I missed moving my personal portfolio .co from GoDaddy to Namecheap when it renewed last week and got hit with a $55 bill.
EDIT: I'd really like to know why I got down voted on this. My renewal this year was twice the price. Everything at GoDaddy seems to be double what every body else charges and it's fair to be unimpressed with still having legacy products stuck at their company even if I didn't notice/it's my fault.
I had a $55 charge from them on my credit card. The page that told me what it was was buried under six clicks. It's shady.
GoDaddy will also be able charge your old expired credit card.
A few years ago my dad had mistakenly signed up for some dark pattern "premium" SEO/marketing service on GoDaddy for one of his domains. It was over $600 a year and was near useless.
Cancelling this "service" was behind multiple clicks. He gave up on cancelling mistakenly thinking that since his old card had expired he would have a chance to cancel at at a renewal.
Of course GoDaddy was able to charge another $629 on an expired credit card...
Moved all the domains in my family from GoDaddy to Namecheap with no regrets.
The problem with .com is that it is both popular and heavily squatted. You'll potentially need to use a non-English word or two or more words to describe your business or website.
.io is still squatted, but much easier game. And it makes sense in our field.
As an example, I wanted a common English word name for my startup. The .com is owned by a squatting firm that balked at a $1M dollar offer. They want eight figures, no less. The .io, on the other hand, is listed at mid-five figures. Considerable delta between those two. Once you start doing business and begin to grow, you can potentially negotiate to lease the .com and redirect. Set up a lease to buy if you exit.
Hmm, it made me thinking that there is one more way to get it cheaper than $8 - use "value of the currency". There are many EU countries with inflation problems, where you can buy domains using their local currency - for example PLN. Currently, 8 USD is worth 32.56 PLN [0]. There are few registrars where you can get .com for 30.99 PLN [1], which is a bit cheaper than $8.
If their DNS service goes down, I can transfer to another DNS in about 2h. I tested that. The bigger problem is if Cloudflare's AI bans my account and I lose access to their Registrar.
My hope is that Cloudflare is small enough that it still has human beings in control of their AI. Unlike Google's AI which can’t be bargained with, can’t be reasoned with, which doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or sympathy. I have friends at Google, but I don't have any confidence that they will be able to help when their Terminator strikes.
I'm in the process of de-Googlifying my digital life as much as possible. Getting out of Google Domains into Cloudflare was the first step. Setting up backup accounts and workflows that will continue work after a catastrophic Google AI termination can be a bit tricky.
Cloudflare renews ".com" for $8.57 USD/year (if anyone is looking for cheaper; not sure if they are the cheapest). Namecheap seemed to have the lowest price for ".io" for a while.
The Base Cost of a .com is $8 then there a $4,000 annual ICANN fee for the Accredited Register such costs are spread over how ever many domains under their management of course name cheap has over 10 million domains under management so that fee is nothing per domain. It can price out small competitors though
