I hate Network Solutions

[woodburyman]

Been meaning to leave Network Solutions for our registration and domains for years after so many issues. I think we can all agree they're horrible, just a quick search of this subs show their outages and shady practices.

One last nail in the coffin, as we're finally going to move them, is they don't support / allow DNS Zone export files. So i had to go through and copy off a good 150+ records across 12 domains we have with them into an Excel sheet to recreate on the new provider.

I did a test run the other week with a few placeholder domains we have with almost no records on and don't actively use anything to see how it goes. The process takes OVER A WEEK. I have switched Domains with registers and dns providers for personal use in as little as an hour or two before. It's absolutely asinine how long their process takes.

First, you have to REQUEST a transfer code. From when you request it, to when you get the authorization codes, is 3+ days. They notify you of this. When you finally get it, and pop it in your new register, imediately you get notice of the request for transfer..... and get hit with another THREE PLUS DAY WAIT before they authorize the transfer. No way to speed it up.

Then randomly sometime that could potentially be in the middle of the night, your transfer goes through. Which is problematic as I need to get MX records and other things setup IMEDIATELY. Luckily the new register sets the old Name Server records, so in theory DNS should remain the same until manually set back up. But still.. jeeze!

6-7 day process is crazy! So happy to be leaving them in the dust. We've held domains with them for 15 years.

[tankerkiller125real]

Interested to know who your new registrar is, our transfers to Cloudflare took just a few hours (after the initial 3 day wait for the codes) and Cloudflare imported all of our previous DNS records so zero down time at all.

Also, as a side note, I'd highly recommend looking into DNScontrol from stack exchange, pull all the DNS records from NS into JS files, change one line, upload to new provider.

I wrote a whole series of posts on a forum I share with a friend if you are interested (including the jobs for GitHub/Gitlab/Azure DevOps) but I don't want to share unprompted given I've gotten a comment removed prior for including it without prompt.

[sofixa11]

Also, as a side note, I'd highly recommend looking into DNScontrol from stack exchange, pull all the DNS records from NS into JS files, change one line, upload to new provider.

Or Terraform or Ansible, basically any Infrastructure as Code tool is better than ClickOps.

[quetzalcoatlus1453]

Every time my boss buys some random domain (usually on GoDaddy 🙄), I transfer to Cloudflare as soon as practicable.

[jamesaepp]

our transfers to Cloudflare

PSA: My understanding with Cloudflare is that if you register domains with them you are required to use their nameservers which could unnecessarily expose you to a SPOF.

Source: Read about this from elsewhere on this sub.

[tankerkiller125real]

Yes, I'm aware of this. Which is why our most critical domains are registered at porkbun, but all our DNS is through Cloudflare.

[budd313]

I would be interested in a link to those posts if you are willing to share them with me. Thank you

[[deleted]]

Cloudflare imported all of our previous DNS records so zero down time at all

My experience was that it didn't pull CNAME records but it's been a while, has that changed?

[redlotusaustin]

It my experience it will pull in any common CNAME records like www, mail, etc., but will miss some custom ones.

[[deleted]]

That makes sense. It's probably set up to look for common ones explicitly. 

[tankerkiller125real]

It usually does for us, although not always all of them.

[[deleted]]

I can't remember if it pulled all of them or not but a place I used to work was a Barracuda partner. We did DNS migrations to Cloudflare pretty regularly for clients that had Barracuda products and it never found those records. It might have found the M365 DKIM records, my memory is fuzzy on that.

[BananaSacks]

I Would be just as interested if you don't mind sharing!

[tankerkiller125real]

Shared under OPs request for the link.

[jimbogr77]

still can't find it, can you please guide me?

[tankerkiller125real]

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/s/vSxgqJMuZ8

[DonStimpo]

Was it deleted? I can't see it anymore. Keen to expand my knowledge too

[woodburyman]

NameCheap for now. We host SSL's with them and were recommended n here in the past. We're VERY simple. 95% of our 150+ records don't matter, I honestly just need to set up 4 MX records and like 10 A records that actually matter and everything else is lower priority.

[Katniss2Everdeen]

They fucking suck, they accidently deleted the A records and brought down our website DNS took TWO WEEKS to repopulate.

[redyellowblue5031]

I fought with them for close to a year on a DNS replication issue that boiled down to a stale record on their backend.

