The is the Sunday after Easter, 2022, still being considered as the Easter Week in Germany. Well, at least from business promotion aspects.

Why on goneo?

I think I have done one really stupid action this week by transferring my domain name bought on netcup to goneo.

To be honest, I made a rush decision doing so. Tricked by the experience I had. I thought transferring a .de domain name would be much the same as transferring a .com domain which I have done many times without unexpected results. However, this is not the case when it comes to .de domain names which are (almost) only transferrable among limited registrars in EU to my knowledge.

The motivation of transferring my .de domain name from netcup to goneo is for change my contract at netcup when transferring the transferred domain name back in the future. (Because I didn’t find a way to change the contract directly on netcup.) So for me, the goneo is chosen as a temporary transit. Because just thinking about using geneo temporarily, I didn’t do much research on it. Then I got fooled.

The goneo is chosen because it has a cheap price tag and „76% Weiterempfehlung“ on HostTest.de when I found it. (And the name „goneo“ looks smart.) Then not long after I had found it, I started transferring my qiasoft.de domain name to goneo.

What about the Transferring?

The transferring path is smooth. About 10 minutes after my submission of my order. I received the email telling „…, die Domain qiasoft.de wurde erfolgreich transferiert. … Alle notwendigen Informationen wie beispielsweise IP-Adressen erhalten Sie im Kundencenter im Bereich „Servernamen“.“ and „Sofern Sie eine Domain bestellt haben, melden wir dies zur Registrierung beim zuständigen NIC (Network Information Center). Die Bearbeitung durch das NIC dauert bei Neubeantragungen, sowie bei einem Provider-Wechsel via AuthInfo, in der Regel zwischen 1-3 Werktagen.“ from goneo and „…, die Domain qiasoft.de wurde erfolgreich mit Eingabe des Authinfo Code zu einem anderen Provider umgezogen. … Ihre DNSSEC-Records werden zum tatsächlichen Zeitpunkt des Transfers (execute) entfernt.“ from netcup.

Unexpected Things

So what are not expected when I look more into details of cheap .de on goneo?

When I logged-in my goneo customer center, I encountered the following screens.

There are two things I didn’t expect. Or I think abnormal comparing to the services I received when I transfer my .com domain names among international registrars, such as on GoDaddy. The first is, from the screenshots, I just got the time for my contract with goneo about „Domain Start“ packet, nothing about the domain expire date – which gives doubt about whether I have lost almost one year of my domain name. (The is also relatively newly bought on netcup, with a validity date range from 07.02.2022 to 06.01.2023.) The second is I didn’t find the path to define or update the DNS records for the transferred domain name.

Wondering why I didn’t get a button like „Manage“ or „DNS“ to define my DNS records for my domain. With the line „Hinweis zu AuthInfo-Codes: Diese werden erst angezeigt, wenn sie vom Registrar bestätigt wurden.“, I though it could be because the transferring is not yet finished. However, when I checked the information on the portal website. I got it – the cheap plan is called „Domain Start“and the following screenshot shows an overview of „Domain Start“.

Quite unexpected, the „Domain Start“ doesn’t even allow users to set DNS records (Zugriff auf DNS-Einstellungen). (In fact, there is also the line „goneo-DNS-Editor“ in the first screenshot above. However, it was not clear enough for me what the „goneo-DNS-Editor“ is.) So how this makes goneo domain names real domain names when it doesn’t allow setting IP addresses for the domains with A or AAAA records?

Should I say, fortunately, goneo still allows me to hold the domain name and use the domain name to do a redirection to another URL to make it a little bit helpful? (Although it is still problematic when using the domain in HTTPS mode.)

Now I am thinking to cancel it, however, I don’t really understand what the line „Sie haben das Recht, binnen vierzehn Tagen ohne Angabe von Gründen diesen Vertrag zu widerrufen. Die Widerrufsfrist beträgt vierzehn Tage, wobei die Frist ab dem Tag des Vertragsabschlusses beginnt.“ in my email really means.

Well, anyway, just for my case, I didn’t really get started using the domain name qiasoft.de and also just though to use goneo as a temporary trustee before moving back to netcup. I think, maximum, I would just lose EUR 3,64 (paid previously on netcup) and EUR 2,28 (on goneo), and a year of time to use the domain name.

Conculsion

Do not do domain business with goneo, do it with netcup.