Who is the best domain registrar for resellers today?

[Jade D]

Yup if this is the case then its time to move, we are fortunate in that DNS.business have offered us cost price to move domains in so we encourage our clients to migrate at cost and do this in bulk.

Will have to get a mail sent out tomorrow and start migrating because this is BS, and I told them (Centralnic) this was a stupid idea a few months back when they engaged with us asking us to move all of our domains over.

Despite the monthly amount being marginal, $6 or what ever it was, its about principle.

OpenSRS pulled similar sketchy unethical * and we moved from them to Hexonet

[PapaKai]

14 hours ago, Web Host Pro said:

So you'll have to transfer the domains or have them moved to CentralNic. It's all such a pain 🙄

We will be migrating your portfolio from Hexonet ot CentralNic Reseller, so at least by that not more work than signing up and to switch TLDs, Domains, Lookup Provider in WHMCS from HEXONET to CentralNic Reseller after the Migration (while using our CNR Registrar Module, not the one of WHMCS).
-> WHMCS - Migration from HEXONET to CentralNic Reseller – Hexonet Support Center

14 hours ago, Mandalorian said:

Mergers & Acquisitions like that are always to monopolise and fleece the partners and end-users that helped make the platform a success. That's greedy inconsiderate capitalism for you.

Honestly, from technical side, I can forward that this merger is a mandatory step. We maintain two Registrar Systems (HEXONET and CNR) which are highly similar. On both sides, we see a huge lack of man power, plus separate infrastructure and related costs. A merger is here for us mainly to improve such things and not for milking customers. Again, that's just my point from technical side. Mergers are a hard topic, for both sides. Please, don't get me wrong - I just want to offer a different view to that - my intension is not to proactively add arguments speaking for Team Internet. I just see this going into a wrong direction. There are other reasons behind that merger. Acquisitions and Mergers are happening everywhere in the domain industry, you can't expect it will ever stop at your registrar of trust - while I fully agree that you should find a way to continue with your loyal customers.

Still, there's the pricing topic... let me also forward, that I shared the ongoings with Management and my personal frustration as well. It is not that funny to work for years proactively for customers, offering premium customer support, reacting even over the weekend on messages, pushing for your WHMCS needs and now to finally see this ending here.

15 hours ago, Mandalorian said:

... the partners and end-users that helped make the platform a success.

I mentioned exactly that also in my escalation message as well.

Probably, this is one of my last comments here as I can't change things and all this is not my scope. However it continues, it was a pleasure working with you.

[Evolve Web Hosting]

@PapaKai I want to give a big thank you to you and your development team. You guys have always been awesome and still are.

This lack of communication from the Sales Team at Team Internet is unacceptable. I have had a ticket open with them for over 2 weeks now and not a single reply. Then of course, there is the pricing issue. I don't want to leave either, it's a real pain to do so. At the same time, I can't force such a large price increase on our customers because of a merger. Team Internet should really entertain the idea of honoring the current pricing structure for those of us being moved from Hexonet to CentralNIC. I'm sure the company will be better off doing this.

[Abel]

Hi everyone, interesting comments from everyone. I have looked for the general price table at https://www.webnic.cc/whmcs-domain/ and I have not found it, can someone please give me the link. Thanks.

[Kuhl, Rubens]

On 12/1/2024 at 1:58 AM, Abel said:

Hi everyone, interesting comments from everyone. I have looked for the general price table at https://www.webnic.cc/whmcs-domain/ and I have not found it, can someone please give me the link. Thanks.

They only mention promotional first 50 .com domains pricing. Hard to find prices is a bad sign and I would probably look elsewhere for my business; many options have already been mentioned in this topic. 

 

[DennisHermannsen]

Hey, all!

Been a few weeks since my last look at this thread. My initial thought was that we would go with DynaDot, but they do not support a lot of the TLDs we already offer. We had also ruled out OpenProvider initially because we had to pay them a yearly membership subscription.
However... We've spent the last month crunching numbers and comparing various providers, and OpenProvider looks to be the best alternative. Even though we have to pay a yearly fee, we are saving thousands of euros every year because we get no markup on domain prices.

