Hover.com – Simple Domain Name’s
Wed, June 9th 2010 at 12:20am
For a long time now I have been a GoDaddy user, simply because of the low price and advertising blitz. When I was looking for a Domain name they always just popped to mind. I suffered through using their appallingly complex user interface, and getting nickel and dimmed for essential services.
Then recently on twit.tv I saw an ad for Hover.com and from the screenshots of the site I could see right away that they are doing things better. The site is very Web 2.0, clean efficient and just there to help you get your work done.
For example, before moving my domains to Hover.com I did a quick check of my site and realized that my RSS Feeds were down. The way my feeds are setup is using a CNAME entry in my DNS records to redirect my URL to FeedBurner (you can read more about that at quickonlinetips.com). Godaddy’s Domain Manager is so busy and confusing I never looked into doing this myself before, and always had to open a Support Ticket with my web-host and have them modify their Name Server for me, which last time took a day or two of back and forth making it work.
After reading the help section at Hover.com (this tutorial in particular) I saw how simple it was to use Hover.com’s name servers to point to my web-host, and Google Accounts for Mail. So I transfered the domain to Hover.com pointed my web-host and everything still works fine.
Then after reading another Hover.com Tutorial, which by the way is the simplest and best intro to DNS I have seen and should be read even if you are not with hover.com, I changed my CNAME record myself. Instantly I was able to refresh the URL feeds.codemonkeyx.net/cmx and it went to FeedBurner.com correctly.
This post ended up being a little more gushy about how great Hover.com is so far, but sites that empower me to do more and learn new things always get me excited.
Oh and before I forget the, the big thing… PRICE.
At first when I saw the $15 price tag per domain I thought, well that’s a little high. But then when I compared to GoDaddy which advertises much lower prices I realized that on top of the domain name I also had to pay for Private Domain registration which was another $9 a year just for that, and added another whole layer of crap that I had to jump through when I wanted to change or transfer. So Hover.com’s $15 fee is lower than what I was paying at GoDaddy! when you factor in the premium add-on.
With Hover.com all I had to do to make my domain Private was to click the check box!! Because it’s included in the price! So far no hidden fees, no “premium add-on” services except e-mail hosting. Just a simple site that gets the job done.
Note: If you decided to use Hover.com be sure to use twit.hover.com to get a 10% discount. I am not affiliated with hover or twit but 10% off is nice, and both hover and twit are great. 
Tags: GoDaddy, Hover.com, Web Design, Web Development
Hey, thanks for the great feedback! I’m the lead developer for Hover, and I can assure you that we have a strong monkey focus in our testing: http://i.imgur.com/xJS77.png
I work for Tucows so I’m obviously jaded, but this was a really cool post. Glad to hear that Hover is providing a service that people are looking for.
Glad you enjoyed the post, looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with next. Rails is on my list of things to learn.
Always liked the way the code looked.
Cool, enjoy Rails. The nice thing is that there are lots of good tutorials at sites like railscasts.com, peepcode.com and of course rubyonrails.org. Feel free to email me if you want any pointers or help.