You see, a few months ago, they decided to impose an arbitrary $200 fee on “spammers”. How it works is that when they get “complaints” (no one knows the magic number to trigger the draconian action), they suspend the domain and demand the owner pay $200 and promise never to spam again. Notice, guilty without trial there. If the domain owner wants to transfer the site out, they demand a $50 “administration” fee as a final insult.

Too risky for me

In a day when a documented, proven opted-in newsletter subscription might be flagged as spam by someone who’d rather just report spam than unsubscribe, this is an unacceptable risk for me as a marketer. I do not and will not spam. I carefully track every opt-in, and always unsubscribe those who ask. But, that doesn’t matter to bullies and giant corporations, especially when they can simply use the spam claim as a thin excuse to extort money.

So, what I did to choose a new registrar was very simple. I ran Whois queries on various affiliate and newsletter sites I respect, and noted which registrars they used. Then, I read DN Forum to get a feel for the “rep” of the companies. In the end, I chose to use Namecheap, for their $8.88 price tag and their free name cloaking. That name cloaking is a service GoDaddy charges for, by the way, and which makes Namecheap actually less expensive when directly compared.

I almost chose Joker due to their rep for not playing nice with courts. Some think that is bad, but I like a registrar who’ll fight for their customers. But, in the end I just felt better about the features at Namecheap.

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