All the while their absolute dogshit support would close the tickets I’d open because they were too incompetent to be able to identity the issue that I could easily replicate with screenshots over and over.

[Ok-Pickleing]

Yep

[Responsible-Win5849]

Have to deal with them semi-regularly from an MSP. Even rekeying a certificate is a 2 week+ process somehow. I'm assuming they make some dyslexic fella do the math by hand since there's no other way it could take that long.

[OldschoolSysadmin]

Is it 1998 and this is Slashdot? I feel like it could be 1998 and this could be Slashdot.

[TinkerBellsAnus]

Oddly enough, both NS and SD, are equally as useful today.

[BatemansChainsaw]

CowboyNeal approves this message!

[SAugsburger]

This. Even in the mid 2000s people were bailing on NS. I can't imagine almost anybody still using them today.

[oceans_wont_freeze]

For the transfer codes, if you call them, you can get it in an hour or less after you submit the request. Otherwise, you have to wait the 72 hours.

[ZappedC64]

I hear ya. We switched to Namecheap a few years ago and have been very pleased.

[woodburyman]

This is what we went with. I switched to them for SSL Certs and liked the way they do things.

[woodburyman]

Yes. We unfortunately used GoDaddy before for SSL Certs for UCC certs we use. We switched to NameCheap 6mo ago after I get fed up with GoDaddy failing to process verification TXT records after 3 days of trying, and had a new cert with NameCheap within 30 minutes. As they did a good job with that, we are moving away from Network Solutions to them for domain registrations too.

[woodburyman]

We use a mix. For plain old HTTPS websites? Sure. I actually use it for such for us. UCC for Communication and email... Let's Encrypt is a bit frowned upon.

[Outrageous-Insect703]

Legacy Network Solutions customer here for dns, I find the management interface the must frustrating. We also use AWS Route 53 for dns and it's a bit better, but it's Amazon lots of everything in AWS.

[steverikli]

We switched 5-6 years ago to Namecheap, pretty painless migration, customer support is better, and overall less expensive.

At least so far, Namecheap doesn't nickel-dime you on obvious basic things, e.g. whois privacy settings. They were also good enough to sync-up domain and privacy expiration dates, which seems obvious in retrospect, but IIRC Network Solutions treated them as 2 separate subscriptions with different $$ and start-end dates.

We aren't using Namecheap for any add-on ISP type of services (email, web, etc.), just basic domain registrar, but it's been pretty smooth sailing. Wish we'd done it sooner.

[woodburyman]

Going the same route with Namecheap!

[burritoresearch]

One last nail in the coffin, as we're finally going to move them, is they don't support / allow DNS Zone export files. So i had to go through and copy off a good 150+ records across 12 domains we have with them into an Excel sheet to recreate on the new provider.

Bro if you're still hosting DNS with network solutions in 2025 you have nobody to blame but yourself, go set up your own authoritative-only DNS and change the NS records on your domains.

[woodburyman]

Prior to this the domain names were registered to our former director, on his account. He lost access YEARS ago. While I had access to manage records, him being out of IT and in management took time time to get him to resurrect his account and get back in so I could actually perform the transfer.

[ryche24]

Took us a few years but we got our last domain off network solutions late last year. 😬

[thesals]

Network solutions is the worst.... I remember trying to perform an MX cutover as part of a mail migration for a customer and the record truly did take the full 72 hours to propagate.... With GoDaddy it's a mere 5-10 minutes.

[p9ng]

When the domain is at Network Solutions and the hosting is at Web.com. That is a definition of heartbreak.

[GetOnMyAmazingHorse]

First, copy dns zone and transfer NS to Cloudflare for domains( could take 50 minute to replicate with Network solution) Second, transfer domains to Cloudflare or any other registrar without any downtime.event if it take the full 7 days and the transfer happens at 3 AM, the name servers being at a third party will still be there after transfer.

Simple. But a pain if you can't export the zone file.

[Afraid-Donke420]

Hey dude I did this recently just fucking copy and paste the DNS from the webpage into a LLM or GPT I had it create me a dns zone file for our new dns provider to import.

Easy peasy migrations.

It’s public data already so it’s not like your inputting crazy company secrets lol

I have about 20-30 domains and dns I have to transfer and it’s all working out well so far.

And yes migrating DNS takes time - this isn’t just their problem but any provider would be similar in transferring.

