Internet.bs - I am massively impressed.

[GUA]

Just thought I'd post this to give credit where credit is due.

I am looking for a new registrar because Moniker are damn awful nowadays.
I had heard good things about internet.bs, and had used them in the past.

I logged onto their chat, and asked a couple of pretty tough questions, which were answered reasonably well. I acted as that 'difficult' customer, and when I disagreed with a particular answer to a question was treated very well. The support staff member stated that she was not sure of the answer (fair enough), and would direct the question to support staff at a higher level.

Within 3 hours I had a response as follows:

Excellent Tom. As you might have noticed some questions are relatively complex
to answer even if they might look simple and if our realtime chat support team
is unable to provide the correct or complete answer, we always add an extra
comment when we review the chat transcript so you get the most appropriate
answer 100% of the time. Our chat operators are in-house trained to resolve
99.9% of the issues and to answer the most important questions, however there
will always be a question that they cannot answer whether because of some
internal restriction policy or because of the complexity of the matter,
however just after you complete the chat session somebody from the higher
level support will review the answer and correct/adjust them if needed.

About Nominet, you can transfer your domain simply updating the Registrar TAG
from either Nominet side or your Registrar side, both they will accomplish the
same task, however the most common approach is to change the Registrar TAG
from your Registrar (I mean the current Registrar not the new one). Now if you
simply update the Registrar TAG, the domain will be moved to us but we most
probably won't be able to guess under which account you want the domain to be
moved, unless we can guess it from the Registrant's email a new account will
be created, which could be somehow misleading. That's why we recommend to fill
our form before you change the Registrar TAG, this way we will know in advance
that the new domain we are going to receive has to go under an account that
you have specifically designated. Here the form that you should fill before
changing the Registrar TAG:

https://internetbs.net/en/domain-name-registrations/transfer-domain-uk.html

If you have already changed the Registrar TAG, it is no use to fill the above
form, if you have not changed the Registrar tag yet, please use the from above
before changing the Registrar TAG. Once again, the Registrar TAG has to be
changed by either your current Registrar or by Nominet, our form is used only
to designate the account under which the domain will have to go after the
transfer has been completed.

Please note the Registrar TAG change is performed in realtime, so when you
change it, the domain will immediately be moved under our sponsorship, there
is no waiting time, so if you are waiting, something has to be wrong
somewhere.

Best regards,
--
Helen Templeton

I did exactly as directed and the domain was in my account with 5 minutes.

Fantastic support, fantastic people.
I'm very much considering moving my whole portfolio to them.

All the best.

Thomas

 

[ninjadomain]

I really like Internetbs as well!

 

[ohkus]

I use them as well....great domain registrar

 

[DN BROKER]

never mind

 

[ohkus]

i would not use them even with my reg fee domains... no thanks

Would you like to explain why?

 

[DN BROKER]

never mind

 

[DomainMagnate]

Anything outside of USA or Canada I don't use! It's that simple!

With all the recent US laws and happenings it's the other way around, your domains are much safer outside the US..

 

[DN BROKER]

never mind

 

[katherine]

I opened an account there a few days ago to accept a domain push, my first impression is that the CP is not so great but I've never heard anything bad about them so far.

 

[MarcoRinaudo]

I opened an account there a few days ago to accept a domain push, my first impression is that the CP is not so great but I've never heard anything bad about them so far.

do you mean our CP is not so fancy? if so you are absolutely right, we have no special effects, we just go straight to the point, no complex paths to acheive your most important operations and you can perform the same operation in bulk and update 1 or 5000 domains with a single click and of course you can use our API absolutely for free so you can even forget our own interface and script your operations the way you like. Give it a try and if you have any suggestion, please let me know, I'll make sure your precious suggestions will be taken in account during our next deploy.

PS: it might look a simple interface but it is solid and robust and it took 8 years of in-house coding to reach its current version and we keep adding new features on a daily basis...again without any fancy special effect, we like impressing you with results and performance not with visual effects...

PS2: we do not pretend to be perfect, we attempt to do our best and we have grown thanks to our members recommendations and word-of-mouth

 

[ninjadomain]

Keep it the way it is (CP), simple and to the point, no need for unnecessary aggravation!

 

[erdinc]

I agree that internetbs menus are not so great. I don't feel as comfortable using them as I do at namecheap or dynadot. However Dynadot recently pissed me off because they insist not correcting a mistake regarding their expired auctions. Namecheap takes forever to fix problems. I'm not very impressed with any registrar at the moment.

Marco,
Can you please have a look how Dynadot manages contacts? You can set a default profile for your whois contacts and that default profile will be used for:
1. newly hand or api registered domains
2. domains that are pushed into my account
3. domains that are transferred into my account
4. any other case that you can think of

The critical thing is that I can set any email address for that default profile. This way my Dynadot account email is never displayed in the whois. They have a special menu for managing contact details. It lets you edit any profile including your default whois profile without selecting any domain. Once you edit that profile any domain that is using that profile is automatically updated. This makes it possible to exclude your account email from whois forever. No matter what you do, your account email is never displayed in the whois, once you edit your default profile, including existing domains or new domains.

