Namecheap has rebranded

https://www.namecheap.com?rebrand

by aroman • 13 years ago

60 73 13 years ago

It's not too bad. Unfortunately what I really wanted them to change wasn't just the "face" of their website, but the whole website, especially the domain managing features and whatnot. Those kept the same early 2000 design. I'm hoping it's because they didn't have time to finish redesigning everything, but why not just wait until they did?

ted04• 13 years ago

I'm personally working on redesigning the account panel. We're about 6-8 weeks out but what we have so far is a huge improvement. Would love to hear your feedback - ted@namecheap.com

sn0v• 13 years ago

Hey Ted, loving what you and the Namecheap team have done with the website! Would it be possible to add a few mouseover/overlay tutorials in the control panel for new users?

rbol• 13 years ago

Looks nice! Are you planning to compare conversion metrics of the old design vs. the new? That would be very interesting!

MichaelTieso• 13 years ago

A huge reason why I keep recommending you to clients is because it's super simple to manage. Please keep it this way.

tamar8• 13 years ago

What Ted said. This has been a long time coming and we wanted to roll it out in phases while we work out the kinks in parts rather than altogether.

It's a tremendous undertaking and we appreciate your feedback :)

booruguru• 13 years ago

I love the new look. It's very clean, warm and inviting. I look forward to the control panel getting a similar facelift.

However, regarding the landing page, I think the teal background for the customer quotes negatively affects readability and the text seems to big. Perhaps displaying one quote at time, within a slider, would be more appealing.

nikcub• 13 years ago

Ive been using namecheap for years and I still get lost in the menus and interface every time I login to do a simple task.

javajosh2• 13 years ago

It costs $10 a year for a name. How much computation is Namecheap doing for that ten bucks, in general?

ted04• 13 years ago

computation?

javajosh2• 13 years ago

Oh yes I was idly wondering how much it costs per name to run a registry - ignoring the e-commerce side.

tamar8• 13 years ago

You can go to namecheap.com > Domains > Pricing to get our entire pricing details.

hierro4• 13 years ago

Just a heads up if you're planning on using namecheap. I transferred a bunch of domains (around 70 or so) and they just refused to provide me with an invoice, so I couldn't deduct the expenses from my company's taxes. They will only sent you receipts, which are completely useless if you're in EU (and I think refusing to provide an invoice is even illegal here).

tamar8• 13 years ago

We don't and have never had a system for invoices--nor have I seen that anywhere else. You do get a whole record of your purchases with the full amount spent.

We do appreciate the feedback though while we build out the interface even further!

Tohhou• 13 years ago

1. Build system for giving invoices

2. Enjoy having less businesses do business with you

trentmb• 13 years ago

1&1 provides invoices...

hierro4• 13 years ago

I voiced my feedback before I left, several times in fact. Not that it stopped you from sending me emails asking why I was transferring the domains out.

melvinmt• 13 years ago

You should know that most US companies don't do full-fledged European style invoices. Who told you receipts are useless for company expenses though, that's simply not true.

hierro4• 13 years ago

In my experience, most US companies don't provide EU style invoices for everyone, but every single time I've asked for one, I got it, except for namecheap - and trust me, I asked multiple times. Receipts are useless in most EU countries, since you need a valid invoice to claim the expense. That includes listing both the buyer and seller legal names, addresses, what was sold, etc... as well as VAT numbers (or local equivalent).

aspratley• 13 years ago

You don't need an invoice for a company expense. How do you think people claim back for things bought in a shop?

riffraff• 13 years ago

In some(? european?) countries you can't deduct stuff bought in a shop from taxes unless you have an invoice.

hierro4• 13 years ago

Not everyone is in US. See my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7086631. If you want to claim an expense for something you bought in a shop, you need to ask for an invoice at the time of the sale. In fact, even non-business entities can ask for an invoice (even if it's useless to them) and is illegal for the seller to refuse.

nostromo• 13 years ago

I think "Register your domains from just $3.98 a year" was better than "The Internet Needs People. To tell stories, open stores and share what matters."

goutmaximum• 13 years ago

As a long time namecheap customer, I am completely lost on this website. Ok, I agree, it looks very modern but "The internet needs people" is less likely to make me sign up for a domain than "Register your domains for 9$".

pravda• 13 years ago

Anything is better then "The Internet Needs People. To tell stories, open stores and share what matters." Talk about going full-retard. Or full-Oprah.

The Internet needs registrars that publish their prices.

Ok, I found the pricing page. You have to scroll down to the bottom.

huwtheperson• 13 years ago

The internet also needs registrants who are willing to let go of domain names. Everything worthwhile seems to be taken.

tamar8• 13 years ago

I commented elsewhere that you can find the pricing page. It's not that hidden and the pricing is not super expensive. We're a pretty ethical bunch at Namecheap. We have donated over $200k to EFF in the last 2-3 years and will be doing a similar initiative soon. Give us a try and I think you'll agree.

patio113• 13 years ago

Dirty little secret of the domain registration industry: all the money is in upsells to email, shared hosting, pre-rolled $30 a month shopping carts, etc. Domains themselves are cheap and fairly low margin.