We have been speaking with OpenProvider for the past week and signed up yesterday, getting a nice discount for the first year. Apparently, we are not the first one to contact them regarding the CentralNic migration. If I understood correctly, they have methods to take care of the migration from Hexonet/CentralNic to OpenProvider.

Another incentive for us to move to OpenProvider is the fact they we can authenticate our domain and have them send emails on our behalf (such as WDRP messages). This is something I've been requesting from Hexonet for years because we had a lot of clients that were suspicious of emails coming from @ispapi.net, claiming to be sent on behalf of us.

Oh, and they respond to tickets very quickly. We don't have to wait days or weeks. Looking at you, CentralNic.

Hexonet has just announced that the migration dates have been moved (May 2025 instead of Feb 2025 IIRC). This gives us plenty of time to move everything. Initially, we thought we would actually need to top up our CNR accounts with 75$ - but it looks like that's no longer the case 😁

 

My boss is no longer annoyed about the migration. We are gonna save a bunch of money with minimal effort - and we get better service by the looks of it.

[Kuhl, Rubens]

Their subscription to get at-cost pricing is optional, but as you found out, it's worth it. The reason is that it allows them to not work on guesstimates regarding different TLD demands. 

[efisher]

37 minutes ago, DennisHermannsen said:

Hey, all!

Been a few weeks since my last look at this thread. My initial thought was that we would go with DynaDot, but they do not support a lot of the TLDs we already offer. We had also ruled out OpenProvider initially because we had to pay them a yearly membership subscription.
However... We've spent the last month crunching numbers and comparing various providers, and OpenProvider looks to be the best alternative. Even though we have to pay a yearly fee, we are saving thousands of euros every year because we get no markup on domain prices.

We have been speaking with OpenProvider for the past week and signed up yesterday, getting a nice discount for the first year. Apparently, we are not the first one to contact them regarding the CentralNic migration. If I understood correctly, they have methods to take care of the migration from Hexonet/CentralNic to OpenProvider.

Another incentive for us to move to OpenProvider is the fact they we can authenticate our domain and have them send emails on our behalf (such as WDRP messages). This is something I've been requesting from Hexonet for years because we had a lot of clients that were suspicious of emails coming from @ispapi.net, claiming to be sent on behalf of us.

Oh, and they respond to tickets very quickly. We don't have to wait days or weeks. Looking at you, CentralNic.

Hexonet has just announced that the migration dates have been moved (May 2025 instead of Feb 2025 IIRC). This gives us plenty of time to move everything. Initially, we thought we would actually need to top up our CNR accounts with 75$ - but it looks like that's no longer the case 😁

 

My boss is no longer annoyed about the migration. We are gonna save a bunch of money with minimal effort - and we get better service by the looks of it.

We just made the move too to OpenProvider.  Their prices are great, and their support has been very good so far.  If you need any of the other services they offer, then the annual fee easily pays for itself.  I agree, that this is the first registrar I've ever worked with that allowed for the emails to use both a completely customizable template, but also will send using our return address.   

I'm not so sure about methods to migrate from Hexonet, as it all seems very manual.  There is a bulk transfer option, but that is a one-time activity and not done at time of renewal.  One feature of Hexonet that I will miss is their registrar migration module, where at time of renewal it orders a transfer instead.  Maybe if enough of us start asking for that, they will consider adding a similar feature .  If we had that, then there would be no effort required to move to them for sure.

Lastly, must be nice that they sent you an email about the migration dates moving.  Their communication has been so poor that I haven't even seen that announcement.  They used to be such a good company not very long ago, but ever since they decided to merge their platforms they basically stopped caring.  So sad.

Edited December 6 by efisher

[Web Host Pro]

Centralnic started charging me a monthly fee as well raising my prices. I never agreed to it, but who cares about telling people what you'll charge them before they deposit money. I can't wait to migrate away from Hexonet and Centralnic. Super shadyness 😡 

I'm migrating to Enom for now, 

[DennisHermannsen]

16 minutes ago, efisher said:

One feature of Hexonet that I will miss is their registrar migration module, where at time of renewal it orders a transfer instead. 

