Gandi.net updates pricing, increases rates by up to 1000%(chatting.neocities.org)
chatting.neocities.org
Gandi.net updates pricing, increases rates by up to 1000%
https://chatting.neocities.org/posts/2023-gandi-pricing
70 comments
25-50% for domain names is too much for me, I'm switching to pork bun as my domains come up for renewal.
The pricing structure is now quite incomparable to most other registrars, e.g. .dev, .de and .cyou now all cost the same 24 Euros / year, which appears to be their new price floor now.
24 Euros for .de, one of the cheapest ccTLDs, is almost daylight robbery, IMO.
24 Euros for .de, one of the cheapest ccTLDs, is almost daylight robbery, IMO.
Yeah, that's not an unreasonable price. Just ticking off the features (which doesn't tell the whole story) Gandi's email service provides something between fastmail's $3 and $5 plans, and similar to protonmail's $3.99 plan.
That €0.35/month plan was a steal. Most places don't even offer backup store-and-forward SMTP for that let alone full email hosting. Of course, now that they are pricing themselves the same as their competitors they will be held to the same standard, and we'll see how that holds up.
That €0.35/month plan was a steal. Most places don't even offer backup store-and-forward SMTP for that let alone full email hosting. Of course, now that they are pricing themselves the same as their competitors they will be held to the same standard, and we'll see how that holds up.
Fastmail and protonmail offer a lot more than just postfix+dovecot hosting. Fastmail developed new standard, brand new webmail UI, brand new webmail client. That's a lot of added value. Protonmail is heaven for crypto nerds which has its own intrinsic value as well.
Ordinary mail hosting is nothing special. Anybody can do it with very little investments. Of course if they can charge for it, good for them. But I don't think it's fair to compare those services. It's like comparing AWS and some random VPS hosting with cpanel just because both can launch debian VPS.
Ordinary mail hosting is nothing special. Anybody can do it with very little investments. Of course if they can charge for it, good for them. But I don't think it's fair to compare those services. It's like comparing AWS and some random VPS hosting with cpanel just because both can launch debian VPS.
Fastmail also includes DNS, a few GB of storage and optionally static web hosting from said storage. They're also providing you with a caldav server for synced calendar, notes and contacts
Tasks can also be synced over Fastmail servers, though they do not provide a UI for it.
Counterpoint: if you compare Gandi's old/existing prices for all other products (domains, hosting, etc.) with the competition, they are not exactly on the cheap end. It seems to me they've always positioned themselves as a premium option. So either they decided to make an exception for email (why?) or the €0.35/month price is not necessarily the steal you think it is.
Its the choose the number that make things look worse. If the article stated it increased €43 Euros a year, it doesn't sound as bad. Its still a large increase, but not as jaw dropping as the % makes it seem.
Gandi was bought out earlier this year leading to discontinuation of free mailboxes [0].
0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35080777
0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35080777
Fuck. Gandi was my go-to privacy-conscious domain registrar.
What viable alternatives exist that aren't cash-grabbing vultures and aren't beholden to US globalist interests?
What viable alternatives exist that aren't cash-grabbing vultures and aren't beholden to US globalist interests?
Porkbun [0] is often recommended. Based in the US though.
0: https://porkbun.com/
0: https://porkbun.com/
The team at https://iwantmyname.com/ always seemed small and friendly, and they’re based in NZ
> Now, Gandi will raise the prices of the Standard mailbox plan from €0.35/month to €3.99/month per mailbox, a 1040% increase.
This headline reads as if the company is just destroying customer wallets a La Reddit API customers until you get into the details. There are premium email clients that charge way more than EUR3.99 per month.
This headline reads as if the company is just destroying customer wallets a La Reddit API customers until you get into the details. There are premium email clients that charge way more than EUR3.99 per month.
Reddit API costs along the line of €2.50/month for providing read/write access to terabytes of targeted content. Less than the new Gandi pricing for a mailbox.
No, it costs much, much more if you actually tried to read out terabytes of content…
And I'd migrated almost all my domains from Network Solutions to Gandi, after NS was bought by those guys in Florida. Who's left that's good?
