years agoI've used iwantmyname since 2013 and in 2021 started using Porkbun for some.
- stephenhuey 2 years ago
- throwaway81523 2 years agoI still like namesilo and porkbun.
- dakiol 2 years agoThere is none. Any registrar has their own shitty stories. Sad times.
- kevin_thibedeau 2 years agoI'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.
- dakiol 2 years agoWhat? With Gandi and others you get screwed by paying more. With Google you get screwed by losing your account completely not matter if you are willing to pay a million to recover it. Google is the worst by far.
- snotrockets 2 years agoBut if something does happen, it's impossible to get a CS agent that can actually help
- 2 years ago
- dakiol 2 years ago
- galenko 2 years agoI 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.
- Traubenfuchs 2 years agoTheir lack of support, or rather their "support fails" and their VP and C-suite level hacker news readers consistently offering personal assistance to high profile incidents on HN kind of made them a negative running gag here.
- Raed667 2 years agoI like CF and I like the fact that I can probably tweet at the CEO and get a response for my issues.
- Traubenfuchs 2 years ago
- _fat_santa 2 years ago
- branon 2 years agoLink's 404, Toot removed apparently. What happened? I use Gandi. They were acquired by a holdings company years ago but that's all I know.
- danieldk 2 years agoThey 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.
- jrootabega 2 years agoThere'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.
- wlesieutre 2 years agoThe 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
- 2 years ago
- aendruk 2 years agoIt’s flickering up and down so I don’t think it was intentionally removed.
Mirror: https://archive.is/w3yZy
- danieldk 2 years ago
- Thoreandan 2 years agoI'd be a lot happier as a long-time GANDI customer if there was any mention of this whatsoever on https://news.gandi.net ... nothing there since 2022. :-(
- rendaw 2 years agoI 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?
- glandium 2 years agoAlso, no email in my inbox about the merger.
- rendaw 2 years ago
- bob1029 2 years agoWhat registrars has HN been using lately?
I've been super lazy and use Route53 for everything right now.
- notpushkin 2 years agoI 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.
- josephb 2 years agohttps://tldes.com/ is an alternative site for those look for pricing comparison for the different TLDs/gTLDs.
Personally I'm currently using Sav and Porkbun, with good experiences with Namesilo in the recent past.
- josephb 2 years ago
- necessary 2 years agoRecently went with Porkbun. Their interface is simple and functional, and they have good support for most 2FA interfaces (including passkeys).
- judge2020 2 years ago> 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)
- ezuogirg 2 years agoSorry but AWS is an ICANN registrar see https://www.iana.org/assignments/registrar-ids/registrar-ids... ID 468.
Also note that Gandi also handle registry ops for AWS see https://aws.amazon.com/route53/domain-registration-agreement...
- ezuogirg 2 years ago
- Jayschwa 2 years agoOver time, I've been migrating from Gandi to Porkbun. I've been happy so far.
- account42 2 years agoMight have to do the same. Been ok with paying slightly higher prices for reliability but I wouln't bet on the latter if they start pulling shit like this even if it doesn't affect me directly.
- account42 2 years ago
- csunbird 2 years agoRoute53 is Gandi under the covers
- andrelaszlo 2 years agoThat's surprising. It seems like it's only partially true:
> AWS provides the Domain Name Registration Services through ICANN-accredited registrars. AWS currently provides Domain Name Registration Services through Gandi SAS , Mesh Digital Limited, Amazon Registrar, Inc., and other ICANN-accredited registrars (the “Registrar”), and your use of the Domain Name Registration Services is subject to their terms. You can identify the Registrar of record for any Registered Name by performing a WHOIS query here . AWS reserves the right to use any ICANN-accredited registrar as the Registrar.
https://aws.amazon.com/route53/domain-registration-agreement...
- sleepyhead 2 years agoYes, only for domain registration. AWS handles DNS.
- sleepyhead 2 years ago
- slyall 2 years agoRoute53 registration doesn't seem to get a lot of resources at AWS.
