The Namecheap blog is the domain registrar's community blog, covering product updates, policy stances and transfers.
HN commenters like Namecheap's EFF donation and past stands, but complain about its redesigned interface, DNS limits and TTL policies.
Someone at Namecheap decided to change their functional domain management interface into "better" one - driven by javascript, with humongous fonts, message popups and dynamic forms that makes any domain editing and management job a time wasting disaster.
Namecheap called it "more user friendly and has a modern design".
I thought 1and1 and Godaddy were unbeatable but never expected my favorite namecheap to beat them to pulp in pissing off so many users in such a short period of time.
As a response to their customers namecheap published a thread:
https://blog.namecheap.com/we-are-listening/
Where ironically "listening" ears were closed to any new comments due to overwhelming negative feedback.
Namecheap stance is instead of giving users the interface and productivity they really liked - they intent to continue forcing users to "like" their new disastrous UI by promising to publish "Get Started wizards" to ease pain:
https://community.namecheap.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=43083#p89319
I welcome feedback here and let make namecheap listen to us - the customers that loved and recommended namecheap to all our friends and clients.
I also welcome to discuss alternatives to show namecheap that ignoring users is not an option and is not acceptable.
GoDaddy has responded to the allegations from namecheap at TechChrunch, saying that the blocks were part of standard practice to limit the volume of Whois queries from a single IP, which is apparently common practice, unless the registrar is notified that there may be a large number of queries. [1]
If this is indeed true, then it seems namecheap are trying to score cheap PR points, although they have responded saying they attempted to reach out to GoDaddy.[2]
I'm inclined to believe that namecheap did try to reach them, although I'm not sure that they are above trying to slam more bad press onto GoDaddy....
[1]
http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/26/godaddy-responds-to-namecheap-accusations-removes-normal-rate-limiting-block/
[2]
http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2011/12/26/godaddy-transfer-update/#comment-1709
A happy NameCheap user for years, I have started switching away. Their horrid "modern" 40px padding everywhere bubbly redesign makes GoDaddy look good in comparison. A major pain to manage more than a couple of domains, and numerous user feedback seems to fall on deaf ears, e.g. [1][2][3][4]
Example weird feature: all domains are shown, even ones that you've let expire/sold years ago, and there is no way to hide them.
[1] https://community.namecheap.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7949
[2] https://community.namecheap.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=66644
[3] https://community.namecheap.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=65871
[4] https://community.namecheap.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=43083
Let's not throw personal attacks at me (and the tongue-in-cheek "congrats for being promoted to executive!" comment). There's plenty of remorse and there's plenty of acknowledgment of mistakes here. That said, as we acknowledged elsewhere, we're responding to the matter across several different platforms and specifically say we're rushed in trying to get out some basic insights behind what happened and transpired. A more well crafted blog response for all to see (this time from the CEO) has been published to https://blog.namecheap.com/social-engineering-issue/
Quote from https://blog.namecheap.com/we-say-no-to-sopa/
"Why are we against the proposed SOPA legislation? It’s very simple; at Namecheap, we believe in internet freedom.
When you register a domain name, you can do anything you wish with it within the confines of the law."
You find how much you believe in your principles, when they lead to outcomes you don't like. Given their actions now, namecheap's SOPA opposition now sounds like just a cheap publicity trick they did to distinguish themselves from GoDaddy.
Oops, they deleted it. It was a post from Namecheap answering somebody asking if they were going to support Let's Encrypt.
Original question: https://twitter.com/matbacon89/status/667348413470650370
Person's response: https://twitter.com/matbacon89/status/667348648741744640
In between, they _did_ say something like "You'll have to wait and see! :)"
I wonder if they deleted it in light of this blog post, which I find disingenuous: https://blog.namecheap.com/ssl-from-namecheap-whats-the-difference/