Where is my default whois profile at internetbs? It is nowhere. It doesn't exist. There is only something called "my profile" but that is my account details, not whois details. The most important thing any registrar should do is to separate account details from whois details.

If I don't see a special menu to manage contacts and if I don't see a page that shows my default whois contacts, I'm not going to be impressed by any registrar. So far Dynadot has the best menus for this. However they annoyed me a lot because of their misconfigured auctions platform.

Edit:
There are a few more details worth mentioning at dynadot:
1. When you login to your account and click on a domain it shows you what contact profile that domain is using and you can click a droplist and select a different contact profile.
2. They don't let click on a domain and edit its contacts (which is a good thing). Instead you create a new profile and assign that profile to that domain. At the end no matter how many different profiles you have assigned to how many domains, you can see all your profiles in the contacts menu.
3. When I want to change nameservers, lets say to ns1.sedoparking.com at dynadot I can select it from a droplist without typing it. At internetbs I have to type it.

I understand there is some bulk managing page at internet.bs but I just want to change one domain and I want to do it on the page that opens after I click on a domain.

Edit 2:
Marco,
1. Have you ever considered changing that name? I think not everybody thinks of Bahamas when they hear "BS".
2. Also your site width is low. I would increase the width to 980px.

 

[MarcoRinaudo]

I agree that internetbs menus are not so great. I don't feel as comfortable using them as I do at namecheap or dynadot. However Dynadot recently pissed me off because they insist not correcting a mistake regarding their expired auctions. Namecheap takes forever to fix problems. I'm not very impressed with any registrar at the moment.

Marco,
Can you please have a look how Dynadot manages contacts? You can set a default profile for your whois contacts and that default profile will be used for:
1. newly hand or api registered domains
2. domains that are pushed into my account
3. domains that are transferred into my account
4. any other case that you can think of

The critical thing is that I can set any email address for that default profile. This way my Dynadot account email is never displayed in the whois. They have a special menu for managing contact details. It lets you edit any profile including your default whois profile without selecting any domain. Once you edit that profile any domain that is using that profile is automatically updated. This makes it possible to exclude your account email from whois forever. No matter what you do, your account email is never displayed in the whois, once you edit your default profile, including existing domains or new domains.

Where is my default whois profile at internetbs? It is nowhere. It doesn't exist. There is only something called "my profile" but that is my account details, not whois details. The most important thing any registrar should do is to separate account details from whois details.

If I don't see a special menu to manage contacts and if I don't see a page that shows my default whois contacts, I'm not going to be impressed by any registrar. So far Dynadot has the best menus for this. However they annoyed me a lot because of their misconfigured auctions platform.

Edit:
There are a few more details worth mentioning at dynadot:
1. When you login to your account and click on a domain it shows you what contact profile that domain is using and you can click a droplist and select a different contact profile.
2. They don't let click on a domain and edit its contacts (which is a good thing). Instead you create a new profile and assign that profile to that domain. At the end no matter how many different profiles you have assigned to how many domains, you can see all your profiles in the contacts menu.
3. When I want to change nameservers, lets say to ns1.sedoparking.com at dynadot I can select it from a droplist without typing it. At internetbs I have to type it.

I understand there is some bulk managing page at internet.bs but I just want to change one domain and I want to do it on the page that opens after I click on a domain.

Edit 2:
Marco,
1. Have you ever considered changing that name? I think not everybody thinks of Bahamas when they hear "BS".
2. Also your site width is low. I would increase the width to 980px.

We do actually have the equivalent of Profile, we call it Template and it is accessible under the whois update page, have a look below:

You can create as many Templates as you like and you can even set one of them as the default Template, so all your new registered domains are automatically using it.

Here the screenshot for the Template creation:

Thanks to our powerful bulk update feature, allowing to update thousand of domains at once and with a single click, we have opted for contanct indipendency. In other words, each domain has its own set of contacts and if you update those contacts for another domain, they will not automatically be update for all domains having the same or similar contacts. If you wish to update contacts for a 2 or more domains at once, just use our bulk update feature and stay always in total control of what you do, i.e. no side effects or unexpected domain updates...

About your suggestion to rebrand our name, it is not so easy and I really doubt that somebody is not buying from us just because he does not know what .bs stands for.

 

[erdinc]

OK, I admit you have the template feature and in fact I remembered that I'm already using it. What I don't like is that the templates are not independent. They are tied to individual domains. There is no menu item to manage the templates. They are hidden inside a particular domain. You have to go inside a domain to see there is something called template. Although I used it a few months ago, I have already forgotten about templates because yesterday when I checked I couldn't find them even though I was especially looking for them.