They can take years to add new TLDs (I've been waiting for 5+ years for them to do .nz properly). Checkout the support forum. Lots of:
Probably okay for the basic stuff though.* Someone asks for a new TLD * Quick reply saying request forwarded to team * a year passes * Another person asks when that TLD will become available.
- halfmatthalfcat 2 years agoNo way, source? Kind of amazing if true.
- Traubenfuchs 2 years agohttps://aws.amazon.com/route53/domain-registration-agreement...
> AWS currently provides Domain Name Registration Services through Gandi SAS , Mesh Digital Limited, Amazon Registrar, Inc., and other ICANN-accredited registrars
- Traubenfuchs 2 years ago
- etc-hosts 2 years agoThis is like saying my car is Venezuelan because it can accept gas from a Valero gas station.
- andrelaszlo 2 years ago
- metafunctor 2 years agoHetzner. Their functionality for this is clunky as heck, but I have more trust in the company than other registrars.
- sfeng 2 years agoCloudflare Registrar, no markup and a reliable company.
- timbowhite 2 years agoThe catch is that you must use Cloudflare's nameservers [0]:
[0] https://www.cloudflare.com/domain-registration-agreement/6.1 Nameservers. Registrant agrees to use Cloudflare’s nameservers. REGISTRANT ACKNOWLEDGES AND AGREES THAT IT MAY NOT CHANGE THE NAMESERVERS ON THE REGISTRAR SERVICES, AND THAT IT MUST TRANSFER TO A THIRD PARTY REGISTRAR IF IT WISHES TO CHANGE NAMESERVERS.
- SahAssar 2 years agoThat's extremely weird. Is there a publicly stated reason for it?
- farseer 2 years agoThis usually isn't a problem, you can point the DNS to any hosting service you want. Its a pain to setup every single record of-course.
- Alupis 2 years agoPeople generally use 3rd party Nameservers when their Registrar is unreliable or "old school".
Most dot-com era web companies used Network Solutions back in the day - and many still use them. However, DNS updates sometimes take hours, their interface is cumbersome, etc.
It's become quite common to use someone like Cloudflare for Nameserver/DNS duties (among other things) and keep your registrar where you like.
- SahAssar 2 years ago
- alex3305 2 years agoRecently switched from Namecheap to Cloudflare. Cloudflare was significantly cheaper for my sole .io domain.
- timbowhite 2 years ago
- danwee 2 years agoGandi actually. So far so good. Need to check if what OP says is true, though.
- basilgohar 2 years agoI've been using namecheap.com for 10 or so years quite happily and haven't felt the urge to move that whole time.
- sleepyhead 2 years agoDNSimple 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.
- daneel_w 2 years agoI've been with joker.com for more than 20 years. Not a single problem ever.
- mech422 2 years agoI 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.
- nubinetwork 2 years agoI use hover, they are a tucows reseller, sort of.
- justinclift 2 years agoOh hell no. Hover used to be good, but have turned into a shit show over the last 12+ months.
Definitely avoid them, and if your domains are important then migrate them elsewhere.
Several reports of problems, including from me:
* https://twitter.com/densone/status/1625378937047027719
- nubinetwork 2 years agoSorry for your luck, but based on your posts and your twitter, you already had other security issues. That's not hovers fault.
- nubinetwork 2 years ago
- preinheimer 2 years agoAnother +1 for Hover.
- justinclift 2 years ago
- changethe 2 years agoporkbun is awesome and pretty much the cheapest for all tlds, and name.com has a nice simple interface. happy with both of them.
- manuelmoreale 2 years agoPersonally been a happy hover.com customer. Definitely not the cheapest but I like that they don't try to upsell me crap.
- 95014_refugee 2 years agoPair. More or less forever. Nothing particularly special, but never so busted there’s been a reason to bother changing.
- mikelovenotwar 2 years agoAlso pair for ~20 years. Not one single service issue in this time. Very quick response from queries raised, technical or otherwise.
- abcd_f 2 years agoThat's pairdomains.com, correct?
- mikelovenotwar 2 years ago
- Pxtl 2 years agoI'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.
