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Comment by TZubiri

8 hours ago

If your business strategy involves going with a vendor with 'cheap' in the name, that's probably the Root Cause of most issues that arise from that vendor

7 comments

TZubiri

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neya  7 hours ago

They used to be great, I had 30+ domains with them and support used to be great. They got acquired by PE and went downhill.

  • ak217  39 minutes ago

    Some of us are old enough to remember the great GoDaddy-Namecheap exodus!

    These days I can't imagine using anything other than AWS or Cloudflare.

freecodeio  7 hours ago

namecheap was decent, unfortunately the lesson people need to learn is that not everything stays decent, not in the current share-holder asskissing climate

  • TZubiri  4 hours ago

    If the business proposition is being "cheap", then they will have to undercut everyone

    If you undercut everyone, they will undercut competitors with the same strategy

    If a cheap competitor undercuts a cheap competitor margins will tend to zero

    If a competitor is pricing at zero and you need to undercut them, you will operate at a loss

    Eventually the company will either shut down, or be liquidated, its valuable assets (the existing contracts and list of customers) will be bought by competitor or Private Equity.

    This is common in domains, thousands of registrars get acquired by a megacorp, see NewFold Digital.

    So in essence, when the business proposition is being cheap, the natural consequence is the business dying and being sold for parts to a purchaser that will have to degrade the cost to value relationship that got the customers in the first place.

    • AnthonyMouse  2 hours ago

      > If the business proposition is being "cheap", then they will have to undercut everyone

      Consider a market with three suppliers.

      Supplier A charges $12.00 and is widely regarded to be The Worst. Their only support is a broken chatbot with a tendency to lock your account at random and their UI is full of dark patterns that trigger hidden fees.

      Supplier B charges $12.50 and is widely regarded to be a reasonable operator that will rarely screw you and offers basic no-frills service.

      Supplier C charges $20.00 and is widely regarded to be a reasonable operator that will rarely screw you and offers a bunch of convenience features and integration with WordPress or something.

      Which one are you going to choose? Maybe C if you want the convenience features, maybe B if you want the lower price, but never A, right?

      Now suppose you're B and you want to pick a name that emphasizes that you have a lower price than C.