You know who buys those comparatively expensive high-margin services? SMB owners and people planning to be one. Suffice it to say that Oprah is slightly more well-known than (pick a tech personage) in that demographic.

This is also why GoDaddy brands with supermodels rather than with "You'll love our automated tools to assist with SSL renewals." (Which, FWIW, are pretty good.)

P.S. Fun fact about GAAP revenue recognition which Bob Parsons hates with a burning passion: Suppose I spend $1,000 on domain purchases or renewals this year. How much revenue does GoDaddy book? Answer: $200 or so, because I renew for 5 years at a time, and they can only book a prorated amount of the $1k per day. The remaining $800 sits on their balance sheet as a liability. If they spend the corresponding cash prior to 2018, as an accounting matter, it looks like they are in debt to Kalzumeus Software. This is crazy to me as an operator, because I cannot ask for that money back and because I know that the carrying cost of my business to them is so close to zero as to be unmeasurable, but it makes the business look artificially over leveraged.

yummyfajitas3• 13 years ago

That fact of GAAP accounting actually makes sense. Suppose after 1 year, GoDaddy screws up and botches your registration. Your domain is permanently gone. Now GoDaddy owes you $800.

So yes, booking it as debt GoDaddy owes you which they pay down in services actually does make sense. It's extremely low risk debt, but debt nonetheless.

antr• 13 years ago

"This is crazy to me as an operator"

But they are in debt, they are in debt with their customers. What would be crazy is to recognise a 5 year service commitment as 1 year. This is no different from how the NYT, The Economist, National Geographic... account for the yearly subs. http://www.fasb.org/revenue_recognition.shtml

Imagine that GoDaddy is acquired by another company, and this other company wants to pivot GoDaddy's business into only hosting. The new owners need to recognise that there is cash in the balance sheet from domain registration services, a service that is yet to be offered. It could even be the case that that cash from domain registrations is no longer in the balance sheet, but has already been distributed as a dividend. If GoDaddy stops providing a service it has committed to, they have to pay back customers. Plain and simple. That to me is a liability, but it is not financial "leverage" or debt as you imply. This liability is noted as "Prepaid revenues" and hence not recognised as financial debt a.k.a leverage.

torkins• 13 years ago

As others have said this GAAP/FASB principle makes sense. The only thing I'll add is that you mentioned not being able to ask for that money back. The accounting activity involved in a refund of prepaid liabilities would be to reduce both their cash and their prepaid liabilities. This would be a perfectly sensible transaction, so GoDaddy could certainly accommodate this from an accounting perspective.

tamar8• 13 years ago

Let me tell you a dirty little Namecheap secret:

We're the company that most people go to because there aren't any upsells.

see you soon? ;)

jordan_litko• 13 years ago

Yup, so much better. As someone who knows namecheap and what they offer very well, I know all the features are there, and with that knowledge the redesign doesn't look to bad. But this is a very ambiguous homepage to a new visitor. The old homepage may have been cluttered but you could just FEEL what they were offering. I don't think this flat design trend applied to all industries.

vxxzy2• 13 years ago

It seems namecheap is more concerned about small business and/or side projects. The market for small, "I'll try this thing out" sort of people: that is the market they, NameCheap, seem to be luring. Eventually, except in rare circumstance, the sites do not do too well and are sent back into Tao.

vxxzy2• 13 years ago

The $ in credit card processing...

tamar8• 13 years ago

We'd love to hear your feedback on where you get that impression. We speak to lots of small business owners, but we also speak to everyone. The Internet needs people--and that is a blanket term. ;)

sergiotapia• 13 years ago

Aw shucks - I thought it was a complete site overhaul judging by their new landing page.

It seems they took the old client area and just plopped it into an iframe. :(

tamar8• 13 years ago

As we mention elsewhere in the comments, this is phase one of a multiple-phase project. Stay tuned, Sergio. ;)

nathan_f77• 13 years ago

Haha yeah, it was a bit of a downer when I logged in to see that

asdfs• 13 years ago

Hosted e-mail pricing is broken. "/yr" should change to "/<length of time>" when you change from yearly to monthly/biannual.

level09• 13 years ago

Somehow the logo reminded me directly of "The next web" logo.

MichaelGG• 13 years ago

I was hoping it'd be a new name. While Namecheap seems like a great registrar, the name alone seems to put people off when I recommend them.

ChrisNorstrom2• 13 years ago

You know what that's so true. I avoided NameCheap the first few times specifically because of the name. Sounds like a guy running a company out of his basement. And with domain names being worth $2,000+ and on rare occasions getting hijacked and stolen, "cheap" doesn't sound like a good thing.

"I'm looking for a construction company, anyone know a good one.", "Oh yeah I use Cheap Construction Co. they're great!"... "Yeah no thanks."

virtualwhys• 13 years ago

Namecheap allowed me to escape from GoDaddy; for that alone I am deeply thankful.