An appeal of Gandi is that they do not take the position that they own domains, and the registrant just rents them. Gandi used to be clearer on this. 2004 terms: "The Client owns the Domain Name registered. Gandi simply acts on the Client's behalf."[1]
That page disappeared some time prior to 2008.
Here are the terms from 2015. "You are the owner of the domain name, meaning that You are the person or the legal representative of a legal entity that has been declared as the owner of a domain name upon its registration, and visible in the public Whois database,...)."[2]
Wordier, but not too bad.
In the current version, that explicit ownership language has disappeared. There's a definition of terms that says: "Contact Owner: refers to the natural or legal person identified by the Registry as the owner of the domain name."[3] But no explicit statement of ownership. The termination clause allows Gandi to terminate only for breach of contract, not at will.
Compare Network Solutions, which is part of "Web.com":
"Registrant acknowledges and agrees that Web.com has the absolute right and power, in its sole discretion and without any liability to Registrant whatsoever, to suspend the Services, close Registrant's account, terminate provisioning of the Services, list Registrant's personal information in the WHOIS output or unmask or otherwise provide the Registrant's personal information to a claimant or other party to resolve any and all third party claims, whether threatened or made, arising out of Registrant's use of the Domain Name or the Services, or to take any other action which Web.com deems necessary, in the event that (i) the Domain Name is alleged to violate or infringe a third party's trademark, trade name, copyright interests or other legal rights of third parties; (ii) Registrant breaches any provision of this Agreement; (iii) Registrant breaches any provision of the Registrar Terms; (d) if necessary to protect the integrity and stability of the applicable Domain Name registry; (e) if necessary to comply with any applicable laws, government rules or requirements, subpoenas, court orders or requests of law enforcement; (f) if Web.com is named as a defendant in, or investigated in anticipation of, any legal or administrative proceeding arising out of Registrant's use of the Services or Domain Name; (g) if necessary to comply with ICANN's Dispute Resolution Policy or other policies promulgated by ICANN (including policies which may preclude using a service such as Private Domain Registration); (h) if necessary to avoid any financial loss or legal liability (civil or criminal) on the part of Web.com, its parent companies, subsidiaries, affiliates, shareholders, agents, officers, directors and employees; or (i) any violation of the Web.com Acceptable Use Policy."[4]
Um.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20041206084659/http://gandi.net/...
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20141203012738/http://www.gandi....
[3] https://contract.gandi.net/v5/contracts/53904/DomainNameCond...
[4] https://assets.web.com/legal/English/DomainNameRegistrationS...
An appeal of Gandi is that they do not take the position that they own domains, and the registrant just rents them. Gandi used to be clearer on this. 2004 terms: "The Client owns the Domain Name registered. Gandi simply acts on the Client's behalf."[1]
That page disappeared some time prior to 2008.
Here are the terms from 2015. "You are the owner of the domain name, meaning that You are the person or the legal representative of a legal entity that has been declared as the owner of a domain name upon its registration, and visible in the public Whois database,...)."[2]
Wordier, but not too bad.
In the current version, that explicit ownership language has disappeared. There's a definition of terms that says: "Contact Owner: refers to the natural or legal person identified by the Registry as the owner of the domain name."[3] But no explicit statement of ownership. The termination clause allows Gandi to terminate only for breach of contract, not at will.
Compare Network Solutions, which is part of "Web.com":
"Registrant acknowledges and agrees that Web.com has the absolute right and power, in its sole discretion and without any liability to Registrant whatsoever, to suspend the Services, close Registrant's account, terminate provisioning of the Services, list Registrant's personal information in the WHOIS output or unmask or otherwise provide the Registrant's personal information to a claimant or other party to resolve any and all third party claims, whether threatened or made, arising out of Registrant's use of the Domain Name or the Services, or to take any other action which Web.com deems necessary, in the event that (i) the Domain Name is alleged to violate or infringe a third party's trademark, trade name, copyright interests or other legal rights of third parties; (ii) Registrant breaches any provision of this Agreement; (iii) Registrant breaches any provision of the Registrar Terms; (d) if necessary to protect the integrity and stability of the applicable Domain Name registry; (e) if necessary to comply with any applicable laws, government rules or requirements, subpoenas, court orders or requests of law enforcement; (f) if Web.com is named as a defendant in, or investigated in anticipation of, any legal or administrative proceeding arising out of Registrant's use of the Services or Domain Name; (g) if necessary to comply with ICANN's Dispute Resolution Policy or other policies promulgated by ICANN (including policies which may preclude using a service such as Private Domain Registration); (h) if necessary to avoid any financial loss or legal liability (civil or criminal) on the part of Web.com, its parent companies, subsidiaries, affiliates, shareholders, agents, officers, directors and employees; or (i) any violation of the Web.com Acceptable Use Policy."[4]
Um.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20041206084659/http://gandi.net/...
