Domain Name Registrants

May 2002

Has anybody found a domain name registration company that's been hassle-free? (We've had nothing but headaches dealing with VeriSign in getting our daughter's school's site registered/renewed--incorrect billing, hours wasted on the phone trying to get things straightened out, promises that things would be fixed but weren't, domain turned off without warning, etc.) Judy

I use gandi.net which is based in France. It costs only E.12 a year, which is for me the biggest advantage. I've never had a problem with them, but then again I've never had much reason to contact them. Marga

VeriSign, formerly Network Solutions, is the absolute WORST. I've never experienced a company with worse customer service than them. I transferred all the domains I used to manage, (in my pre- mom days there were about 8 of them) over to http:// www.register.com. Once you get everything transfered over it's a breeze to manage contacts, billing, etc. The hard part, of course, is getting Network Solutions to transfer the names over. You may have to end up calling them. Good luck! Jill Herschman webmiz [at] choice.org

LMI.net in Berkeley, 843-6389, offers internet services including domain name registration. They're great and provide excellent service! Their web site is: LMI.net Toby St. John

USA Domains is great. No hassles so far. We've been using them for over a year. Angela

I can recommend using register.com - stay far, far away from Verisign (aka networksolutions). We've always used register.com in the past, but for some reason I decided to use verisign on a recent registry. What a mistake!! All I wanted to do was register a name and have it point at a webserver I'm already running. This is $35/yr at both places. There was no way to indicate the IP address for the existing site, but I thought, well it must be here someplace, everyone wants that, I'm sure there won't be a problem. So I register the name and then start looking for how to link the new name to my website. I read a dozen FAQ pages and sent email twice (nope, it wasn't answered) before I came across the page that tells me for only $12 a year I can have the new website be forwarded to the existing site. What a rip-off! This should be free! So after deliberating with myself for a day, should I stop payment? Should I make phone calls? I decide the path of least resistance is to fork over the $12 and just live with it for 60 days (amount of time Verisign requires you to stay with them). I signed up for the so called ''website forwarding'' 2 days ago and still forwarding has not taken effect. I'm pretty confident something has gone wrong and I will never see it happen. So, it's back to the phone now I guess. If only I had used Register.com! Moral of the story: do not use Verisign to register your domain. Ginger

We had nothing but problems with Network Solutions, now Verisign. We ended up having to call them and wait on hold for hours for something that should have been do-able on the website, talk to a clueless technician, have it escalated to a slightly less clueless technician, and finally to the person who could do what we wanted. Very annoying. Myriam

I've had good experiences registering & hosting 2 sites on www.powweb.com. Their rates are inexpensive (~$8/mo), they provide good customer service via email & online help pages, and they have a lot of good features & options (SSI, CGI scripts, etc.) I plan to register a 3rd domain with them soon. Patrick

YVOD is a great domain name registration company ,It's hassle-free? Great service and inexpensive. Check out the website. http://www.yvod.com/index.html Jules