That's a hook I developed and sold to Hexonet. They've probably expanded it a lot though as this was many years ago.
When I asked OpenProvider about it, they said they had a similar feature for WHMCS. If not, I'll just create one from scratch again. It's really dead simple:

• Intercept the domain registration with the PreRegistrarRenewDomain hook point
  • Be aware that WHMCS will send the "Domain Renewal Failed", so you might want to abort sending this email as well
• Use the providers API to transfer the domain instead
• Write logic for TLDs that aren't renewed during transfer - these would to be renewed after transfer

That's basically it. It's not even 100 lines of code.

I still have the code but I can't share it.

[efisher]

36 minutes ago, DennisHermannsen said:

That's a hook I developed and sold to Hexonet. They've probably expanded it a lot though as this was many years ago.
When I asked OpenProvider about it, they said they had a similar feature for WHMCS. If not, I'll just create one from scratch again. It's really dead simple:

• Intercept the domain registration with the PreRegistrarRenewDomain hook point
  • Be aware that WHMCS will send the "Domain Renewal Failed", so you might want to abort sending this email as well
• Use the providers API to transfer the domain instead
• Write logic for TLDs that aren't renewed during transfer - these would to be renewed after transfer

That's basically it. It's not even 100 lines of code.

I still have the code but I can't share it.

That's awesome.  Let me know what you find out and if you are willing to recreate it.  If there is anything I can do, please reach out.

[efisher]

2 hours ago, DennisHermannsen said:

That's a hook I developed and sold to Hexonet. They've probably expanded it a lot though as this was many years ago.
When I asked OpenProvider about it, they said they had a similar feature for WHMCS. If not, I'll just create one from scratch again. It's really dead simple:

• Intercept the domain registration with the PreRegistrarRenewDomain hook point
  • Be aware that WHMCS will send the "Domain Renewal Failed", so you might want to abort sending this email as well
• Use the providers API to transfer the domain instead
• Write logic for TLDs that aren't renewed during transfer - these would to be renewed after transfer

That's basically it. It's not even 100 lines of code.

I still have the code but I can't share it.

I just checked with OpenProvider and they do not currently have something like this.  Let me know if I can help sponsor this with you.

[DennisHermannsen]

On 06/12/2024 at 17:50, efisher said:

Let me know if I can help sponsor this with you.

I have started work on an addon module that can hopefully work with any registrar in WHMCS. You have to define the source and destination registrar module, and the addon module takes care of the rest.

[Jade D]

15 minutes ago, DennisHermannsen said:

I have started work on an addon module that can hopefully work with any registrar in WHMCS. You have to define the source and destination registrar module, and the addon module takes care of the rest.

Very ambitious considering that each registrar will have its own API requirements 

Edited December 9 by Jade D

[DennisHermannsen]

Nah, not really.
Each registrar module has functions which can be called from anywhere in WHMCS.
As long as the source registrar (and TLD) supports the _GetEPPCode() function and the destination module supports _TransferDomain(), we can initiate the domain transfer. I've already tested it this weekend.

 

[Jade D]

And which registrars have you tested with? Interested to see which registrars use exactly the same API considering the number of ICANN accredited registrars

[DennisHermannsen]

@Jade D I'm not sure if I was unclear.

I'm not connecting to any API.
The registrar modules are built using various methods, like 'myRegistrarModule_GetEPPCode($domainDetails)'. This will run the code that is used by WHMCS to get the EPP code for the module.
If the developer that built the module has hard coded a specific string, it will return that string. If the developer connects to an API, gets the domain's information and extracts the auth code from that, my module will do the exact same.

As long as the developer of the source and destination registrar modules have built the modules with support for the _GetEPPCode() and _TransferDomain() functions, everything will work just fine.
For some TLDs, the _GetEPPCode() will not return the actual auth code but indstead send an email to the registrant with the code, and I don't think anything can be done about that - but that would also be an issue if trying to migrate the domain manually.

