New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Comments
Gandi is both France and US based.
Many years ago, I signed up for a few domains with Gandi when they were France, period. (Gandi was one of the only companies supporting DNSsec back then. I wanted to try it out.)
A few years later, Gandi sent me a message informing me that they had created a wholly-owned US subsidiary, subject to US law. They offered me the choice of keeping my account with the French company or change my account to the new US subsidiary. The France account would be subject to French law as applied to someone in the US. The US account would be subject to US law.
I chose to move my account to the US subsidiary and stayed with Gandi until I moved all my domains to Cloudflare last summer (2022). The move was transparent - I did not notice a thing.
There were never any issues with Gandi, other than the high price. If I had to choose one thing I did not like, it was their policy of email-only support. At that price, I would have appreciated phone support.
Want to transfer my .PM domain somewhere else (currently with internetbs), since they updated their system and their dyndns does not work anymore without api key and to provide api key they want 10usd to add to account funds, which I dont want. But only option I found (in regard of cheap price for .PM) is infomaniak, but judging by comments they want KYC style verification AFTER you sign up & transfer domain with them. Not ideal. I guess I'm stuck with using some 3rd party (free) service for dyndns then.
You're just a bundle of great information. Wish there were more folks like you around! My very first VPS was with Gandi but I haven't dealt with them in years (prices were a bit more premium than I preferred given the specs) looks like their domains come at a premium as well. If anything, it's a premium, viable alternative and that works.
Thanks again!
10/10 would recommend
Just to clarify - this is for Ubuntu members, not Ubuntu users. Ubuntu membership is something that is granted for significant contributions to Ubuntu community. There are only about 500 Ubuntu members in the world.
I didn't even bother to look...but I'm so glad you did lol
Top Level Design is absolutely not a Chinese company. I'm not sure where anyone got this sort of misinformation but it's borderline libelous. The company is registered in China to sell domains on our TLDs, like any other company that sells their wares in China.
Top Level Design has an office in Beijing, China. It is reasonable to say that "Top Level Design is in China" the same way that someone would say that "Microsoft is in China." It is reasonable to call Top Level Design's Beijing office "a company in China."
-> Please explain how what I wrote could be seen as "borderline libelous."
Here is the information from Top Level Design's own website:
https://toplevel.design/operation-in-china
Their Chinese website:
https://toplevel.ink
The first sentence on that Top Level Design webpage reads: "Top Level Design, LLC opened its Beijing office in 2016." Those are their own words.
-> So yeah, Top Level Design is in China.
(MINOR CAUTION - Typing "top-level.ink" without an "https://" prefix got me to a unsecure version of the Chinese website. The problem was repeatable, but I could not replicate it if I typed "http://top-level.ink". Please note that this issue does not apply to all browsers.)
Top Level Design has one rep in China to comply with China's MIIT requirements to sell domains on top of TLDs the company operates and have them function inside China. Same as .xyz, Donuts TLDs, Afilias TLDs, etc. I guess you could say that Top Level Design is "in China", as you mentioned, the same as Ford is "in China" or Microsoft is "in China". Top Level Design is not however a Chinese company, it is a US LLC. This also only affects domains registered by Chinese citizens under those TLDs (design/ink/wiki) and has no affect whatsoever on Porkbun or any non-Chinese citizen registering domains under those TLDs. Your post made it sounds like we were in some way beholden to China as a company and that is simply incorrect.
Thank you for the clarification.
The statement, "Top Level Design, LLC opened its Beijing office in 2016" makes it appear that Top Level Design's operation is a physical presence in Beijing, China. I imagine a real physical office with a real door labeled, "Top Level Design".
We have been dancing around the open question, which is:
-> How much access to Porkbun's operational data does Top Level Design's representative in China have?
Can they view domain registration activity by US citizens, for example?
Can they create a query: "Give me a file that lists all the domains that were registered this week, along with the detailed registrant contact information for each domain?"
I previously said, "I do not like the idea that a company in China has direct access to Porkbun customer activities and information."
Neither Top Level Design, nor Porkbun, nor @oborseth has ever asserted that the Top Level Design representative in China has no such access to Porkbun data, at least not that I could find. That is my point.
The Top Level Design rep in China does not have access to any Porkbun/registrar level information. The rep in China is registry level, so Top Level Design only. Porkbun actually interfaces with Top Level Design the same way we do other registries. There is ICANN policy that requires so called "vertically integrated" registrars and registries to behave in certain ways. Other vertically integrated registrars include GoDaddy / GoDaddy Registry and Name.com / Donuts (aka Identity Digital), there are some others but I can't think of them off of the top of my head.
Have you checked out netim, hover (by Tucows), and ovh?
what is there to report about netim? i am considering moving to netim with some domains.
Nothing really, as far as I can recall.
I have been using them for my ccTLDs since 2013.
so you, i.e. domainguy, can definitely recommend netim?
Yeah, why not.
I've had several domains with them over the years and I still have some now.
I'm only using them for ccTLDs though.
Don't go with Porkbun, if you want Support that actually knows what DNS is, how it works, especially glue records.
Just go to Namesilo or Namecheap.
Been waiting & waiting.
Ex GoDaddy tech support worker here.
Don't go with GoDaddy imho. From my experience, things would break, I can't 100% say it was done on purpose. However I can say that customer would need to call in for technical help, and as a technical agent, management did not care about the level or lack of technical ability in it's work force. Al they cared about was an average of $29 sold per incoming call.
We were encouraged to sell add-ons and upgrades that were not needed, if we didn't hard sell we would be in danger of losing our jobs.
Eventually they moved the department to India, where employees are more willing to push the hard sell even further.
Bribing customers over domains was a regular practice encouraged by managers. For example, a domain has an $80 renewal fee after 18 days unpaid. We would agree to waive that only if the customer subscribed on hosting for a further year etc. Rich customers had their arses kissed and customers on a budget that were maybe running a one site business on a budget were treated with contempt.
I remember one customer who was clearly mentally ill, who could not afford to eat due to a number of domain names he was hording and renewing, to try and sell on in the future. I was encouraged to instill fear of loss in this customer. I was unwilling to do this and encouraged him to sell off domains if he could and not renew them. I was then singled out at work and eventually sacked for multiple fabricated reasons (which was overturned at tribunal). But my story is in no way unique.
Of course this is just my view / opinions and experience of when i worked for GoDaddy, however from my point of view they are accurate.
I've been very happy with OpenProvider. Does everything you need with all bells and whistles included.
Namesilo, namecheap, maybe netim?
I was also using many years ago godaddy but this company, support - everything sucks!