I am a huge fan of Gandi. Yes, they are slightly more expensive than other services, but I find their user interface not just good, but really quite amazing.
One simple but obvious feature they have is the ability to create DNS presets and apply those for new domains, it's really useful. (other people probably offer this)
Gandi also has fantastic support; it is slightly sad that they do not have a telephone number, but I get the vibe that Gandi is a real technology company and they believe they can offer premium support with support email. I agree, but I'd still like a telephone number for burning issues.
My only real complaint is that they have an unbelievably stupid login system where you log in not with a username, nor with an email address, but with an entirely random username. Mine is: PC5669-GANDI. It's infuriating if you ever need to use Gandi on a different computer. Why they saw it suitable to put their company name at the end of every login is puzzling.
Good spot, thanks :)
Never even occurred to me it would be registrar related, as I don't use OVH as a registrar - they must apply the same standard to all their customers.
I also use Gandi. I moved away from godaddy some years ago, and I am happy with the change. Good customer support, clean interface. If only they changed their brain-dead login system, and made their web work with something other than firefox, they'd be awesome.
I've had a great experience with their VPS service as well. I chose it just because it was the cheapest one I found when I briefly looked around, but I've had 100% uptime for the entire 6 months I've had it.
The username thing is indeed very annoying though.
As does NameCheap and pretty much every other registrar.
Here is the relevant text for NameCheap:
Namecheap may also cancel the registration of a domain name, after thirty (30) days, if that name is being used, as determined by Namecheap in its sole discretion, in association with spam or morally objectionable activities.
Morally objectionable activities will include, but not be limited to 1) activities designed to defame, embarrass, harm, abuse, threaten, slander or harass third parties; 2) activities prohibited by the laws of the United States and/or foreign territories in which you conduct business; 3) activities designed to encourage unlawful behavior by others, such as hate crimes, terrorism and child pornography; 4) activities that are tortious, vulgar, obscene, invasive of the privacy of a third party, racially, ethnically, or otherwise objectionable; activities designed to impersonate the identity of a third party; 5) and activities designed to harm or use unethically minors in any way.
Is that for material you host under their hosting services, or does that really include sites that only use their domain registration, and host the content elsewhere?
> "For example, Gandi does not tolerate activity that is morally objectionable or that poses a threat to public order" [1]
From their domain registration terms:
> "Consequently, You commit Yourself to assuring that Our services are used in a licit manner and in conformity to Our Ethical standards" [2]
> "You commit Yourself to choosing and using Your domain name and Our services in a way that constantly respects the rights of third parties (intellectual property laws, personality rights, image rights, and the respect of private life, trademarks, etc.)"
From their general conditions of service:
> "By accepting Our Contracts and using Our services, You agree to abide to Our code of ethics which consists, in particular, of protecting and respecting minors, human dignity, public order and good moral standards, not infringing on the rights of third parties (private life, image, honor and reputation, trademarks, designs and models, copyrights, etc.) or the security of persons, property, the government, or the good working order of public institutions, and to help in the fight against abusive and/or deviant uses of the Internet (spamming, phishing, hacking, cracking, or attempts at hacking or cracking), or any other infraction as cited in the Penal Code." [3]
So Gandi reserves the right to revoke your domain name if it determines you violate one of their "good moral standards", or anyone makes any copyright claim against you. They essentially gave themselves contractual power to police the content of the sites on domains purchased through them.
> NearlyFreeSpeech.NET reserves the right at any time and for any reason, including but not limited to your violation of these TACOS, to limit, suspend, or terminate your use of the Services and to discard any of your Content. Such termination of your use of the Services may be performed without prior notice, and NearlyFreeSpeech.NET may immediately deactivate or delete your Content and all related files relating to the Services and/or bar all access to the same. NearlyFreeSpeech.NET will not be liable to you or to any third party for any termination of your access to Services.
Indeed, everyone has the "we're not liable if we terminate your service" legalese, but not everyone has the stated free speech mission statement on NFS's About Us page: https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/about/
You're right in wanting to judge by actions rather than some CYA phrasing in a terms & conditions. NFS has a track record of backing up that free speech mission with action. And then there's Dynadot, who continue to host the wikileaks.org domain, and the DNS after EasyDNS dropped them. If Gandi has a similar track record, I'd love to hear it.
Don't they have a term whereby they can take your domain if they want to (or rather, decide they could make more money that way)? ISTR that was why I avoided Gandi.net last time I bought a domain.
Revoked SSL based on trademark and Whois information.
Although the article does provide an update which says:
The reason for the certificate being revoked was because of the inaccurate whois data. Certificates really are a seal of trust, but that cannot be based on falsified whois data. It was right to revoke the certificate for this reason, but not without being in contact with the customer. We have reviewed and changed our processes to rectify this.
Mr. Marlinspike bought a SSL certificate from Gandi by giving them wrong personal information. When Gandi revoked the certificate, the support guys first wrongly communicated that it was probaly due to a trademark dispute, but it was actually just about the wrong whois information.[1]
Ok, miscommunications happen, but what really irks me about Mr. Marlinspike is that he later went on to complain about how companies did not do enough to verify the whois information for SSL certificates.[2] Which was, as we know, the reason why his SSL certificate was revoked.
