I guess this is a cautionary tale.
I was recently having issues with my Gmail account that’s tied to my Epik ( a domain registrar ) account, so when I was supposed to renew my domain, I didn’t receive any e-mails about it. When I decided to randomly check on my website, it seemed to be down. So I checked Epik and a domain that usually cost £15 a year to renew now cost £400 to renew as it was expired.
As a teenager who does not have £400 to spend on a domain, I decided to just wait until the domain fully expired and buy it for a cheaper price.
After some time, the domain fully expired and GoDaddy decided to buy it as soon as it did, and charged me £2,225 to renew the domain. I don’t understand how a price that large is justified, considering that my website gets barely any visitors and I basically only use the domain for hosting stuff. No idea how hiking prices this much is legal
It’s legal because they bought the domain and they can charge whatever price they want if you want to buy it from them.
tldr - lesson learned. buy a new domain and move over to it.
but for those who want to learn something new - you are only renting your domains. If you fail to pay by the registration date then you generally get a grace period to pay more money to renew it. If you fail to pay before that period expires then the domain will be released. Some companies like godaddy will automatically buy the domain for another year (or more). But even if Godaddy doesn’t then it still goes up on a list of expiring domains and there are backorder services that will try to buy the domain or auction them off.
So in the end it doesn’t really matter what registrar you use. If you do not pay, it goes back to a list where people can see it is expiring and then you’ll get some people who either want to legitimately use that domain or more likely they are wanting to try to sell it to you or someone else for more than they buy it for.
And I saw someone mention file a complaint. I’m sorry to say that if you did not have money to renew the domain then you aren’t going to be able to do that either. This is called Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) and the fee is between $1500-4000 for 1 to 5 domains.. Additionally, just because you file a complaint does not mean the issue will be resolved favorably or timely. These complaints can last years, and there is no guarantee you will get the domain back.
This is why you should always pay your domain rental fee. And if you don’t, then you need to either be willing to pay a ton of money to get it back or you will need to move on. Sorry its a tough lesson to learn but if you’re just a student then you probably weren’t using this to run a business or anything so in the end you are quite fortunate.
Hahaha. I purposely got a jibberish .xyz domain. If they ever ask for more than the $9.99 a year they can pound sand.
They don’t really care. They’re fishing for “whales”. Those who forgot to renew their domain or something but desperately need it back. Businesses, likely.
Or people who use it for email and basically have their online identity tied to them.
If you don’t mind using a gibberish .xyz domain, why not an 1.111B class? ([6-9 digits].xyz for $0.99/year)
Sorry, but chalk this up to lesson learned. It’s almost always been this way. Domain squatters will do this all the time. In fact, some domain registrars will use you searching their site for an ‘available’ domain, and if you don’t buy it up right away – will buy it and hike the price and sit on it for years in order to lock it down, knowing you wanted it.
Have also had good experience using namecheap for years.
Thirded for Namecheap.
I had this happen with NameCheap. I’m not sure if they bought it or someone else, but it stayed registered with them. Whoever bought it has held it for a couple years, put up a fake website to look like they were using it, but took it down after a year when I didn’t bite on buying it. Current status shows it’s pending deletion finally for abuse or non-payment. I keep checking to see when I can nab it again.
It happens with anyone. Bots track expirations and snatch them so that they can ransom them back to you for thousands - exactly as in OPs example.
AUTO RENEW. Auto-renew. Auto-renew is the way. The solution to this problem is Auto-renew.
Yes, I just didn’t realize that auto-renew doesn’t work with PayPal on NameCheap and had lazily set it up with PayPal when I got it because I didn’t want to go get my wallet. Lesson learned!
I think you can also register 10 years in advance, or maybe more depending on the registrar, which would cover all other potential snafus like expired card info.
I mean, I use namecheap. I’m thinking about throwing one of my domains onto cloudfare just in case.
If you don’t like namecheap, some people have been suggesting porkbun or something.
Porkbun has been fair to me. Recommended.
Namecheap is alright, but Cloudflare only charges at cost with no markup.
Then they make you use them for DNS. May or may not be a big deal, but the reason it’s at cost is to act as a loss leader to get you exposed to and buying their other products.
Yeah this is why I don’t use cloudflare, I have my domains on porkbun.
Their free services are extremely useful and you can’t find that anywhere else. I’ve used them for years with hundreds of domains and never paid them a single dime.
Time to register that domain before OP gets it…
Gohddzsx?
I prefer to be called daddy. Godaddy
Namecheap has extra rules if you want to use an API (minimum money spent with them, minimum of domains managed with them etc.) — GoDaddy style.
Keep that in mind, if you need an API (for DDNS or for obtaining wildcard TLS certificates) you’ll have to use a separate service for DNS.
DDNS with Namecheap is as simple as hitting a URL with a /GET request from the IP you want it to point to. No limitations. No special requirements.
You really should have separate services for registration, DNS and hosting. That way you’re not held hostage by a single provider.
Why should I post someone else for DNS records if namecheap is handling it just fine for my use case?