That the transition was seemless and, well, cheap, was an added bonus.

ing33k• 13 years ago

I like the new design, but they should have done it progressively. ( not jumping from 95 design to 2014 design at once )

poopsintub• 13 years ago

Seriously? You want them to spend thousands of dollars to show you a site that looks like it's from 2000 for the next six months, only to redo it more modern?

rrpadhy• 13 years ago

My first impression was "Are they pivoting to become a social network?"

:( I need to stop thinking pivots.

ChrisNorstrom2• 13 years ago

Happy NameCheap customer with 35+ domains here.

This is the worst redesign I've seen in a long time but has a really well redesigned logo. Sorry. Looks like they're trying to fit their content in one of those Generic Fad Layout Templates you find on ThemeForest. The LOGO is awesome though.

● Registering a domain is now harder. Before I could select a dropdown menu and see all the TLD options. Now I can't.

● Did you know that NameCheap sells .es domains? Guess how many screens you have to click through to find that out.

● Did you know NameCheap .coms are only $10 while other sites sell them for $14. Because this design doesn't tell you anything.

● I have to scroll so much to get so little. White space is good in moderation but this is just overdone. There's so little content and so much white space and meaningless grey elements and slideshows and giant icons that it makes the site look sterile.

● There's a slideshow with only 2 slides, one of them talking about Web Hosting (to sell web hosting plans), the other about Security (to sell ssl certificates). No other data. No other info. How many people do you think are going to click the second slide and find out that NameCheap sells really cheap ssl certificates.

● Lots of garbage information is taking up space.

● Less functional than the previous design.

● Some of the worst copywrite I've seen. "The internet needs people" and "Getting your site online is easier than you think."

● It tries to advertise NameCheap (poorly) and what it does (poorly) rather than letting me do it. Look, you guys won, I'm already ON your site. Stop selling your "image" to me and start selling your products and services.

Hopefully when their sales drop they'll revert to the previous layout and work off of that.

emocakes2• 13 years ago

I kinda sorta agree, at default zoom level, everything is way way way oversized, the logo rocks though.

goldenkey• 13 years ago

As a customer with over 100 domains, the new redesign is quite the eyesore. My main reason for choosing Namecheap was because it was technically designed, minimalistic, and had good prices. The new design says flat hipsterism with a splash of web 2.0 fruityness. It's not in the spirit of Namecheap. Something tells me that this design came from an external source. Why change for changesake? Eek.

hdra• 13 years ago

How is the old website minimalistic? While I do agree the new design is confusing and put too much in form over function, the old website is way too cluttered IMO.

joelrunyon• 13 years ago

Over 100+ domains. Took me a bit to figure out where to login.

Once I did the backend is completely the same :-/. That's not terrible, but it looks incredibly awkward next to the new design.

By "rebrand" I thought they were changing name, etc - but it seems like the whole thing is less clear.

emocakes2• 13 years ago

The menu on the right cuts off at the bottom of my screen and there is no way to scroll it down. Also, the default font size is too darn big, zoom out to 75%, thats how it should look.

They haven't rethemed the manage pages yet, looks hilariously out of place x)

bosch• 13 years ago

Hopefully, they get higher quality support reps with better understanding of English. I'd also like the ability to be able to call someone, that's something that GoDaddy does better. I guess they take advantage of the cheaper technical salaries in Eastern Europe though so that's why customers aren't able to talk to someone.

mmanfrin• 13 years ago

The account page looks 100% the same as it was, they only changed the header.

Now things look out of place.

tamar8• 13 years ago

Two Namecheap employees commented already about this saying that the account area's redesign is also underway ;)

tristanperry• 13 years ago

As patio11 says, the margin on domains are fairly small and so many domain companies survive on the upsells instead. Verisign's current .com price is $7.85 and for .net is $5.62. This is the minimum that the registrars (GoDaddy, NameCheap etc) need to pay - so when you think that NameCheap sometimes sell .coms for $8.95, the margin really is small... especially since I've left out the $0.25 ICANN transaction fee (many companies - GoDaddy aside - include this in the overall price). So a $8.95 .com sale leaves just $0.85.

So it does make sense for domain companies to market themselves as sellers of an online presence, instead of a sub-$10 domain name.

But having said that, the website seems a tad... boilerplate. I thought that big companies were done with rebranding to a Web 2.0 esque corporate web design?

Also the footer is 865 pixels tall on my 1920x1080p screen - does it really need to be that big?

I don't mean to be too critical - I do support the change to selling a 'story' instead of a domain name. But the design just seems... outdated?

nader• 13 years ago

Much better, now they just need to get their client interface modernised :)

fire_starter• 13 years ago

Affordable & Unlimited Hosting From Escalate is only $1.89/Month. Not only do they always have a special offer going on, but they have a huge variety of services and probably the most reliable support I've dealt with (GoDaddy & HostGator sucked!)

They're honestly worth checking out, if anything else http://www.escalatehosting.com/special/645199

xref• 13 years ago

Oh man, it looks like iOS threw up all over this redesign. What's the extra popout menu on the right for? it's all the same stuff from your navbar. And why are all the account management tools shoved in a tiny menu in the corner of the screen even when I'm logged in?

Namecheap has rebranded

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