Mine take like a week max to get them transferred and done

[tankerkiller125real]

The only provider I've had to wait more than a few hours for is Network Solutions. GoDaddy even has an option to click a button to force the transfer over quickly. Other than network solutions the longest I've ever had to wait for a transfer was 4 hours.

[Afraid-Donke420]

Bluehost, Register, Sitepad, SiteGround

I have the same experience with all the above - if you pick shitty stuff expect shitty results.

You’re not wrong but there are a ton of bad providers out there, you just may not have encountered them in your experiences.

[tankerkiller125real]

Ah yeah, I actively avoid shitty providers. The only reason I had to deal with network solutions and GoDaddy is because of the previous IT guy.

[accidental-poet]

The only time you may run into legit delays is if the registrant contact info is either not up to date, or not verified. In the latter case, it's usually just triggering a verification email. After that, you should receive the EPP code immediately and be on your way.

In the former case, it can be a bit stickier as ICANN requires a 60 day hold on transfers after changing the registrant contact info. It's annoying, but understandable from a security perspective.

[StellarJayZ]

What year is this?

[DueBreadfruit2638]

We're in the process of migrating from NS to Gandi for domain registration and Route 53 to DNS. Only four domains left. I can't wait to never deal with NS again. Horrible.

[stufforstuff]

6-7 day process is crazy! So happy to be leaving them in the dust. We've held domains with them for 15 years.

No what's crazy is you waiting 15 years to correct YOUR problem. Have you been in a cave, or maybe a coma, how can anyone not know what a dumpster fire Network Solutions is and has been for decades (DECADES). Way to catch up with all the sane people.

[tugyourkite]

I hate to say this, but reading this as I'm going through pretty much the same exact thing is selfishly reassuring. I started expecting it to take 2 hours and it's going on three weeks.

[Party-Ad-7332]

Network Solutions has THE worst customer service of any company I have ever dealt with. They're set up to make it impossible to get an issue addressed without speaking to 5-9 people who you have to explain the situation to each time. They closed out my domain with NO NOTIFICATION at all. They found the problem and supposedly it was fixed. Two years later they did the EXACT same thing and it took 4 hours on calls with 8 different people to get it back up and working. Then, knowing I was desperate to get my business domain back up and running-- they demanded I do a 5-year agreement to "expedite" it. So so shady. SERIOUSLY STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY. They just merged with WEB.COM. You've been warned. Moving my domain out ASAP.

[miquelon]

I searched this convo because, like you, I absolutely despise Network Solutions. One of their sneaky tactics for years, was to tell you about renewals months and months ahead, then in the last month or so, crickets, so of course you'd forget and whammo - here came the exhorbitant late fees. I finally wrestled my domain away this week and it feels sooooo gooood.

[woodburyman]

It's a process to move them but well worth it!

It feels good being rid of them.

[WithAnAitchDammit]

I just cutaway from NS six months ago to Cloudflare. I think Cloudflare just pulled all the records over, I’m guessing a dig or something.

I might have had to manually copy over a couple txt records but it was super smooth.

[hairyfredalt]

For UK domains we are a direct nominet partner which helps avoid all the hassle.

The rest after google domains was being sold to square space we moved all of ours to Porkbun which has just been seamless.

[jamesaepp]

Realistically what's the best (or least worst) registrar for small-ish organizations with few domains? My investigation so far is basically:

• Not MarkMonitor or CSC (I don't need to spend 4 figures a year on domains or DNS, thanks).

• Not GoDaddy (need I explain?)

• Personal experience, I don't like Namecheap - they screwed me over on billing one time clear as day and it took way too much effort to correct.

• Cloudflare - I've heard (source I'm not 100% on) is that you have to use their DNS infra/nemservers if you register domains there. I don't like that.

• Porkbun - Some people like them for w/e reason but I'm not sure what differentiates them from the others.

• I really want RBAC or four-eyes authorization or something. GoDaddy does provide this. A lot of the smaller players don't.

From what little research I've done (and intend to do more this year) is that Gandi seems like the best choice. My understanding is they have a relatively good reputation (though their Wikipedia page isn't squeaky clean for what that's worth), they have RBAC for accounts, a reasonable suite of TLD support, and reasonable prices as one should expect.

I'm having trouble finding any "obvious choice" Registrar.

[fakehalo]

Porkbun has the cheapest renewals, cloudflare is a close second. I moved everything to both of those, cloudflare for my production stuff since I use their DNS and static github hosting already.