[PapaKai]

@DennisHermannsen for that you sold this tool to us (you mentioned this in here as well), you're sharing plenty of insights now to the public. From legal perspective I am not even sure if this is ok. I understand your frustration regarding CNR and enthusiasm regarding your solution, but that's still something you shouldn't share that way.

Just my very honest opinion.

[DennisHermannsen]

@PapaKai What I sold was a very basic hook that only worked with domains from a specific domain provider to Hexonet. I haven't shared details on how the code for migrating domains to Hexonet works, because I frankly don't know. I've never seen or used the revamped version of the code. We've not had any reason to use it.

What I'm building is a new module for WHMCS that uses WHMCS' internal functions to transfer domains between registrars. It might work similar to what Hexonet has built - I can't know.

9 minutes ago, PapaKai said:

I understand your frustration regarding CNR

This has nothing to do with our frustration towards CNR. We've had no communication with them for weeks.
We just decided to move provider as we could save a lot of money by switching to OpenProvider, and we're building a module from scratch that - potentially - allows us to move from any provider to any provider without much effort.

Also, there was no contract. We just handed over the module and got our payment. I am not legally prevented from sharing the code (or even details about it) to anyone- but I have not and will not, though.

The new module will be available to others.

[Jade D]

1 hour ago, DennisHermannsen said:

I have started work on an addon module that can hopefully work with any registrar in WHMCS. You have to define the source and destination registrar module, and the addon module takes care of the rest.

Ok I understand better now, the add on module will call whmcs internal api to initiate the transfer of the domain from Registrar A to Registrar B.

 

I get you now! This is clever

[PapaKai]

@DennisHermannsen don't get me wrong regarding my posting. from business and legal perspective all this is probably fine. While it is not from personal perspective. Anyway, just wanted to get in personal touch while a PM would've been even more clever. Have a nice day.

Just for completion - what you're working on is matching what we made available based on your sold hook. Registrar A to B migration is possible by that while we just do not offer outgoing migrations of course.

Edited December 9 by PapaKai

[DennisHermannsen]

11 minutes ago, Jade D said:

Ok I understand better now, the add on module will call whmcs internal api to initiate the transfer of the domain from Registrar A to Registrar B.

That wasn't the plan, actually - but that might be a lot easier!
When you're building a registrar module, you have to define specific functions. It the module should be able to register domains, you need a _Register() method.
If you include the registrar module's primary file (the one that defines all of these methods), you can use them wherever you like. Say, if you want to do it for domains that use the Enom registrar - this module is just called "enom" in WHMCS. You would do the following
 

<?php

include ROOT_DIR . '/modules/registrars/enom/enom.php';

//Now you can use the functions defined in enom.php:
enom_RegisterDomain($domainDetails);
enom_TransferDomain($domainDetails);

Using the internal API basically does the same. When you call the DomainRegister API endpoint, it finds out what the registrar is for the domain in WHMCS and runs the _RegisterDomain() method from that module.

[RadWebHosting]

On 12/6/2024 at 8:20 AM, efisher said:

I agree, that this is the first registrar I've ever worked with that allowed for the emails to use both a completely customizable template, but also will send using our return address. 

OnlineNic provides this

[DennisHermannsen]

Next week we'll test our module.
It works like this:

1. You define the old and new registrar modules
2. New registrar should be configured as the default for new domain registrations for a specific TLD
3. When WHMCS attempts to renew a domain, it will check if the current registrar module is defined as the old registrar in the module settings and if the new registrar has been configured as the default for the TLD
4. Use the new registrars _GetTldPricing() function to see if EPP code is required and get the transfer price for the TLD
   1. If EPP code is required, fetch it from the old registrar using their _GetEPPCode() function
   2. If transfer price is set to 0, we assume domain is not renewed - renewal will need to happen after successful transfer (this part is still WIP)
5. Run the the new registrar's _TransferDomain() function
6. If anything goes wrong, send an email to admins

If the transfer is successful, the client receives an email with relevant information and the domain's registrar module is updated.

I plan on adding support for registrars that doesn't have a _GetTldPricing() method, but this would require feeding the module with information about EPP requirement and whether domains are renewed during transfer.

Edited December 13 by DennisHermannsen