Domain Diary

If you’re into domaining, you must be aware of Monte Cahn and one of his companies - Moniker. They position themselves as “The Most Secure and Customer Service Driven Domain Name Registrar in the World!”. According to some fellow domainers (including Dave Zan, one of the biggest authorities in the field), Moniker has to be THE best and really most secure registrar out there. However, I would like to give you my personal impressions and experiences so far, while dealing with them. The full chronology:

• 2006 02 05. Wrote an email to sales [AT] moniker [DOT] com asking for the special pricing. Their standart USD18.99 pricing scheme wasn’t appealing for me at all. Asked for the level 3 (USD12.95 new registrations, USD10.99 transfers and renewals) pricing. No answer for a week.
• 2006 02 12. Repeated the email. No answer for a 4 days.
• 2006 02 16. Repeated the email with copy and a half-angry (but VERY polite) note to Monte himself. Answer was in my mailbox after 20-25 minutes. To be exact, 2 answers within 10 minutes interval - both of them apologised, telling that they had severe mail problems during last days, while migrating their systems. One was telling me that my pricing was reduced to USD8.95 (level 5), another asking for my customer number, so that pricing could be reduced to USD6.95. I thanked both guys, particularly the second one, pointing out to him that 6.95 isn’t what I asked and that I’ll NOT give him my customer number . However, pricing still was reduced to 6.95. Later, an email from Monte himself arrived, apologising and asking is everything in order.
• 2006 02 16 - the same day. Ordered a transfer from RegisterFly. Became aware of rather BIG glitch in their system which sent transfer authorisation e-mail to rapid@registerfly.com instead of me - the admin contact. Wrote to support [AT] moniker [DOT] com asking how to proceed. After 2 hours received an answer, asking me for my credit card details. Have filled their online payment information form and advised support about this. After another 2 hours came reply asking for the CVV code (I swear, they weren’t asking me for this on the online form!). Replied. Transfer began. Nice… Support promised to inform their engineers about the glitch. Nice…
• 2006 02 18. Registered domaindiary.net. Everything went as smooth as possible. Haven’t figured out how to change registrant/admin/tech/billing emails for half an hour. Losed all patience and settled for domain privacy for additional USD2.00

So far, I can see the following pros and cons:

Pros:

1. Very nice people when you’re lucky enough to get hold of them;
2. CEO that actually *REPLIES* to emails.

Cons:

1. Support isn’t 24×7;
2. Using M$ Outlook instead of something like Cerberus Helpdesk or Kayako to manage support issues and tickets. Not very professional…
3. Control panel is somewhat complicated for new people like me.

However, I WILL transfer all my personal domains to Moniker, both from RegisterFly (because of lack of support and non-functioning control panel) and GoDaddy (because of humilating TOS). Wish me luck.