What do we learn from this: Give correct whois information and your domain will be fine. For trademark disputes there is the UDRP process[3] which not just Gandi but also most other registrars (including namecheap) have agreed to.
I've been using gandi for a long time and they've always been good to me. I like their "no bullshit" philosophy and their respect for my rights as a domain owner.
I recently asked them why they charge more than competitors for, this was the response:
Thank you for contacting Gandi Customer Care. It is true, Gandi does charge slightly more for
domains than some other registrars. We do feel that we are still affordable, however. The
reason we need to charge a small premium is that we have a different business model than
other, larger companies, and cannot get by on razor-thin margins. We are a commercial
organization, certainly, and we do make money, but we also support the community of
innovators in the hosting and domain name management space, and we do not advertise, but
rely on word of mouth for our marketing. We do not buy market share with ads, and we do
not make empty promises to capture customers.
We also include some services (such as a free year of SSL certificates and the ability to
obfuscate your whois data) that other registrars tend to charge incrementally for. This is
because we believe that your data is yours. We will never sell your private information as
some others do, and so we do not have that revenue stream.
We appreciate your willingness to consider Gandi as an ethical, no-bullshit alternative to
GoDaddy. Right now a lot of domains are available at $8/yr through the end of 2011. We
hope you will join us.
If they don't advertise, shouldn't their costs be lower? Also, I'd rather they charge incrementally for services. Charging more for forced bundling of unwanted services only benefits them.
I don't know about transfers but new domains get one year free one domain SSL certificates too. I have most of my domains with Gandi and their management website is a breeze.
I don't like mentality like you represent in this post, not everyone who buys domains is a funded tech company or anything like that. In the end if a company is offering the same service at a lower price why would you not go with that one? What makes you think Gandi.net is worth more than Namecheap? They seem to offer the same service and ethics as Gandi. And the difference is a take out meal where I live, I'll take the sandwich and domain if you give me the choice.
I don't like the mentality you represent in this post, not everyone who buys domains has the time to haggle over $5. The time saved not worrying about $5 could be used to get a take out meal where I live. ;)
Why would I pay $15 when I can pay $10 and get great service?
Does Gandi offer something that others don't?
As for the amount, I'll admit that it isn't a great deal, but while $5 won't break me, it's a matter of scale. I've been transitioning from GoDaddy for awhile now, but at the moment, I still have about 20 domains hosted with them.
20 x $5 is $100, which means I can be free of GoDaddy for $x with Name.com, for $x + 100 with Gandi. Again, why would I pay more when there are known good options for less?
Can anybody tell me how to transfer domains + DNS to Gandi without downtime?
I'm pretty sure the right way to go about it is to move DNS first, but it seems Gandi does not support this (unlike Namecheap).
My DNS is hosted with the current registrar which, shall we say, is not terribly pleased with people leaving. So I would not put it past them to cut off my DNS service.
Me too, been using gandi for many years. It isn't the cheapest, but the service has always been great, and they would never be on the wrong side of something like SOPA.
I've used Gandi for two years now, and my advice can be summed in one word: avoid. Absolutely atrocious, horrible support. No live chat. No phone number. And it took them THREE full days and two "reminder" emails to respond to me on a system critical issue. This is not acceptable - and it quite frankly goes against their "slogan." On the flip side, I've found Namecheap support and value to be far greater. So I support them wholeheartedly.
Few days I tried to move my GoDaddy domain to Gandi.net, and GoDaddy denied my request because apparently the domain is registered privately. Why should I expose my name just to transfer?
You should have asked yourself that question before you registered at Godaddy. If you do not want your name to be associated with your domain, you are now locked in forever. To be honest, I don't even know if other registrars do it any different. (I only know that Nearlyfreespeech.net does not lock you in that way, but not about others like namecheap.)
Gandi.net does not offer full whois privacy by the way, so your name will always be revealed.
Privacy can be expensive. If you are in the US, you could try getting a PO box. Post offices around me have them for as low as $42/year. That is about three years of domain registration, but if you have multiple domains or want to keep your home address off the Internet, the cost can be worth it. Plus, now you have a different address for things and it's a locked box that's difficult to break into.
I used them for a while and performance was better than Linode (I used baltimore datacentre) but what made me stop was the lack of automatic billing.
After that I switched to slicehost who's equivalent VM performs even better however I don't think you can sign up for that anymore now they've been assimilated by Rackspace.
Didn't have any unscheduled downtime over 6 months on Gandi.
Don't put their slogan on a Powerpoint presentation then. Also, your corporate culture could use some lightening up (you may not have the power to do this, just saying.)
One simple but obvious feature they have is the ability to create DNS presets and apply those for new domains, it's really useful. (other people probably offer this)
Gandi also has fantastic support; it is slightly sad that they do not have a telephone number, but I get the vibe that Gandi is a real technology company and they believe they can offer premium support with support email. I agree, but I'd still like a telephone number for burning issues.
My only real complaint is that they have an unbelievably stupid login system where you log in not with a username, nor with an email address, but with an entirely random username. Mine is: PC5669-GANDI. It's infuriating if you ever need to use Gandi on a different computer. Why they saw it suitable to put their company name at the end of every login is puzzling.
Honestly though, its a minor criticism, and I love their "no bullshit" policy: http://www.gandi.net/no-bullshit
In my experience it is true.