I doubt many of you care that
someone is coming back to OpenSRS, but I thought I would send this to the list
anyways to help stop anyone thinking about leaving OpenSRS.
Here is my
story…
February 2002 I signed up to
SRSPlus, the reason, domains for $6-8 a year. I submitted my payment of $500
(which was much higher than the $250 OpenSRS required) to fund my account and
began immediately registering domains thru their web site interface –
something that works fine if your domains are all managed by
you.
SRSPlus does not provide scripts
but just an API, and I hate programming. So in order to use SRSPlus like
OpenSRS I had to pay someone to develop scripts for me. I choose William X
Walsh, someone I considered as a friend at that time. A few months based and
my SRSPlus experience began to turn awful. Mr. Walsh never provided me with
scripts to use SRSPlus after being paid (and to this day almost a year later
still nothing) so I was unable to sell domains to the public as they would not
be able to manage them. Then SRSPlus decided to raise prices, which made them
more expensive than OpenSRS unless you sold more than 11 domains a month. So I
got pretty ticked off and was getting ready to move back to OpenSRS (surely
the best domain reseller program out there for what they provide the
RSP).
But then… January 2003, I received
an email from Ron at Dodora offering me domains for $6.50 a year – something
that was too good to be true. I asked him about scripts, and they provided
none, just the API, and after learning from SRSPlus I quickly told him no. He
then told me they hired a company to develop scripts which would be provided
to the reseller, so I got excited and sent in my paper. They had no minimum
payment, so there was little to lose. Well the scripts got delayed as the
programmers (I spoke with them and they were developing the software, adding
new features and kept asking for my opinion on what was needed, which was
nice), so I kept using the web interface to manage domains. Fortunately
clients were able to modify their domain at the Dodora web site, something
SRSPlus failed to offer. I used all my credits from my original payment and
sent them more money over PayPal. I started using those funds and the scripts
were almost ready, boy was I excited. Then one day I tried to access
dodora.com and it was down (this was 3 weeks ago, and it is still down). I run
servers and know there is occasional downtime, so I thought nothing of it. But
it was still down the next day, and the day after that. I send Ron emails, but
they bounced as their network was down. I called them, but the phone just rang
busy. Nothing for 3 weeks… I emailed the programmers and was told their data
center burned down and they would be back up soon.
Today, February 22. I talked to a
old time buddy on IRC about all the problems I had and he suggested I go back
to OpenSRS, he even offered to help me get back up and running with some of
his scripts he developed. Tired with all my problems trying to get the best
deal, I have decided to go back to OpenSRS (and I hope any of you guys who are
considering leaving OpenSRS decide to stay). The support, software, and
community of OpenSRS is just to great to overcome a few dollars savings per
domain.
If anyone has any questions please
feel free to ask, as I cannot explain the amount as stress, frustration, etc I
went thru during the past year and I would hate to see anyone else go thru it.
Ryan Brown
The Burgh Live,
LLC
