question Cosmotown - How can they afford these prices?

[Restecpa]

I don't want to badmouth anyone, especially since I don't even know what's truly going on, but let's for a moment ignore the fact that their support is lackluster and that you truly get what you pay for with them...

How does their pricing make any sense? What is the logic behind charging $6.99 on new .com registrations and $7.99 on renewals, when wholesale registry fee is $8.97 + $0.18 ICANN ($9.15)? Even if they went Cloudflare route (and charge the Verisign+ICANN fee only) they would still have to pay for the business operating costs out of pocket, but the way they are set up, they are not only paying those costs, but also for each and every registration and renewal that comes through them (approx -$1 to -$2). Can anyone explain this?

Mind you, I understand why GoDaddy could do this in the past, with all the extras they upsell to the moms and pops, but Cosmotown doesn't even attempt that.

Another explanation could be that they're trying to get a piece of the market share at a temporary net minus before they stat raising prices, which is a common strategy, but in order to get that share they would have to offer a good service and quality support to leave a lasting positive impression, and they don't seem to be able to do that. So what's going on there? Are domains even safe? And are they really losing ~$2 dollars on every single new registration? I don't understand how they ever expect to make that money back, unless it's just a l******mat, and the loss per domain registered is just the cost of doing "business"... well shit, I never thought of this until right now

 

[Helmuts]

Just checked the Verisign: Cosmotown seems to be a legit .com registrar

verify yourself: https://www.verisign.com/en_US/domain-names/domain-registrar/index.xhtml

scr:


---

ALL 3 of the people mentioned on their 'About us' page, seem to be related to "AIBrain, Inc" (leaves an impression of a well established and cool company)


and


---

Yes, it seems they are burning some money on acquiring users. Lots of companies do this.

These prices will attract the attention of quite a number of domain name investors.

--

At the same time doesn't seem to be a new company. .. checked the opencorporates.com website:


and:


==

They seem to be relatively new to the domain name industry >> I am not connected to any of the 3 mentioned people on Linkedin (not that I am some kind of benchmark value, of course), nor any of their accounts seem to be connected to lots of DN industry professionals. .. apologies to Cosmotown if I have missed something.

===============
===============

Now, what is Really Interesting, is this bit:


have to admit, I haven't heard of CrossCert (note: I still don't know most of the industries large companies), BUT, the word Softbank Group doesn't need any verifications > it is a monster (in a good way)!

---

Looks a player in the industry with an interesting background.

.. maybe, if Cosmotown reps are reading this > would you like to add anything? ... You are most welcome to introduce yourselves.

H

 

[404]

They're quite good also. Backend, outdated feel but it works. Small bugs at times but nothing serious.

Support, fine.

Great value for your money. I have close to 200 domains with them I think.

Nothing fancy, no upselling. No additional fancy features either

 

[Restecpa]

@Helmuts, thank you brother for looking a bit deeper. I've looked into them as well and I know the are supposed to be legit as far as being ICANN accredited etc goes, but their service and prices are what worries me. Obviously the prices are great, but the fact that their servers and the site itself is not always stable makes me think that they cannot afford these prices, so naturally one starts having questions (I do believe it was a lot worse a year ago though).

They also struggle with 2FA, they only offer email and SMS (not the best options to begin with), and neither seem to be working for me most of the time. Their solution seems to be to just turn it off when it's not working, which obviously is not a solution at all. I asked them to get it fixed, but their support right now leaves a lot to be desired...

They're very slow in answering the messages. Granted, everybody can get a bit annoyed with their "higher maintenance" customers, but you're not supposed to let them know that... at least I assume that's why I've been waiting for their reply since Thursday Or perhaps they're just really so severely understaffed, but either way, it's unacceptable IMO.

By no means am I trying to badmouth them, it's in everyone's best interest that they succeed, and it they ever get their shit together I will make sure to update this post and let everyone know, but these things need to be taken care of if they want to be in the IT business, especially one where hackers have a great incentive to lurk around...

Ability to use hardware security keys for 2FA should be the norm by now (and I assume very cheap to implement), so there's no excuses for 2FA to struggle at any point IMO. Both Porkbun, Namecheap and even Dynadot have the ability to use hardware security keys for example, and they're by no means huge registrars. So does Google obviously, etc... but that's to be expected.

 

[404]

Ability to use hardware security keys for 2FA should be the norm by now (and I assume very cheap to implement), so there's no excuses for 2FA to struggle at any point IMO.

Till you misplace your yubi and you're screwed

I agree though, HW Auth is good but most definitely not the norm (yet).