- dakiol 2 years agoIsn't the biggest issue with Google that your account could get banned for whatever reason, and then your chances of recover it are under 0.001%? That's the biggest fear imho.
- dakiol 2 years ago
- latexr 2 years agoI’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).
- rationalist 2 years agoDynadot
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.
- KingOfCoders 2 years agoDo they have better invoices? Namecheap (~20 domains there) is a pain when it comes to invoices (they don't send them to you, it's not clear where to find them in the UI, they mix it with transaction receipts, the name of the PDF is off etc.)
- rationalist 2 years agoI don't know, I only have a few personal domains and don't use invoices.
- rationalist 2 years ago
- KingOfCoders 2 years ago
- Faaak 2 years agoI use infomaniak.com. Prices are reasonable and their API is somewhat ok
- Macha 2 years agoI have a few domains on gandi (they support .ie unlike a lot of big registrars), but my primary registrar is still namecheap.
- jacooper 2 years agoNamecheap/porkpun
- asddubs 2 years agoI like name.com, I also often hear namecheap recommended
- notpushkin 2 years ago
- pomian 2 years agoHas anyone felt that GoDaddy is doing the same thing? They just switched to Microsoft for domain hosting and email, and it's a mess, and it seems as if all of the free mailboxes are gone including, free forwarding.
- jodrellblank 2 years agoYes, 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.
- pomian 2 years agoThanks for confirmation. I've been fighting the settings for a few days, in multiple domains. It's not clear. Does look like all free emails are revoked. Too bad.
- pomian 2 years ago
- jodrellblank 2 years ago
- zhte415 2 years agoThis seems short sighted. For just one mailbox per domain, 2.99 per month is 35.88 per year. This will wipe goodwill from an existing loyal customer base very quickly#.
I have 4 domains, each with 2 email addresses. I do not want a 287.04 per year bill, and nor do I want my domains being held hostage for this. I will look to migrate away immediately.
But, I have emailed Gandi to ask them to confirm, since the website doesn't yet reflect this news, and it's not the first time they may be victim of disinformation (action perhaps indicitative of trust built using Gandi).
#small, non wholesale customers.
- 2 years ago
- jwildeboer 2 years agoFrom their statement it is not really clear if these changes affect new contracts (most probable) or are retroactively extended to existing contracts (not probable).
FTR: I have 20+ domains at Gandi and never used their mail service (I run my own e-mail Server for all those domains since many years) so this change does not affect me.
- Animats 2 years agoNow I need to move all my domains away from Gandi. And I'm paid for years in advance. Any recommendations?
- janosdebugs 2 years agoCheck 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.
- janosdebugs 2 years ago
- Panino 2 years ago
- l1e34r 2 years agoAs a us customer I have not received any emails about this. I reached out to them asking about it. They gave me the same boiler plate code. Sent back another email say thats basically fraud in the us.
their response
`My bad. I assume the mail you sent was after reading a communication made for clients paying in £. You're not impacted by this communication.
We’re currently reviewing our general conditions and pricing policy in each currency given the fluctuation for the latter which means changes won’t likely be the same for each currency.
Should a change occur for you; you'll receive a mail from us.`
I asked them to confirm the free email isnt being removed for US customers yet, and if it does a email will be sent out.
their reply
`I can only confirm what I shared with you above.`
- iuafhiuah 2 years agoSo the change is instead of two free emails per domain forever, it's going to be two free emails per domain for the first year.
Additionally, the price per email is going up massively:
Standard: 0.31 GBP -> 2.99 GBP (964%) Premium: 1.57 GBP -> 5.99 GBP (381%)
- RealStickman_ 2 years agoWhat are some recommended alternatives?
I specifically need support for .li domains and acme.sh to renew certificates.
- SahAssar 2 years agoinwx 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)
- SahAssar 2 years ago
- dennis_jeeves1 2 years agoTangential by related technical question:
Does something exist out there which is equivalent to a domain name for a website (or an any entity) which is independent of a external entities, like DNS or DNS like servers.
