Life after Trinic: Webnames.ca

Back in 2001 I wrote about switching my domain name registrar from Network Solutions to a small Edmonton company called Trinic. After dealing with the non-responsive behemoth that was Network Solutions, Trinic’s lean, mean interface was a pleasure, and for a long time I was pleased with their services.

Starting in early 2002, I encountered some customer service problems with Trinic. Then, later that year, I heaped some more praise their way.

Since that point, however, it has been mostly downhill. When their services work, they work well. When they don’t work, it’s almost impossible to get a human being on the phone, and email response time has gotten longer and longer. Their web-based systems are “quirky” at best, and often contain incomplete information, and there have been several instances where domains have become “stuck” somehow, and have required them to clear something manually. With the exception of some outages in their DNS services, I’ve never encountered a serious service-affecting issue; that said, I’m gradually lost faith in the integrity of their systems.

All of which has led me, this week, to switch registrars again. This isn’t something I do lightly, mostly because of the amount of work it takes to transfer everything — seemingly endless streams of confirmation emails to go through, mostly, punctuated by waiting times for various third parties to do things.

I choose Webnames.ca as my new home. This company is an outgrowth of the original “dot ca” domain name registry at the University of British Columbia (back in the days when registering a .ca name was as simple as sending off an email message to John Demco). I first used their systems several years ago, and I wasn’t impressed: I ran into frequent problems, and found their customer service lacking.

I revisited them this week, and found things had improved dramatically. They have just unwrapped a new web-based management tool that is, in large part, intuitive, fast, and easy to use. In transferring a menagerie of 30 .ca and .com domain names this week, I ran into a couple of problems, mostly CIRA-related, and I never had to wait more than a couple of minutes to talk to a real, live, helpful person. The kind of person that could actually fix my problem, not simply take the details and promise to call me back.

I had a longer conversation yesterday with the company’s Business Development Manager, Rupert Lindsay, yesterday, and found him knowledgeable, helpful, and willing to answer almost any question I had.

I’m going to be sending more business their way in the days and weeks to come; if you want to register a domain name yourself, early indications are that Webnames.ca is a good destination.