NamecheapCEO (u/NamecheapCEO)

NamecheapCEO commented on Namecheap is buying and holding onto domains you're interested in? old.reddit.com/r/webdev/c... · Posted by u/satvikpendem

CameronNemo · 3 years ago

Is there any way you can show that? Like some kind of audit that verifies all the domains you register are associated with real customers somehow? I really want to trust you and your team, and have never experienced front-running while using your service, and I realize it is hard to prove you are not doing something, but I have to think that some kind of technical/audit-trail solution would be a lot more effective than replying on various social media posts.

NamecheapCEO · 3 years ago

As you can see, the original poster deleted his original claim on reddit. No one has ever provided a single shred of evidence that this is actually a thing.

NamecheapCEO commented on Namecheap is buying and holding onto domains you're interested in? old.reddit.com/r/webdev/c... · Posted by u/satvikpendem

fwlr · 3 years ago

It shouldn’t be hard for someone making these claims to show whois data before and after. Maybe the whois before requires some foresight, but the whois after does not. I will note that despite putting “Confirmed” in the title of their Reddit post and saying they did a whois search that showed Namecheap had bought the domain, the user has not provided that whois data, nor the domain name so that others can independently confirm.

The price of a domain registration going up in real time as you’re trying to buy it is obviously a frustrating experience. Domain name frontrunning is a legitimate concern, shady registrars have done it in the past (e.g. NetworkSolutions), and there are many other entities besides registrars that might do it as well.

Trying to register a domain name is notably not a hygienic process at the best of times, the information that someone might be willing to pay money for a particular domain name could leak and be exploited at many different stages of a typical search process. Unfortunately, the user only finds out they’ve been exploited when they try to pay on the registrar’s site. Registrars concerned about being unfairly accused might find that providing some transparency into the process can assuage this reaction - perhaps a “why did this price go up?” button/link that shows excerpts from your log history of whois calls for that domain name, or if the problem is the gTLD provider changing their prices on the fly, maybe a log of that information over time.

(Exhaustive potential conflict of interest disclaimer: I hold ~$40/year worth of registrations through Namecheap and another ~$30/year worth of registrations through Gandi. Besides these two aforementioned purchases, I do not and have never been employed by, held an investment position in, or maintained any other kind of financial relationship with any domain registrar [lookup service, TLD provider, etc.] in any form.)

NamecheapCEO · 3 years ago

Thanks for being a customer and for your input here. I can also assure you that we do not adjust our pricing based on searches. Our pricing is pretty static and is usually given to us from the tld registries themselves. They sometimes create "premium" pricing for certain domain names and all we do is pass that on to the customer with a very minimal percentage added to it(usually less than 10%) in most cases.

NamecheapCEO commented on Namecheap is buying and holding onto domains you're interested in? old.reddit.com/r/webdev/c... · Posted by u/satvikpendem

vr46 · 3 years ago

I've searched for squillions of domains with Namecheap and moved to them years ago from 123, but never lost a domain to them, I don't believe this happens.

NamecheapCEO · 3 years ago

Let me assure you, you are right. We would never do this as firstly, it is unethical and secondly we value our customers. Thanks for being one of them.

NamecheapCEO commented on Namecheap is buying and holding onto domains you're interested in? old.reddit.com/r/webdev/c... · Posted by u/satvikpendem

DANmode · 3 years ago

Curious from a technical perspective what you might be doing to protect your users' domain queries from other administrators.

NamecheapCEO · 3 years ago

Administrators as in whom? No one on our team is monitoring searches and registering domains, period. These claims are 100% false. You can easily prove this at any time by conducting a search yourself and monitoring what happens.

NamecheapCEO commented on Namecheap is buying and holding onto domains you're interested in? old.reddit.com/r/webdev/c... · Posted by u/satvikpendem

avgDev · 3 years ago

I have been using namecheap. Super disappointed by this news.

Any good alternatives?

NamecheapCEO · 3 years ago

Thank you, these claims are absolutely false, we do not front run domains on our website.

NamecheapCEO commented on Namecheap is buying and holding onto domains you're interested in? old.reddit.com/r/webdev/c... · Posted by u/satvikpendem

dinkleberg · 3 years ago

Wow this is quite disappointing to hear. I’ve been a happy namecheap customer for years and have bought far too many domains from them (too many side projects lol). I always believed they were the good ones, but maybe I’ll need to start looking elsewhere.

NamecheapCEO · 3 years ago

Thank you, these claims are absolutely false, we do not front run domains on our website.

NamecheapCEO commented on Namecheap is buying and holding onto domains you're interested in? old.reddit.com/r/webdev/c... · Posted by u/satvikpendem

_virtu · 3 years ago

That's such a shame. Namecheap was so great. Time to move on. Until then, I would recommend sending a feedback ticket to let the corporate overlords know. I doubt it'll do anything.

Feedback form: https://support.namecheap.com/index.php?/Tickets/Submit/Rend...

NamecheapCEO · 3 years ago

Thanks, these claims are absolutely false. We do not monitor nor register domain names that been searched at Namecheap, period.

NamecheapCEO commented on Namecheap is buying and holding onto domains you're interested in? old.reddit.com/r/webdev/c... · Posted by u/satvikpendem

gist · 3 years ago

> I’ve searched for domain names and came up with some great ones only to find that very soon after they were registered by nanecheap.

That could easily be a coincidence. For one thing you don't know about all the domains that were searched for that were not registered by the registrar. Only the ones you searched for (which could very easily be registered for another reason meaning there was another signal indicating their desirability and you even said 'and came up with some great ones only to find').

> Do a Google search on Namecheap frontrunning and you’ll find tons of posts of people talking about how it happened to them.

Is this really the way you think? You do a search and if people are reporting a certain 'symptom' well it must be correct. An anecdote. I drank coffee this morning and XYZ happened wow 'many' people had the same experience!

> If you don’t want to lose that great domain name, never search anywhere except Google or Amazon domains.

As others have pointed out you can also just search from the command line using whois. Not sure why you think that Google or Amazon are super safe either. Amazon runs many domains through gandi.net. Either of them have their own downside. At least at Namecheap you can actually last I checked get in touch with the CEO or an actual employee.

NamecheapCEO · 3 years ago

Thank you, we absolutely do not front run domains that are searched with us. These claims are absolutely false.

NamecheapCEO commented on Namecheap is buying and holding onto domains you're interested in? old.reddit.com/r/webdev/c... · Posted by u/satvikpendem

CameronNemo · 3 years ago

Because, unfortunately, this is where we are at. We can't trust registrars to act in good faith. Lots of people have assumed that Namecheap was above the fray, but that assumption can easily be false. With competition from cloud providers who offer domains at wholesale prices, and free DNS as well, Namecheap may be resorting to less than savory tactics to keep themselves alive.

NamecheapCEO · 3 years ago

Absolutely not, we don't front run domains, never have and never will.

NamecheapCEO commented on Namecheap is buying and holding onto domains you're interested in? old.reddit.com/r/webdev/c... · Posted by u/satvikpendem

version_five · 3 years ago

Namecheap leadrship are on HN and have clearly (imo believably) stated that they don't do this. There was a famous one where some say, rpg.quest domain got bought after someone had looked at it, and it seemed clear it was just because it was an obvious domain and somebody else bought it, not namecheap frontrunning. Maybe their stance has changed?

NamecheapCEO · 3 years ago

Thank you, our policy has absolutely not changed and never will. We are in the business of serving our customers, not attempting to take advantage of them in any way.