I know that in some sense public/private keys in asymmetric cryptography mimic that feature (the public key being the address of the receiver), but is there anything out of the box? Does Tor have a similar feature?
I do understand that this equivalent to which I'm alluding to, may be an unintelligible string of characters, unlike current website user friendly names. I also understand that the underlying ip address change can be a challenge , but probably not an insurmountable one.
- Thoreandan 2 years agoThere'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.
- dennis_jeeves1 2 years agoThanks, between the 2 if you had to choose one, which would you recommend?
- dennis_jeeves1 2 years ago
- dennis_jeeves1 2 years agoThink 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.
- _glass 2 years agoMaybe like ENS? https://ens.domains/
- Thoreandan 2 years ago
- quercusa 2 years agoI haven't seen anything from them yet - do they say anything about forwarding addresses?
- lgvld 2 years agoNeither do I.
Would be really upset if they start charging for the two included mailboxes.
- lgvld 2 years ago
- KingOfCoders 2 years agoLooks like fraud to me.
- ajross 2 years agoNot that this isn't a travesty. But it's worth pointing out that my first thought was: 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."
Meh. The specifics here seem pretty damning, though. Most likely the new owners just didn't understand the older contracts and started rolling out the new business model without review. The end result will probably be just a refund for the affected accounts.
- account42 2 years ago> 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.
- teddyh 2 years agoAre you calling Gandi “some tiny provider”?
- account42 2 years ago
- einichi 2 years agoI used Gandi's email service as just an SMTP service to send notifications from various scripts and apps.
Any alternatives I can use? Ideally actual SMTP and not some API, some apps I use only support the SMTP protocol.
- worksonmine 2 years agoCrap, I was about to move there because the namecheap CEO is too impulsive and still waiting for the explanation of their "third party getting hacked" a few weeks ago. Where do I go now?
- MrFoof 2 years agoHover 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.
- pomian 2 years agoThat's good to hear. I've been using GoDaddy for years, with same high quality tech help, and free emails, until now. Might check hover.
- pomian 2 years ago
- aww_dang 2 years agoName.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.
- duud 2 years agoDynadot is good
- MrFoof 2 years ago
- artdigital 2 years agoSad to see Gandi worsening. It was a fantastic registrar that I recommended to everyone. Now I’m in the process to move everything to cloudflare and porkbun
Just recently I moved a .pn domain (required gandi corporate subscription) to Gandi and they’ll charge me almost double of the at-cost for renewal as the base fee, excluding the corporate subscription. Inquired about this and asked for a refund because I wasn’t satisfied with the service, but that sadly wasn’t granted to me either
What happened to Gandi - No bullsh*t?
- mardifoufs 2 years agoHow do european customer protection laws not protect against this??
- pinkcan 2 years agouk is not in the eu anymore?
- capableweb 2 years agoGandi SAS (Société par Actions Simplifiée) is a French company, not British.
- blibble 2 years agoEU law didn't evaporate the moment the UK left
it was almost entirely transposed into UK law
- capableweb 2 years ago
- pinkcan 2 years ago
- benhurmarcel 2 years agoThat doesn't match Gandi's website.
https://www.gandi.net/en-US/domain
> Two, free custom email addresses
https://docs.gandi.net/en/gandimail/index.html
> With every domain name you buy from Gandi you receive two free email inboxes through Gandi’s email service, each with 3GB of storage.
- crtasm 2 years agoCorrect. They should really update their website at the same time as announcing the upcoming change to existing customers by email.
- crtasm 2 years ago
- aidog 2 years agoI've bought a strangers domain name with a deal to keep hosting their two e-mail addresses. Just set up everything last year and can't easily move off. It now seems that this deal is going to cost me a lot more. I prepaid until 2029. Their tagline "No Bullshit" seems to no longer apply. I was a good client for over 10 years. Shame, that they don't have a japanese office, but maybe I can do small claims court in taiwan.
- mongrelion 2 years agoI see that a lot of us rely heavily on the 2x free mail addresses we got per domain.