 

[Restecpa]

They're quite good also. Backend, outdated feel but it works. Small bugs at times but nothing serious.

Support, fine.

Great value for your money. I have close to 200 domains with them I think.

Nothing fancy, no upselling. No additional fancy features either

A year ago they constantly kept crashing and it was a pain setting up the DNS as they wouldn't always save the input. Have they fixed that since? I noticed I still had a few bugs with DNS the other day, but it didn't seem to be crashing as badly as a year ago. So hopefully they got that a bit under control.

Their support and 2FA (a few days ago I couldn't log in for like 4 days because of 2FA not working and their support not replying for a few days) is my biggest problem with them right now, so I find it interesting that your experience with their support seems to be better?

 

[Restecpa]

Till you misplace your yubi and you're screwed

I agree though, HW Auth is good but most definitely not the norm (yet).

That's why you have 2, one always somewhere safe, and you safeguard them both with your second amendment I know I do...

 

[404]

Setting up DNS works fine for me. I only need nameserver changes though as I run my own DNS. Could be different if you're trying to set up theirs. Never tried it.

Never encountered 2fa issues personally. I don't log in that often though, just to transfer out Heard people about it before so you're not alone.

Support has always been acceptable for me, within 24 hours. Not as fast as Dyna or NC but I'm usually not in a rush.

That's why you have 2, one always somewhere safe, and you safeguard them both with your second amendment I know I do...

Lol, you live and you learn. I learned it the hard way when I left one by accident a 9 hour drive away.

 

[Restecpa]

Lol, you live and you learn. I learned it the hard way when I left one by accident a 9 hour drive away.

Damn, I feel you man. Yeah, it's always pretty much the first thing on my mind when I'm going somewhere far... The one time I forgot it, I remember it felt horrible (even though I didn't end up needing it), because I've got literally everything locked behind it, including my personal and business Google accounts, etc... But it's a great tool, especially when coupled with common sense and long ass passwords

 

[Restecpa]

If Cosmotown ever reads this... It is not my intention to talk bad about someone who is starting anew, let alone someone who is apparently bleeding money while doing so. But let's get this shit fixed, m'kay? And I'll let everyone know you're doing a great job and all The prices already speak for themselves, but so needs the service.

You can even raise the prices a bit, as long as you get the service where it's supposed to be, or else it's just contra productive...

I'll give you one thing right away though, I really appreciate the fact that you are not aggressively upselling. Actually, you don't seem to be upselling at all, which is great. Obviously at some point you will have to start offering additional services etc, which is fine, just make sure you don't shove them down customers throats like GoDaddy for example does. That's disgusting and it made me leave them long before their HUGE price hike...

Other that that, I wish you luck.

 

[Restecpa]

It seems like I've managed to figure out the 2FA SMS problem (on my own btw, their support was of no help in this regard for about a year now, even though they should've been able to figure it out, now that I know what the problem was).

If anyone ever runs into the same problem with their 2FA codes not being delivered to their phone, you can send me a private message on DNF and I will explain...

In short, you need to format the number properly because they don't parse it into a proper form themselves (like most other companies do, regardless of how you type it in), and once you make a "mistake" you won't be able to fix it easily because it requires a working 2FA to do so lol.

You also need to make sure you do it in your technical contact as that is the one that is used for 2FA and that one only. Changing your registrant contacts number or administrative contacts number won't work with 2FA and for some reason they don't make that obvious anywhere on the website, nor did support let me know of this... The funny thing is, as I already mentioned, you can't even fix it later if you want, because adjusting your phone number at a later time requires a working 2FA to save it, so it takes jumping through the hoops with support etc.

It also still doesn't explain why it wasn't delivering the email codes in the past, but at least for now both seem to be working (so I guess they were both somehow connected). The email was always in the proper place though, so I really dunno...

I've now suggested to the support how they could fix this so it doesn't happen to others as well (a note here and there would help, such as telling your costumer that if you need your 2FA contact changed, you do it by adjusting the technical contact and that one only), and to automatically parse the phone numbers into proper international form without counting on your customer to do it right. They should also not turn on the 2FA before they check that it is working, which they clearly haven't in my case. But I'm not holding my breath given that they haven't been responsive for the past 4 and a half days...

To be fair, I should probably let the boss know of these issues, rather than who I assume are underpaid students answering the support tickets.

 

[404]

underpaid students answering the support tickets.