So yes you have the template feature but it is so hidden, somebody who is especially looking for it can not find it. Even after you go inside a domain you have to expand the template area to see it. And even after you find the template menu inside a certain domain, I still don't know how to edit it or how to view it. It is too complicated. I don't want to go inside a domain to manage my default contact details. There should be a top menu item for this. Dynadot has such a menu. I can view, edit and assign a profile as default even if I don't have any domain in my account. Also it shows whether or not a profile is in use (assigned to any domain or none) and if it is use you can see for which domains. I want to manage my contact profiles on an independent page.

When you think about it, the Dynadot method makes more sense. If I have a few hundred domains, I'm not going to have a few hundred different contact profiles. I will have a few. One of them will probably cover 95% of my domains. This is my default contact profile. I want to edit that profile in an independent page and when I edit it I want all domains that are using it to be updated automatically.

Btw, I'm not here to promote Dynadot. They are useless in many things and stubborn as hell. I just like their contact management menu, it is better than anything I used and I used a lot.

You said if I assign a template as default it will be used for new domains. Does this mean it is not used for domains pushed into my account or domains transferred into my account? For these two cases, does my account email end up in the whois? The reason I'm asking is because, this is exactly what happens at namecheap. I have been trying to make them correct this mistake for years. They keep displaying my account email in the whois.

You need to understand that I don't want my account email in the whois. You must NOT show my account email in the whois. Give me the control to prevent this completely. I don't want to fish around inside individual domain controls for such a major feature.

If I had a registrar the first thing you would see after signing in would be a page where it shows my account details on one half and my default whois details on the other half. I would put that directly to the first page you see.

I would even appreciate if you would ask me my whois email when I create an account so that you can create a default whois profile for me that has a different email than my account email, from the very beginning.

This problem is related to security. I don't want my account email to be used ever on the whois. I hate that page called "my profile". What do you mean by my profile. This is not my profile. This is my account details. Use better names. Don't use my account details for my profile.

So here are my suggestions:
1. change "my profile" to "account details".
2. change "template" to "contact profiles"
3. create a new top menu item called "manage contacts"
4. On the manage contacts page make it possible to add, edit and view contact profiles. Also when opening the manage contacts page I want to see a list of contact profiles and next to them the number of domains they are assigned to.
5. Make it so that you can not edit a domains contact profiles without creating a new contact profile that would show up in the manage contacts page. This will ensure that you manage all your contacts in one page.
6. When I go inside a domain the first thing I want to see is a droplist for contact profiles where I can select what profile that domain should use. I don't want to click one more expand button to see this.
7. On the manage contacts page add radio buttons to select the default profile. Obviously only one profile can be default.
8. Deep inside your code in many places it must be reading whois data from account details. You need to clean all that make sure whois data is never populated from account details but it is done from the default contact.
9. Change you name. I can not mention that name to my clients. "Internet BS" sounds too bad.

 

[katherine]

They also own internetbs.net

 

[MarcoRinaudo]

Hi

...

Templates are not tied to a specific domain, yes you have to click on a specific domain to manage them and your suggestion to have a separate place to manage them without having to prior click on a domain is welcome, but once again they are not tied to a domain. A Template can be used for any domain of your choice and can even be used to bulk update thousand of domains in a single click.

About your concern regarding your email published in the public whois, that's NOT going to happen unless you specifically create a domain where you use it. By default we prefill the whois data with either the default template or your initial data you provided but we do NOT create it automatically, meaning that you have to confirm whether you want to use it or not.

PUSHing a domain is not affecting the corresponding whois data, you have to see your account with us as a management place for your domains. You can have thousand of domains each of them with their own whois data completely indipendent from each other. In fact our interface was initially conceived for resellers and domainers, so your personal account data is not automatically used or applied to a domain, you are always in full control of the whois data for each of your domain and we do not automatically use your email for your domains, give it a try.

Please do not be so polemic for a word, we call Profile what you call Account details, we call Whois Template what you call Profile, so far you are the only customer complaining about it and I assure you we will take in account your suggestion, but don't put us under a bad light just because we don't call things the same way you call them, after all there is no rule, what you want is a functional, efficient, performing, extremely safe and economic Registrar and you have to agree with me that with us you are in the right place, once again we are not perfect but we do our best to be as close as possible to perfection

 

[erdinc]

Contact me in a few years when you created when you create those pages to manage contacts.

It is not because of personal preference that I want "my profile" to be called "account details". It is because registrars never understand the difference between account details and whois details. If you start using the correct terms you might start understanding the difference. A profile is the incorrect term to use for account details because a profile implies the possibility of multiple profiles. Is there such a thing as multiple profiles inside one account? No. Then why on earth are you using the incorrect term and arguing with me about your mistake? Just fix the problem and get on with it. A template is a common term in web design industry. For instance wordpress has templates. Using the term template for whois profiles is incorrect.