I have a script running that uses the Namecheap API to automatically get wildcard certs from Let’s Encrypt. I didn’t pay a dime for this. Did something change?
Maybe you meet the conditions for it? It hasn’t been possible to access their API without meeting the conditions for at least a year now.
You don’t pay directly for the API, the latest conditions AFAIR are 20+ domains and $50+ on account balance and $50+ spent in the last 2 years.
They also want you to whitelist the IPs that access the DNS which makes it unusable for DynDNS, but at least they have a separate URL for that.
So search for a lot of domains at random to cost them some money?
Absolutely. But I think it might be more advanced than that. They might have some sort of analytics that measures how long people stay on the page, etc to inform their purchasing decisions.
Ah, so search a couple of domains and sit on their page for a while making random mouse movements and scrolls then? Got it.
+1 for namecheap. They’ve been reliable and fair to me for years.
I’ve lost my domain too. It took me two years to get it back. Hopefully it won’t be squatted for long
After some time, the domain fully expired and GoDaddy decided to buy it as soon as it did, and charged me £2,225 to renew the domain. I don’t understand how a price that large is justified, considering that my website gets barely any visitors and I basically only use the domain for hosting stuff. No idea how hiking prices this much is legal
GoDaddy is known to do that.
Technically, they’re not hiking the price. GoDaddy bought it after it expired and then is re-selling it at an astronomically higher price. It’s one of the many, many reasons people hate them.
I’m ashamed to say I still have a couple of domains with GD that I haven’t migrated yet. This post might just light a fire under me to get that done.
Got a work related variant, a 3 letter domain we really liked was registered by a person asking a couple of hundred bucks or so. Which really was a good deal and we were more then happy to pay.
Our IT department advised guiding the transfer themselves. Instead our marketing department went ahead anyway and just agreed to “you end your subscription and after that we register it” … instead of using transfer codes.
In the minutes between, a bulk claimer snatched it away.
OMG. I can’t believe the marketing department was that inept. Tragic
Honestly I believe it. I had a VP of sales / marketing overriding requirements making them more difficult from the CEO after getting screamed at by the CEO who wanted the product (bono project) to be quick and easy for initial release.
He also ordered IT garbage for a site once (consumer PCs running Windows not server edition)
And to top it all off went behind supervisors backs in engineering departments asking for daily spreadsheets trackong their time because "if you can go to the bathroom you have time for this.
All leadership was toxic though like the CEO screaming at him lol.
Can’t tell if /s
LMAO they really are inept 🤦♂️
Damn you reminded me to check my gmail and there was a domain renewal reminder, thanks!
I’m glad I don’t care about the domain name. Just something easy to remember but I can always change it and tell the fam.
It’s important if you’re building a brand, or if you’re dumb like me and run your own email server
Luckily for me I don’t need many email addresses and zoho will do something like 5 for free on your domain. Do you dislike running the email server? I don’t mind all the normal day-to-day upkeep of things, but is email some special kind of hell or something?
I like running my email server, because I justify it with my use cases.
If you like to spend time conversing with support about why your IP is on a blacklist, or why your email is being sent to spam (or outright rejected - I’m looking at you Microsoft), and then trying to increase your domain and IP reputations, be my guest.
Otherwise, a service is generally best
Did you ever get Microsoft to do anything other than tell you to register for the SNDS service, and then have them still silently drop your email regardless of whatever they claimed was going on?
I found that extra fun.
I am sorry that happened to you
Thanks for sharing your story, though. I have a few domains, two of them being very important for me (one I use for all my emails, and the other one for all my self hosted stuff). So I’ll be paying close attention to their renewal
I hope you can find another domain that you like and that you can transfer your stuff to it.
This happened to me years ago (the .com of my full name). I kept checking in at expiry date for 3 years and they eventually let it expire, so I bought it back for normal price.
This ☝️it happened to me and to a close friend, if you are reselient and can wait it is possible to but it back at regular price
Hopefully it’s not a common last name + a first name that suddenly became popular, could imagine it getting scooped by someone else.
Now would be a good time to look for a
.comyou like, or one of the more common TLDs. And register it at Namecheap, Porkbun, or Cloudflare. (Cloudflare is cheapest but all-eggs-in-one-basket is a concern for some.)Sadly, all the cheap or fun TLDs have a habit of being blocked wholesale, either because the cheap ones are overused by bad actors or because corporate IT just blacklists “abnormal” TLDs (or only whitelists the old ones?) because it’s “easy security”.
I got a three character XYZ to use as a personal link shortener. Half the people I used it with said it was blocked at school or work. My longer COM poses no issue.
Good news! .xyz is no longer the top malicious non-com/net/org domain.
It’s uh, .top now. https://www.spamhaus.org/reputation-statistics/gtlds/domains/
Buy a different domain. Let them pay for this one until the end of time.
This was the plot to an episode of iCarly
if only we listened to spencer’s advice. always listen to spencer’s advice.
Sounds like you’re in the UK, if so I’d recommend legit companies run by old nerds like Mythic Beasts: https://www.mythic-beasts.com/domains