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20141203012738/http://www.gandi....
[3] https://contract.gandi.net/v5/contracts/53904/DomainNameCond...
[4] https://assets.web.com/legal/English/DomainNameRegistrationS...
If they have to raise prices to... $5/mo, to me that sounds like a part of their " no bs" policy.
To me, 35c/mo doesn't exactly sound like a service I should be trusting with something like emails. $5/mo won't exactly break the bank either.
To me, 35c/mo doesn't exactly sound like a service I should be trusting with something like emails. $5/mo won't exactly break the bank either.
I used to really like Gandi. I still have a t-shirt with their #no_bullshit slogan that's from 2015-16. It's been a couple of years since I stopped having any need for their services, and its sad to see them dropping the ball like this.
Was only a matter of time after Gandi was sold off.
It made me migrate all of my emails to a self-hosted solution using Mail-in-a-box. I'm also looking for another registrar that handles .me and .ru domains without going through Cloudflare.
So far no luck. So my domains will cost me a little more to renew next time it comes time to renew them.
It made me migrate all of my emails to a self-hosted solution using Mail-in-a-box. I'm also looking for another registrar that handles .me and .ru domains without going through Cloudflare.
So far no luck. So my domains will cost me a little more to renew next time it comes time to renew them.
I just completed my email migration away from Gandi this weekend. I figured if I had to really start paying for it, I might as well get something better than their offering or move to something cheaper. If I'm paying ~$4/mo per user, it really starts to seem worth it to spring to something that offers a lot more for similar pricing. Then there's lots of services out there which offer cheaper prices with more features. For truly just a basic mailbox <$1/account can make some sense, but basic email only for that price is crazy steep.
I ended up migrating to Zoho. It took about an hour getting accounts set up, DNS records changed, and data migrated. Importing data through IMAP went really smoothly. I probably could have gotten by on the free tier but a few family users didn't want to use the apps and preferred the Exchange ActiveSync functionality to have a more system-native experience on platforms like Android and Windows.
So far, so good.
I ended up migrating to Zoho. It took about an hour getting accounts set up, DNS records changed, and data migrated. Importing data through IMAP went really smoothly. I probably could have gotten by on the free tier but a few family users didn't want to use the apps and preferred the Exchange ActiveSync functionality to have a more system-native experience on platforms like Android and Windows.
So far, so good.
I've been using mxroute to host some email for my family and random automation stuff for the past while.
Really happy with them, I'm paying 15 USD a year on a recurring black Friday deal. I think that has 50GB storage, which is fine for my usecase.
They have unlimited mail accounts, which is great, as some family members might only send or receive a handful of emails a month...
Really happy with them, I'm paying 15 USD a year on a recurring black Friday deal. I think that has 50GB storage, which is fine for my usecase.
They have unlimited mail accounts, which is great, as some family members might only send or receive a handful of emails a month...
Another option is Purely Mail [0] which is who I'll be using if running my own Mail-in-a-box turns out to be a bit too much. It could end up being cheaper than mxroute depending on your needs.
[0] https://purelymail.com/
[0] https://purelymail.com/
Looks like a great option too, thanks.
It’s 2023 and I still see lots of comments in this thread asking things “who is still good”, “who hasn’t sold out yet”, etc. etc.
How many more years need to go by before we all acknowledge the truth? We are not guaranteed fixed pricing and we do not “own” anything in this environment. Legal terms and marketing “guarantees” are all as malleable as the code that backs the product. This is a fundamental reality of working on the web. Every time I see someone angrily copy and paste a company quote of some kind, I chuckle a little because that’s someone who still believes that companies all mean what they say all the time.