Anyway, these are not so important. The important thing is you don't have the contact management menus Dynadot has and you don't seem to be willing to listen and improve your site. It is a shame because in an earlier message you wrote that you welcome feedback which is why I wrote here in first place.

If you are not going to listen and improve your site, why do you write such messages? I have only two domains at internet.bs because I wanted to test it. Your prices are all right but the user menus are not as good as they could be.

As for domain push, if I understood you correctly you just admitted a big problem on your site. You said pushing domain doesn't change its whois data. This is very wrong. How could you create something so illogical. Any pushed domain should use my default whois profile. The same goes for transferred domains.

You really need to try much harder to understand what users want. I guess you come from a programming background which would explain why you don't listen and don't try to understand.

The point is I want complete control of all whois contacts of all my domains. I get this control at dynadot because there it is impossible that any domain might have any data in the whois outside the few profiles that I can control in one page.

You created such a system where hundred domains might have 100 different data and it is impossible to control and check anything without spending a ton of a time. I'm sure if I had a few hundred domains the only way for me to control whois data would be to select all and then to edit them all in bulk. Then I would have to repeat this bulk editing regularly just to make sure. The dynadot system removes this requirements. There is no way any domain can have any whois data other than the few profiles I can control. And this is exactly what I want. And you should start listening more.

 

[MarcoRinaudo]

Eric, we listen to suggestions and that's how we have improved our interface and services we offer. Believe me or not we have large domainers and resellers that are very happy with our interface that is "straight to the point". However the fact we have happy customers does not mean we cannot improve our interface even more and we are glad of your feedbacks.

About the PUSH, I have explained you how it works, when you PUSH a domain you move its management from one account to another. Moving the management does not mean changing the Registrant. Those are two distinct things and the fact that you prefer to have those bundled is your personal preference. With us you can PUSH a domain from an account to another without altering any whois data, nameserver listing and so on, everything will stay unchanged. If you want other changes performed prior or after the PUSH you have all the tools to do so in a matter of clicks and even in bulk if so you wish.

 

[erdinc]

If I bought a domain from someone and it was pushed to me, I would want the whois details to show me instead the previous owner. If I sold a domain to someone and I pushed it, I would want it to show the buyers contact details and not mine. Especially with sedo sales the sedo representative checks the whois details to confirm the domain is in buyers hands. I would end up begging the buyer to put his whois details on the domain that is already in his account.

The same happens with escrow.com. Have you ever sold a domain using escrow.com? You push directly to the buyer and the only way escrow will release the funds is if the domain shows buyers whois details.

To me it is unacceptable that I can push a domain but can not force the domain to show the recipients whois details. At namecheap they have both options. You can select whether to keep existing contacts or to use recipients contacts. At least you should add this option so that I can select it when I sell a domain.

The namecheap way is acceptable. If a push would automatically change whois details that would have been acceptable too. However what you are doing (keeping whois details after push) is unacceptable.

I suggest that you create a dynadot account and use them for a while. You need to see it to understand it. For instance when I want to update any domains nameservers I can select from a droplist any nameserver that are in use. I don't need to type. In other words, whenever you assign a nameserver to any domain that nameserver is added to pool which you can actually see on a special page that shows all nameservers in use and you can see what domains are using what nameservers.

As we all know a transfer does not change nameservers. After a transfer to dynadot those new nameserver that come with the newly transferred in domain are also added to the nameserver pool. In other words, just by looking at the nameservers page you can see all nameservers that are in use for all domains. This makes it impossible that a domain might be forgotten set to some old nameservers that are no more needed. Again this is very similar to their contact management feature.

I have used the following registrars:
register.com
networksolutions.com
name.com
namecheap.com
moniker.com
mydomain.com
internet.bs
godaddy.com
enomcentral.com
dynadot.com
bigrock.com

You are one of the good ones. You have some good features. Your prices are better than anybody, most of the time even cheaper than godaddy or dynadot's super bulk prices. You just need to improve your user menus and change your name (look at answerable, it is possible).

 

[MarcoRinaudo]

Erdnic,

we will definetively look at your suggestions, that's how we have created our interface so far, thanks to customer's feedbacks.

About the PUSH, I think there is a misunderstanding somewhere, you can of course update the whois data prior to pushing a domain and you will achieve exactly what you are looking for. The fact of bundling whois update and push in a single operation looks to me as a limitation rather than as an advantage. We offer granularity of operations and that translates in flexibility. With our current PUSH implementation you have the three following options:

1) Update whois prior to PUSH
2) Update whois after PUSH
3) PUSH without changing whois

and once again, all those operations can be performed for an unlimited number of domains at once, just with a single click and that's what our domainers customers are loving...