[QUOTE=USAFAN]I am a little confused ... what is so special with some services..?

/ QUOTE]

Customer service, uptime, not being rejected by isp's for mail forwarding, lots of reasons that make one different then the other. Price is fairly insignificant of a decision maker, be it $6 or $15 a year, I'd gladly pay for service, just as I'd be perfectly happy paying less if it's a reliable provider.

Currently, Name Secure is striking out in all of those.

Hey, just as a heads up, Namesecure puts a registrat lock on all their domains by default, so you can't move them away from them without them unlocking them first. Didn't know that until today, it doesn't show up in their whois lookup, nor did I ever agree that I wanted all of my domains locked.

The whois lookup at whois.sc (you can do a whois.sc/yourdomain.com ) and many others show the status of any locks, that may be something you may want to check just in case. I'm dead in the water until they get around to processing the request to unlock, not a position I'm thrilled about.

The domain lock is a must these days

Our 'friends' at ICANN dictated in November last year (http://www.icann.org/announcements/a...nt-12nov04.htm ) a number of things.. the main points are (copied from the PR)
* Requiring registrars to verify the identity of the registrant or administrative contact requesting the transfer by one of a number of approved methods to deter fraud;
* Preserving the ability of registrants to "lock" their domains so they may not be transferred from the registrar, but requiring registrars to provide a readily accessible way for registrants to have their current registrar remove this lock at their request;
* Enabling registrants to transfer their domain names without having to "double-confirm" the transfer once the transfer has been reliably authenticated per the new policy; and
* Providing a robust dispute resolution process for resolving disputes between registrars, including registries implementing a "transfer undo" functionality to provide for efficiently reversing any transfer initiated in violation of the policy.

For registration, I use Joker (am a reseller of theirs) and GoDaddy - plus I'm a Nominet member (for .uk domains) and also can do .ie domains (through a reciprical agreement with a .ie domain reseller) - for the various clients who suffer from me(!)

cordelli & davork:
Thanks, you are great! ^ FT is great! ^

I just went to buydomains.com and locked all my domains.

Thanks again

I just paid buydomains until 06/2006 ... next year I may try namesecure.com!

love go daddy, except that they sell so hard (like when you call tech support). only complaint though and have used them for a long time.

The first domain is on it's way over to 1and1, they finailly unlocked it and I've gotten the "please stay with us" e-mail, so hopefully the confirmation of the transfer one will be right behind it.

The other nine will be moved to a variety of the places above, so thanks everybody for your help and input.

Still can't access my e-mail at namesecure, but I was able to get it forwarded outside but getting way less then I should.

I recommend GANDI, www.gandi.net, and have 12 or 13 domains with them (for myself and clients). They are not the rock-bottom cheapest, but they are absolutely solid & competent and have no interest in up-selling you or anything like that. They have helped me out in things like trying to wrest domains away from the clutches of the b******s at VeriSign/NetSol.

They are in France, but deal with customers all over the world (I'm in the U.S.). Their prices are in Euros, but they accept U.S. credit cards. Their web pages have both French and English interfaces. I give these folks my highest recommendations.

The 1and1 transfer took place this afternoon. It was extreamly painless, took no time at all to get the forwarding set up before the transfer took place so that there was no downtime at all in the domain.

E-mail was down for about 30 minutes, but everything is functioning. Time to move another one.