Companies mean what they say today to make money today, that’s it. As soon as today’s messaging no longer satisfies the profit motive, everything changes. The most successful companies are the ones that are able to raise prices without upsetting people’s expectations.
How many more years need to go by before we all acknowledge the truth? We are not guaranteed fixed pricing and we do not “own” anything in this environment. Legal terms and marketing “guarantees” are all as malleable as the code that backs the product. This is a fundamental reality of working on the web. Every time I see someone angrily copy and paste a company quote of some kind, I chuckle a little because that’s someone who still believes that companies all mean what they say all the time.
Companies mean what they say today to make money today, that’s it. As soon as today’s messaging no longer satisfies the profit motive, everything changes. The most successful companies are the ones that are able to raise prices without upsetting people’s expectations.
I've been a Gandi customer for over a decade. I'm willing to shell out the $4/month (for now) I get it, they have to make money. But when the aliases are no longer free: I'm out.
Having a backup plan isn't a horrible idea either... might give mail-in-a-box a try.
Having a backup plan isn't a horrible idea either... might give mail-in-a-box a try.
I'm glad I jumped ship when they got bought out by a shady company with a history of price gouging.
I like porkbun for personal stuff, dnsimple for work
I like porkbun for personal stuff, dnsimple for work
Click bait title.
1000% when the real story is an increase of 3 euro?
Bs, the company decided they can't discount and as long as they give enough notice I don't see a problem.
> Now, Gandi will raise the prices of the Standard mailbox plan from €0.35/month to €3.99/month per mailbox, a 1040% increase. The Premium plan will go from €1.75/month to €5.99/month, a 242% increase.
1000% when the real story is an increase of 3 euro?
Bs, the company decided they can't discount and as long as they give enough notice I don't see a problem.
> Now, Gandi will raise the prices of the Standard mailbox plan from €0.35/month to €3.99/month per mailbox, a 1040% increase. The Premium plan will go from €1.75/month to €5.99/month, a 242% increase.
I don't find the "it's only a couple of euros/dollars/pounds" argument terribly convincing.
A 10x increase is a 10x increase. It adds up quickly.
Should businesses, e.g. supermarkets, raise prices by 10x for items below a certain threshold? What should that threshold be? Or, what about AWS? They charge something like $0.10/GB for egress. Should they start charging $1/GB?
I'm being frivolous of course, but I'm sure among Gandi's customers there's gotta be someone who uses a lot of mailboxes and is therefore going to be significantly impacted from this.
> as long as they give enough notice I don't see a problem
They gave a month's notice. Whether that's enough, I suppose that depends on how many "products" (domains, mailboxes, hosted sites, etc.) you'd have to migrate.
Should businesses, e.g. supermarkets, raise prices by 10x for items below a certain threshold? What should that threshold be? Or, what about AWS? They charge something like $0.10/GB for egress. Should they start charging $1/GB?
I'm being frivolous of course, but I'm sure among Gandi's customers there's gotta be someone who uses a lot of mailboxes and is therefore going to be significantly impacted from this.
> as long as they give enough notice I don't see a problem
They gave a month's notice. Whether that's enough, I suppose that depends on how many "products" (domains, mailboxes, hosted sites, etc.) you'd have to migrate.
Say you’re providing standard email to a family of 6. Your yearly bills are €25.2.
Now, your bills are €288 per year, for the same service, basically overnight, without even beginning to consider other price raises by Gandi and general inflation. If you don’t have a ton of disposable income that’s kinda brutal and you don’t have a lot of time to work this out.
Now, your bills are €288 per year, for the same service, basically overnight, without even beginning to consider other price raises by Gandi and general inflation. If you don’t have a ton of disposable income that’s kinda brutal and you don’t have a lot of time to work this out.
I left Gandi a year or so ago with the couple of domains that I had there, since they had a decent markup over cloudflare’s wholesale pricing.