A walk down memory lane... Low pay, graveyard shifts making money to be able to afford uni. Good stuff

 

[Restecpa]

On a positive note, I've had a good experience using the website today. Unlike in the past, it was responsive and I didn't get any timeouts. So I guess my past bad experience, coupled with somewhat unresponsive support and the fact that I couldn't log in for like 4 days in a row because of the 2FA trouble, made me assume it was still as bad as a year ago... I'm glad to see that they seem to have fixed the website bugs, because it was just horrendous back then. If my experience a year ago had been more like today, the tone of this thread would've been totally different...

Just add proper HW 2FA, re-design the problematic parts of the UI (just add mentioned notes really), and train some capable support staff, and you're good.

 

[Restecpa]

@404 I know you said you use your own DNS, but do you ever use their url forwarding for something quick? Have you noticed it's not working anymore? I can't save any forwarding data even though it says it's saved. It just gives a bogus thumbs up reply when in fact it doesn't save it. Not only that, but their domains used to be forwarded to Google.com by default, and now even on default settings you get:

"This site can’t be reached​

sixzerozero(.com) took too long to respond."

It's not just me... I tried pinging it and tracerouting both from my PC as well as from various online servers around the world, and no packets are returned.

 

[Helmuts]

Good Sunday morning, everyone! Just a quick update: It seems Cosmotown has noticed our thread (we tweeted at them), and hopefully, they will create an account on DNF so we can dive into the details of their offers. Great Sunday all! H

 

[Restecpa]

Yeah, I've talked to them some more and they're looking into things apparently (haven't discussed the thread). So if they ever fix these issues, I suggest archiving this thread and removing it from the public access in order to give them a chance at a clean slate. But I think it was important to discuss them in public, because these issues have now persisted for a year, and some of them, albeit to a lesser degree, still do. I think a lot of it has to do with their overly aggressive firewall rules, but also certain servers crashing (url forwarding failing across the board for example).

I'd also like to add, because I realized now that my explanation about the wrong format of phone numbers makes it sound as if I didn't know how to properly type them in... that is not the case.

See attached screenshot of a made up example.

What you see got saved as +378.064444444 I believe, when in fact it should've been saved as +378.64444444. The funny thing is, after I told them about it my SMS 2FA stopped working again. Until I now went back in and added the 0 back. It's possible they've made adjustment based on what mentioned, which in turn seems to have botched up the previous phone numbers or something, I have no other explanation as with the 0 back in now it works again (while before it wouldn't). So maybe we're getting somewhere

But as I said, that is not even the only problem, as a big one seems to be their firewall, if you're not from the USA at least... My ISP tech for instance couldn't even access their site from his workstation. His traceroute stopped at hop 13 or something. I believe it was just around or after the Amazon servers, he couldn't say where as he gets cut off, but they will try to investigate further.

Once the main issues are fixed and they confirm that it's all behind them, I will let you know and you can remove this thread as there's no need for my rants to hang over their heads forever.

 

[Helmuts]

Yeah, I've talked to them some more and they're looking into things apparently (haven't discussed the thread). So if they ever fix these issues, I suggest archiving this thread and removing it from the public access in order to give them a chance at a clean slate. But I think it was important to discuss them in public, because these issues have now persisted for a year, and some of them, albeit to a lesser degree, still do. I think a lot of it has to do with their overly aggressive firewall rules, but also certain servers crashing (url forwarding failing across the board for example).

I'd also like to add, because I realized now that my explanation about the wrong format of phone numbers makes it sound as if I didn't know how to properly type them in... that is not the case.

See attached screenshot of a made up example.

What you see got saved as +378.064444444 I believe, when in fact it should've been saved as +378.64444444. The funny thing is, after I told them about it my SMS 2FA stopped working again. Until I now went back in and added the 0 back. It's possible they've made adjustment based on what mentioned, which in turn seems to have botched up the previous phone numbers or something, I have no other explanation as with the 0 back in now it works again (while before it wouldn't). So maybe we're getting somewhere

But as I said, that is not even the only problem, as a big one seems to be their firewall, if you're not from the USA at least... My ISP tech for instance couldn't even access their site from his workstation. His traceroute stopped at hop 13 or something. I believe it was just around or after the Amazon servers, he couldn't say where as he gets cut off, but they will try to investigate further.

Once the main issues are fixed and they confirm that it's all behind them, I will let you know and you can remove this thread as there's no need for my rants to hang over their heads forever.

Tx. As for this thread - it seems to be a quality conversation and doesn't do any damage to their brand, only gives more eyeballs. .. tx for the phone number .. might be useful for me.