No one should use GoDaddy, ever; there are many other registrars in their price range that don't share their onerous practices with regards to transfer, takedown, security and privacy and which have much better customer service.
Namecheap as well. I used to be on GoDaddy and sure, everything they do is spelled out but why do they have to make every transaction so annoying and difficult? So many screwy add-on options. Namecheap just keeps it simple to me.
The only thing with Namecheap is that I got a little confused when the whois guard stuff (or whatever they call it) didn't apply like it expected. My memory is a little fuzzy about the scenario right now but I bought three whois guards, applied one and then the other two couldn't be applied to my other domains. I ended up having to get support involved but they cleared it up within an hour. A little confusing? yeah. Annoying? no.
I'll chime in. I've been using them since 2007. For me, they're nice and straight-forward. They don't offer any bulk discounts (NN% off for 5 years, etc), but they do occasionally hold sales.
They also raised their rates a few times. When I first joined, they were $8.88/mo. Then they went to $9.29/mo, then $9.69/mo, and now $10.16/mo. Arguably, this may be one of their downsides, but I've never minded. I believe other registrars were also raising their rates around the same time too. (NOTE: prices include the ICANN fee.)
You realize VeriSign increases the registry fee 7% each year. NameCheap from my calculation is actually eating into their own margin each year slightly.
I used to use them back in around 2004, love the company, owner is wonderful. Only reason I don't use them is I got a much better deal at Fabulous.com which is designed for large portfolios. I still recommend them to basically anyone looking for a registrar that isn't holding 100 domains or more.
Not the person you asked but I've used namecheap for 3 years now and haven't had any issues, the whoisgaurd they offer is cheap when it comes up for renewal and you don't have to have a card or anything on file for when renewals come up, they do email you a bit when they do but I don't mind that.
The interface isn't going to win any awards and most of my domains use linodes dns so I can't say how well their dns stacks up.
I also have a few domains on nearlyfreespeech which is quite a bit down on the interface but their terms are great.
>The interface isn't going to win any awards and most of my domains use linodes dns so I can't say how well their dns stacks up.
Their DNS has been fantastic for me. Very straightforward interface, and even has a few nice touches like being able to automatically set up mx records for you if you use Google Apps on that domain.
Only a couple times in the last year, just used them to register the name for the startup my wife and I are hacking on, however they came highly recommended by a friend of mine and Googling turned up many happy customers.
I've got most domains with omnis.com now - still have some with godaddy, but I move them over when I can. omnis has been fine for me for the past 2-3 years, haven't had price increases yet, and I get a small discount > 50 domains - my per domain cost is $8.20/year IIRC.