Was easier than expected to port my config — I was especially nervous about the nameserver config since I use one of those domains for my primary email address everywhere. But yeah totally smooth, there is almost zero friction to change domain registrars… I’m surprised that companies can mark up on pricing at all without their margins getting entirely competed away to nearly zero
Was easier than expected to port my config — I was especially nervous about the nameserver config since I use one of those domains for my primary email address everywhere. But yeah totally smooth, there is almost zero friction to change domain registrars… I’m surprised that companies can mark up on pricing at all without their margins getting entirely competed away to nearly zero
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I've used Gandi for ~15 years. I don't care about their VPSes, email boxes, web hosting, or anything else. All I cared about was the privacy, anonymity, and integrity of their domain registrar service with sensible prices. Now that they appear to have completely sold out to corporate interests and are on the price-price-profit spiral train, I'm wondering what alternatives exist.
This is why I switched all my $dayjob domains to Hover years ago. They charge 15-50USD/year depending on the TLD and its fees. No bullshit, no ads, no cross-sell, friendly Canadian support.
You get what you pay for. I want my registrar to have a sustainable business model so they don’t screw me over. A domain name is a critical SPOF for any business.
You get what you pay for. I want my registrar to have a sustainable business model so they don’t screw me over. A domain name is a critical SPOF for any business.
[deleted]
Curious if this will impact AWS pricing, as I believe Gandi is one of the main providers behind Route 53.
I assume that pricing will be covered by a contract between Amazon and Gandi, that is not affected by this recent announcement. And that if Gandi increases prices on Amazon a lot in the future when the contract comes up for renewal, Amazon would simply switch to a different reseller.
I would have assumed Amazon did that themselves? Amazon Registrar, Inc. is ICANN accredited.
Yes but it's a lot of work to integrate with literally over a hundred different TLD registries to provide full spectrum domain registration coverage. And it's not just technically difficult; there's lots of work to do from a legal/biz dev standpoint as well.
Much easier to integrate with a reseller and have them do a lot of that for you. Then you can only worry about the big ones (e.g. Verisign for .com), and maybe slowly onboard to additional ones over time.
Much easier to integrate with a reseller and have them do a lot of that for you. Then you can only worry about the big ones (e.g. Verisign for .com), and maybe slowly onboard to additional ones over time.
It seems they have a relationship per AWS's docs [1] for handling certain TLDs. In particular this calls out using Gandi to verify transfer of .*.uk domains. I'd be very surprised, however, if that that deal is tied to consumer pricing.
[1] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/do...
[1] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/do...
Always use https://tld-list.com to find the registrar with the cheapest renewal rate.
Whats a good alternative now, I have a few domains with them..
Lots of people on HN hate Cloudflare... but they're pretty good on prices, UI, and "just works"ness. Their support is also speedy.
I'm opposed to them for purely ideological reasons. Their products are some of the best on the market that I've used at work. I can't really speak to their support because everything I've had to use for work Just Works so I've never had to contact support.
I think it is dangerous to have as much of the web as there already is behind a single entity is all. I do not wish to contribute to the centralization of the web even further by pushing my own sites and projects through Cloudflare. So I make an active effort to avoid using them. The ever increasing centralization of the web should be considered harmful and Cloudflare and AWS already run an absurd portion of the internet and it only seems to be getting worse. To such an extent that US East 1 outages has become a meme.
I think it is dangerous to have as much of the web as there already is behind a single entity is all. I do not wish to contribute to the centralization of the web even further by pushing my own sites and projects through Cloudflare. So I make an active effort to avoid using them. The ever increasing centralization of the web should be considered harmful and Cloudflare and AWS already run an absurd portion of the internet and it only seems to be getting worse. To such an extent that US East 1 outages has become a meme.
Yeah they’ve been great. Compared to all 3 other registrars that I’ve used (incl Gandi), Cloudflare has been significantly easier to configure and understand. And it was easy as hell to host my static site through them on their “pages” integration with gitlab. I couldn’t believe how well it worked. Very “just works” for sure.
I don’t love how they’re a single point of failure for much of the internet, or the amount of power that gives them. But from a user’s perspective their service has been fantastic, especially for how little I’ve paid them.
I don’t love how they’re a single point of failure for much of the internet, or the amount of power that gives them. But from a user’s perspective their service has been fantastic, especially for how little I’ve paid them.
