I just transferred my 47 domains out of GoDaddy. I've been meaning to do it for awhile --- primarily because the price keeps inching up and because I find their advertising and use of spokeswomen sort of distasteful.
Seeing Jillian Michael's face when I'm buying a domain or setting up DNS records for a client is pretty much the last thing I want to see.
I guess you could say SOPA was the last straw. Transferring 47 domains cost a pretty penny, but it feels really good to leave that circus behind.
I went with Namecheap, primarily because I've heard good things about them and this blog post made it easy. I like how simple and snappy their web site is. Much quicker and easier to use than Godaddy...and no Jillian Michaels staring me down.
For those curious about prices, I just transferred 42 domains (mostly .com's but a few .org's, .net's, and .mobi's) to NameCheap for $367 with discount code.
And if you have any domains that still have a few years left in their registration, that is supposed to transfer with the domains.
Big relief having finally gotten off my butt to do that. Well worth the $200+ and at least that renews them all for an extra year at the same time, so it's not like I wouldn't have spent it anyway (just not all at once).
Knowing that I would need to pay to renew them anyway made it slightly less painful. It's tough to cough up $300+ at once, but SOPA is a horrible idea and GoDaddy apparently has no clue who their customers are. I'd be very curious to see some stats on how many transfers happened because of this effort.
We did 10x the inbound xfer volume on the 22nd vs. the 21st. So far on the 23rd, we're at 80% of the volume we saw on the 22nd. This only counts completed transfers, and there are a ton more in process as people fiddle with the Godaddy knobs and dials.
...and to head off any bandwagon jumping criticisms, we've been publicly opposed to this sort of legislative gerrymandering long before Godaddy stepped out in favour of it... https://www.hover.com/blog/hover-opposes-sopa
I agree with your sentiment, but the Grammar Nazi in me wants to make you aware that gerrymandering is a specific type of political malfeasance related to redistricting, not a generic term for political chicanery. :)
I just transferred 17 myself. I'd been meaning to for a while and, as you said, this was just kind of the final straw. I moved them to NameCheap, where I ready had another 32 domains registered.
How are you going to manage 172 domains without auto-renew? Unless you only ever buy domains on one date each year, the renewals end up spread out over time, so you have to check and pay every month to keep from losing things.
I'd move to Namecheap right now if
1) They took my American Express card, they only take Visa/MC
To solve 1, if you don't mind using PayPal, you can use an AmEx through them. I know using PayPal brings up a whole extra line of issues, but it does solve the first problem.
Seeing Jillian Michael's face when I'm buying a domain or setting up DNS records for a client is pretty much the last thing I want to see.
I guess you could say SOPA was the last straw. Transferring 47 domains cost a pretty penny, but it feels really good to leave that circus behind.
I went with Namecheap, primarily because I've heard good things about them and this blog post made it easy. I like how simple and snappy their web site is. Much quicker and easier to use than Godaddy...and no Jillian Michaels staring me down.