Is the Tech Community’s Preference for Namecheap a Sign of Things to Come?

Earlier this month I wrote a post about which domain registrars HackerNews users prefer. Among that audience, NameCheap came in first (35%), GoDaddy second (27%), and Gandi a distant third (6%). There was a lot of great follow-on discussion in the HackerNews comments about pros and cons of the various registrars that’s worth reading.

Several readers asked about the overall statistics, that is not just HackerNews visitors but everyone who has chosen a registrar on Lean Domain Search.

Here are those numbers from launch (Jan 16, 2012) through today (Dec 18, 2012):

45% of Lean Domain Search users who were prompted with the “Please select your preferred registrar” dialog chose GoDaddy as their registrar, followed by Namecheap (20%), Gandi (3%), and Dreamhost (3%). 17% selected “None” and the remaining 12% selected something else (all less than 2% of the total).

GoDaddy may be the most popular registrar, but HackerNews users are 75% more likely to use Namecheap than GoDaddy compared to the average Lean Domain Search visitor.

If the preferences of the tech community are an early indication of overall trends, Namecheap could pose a significant threat to GoDaddy in the coming years. Regardless of the outcome, the competition will force all registrars to step up their game and that is certainly a good thing for all of us.