What's their billing model? Can you choose "if I stuff up, my things go offline" (NearlyFreeSpeech) or is the only option "if I stuff up, I get an enormous credit card bill" (AWS)?
For business use I don't care so much about this. But for personal stuff I just can't accept unlimited liability. I would even be willing to pay a bit more for the safety.
So... I suppose my question is: what's a good option for folks who are worried about bill shock?
For business use I don't care so much about this. But for personal stuff I just can't accept unlimited liability. I would even be willing to pay a bit more for the safety.
So... I suppose my question is: what's a good option for folks who are worried about bill shock?
The only reason I chose them instead of AWS is bill shock. I don't run up high enough of requests to go past the free tier though so honestly... I have no idea what it's like to run a "successful" system with millions of requests a day.
But their pricing (10 million / month, +$0.50/million) is much clearer to me than the many many pages of confusing jargon on AWS, which is why I went for CF.
I've seen some horror stories, but it's been great so far. Honestly, I just don't know... but that's probably true for any host like this? (I have no idea how to run my own server, so I'm completely dependent on hosts like CF or Fly)
But their pricing (10 million / month, +$0.50/million) is much clearer to me than the many many pages of confusing jargon on AWS, which is why I went for CF.
I've seen some horror stories, but it's been great so far. Honestly, I just don't know... but that's probably true for any host like this? (I have no idea how to run my own server, so I'm completely dependent on hosts like CF or Fly)
That sounds better to me than AWS billing, but for personal stuff I'd still prefer to pre-pay and then get cut off if I run out of money in my cloud provider account.
If the provider is worried about incurring costs that they then can't recover, then they could require me to have, e.g., a minimum $10 balance, and all but the simplest of things shut down if I dip below that. Then the remaining ~$10 would be used to pay for cost of storage/bookkeeping, and then if _that_ runs out, they delete all my stuff.
I'm happy to pay. I just can't tolerate much personal risk as an individual with a family.
If the provider is worried about incurring costs that they then can't recover, then they could require me to have, e.g., a minimum $10 balance, and all but the simplest of things shut down if I dip below that. Then the remaining ~$10 would be used to pay for cost of storage/bookkeeping, and then if _that_ runs out, they delete all my stuff.
I'm happy to pay. I just can't tolerate much personal risk as an individual with a family.
Could you elaborate on Cloudflare's support? My understanding was that unless you're on a plan ($20+/mo per site) you don't get access to support at all, just community/forums.
I only pay them for domains, and they have my CC for Cloudflare Workers (but I've never paid them).
I ran into a few issues with their platform, once with R2 when it first rolled out, and a couple of times with domains, and once with caching not clearing.
I think I submitted my request through some form (this is a while ago, hazy) and someone always got back to me within 4 hours. I think they're supposed to get back at least 24-48 hours.
Mileage may vary, and this was a while ago, so maybe things have changed now.
I ran into a few issues with their platform, once with R2 when it first rolled out, and a couple of times with domains, and once with caching not clearing.
I think I submitted my request through some form (this is a while ago, hazy) and someone always got back to me within 4 hours. I think they're supposed to get back at least 24-48 hours.
Mileage may vary, and this was a while ago, so maybe things have changed now.
They don't "just work" for my .dev domain names :(
Apparently coming soon, though it’s been on this page for at least a month.
https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/tld-policies/
https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/tld-policies/
It's been on that page since 2001. However, a more recently published article states "Note: We plan to support .dev and .app by mid-July 2023".
https://blog.cloudflare.com/a-step-by-step-guide-to-transfer...
However, it's now mid-July 2023 and still says unsupported on my dashboard.
https://blog.cloudflare.com/a-step-by-step-guide-to-transfer...
However, it's now mid-July 2023 and still says unsupported on my dashboard.
I think it's been listed as coming soon for a lot more than a month. We'll see if it ever arrives.
pierat(1)
I'm very happy with Namecheap. The prices are very reasonable (though I confess I have never really shopped around), the UI is functional and largely gets out of your way and lets you do what you want.
I like OVH for domains
> Now, Gandi will raise the prices of the Standard mailbox plan from €0.35/month to €3.99/month per mailbox, a 1040% increase.