I certainly understand your point but the point of the poll is to find out if GoDaddy users are actually taking actions (to find out if there will be a mass exodus).
Domain transfers are a small pain in the ass, and your registrar is generally nothing more than a name and a number on a yearly bill, so past idiocy from GoDaddy doesn't really mean much unless it was offensive enough to motivate you to do some work to switch, and since I've rarely even been to their website since my initial registrations, it just never occurred to me.
I stopped registering new domains with GoDaddy several years ago, but until today, I didn't bother switching my old ones away from them (I had maybe a dozen there, and several dozen elsewhere). Now I have.
I've been with them for 10yrs and they have never wronged me. The only reason I'm considering switching is the moral reasons with SOPA.
When you have 30+ domains on a single registrar it is a little frustrating to go through each one individually and get the authorization code, unlock them, and request the transfer.
Also, for me, I have domains that I did 5-10yr registrations on, so the transfer and getting 1yr free isn't really that helpful.
Just fyi, you can generate a csv of your domains and authorization codes by doing:
Domain Management > Tools Tab > Exportable List > click Add New Export button > All your domains > and make sure to select "Authorization Code".
As for locking or unlocking, in Domain Management you should be able to just click the select all checkmark, and click the Lock button to set the lock level on all of them.
None of that should be an issue, even when transferring in, a bunch of registrars offer a bulk transfer option. The real pains start to set in if you have gTLDs which have special gotchas when transferring or changing contact information/ownership. I probably wouldn't even have been able to transfer my .it domains out of godaddy if not for the fact I have a dual citizenship which gave me some freedom with the regulations -- though it still took me hours of trial and error.
One slight irritation on GoDaddy -> Namecheap. One of these sites has a bug where it's either incorrectly generating ACs with embedded double quotes, like ABC"345"DE, or it's not storing them correctly. I did the bulk transfer yesterday, and this morning discovered that all such domains failed with a bad AC. I'm working with Namecheap support now to resolve it.
So it's still a constant-time operation, but the value of C is growing for me.
I haven't got any GoDaddy domains so I haven't done it personally, but I think people on the other top story about how to leave GoDaddy had all that solved.
You could use the tools to export all your domains, get the transfer codes, drop those into NameCheap (with the SOPASUCKS coupon) all at once, then go back to GoDaddy and confirm the transfers to avoid a long wait. And they even let you keep the time you had registered.
Technically I should answer "no" on the poll, because I did not transfer my domains from GoDaddy today. I never had them registered at GoDaddy. Perhaps a typical HN reader is not as pedantic, but I expect some are, so surely having the "never used godaddy" option would have made the results more accurate.
That's why the poll is missing an option. I've never registered a domain using GoDaddy, but, the way the question is phrased, I almost clicked "No", since I indeed "did not transfer my domains from GoDaddy today". Doing so would have skewed the results.
Honest question: when was that, and what was the criteria for "best"?
I've been purchasing domains since the time when you had to mail in a check for the payment (and the grace period was like 6 months). I don't ever recall GoDaddy being any version of "best".
I remember switching to them from Network Solutions or Register.com, who still charged like $99 or $29 per domain (I forget which). It was amazing that they had $9 domains AND they provided DNS (it used to be you'd be stuck needing an ISP for this)
The first domains I got were from register.com at over $30/year. I assumed I was getting great service or something. When I finally had an issue, I sat on hold for over an hour and then got disconnected. I decided to switch to godaddy, the cheapest well known brand.