Is it an idea to join efforts & money and rent a VPS from Hetzner and run our own mail server?
- TheChaplain 2 years agoI 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.
- TheChaplain 2 years ago
- 2 years ago
- aguywithguile 2 years agoDont know if its related to the recent changes but I opened a support request that has been open for 3 days now with the only reply being we've transfered you to a different part of the support team. it is related to moving registrar which i can see not being the highest priority but still quite frustrating.
netim replied within 30 minutes of me opening a ticket related to the same issue for context.
- behringer 2 years agothis kind of change could definitely upset customer service queues. I don't know if 3+ days is normal for Gandi or not though.
- behringer 2 years ago
- oh_sigh 2 years agoWere the mailboxes part of the contract, or were they a "here's a nice thing we're giving you for free" deal sweetener?
- seydor 2 years agoI think their motto was "no bullshit" or something
It looks like they don't like to be coy about scamming their users either
- MildlySerious 2 years agoTo 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.
- MildlySerious 2 years ago
- glomgril 2 years agoIs migrating domains from Gandi to somewhere else easy/possible? I've had the same domain for years, I used to pay like $20 for five years, but then I forgot to renew, and because I let it expire for a few days, now they are charging me $100/year! Sour taste in my mouth about them even before this...
- ademarre 2 years ago> 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.
- AnonC 2 years agoYou 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.
- rationalist 2 years agoYes, 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.
- manquer 2 years agoMoving 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
- mikea1 2 years ago> The process is free as in gandi won’t charge you to migrate but newer registar might
The new registrar will charge a fee and the expiration date of your domain will increase by one year. The transfer fee should be roughly the same as the registration and renewal fees. If anything looks fishy, compare with another registrar (starting with common registrar recommendations you see at HN)
- mikea1 2 years ago
- LinuxBender 2 years agoOne 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.
- ademarre 2 years ago
- MonkeyClub 2 years agoIs this confirmed?
TFA 404’s, gandi.net still advertises the two free mailboxes, and I haven’t received any communication from Gandi.
- jodrellblank 2 years agoI 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).
- jodrellblank 2 years ago
- 2 years ago
- bofadeez 2 years agoThey no longer have a competitive advantage and I'll be moving all my inboxes to MXRoute.
RIP Gandi
- duckmysick 2 years agoSo I guess I will be looking for a new email provider. I have a couple of domains with emails + a lot of custom aliases. Don't care for a web UI since I'm using an email client.
Anyone hosting with runbox.com? What can you tell me about it?
- junon 2 years agoI 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.
- junon 2 years ago
- indigodaddy 2 years agoOne of the comments on the mastodon site references bookmyname.com as an alternative with free email boxes (1G). They’re site looks pleasingly last millennium and also says powered by FreeBSD (also pleasing!)
- sitzkrieg 2 years agoi switched from gandi to porkbun a few years ago and cant recommend them enough. the least crufty domain and dns management site ever too, simple as it should be
- ectospheno 2 years agoMy main complaint with gandi is the status page is a lie. Take now for example. You can check email but can’t send. Status page says all is well. Happens a lot.
- tracker1 2 years agoFor good or bad, Google domains does include email forwarding services... Though not sure how much I trust Google for domain registration in the long term.
- rwaksmunski 2 years agoI migrated my domains and deleted my account as soon as I got wind of the sale. It was a PITA but apparently well worth it.
- insomniacity 2 years agoAre there any reputable registrars with APIs with Terraform providers, outside of Gandi and AWS?
Just not sure I can give that up!
- FounderBurr 2 years agoWow Gandi was one of th4 old school internet “good guys”. Are there any similar quality registrars left?
- kwanbix 2 years agoI don't have a mastodont account, if that makes a difference, but I cannot see anything.
- 2 years ago
- Arubis 2 years agoCan someone add context to the “gets bought out” part?
- imwillofficial 2 years agoI switched from Gandi to Porkbun, never looked back
- huhneverthot 2 years agoUh, I didn't get an email from Gandi...
- EGreg 2 years agoCapitalism as usual.