NameCheap sucks - URL redirection
I just talked with NameCheap live support and here's what they told me:
we are having a technical issue with forwarding at the moment
That's their answer to my question as to why domains using default NameCheap nameservers and URL redirection (301 or standard 302) do not work (again!) and we get a "The server at domain.com is taking too long to respond."
Now, this is far from new. NameCheap had been under a DDoS attack in October last year which made all of their domains using NameCheap DNS servers, unusable. That is, you could use their domains if you parked them on some hosting and changed the nameservers. You could not use them if they were on NC DNS servers and using CNAME, URL Redirect, URL Frame or any other form of redirection. That means affiliate URL redirection, affiliate URL cloaking, Blogger blogs using CNAME alias; they were all down for a few days, and some people lost a lot of money.
Then just a week ago there had been a Connection failed: too many connections showing up instead of domains using URL redirection. Apparently it was either some technical problems or a DDoS attack on NameCheap again.
Now this is happening once more, and while NameCheap support say they are working on fixing it ASAP, I am rather disillusioned with their service and looking for an alternative. I've been registering domains at NC for use in cloacking and redirecting affiliate links, since they offer low price and free Whois protection. However this "domain downtime" is unacceptable. Hosting problems I am familiar with; however, I haven't even heard of domains themselves not working before this NameCheap fiasco. How hard can it be to simply redirect a domain to another URL?!
The truth is, NameCheap sucks, and hard. The fastest tech support is useless if all they can tell me is that "they're working on it" and in the mean time the domain redirection is timing out. They even delete all the (polite!) posts that their members post on NameCheap forum about the redirection problem, or say that "it's a problem with your browser cache".
OK, I guess that's enough of the ranting. If anyone has any suggestions of a good alternative to NameCheap where I could buy .com and .net domains under $10 and get a free or cheap whois protection, please let me know. All I care about is fast and stable domain redirection. I used to think this comes without saying, but NameCheap proved me otherwise.
8 comments:
Ah, they are actually letting everyone know this time:
https://support.namecheap.com/index.php?_m=news&_a=viewnews&newsid=155
So I guess I will just switch to Backup DNS and wait up to 24 hours for the changes to propagate and hope that redirection works then.
Ooops wait, I can't. It gives me the following error:
"Unable to retrieve DNS Hosts information
DNS Hosts information was returned in an invalid format"
Good job, NameCheap!
Hey,
Yes I'm having the same problem, was doing some research and came across your post.
It was happening yesterday as well.
Very annoying. It also seems that they have taken down the support page you mentioned in your comment as I can't reach it.
Strange as this is actually the first problem I've had with them, although it is a big problem.
Why don't you try using the backup dns servers instead? This will put you on enom's dns servers instead of namecheap's dns servers. If the problem is specific to namecheap, this may solve your problem.
I have in fact tried that, but like I said, it just gave me this error:
"Unable to retrieve DNS Hosts information
DNS Hosts information was returned in an invalid format"
Obviously, while the namecheap DNS hosts are down or under attack, you will likely have trouble switching to the backup dns servers.
What I'm saying is that if you suspect that the namecheap dns server problems have been and will be recurring, you can switch to the backup dns servers at enom now that the main namecheap servers are back up, so that the next time the main namecheap servers go down or are DDOSed, you will not be affected by the problem. Just hope that the enom servers do not suffer the same problem.
This happens more times than not. It's happening AGAIN! I still get charged for each click on PPC campaigns even though the site FAILS! I contacted live support and all they can say is "We're working on it" BS. They are costing me money! I need to relocate to another provider!
anyone knows anything about problems with Namecheap on Oct 26, 2009 (now)?
anyone knows anything about problems with Namecheap on Oct 26, 2009 (now)?
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