Why cheap domain registrars fail to deliver

Over the course of the last few years I have dealt with a wide range of ICANN registrars and their resellers.

Some experiences have been good, some fantastic and some excruciatingly painful.

Which ones stick out?

The bad ones of course!

It is a well known fact that people remember bad service and, more importantly, talk about it more than they do about good service.

About a year ago we were given the opportunity to signup with Directi and get cheap domains.

There was a full API and all the other “gizmos” and the price was almost too good to be true (especially if you look at the ICANN rates).

I should have known better.

I’ve always been a strong believer in the “you pay for what you get” philosophy, and with DirectI you will get cheap domains – definitely.

Just try actually managing them!

And please oh please, do not even try to open a support query.

You stand a 10% chance of getting a relevant reply on a good day.

The web interface is obviously your main point of contact to manage your domains. You’d expect it to be accessible, or is that too much to ask?

Problems:

• API – the slightest typo throws it out and certain fields that shouldn’t be compulsory are
• Transfers – they have a tendency of vanishing
• Support – non-existent or simply irrelevant replies to queries
• Management – impossible to actually manage all domains in your account
• Buggy – we’ve ended up with domains being split between multiple accounts ie. ours and that of a competitor. Directi cannot explain these discrepancies
• Gateway support – they added 2checkout but ONLY for US dollar! The 2checkout API works with multiple currencies, why exclude clients?
• Uptime – Both the web interface and the gateway “vanish” from time to time. Haven’t they heard of load-balancing?

When we initially moved our billing over to using Modernbill one of the things that bothered me was the lack of support for Directi. Now I am really happy that they do not support it.

The number of issues we have had with their interface and API, without even mentioning issues sub-resellers ran into, far outweigh any price advantage.

Domain registration can and should be an automated process for CNOIB domains.

Each manual intervention has a direct impact on margins.

Each manual edit takes time, so costs you money.

If you have the choice between a system that “just works” and gives you real technical support when you need it and a system that malfunctions but “saves” you a few cents, which one would you choose?
I know my answer.