Robin Majumdar 2.0

1and1 is the German hosting company that roared into the US market a couple of years ago with extremely aggressive pricing on a wide range of web hosting and domain registration options.

I’ve found their web hosting (in the past) to be clunky - ok, maybe I am not a big fan of graphical hosting interfaces à la cPanel and WHM , but I digress.

They have a pretty hot sale on .US domain name registration for .US domains at $2.99 per year.

It’s official: GoDaddy to offer .ca domain name registration – GoDaddy Canada office in Ontario is open.

The news was somewhat buried in a GoDaddy press release announcing their sponsorship of Ron Fellows in the #5 GoDaddy NASCAR race vehicle…

I like verbatim quotes, so here goes:

The Go Daddy Group, Inc. is leveraging the sponsorship to officially announce entry into the Canadian market with its new subsidiary, Go Daddy Domains Canada. While Go Daddy already counts some of its 5.5 million customers in Canada, it’s working to serve even more. Go Daddy Domains Canada recently opened its office in Ontario, Canada. It is a certified .CA registrar and by race time, hopes to be offering customers .CA domain names.

So, what does this mean? Well, GoDaddy is now CIRA-certified and you will soon see a non-stop stream of email and web promotions announcing their ubiquitous 10-15-25% coupon code promotions for .ca domains.

I’m intrigued how much influence Adam Dicker, who is VP of the GoDaddy TDNAM domain name aftermarket division had in this foray into the burgeoning Canadian domaining marketplace. Adam is highly respected Canadian domainer most well-known for his DNForum.com domainer site. He was also recently involved in a pretty well-publicized scandal when he bid on domains listed in the TDNAM marketplace.

Is this good for .ca domain holders? I think so – GoDaddy will add some serious exposure for .ca domains and provide for some additional registrar competition.

The Canadian in me wants to support the real Canadian registrars though; MyID.ca, Namespro.ca and the others…

Lunchtime deal found:

Well hot of the heels of their latest $6.95 .com deal, which ended yesterday, GoDaddy now has a decent deal for new .com domain name registrations at 30% the regular price. Use the coupon code goxtgi200c at checkout to register (or renew) your .com names for $6.85 (plus the $0.20 ICANN fee) - don’t know how long this promo will last…. but I’ve confirmed it for both NEW and renewals…

Well, just a quick heads up if you have a .us domain name to renew; GoDaddy has a coupon code for .US renewals (or new .US registrations) that allows you to get it for $6.79 instead of the usual $9.99 and even the currently discounted .US renewal price of $7.99.

Just be sure to enter CJCBENTLD as the promo code in your GD shopping cart before checking out.

We used this for a .us domain name that had actually been *cancelled* (gasp) because it had fallen through our domain name auto-renewal system! Yes, it is possible to renew cancelled domain names at GoDaddy, but only if you’re quick about it. If you don’t do it, then it goes into RGP and renewing it manually through GoDaddy customer support involves a far heftier fee… more on that in another article.