Private equity seems to be a form of cancer that slowly sucks the life out of everything it touches, with a single goal: to grow and spread. Can someone more knowledgeable please explain to me why I'm wrong?

Private equity has been a cancer for the web hosting community. A single firm bought the top two control panels (cPanel and Plesk), the top virtualization solution (SolusVM), and the top billing software (WHMCS). And each year the prices are raised further and further with no real investment. It's forced a lot of smaller providers out and caused prices for customers to skyrocket. And you have to put up with it because the alternatives still aren't quite as good, or you're too locked in.

It's the same for hosting companies. A single PE firm (Endurance) owns over two dozen hosting and domain firms. The first thing they do is lay off the staff (because they already have outsourced agents) and strip the bits away until it's nothing more than a shell with a name for one of their other platforms.

PE is a cancer, and I don't even know if I can count one that has ever been a net positive for a company. All they care about is extracting more and more until all that's left is a stone.

Please do not turn NameCheap to shit, CVC. It was a lot of effort to make the move when NameSecure... turned to shit.

Goddamnit, I just moved everything to Namecheap to avoid more outages. Anyone have other recommendations in the event of the likely private equity rot?

For anyone wondering: "the deal covers both Namecheap and its sister platform, Spaceship."

Should link to original article - https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/cvc-strikes-1-5-billion-d...

https://archive.ph/i9vOk

What is the simplest, and least path of resistance to starting my own Registrar? Do I have to pay a fee for each TLDs, gTLDs that I want to be able to make it available for registration?

Good for Namecheap. They're still my default when I'm searching for new domains, even though I end up registering somewhere else (their bulk search is still best in class imo).

I'm a bit surprised at their revenue numbers considering domain registration is pretty much a commodity at this point. I always assumed non-technical people would first go to a web host/email provider that lets them buy a domain vs. a domain registrar that also supports email and web hosting. Clearly I'd be wrong.

Literally just renewed domains with them hours ago. Worrying that this is being seen as an acquisition worthy space

Soon they will change their name to namexpensive… time to move on to other options not managed by vampires

Are there guides on how to move domains from Namecheap to whoever the new recommended provider is?

Ugh, all my domains are with Namecheap, since Google stopped dealing with domains and CloudFlare and GoDaddy seem more evil. Also I appreciated Namecheap's support of Ukraine.

Hopefully it's not too predatory and the owner just wanted to cash out some chips; some corps do okay under private equity (Suse for example) but lots get ripped to shreds...

Shit I have domains there. Anyone have recommendations for a good cheap registrar that supports .io?

> Richard Kirkendall, founder and CEO of Namecheap, will remain with the company, retaining a significant shareholding and continuing to oversee its operations.

I hope Mr. Kirkendall would continue to oversea its operations and continue to pay its employs a good salary.

https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salary/Namecheap-Ukraine-Salarie...

Another private equity acquisition. Hooray!