Snigdha Sur (@snigdhasur) on X

In January 2025, Namecheap shut down my company’s website globally. I was forced to file a temporary restraining order against them to get our website back. An American court ruled in my favor.

I run The Juggernaut, a startup that tells powerful South Asian stories. When Namecheap took us offline, our business came to a screeching halt. Growth, usage, and word of mouth is a startup’s lifeblood. We lost it all for weeks.

Our entire web presence vanished overnight. People couldn’t read articles. Customers were furious. We lost paying subscribers and couldn’t acquire any new ones, especially in one of our biggest acquisition months. We lost *years* of SEO we had painstakingly built.

Shutting down a news organization also raises serious First Amendment and free-speech concerns.

We were also in mid-conversation with investors, which we had to suspend. One investor even messaged me on LinkedIn, asking if I had shut down my business because he couldn’t find us online anymore. That’s how total the shutdown was.

Despite multiple messages to Namecheap support, the company was unresponsive. So I sued Namecheap to recover our domain. Now, I’ve learned from my lawyers that Namecheap is suing me personally.

Big corporations sue founders personally to scare them. This is a problem. They know we have limited resources to defend ourselves. cc:

Namecheap’s main claim is that the domain was registered in my name — even though it was used exclusively by the company. Many founders do this, sometimes purchasing a domain before incorporation.

Namecheap also claims it has broad discretion to shut down your domain “at any time for any reason,” which can create massive uncertainty for founders.

Now, Namecheap is trying to win exorbitant legal fees from me despite the court saying we deserved our domain back. Ex-CEO Richard Kirkendall (

) even tweeted he’d return the domain, thanks to

asking questions, then did no such thing.

The power imbalance is glaring. Namecheap CEO Richard Kirkendall touted the company earning $398 million in revenue in 2024, and is now valued at $1.5 billion. I haven’t raised a Series A. This just lets you know the scale at which they can go after me. cc:

For a company that says they are “always champions for their customers,” that proudly displays quotes from other founders like

, Namecheap’s behavior is deeply troubling. If I could do it over, I would never buy my domain from Namecheap. cc:

From my end, looks like this tweet has been deleted