Who controls your domain name and email?

[ghen]

We've been using Godaddy for both our domain names and our hosted email for quite a while now. They have cheap prices and they email me a lot when things are about to expire. But their business practices are absolutely abysmal. They will auto-renew stuff I don't want anymore and then force us to pay for it saying there's no way to undo the process. They also limit our email to ridiculously low numbers which hurts marketing.

I'm looking to find a big company that can take what I like about godaddy but not hold my domains hostage and force me to pay for things I don't want. I've searched around and websites showing "alternatives" to godaddy always go to the opposite extreme recommending some 10 man operation in France or something.

On a side note, do you do your own email? That solution is extremely expensive if you don't steal the software ha.

 

[Jerry Thibeau]

I use LunarPages and have been quite happy with them. When I need support I'll often get right in and they fix my issue.

 

[Billfred]

Intermedia.net hosts our email and website, both for our rooftop and for the group's portal page. No complaints.

Network Solutions handles our jimhudson.com domain, though we will likely migrate it to GoDaddy where we've got more of our domains when it comes up for renewal.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

I've been using Godaddy for years now. Host all my domains there and some 1 off hosting packages. I also like their 1 click WP install and built in FTP service. They're not the easiest website/service to navigate that's for sure.

You can set up your domain to AutoRenew OR you can turn that off.



As for email - if you have a hosting package you get a decent size email account and of course you can upgrade OR you can host your email somewhere like Google Business for nothing unless you get the upgrade w/ Google.

If you are referring to the Godaddy email marketing service - from my past experience, that has a lot to be desired for and is overpriced for what it is - unless they've made a lot of changes.

 

[tijerin]

I know a couple large automotive groups that use Zimbra. It always seemed to work well when I was with one of them and there never were any kind of restrictions that I was aware of. May be worth checking out. Zimbra offers Open Source email server software and shared calendar for Linux and the Mac.

 

[Alex Snyder]

We use Network Solutions for Checkered Flag and I personally use DreamHost for my own stuff.

 

[tstephenson]

We use Network Solutions for all our email and most of our domains. I have never had any real problems with them. They do however put restrictions on the size of email boxes, but all of our people are accessing email via outlook and/or phones. This prevents most of the problems with over stuffed email inboxes. As far as renewals, as long as you turn off the auto-renew option, you can manually renew or cancel at your discretion. They also send emails when things are getting ready to expire. I use GoDaddy for my personal domain registrations, and have experienced the same problem with auto-renewing of some domains I no longer wish to have.

 

[Dominic Belfiori]

We primarily use Network Solutions, but we have a couple domains on GoDaddy. Haven't really experienced any problems with either of them.

 

[JIversDCH]

Microsoft itself provides hosted Exchange accounts, if you're interested in that. I think the price is about $5/month per user. Google's premium (or whatever they call it) is about $50/year per user, and allows for all kinds of interesting things, integrates with Outlook, and provides a "Gmail"-ish web email access.

And hosting your own email is actually dirt cheap (free, to be specific) as long as you don't need full Exchange-like features... you can easily set up a Linux box (and I mean easy even for non-technical people) that handles IMAP sending and receiving. If you DO need more features, Zimbra (mentioned above) is a very good system, as is one called Axigen (though it's not free, it is a LOT cheaper than Outlook... about $3000 for up to 3000 accounts, and that fee is one-time).

 

[ghen]

You can set up your domain to AutoRenew OR you can turn that off.
.

Yeah, I did that. They turned it back on, auto renewed a domain I didn't want anymore, and now I own it for another 2 years.