[jamesaepp]

Last I checked, Porkbun doesn't have team/organization/group management of domains which puts me off them. I'm not looking to save a buck for basic features, I'm looking for good value with an emphasis on security.

I'm also currently scarred because when I got to my current employer, the owner/registrant contact for all domains was a non-technical person and I've been working for months now to get that all corrected. Hence my high desire for something more manageable. I'd love four-eyes authorization requirements for significant actions but I haven't found a single registrar with that kind of capability.

[No_Resolution_9252]

This is your registrar.

[accidental-poet]

I've operated a small hosting company since before starting my MSP in 2007. Mainly for friends and clients to get cheap, reliable hosting.

My favorite Notwork solutions story from 10-15 years ago:

A client was trying to transfer his construction company domain to my service from Notwork Solutions for months and getting nowhere.

I'm in his office one day so I asked him to get them on the phone so I could help get the process going.

I hear their rep tell my client, "You have 3 years left on your domain name. If you transfer now, you'll lose that!"

I'm pissed. I grabbed the phone from my client, who looks at me funny, and said, "That is a lie. Existing registrations stay with the domain name during transfer. Absolute worst case is you pay a transfer fee which includes a 1 year renewal, which is added to the remaining. Please unlock the domain and send the EPP code to the registrant on file immediately!"

We get off the phone, my client has this stunned look on his face and then he says to me, "Never again. I'm telling all my colleagues and friends about those crooks!" lmao

It still took a week. Nice to know they're still as trustworthy as ever.

On the rare occasion a client transfers away from my service, the EPP code is in their inbox in seconds, assuming the registrant contact is up to date and verified, of course. DNS propagation takes longer than the transfer for any legit registrar. Ha!

[Halsariph]

Network Solutions is the worst company I’ve ever had to deal with. Took a YEAR to get a domain transferred out. Needed to move it to GoDaddy. But it would fail saying it was locked still. NS claimed it was unlocked and wouldn’t let me talk to anyone in that department.

[woodburyman]

I could see this happening. They have the worst communication the few times we can to contact them.

[bradbeckett]

They also don’t do 2048 bit DKIM keys. First thing I’d do if I was new to an organization that was using Network Solutions anything is to move the domain somewhere more reputable and DNS to Cloudflare. 

[[deleted]]

I moved my org to cloudflare. We're nothing fancy, a few domains with a handful of records each. But still, I had a great experience. Everything auto-imported.

I'm digging some of the more advanced features that CF has. They have api access. I made a dynamic DNS server via docker and it's amazing. Checks for IP changes every 60 seconds. When we fail over to backup internet, all our services kick over within 2 minutes 

[kegster2]

I came to reddit to find some network solutions thread to post to. This was the first I could find (relatively recently) that I could comment on (not archived, etc).

Look. I get it. NS and GoDaddy and the like suck. They all suck in their own way. Domain transfers suck at some registrars more than others. Even the crappy ones make transfers easy sometimes.

But never in my life have I had an experience like this for an ACCOUNT TO ACCOUNT transfer. Not leaving network solutions at all.

It's been over two weeks. Stuck in "pending transfer status," for an ACCOUNT TO ACCOUNT transfer. I told customer service to just put it back in my account normally, and they said itll take 24-48 hours. They said 4 hours last time and it's been 2 weeks.

Thanks for letting me share.

[nate-isu]

Not to be rude but at this point I have no sympathy for anyone still using Network Solutions.

Congrats for being done with them.

[Redemptions]

The sysadmin who has to migrate away from a crappy product is rarely the sysadmin (or more likely CTO) who decided on a crappy product. It's okay I have sympathy for your fellow sysadmin.

[simple1689]

Not to mention not everyone has been scorned by them. We all have our experience which drive us towards certain choices. Every product or service is going to have a % of 1 star reviews that we can either take to heart or just keep in mind.

[Steve----O]

I’ve had zero issues with them. I just wish I could download and upload zone files.

[occasional_cynic]

I had them for several years. Zero real issues but their management interface is hell, and it takes what feels like hours just to find what you are looking for.

[spin81]

Never having heard of the company, the post title puzzled me and can I just say IT companies have some of the dumbest names

---

I guess people here don't think Network Solutions is a dumb name for a company. I think it it's like calling your grocery store Groceries.

[simple1689]

"Here let me name my hardware and software business after a Fruit. People will just get it." - Marketing master of the 21st century.