I want to get some domains for selfhosted stuff, but I’d like to use a registrar that I won’t regret doing business with later, both in terms of ethics and potential customer service stuff. Who do y’all like most?
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Top answers from the last 39580202 times this was asked:
- Namecheap
- Porkbun
- Gandi
- Cloudflare
I wouldn’t buy domains from Cloudflare from a risk mitigation perspective. At work I direct six figures of budget their way annually, but as a free-tier customer in my personal life I don’t trust them not to fuck up at some point and lock my account. If I register my domain elsewhere I can bring myself back online by moving the nameservers. If it’s registered at Cloudflare I’m fucked.
I have one of my domains on Cloudflare and was thinking of moving the rest of them there. What makes it harder to move name servers away from Cloudflare than other places?
You’ll be fine to move them to Cloudflare.
What the other user is describing would be an extremely rare scenario, and you should be able to change registrars in that case anyway.
There’s really not much of any practical benefits of that kind of excessive “risk mitigation”.
Your registrar (the place you buy your domains) is where you update your nameservers. If Cloudflare have locked you out then you won’t be able to change them. Other standard registrars will have far less cause, legitimate or not, to lock or disable your account, since they don’t host/proxy your content.
I’m not sure what the consequences are for ignoring it, but it would violate the ICANN RAA to lock a person out of being able to transfer their domain except for legal reasons like evidence of fraud or a court order. Sure, they can terminate your account on their services but they can’t prevent you from transferral without violating their agreement with ICANN.
It would be a weird scenario that you’re describing that would be unusual and exceedingly rare. You would need to be directly connected to something highly illegal for that to happen, not just a normal user.
That’s why I said I don’t trust them to not fuck up, not that it’s something that should ordinarily be expected. Additionally, especially considering how the rule of law in their jurisdiction is going recently I wouldn’t assume it will always be this way.
Gandi massively increased their prices 2 years ago.
For email hosting only. But yes, they are not as trustworthy as they once were
Another +1 for name cheap, been using em for a decade now. Their deals are stellar and renewal prices are on par with any other competitors usually
Porkbun has been great
Seconded. I switched from namecheap when they raised the price of my domain. I never had a problem with name cheap but porkbin is cheaper.
Agreed.
In case anyone was wondering:
- namecheap: US
- porkbun: US
- INWX: Germany
- OVH: French
- onlydomains: NZ
I personally have been with onlydomains for a decade or so. No complaints.
I’ve domains from both DomainMonger and NameCheap. If it were trivial, I’d probably move my domains to NameCheap. The web UX is a little better; aside from that, I’ve never had issues with either, not heard anything particularly bad about either.
But, yeah: +1 on the NameCheap suggestion.
Does UX really matter?
I’d rather decouple DNS and domain.
Feels like (no proof, just gut feeling) services like Cloudflare have better security and integration than the respective registrars.What do you mean, decouple DNS and domain? The registrar is the authoritative source for DNS - how do you bypass that?
While yes, that’s true, you can point the domain to have 3rd party DNS servers.
For example Cloudflare.
You could register VMs with them or with another registrar. Same with DNS. Do it with your choice of registrar or use whatever else you maybe actually want.
I’ve been with Porkbun since Gandi got acquired. No complaints.
Acquired by whom?
Total Webhosting Solutions
I switched to Porkbun from Namecheap recently because Porkbun is somewhat local.
Porkbun is decent but cheaper if you have a dozen domains too
Namesilo is quite good - cheap & been using it for 5 years now (coming from namecheap)
I find their website so awful and painful to use. Everything is difficult to find and just takes longer to accomplish than nearly anywhere else. I bought one domain from them once and will never use them again.
I have had a lot good experience with Porkbun.
I’ve been with 1984.is for a couple of years now. I think my domains cost around 12 Euros a year each. Their web GUI works fine and I’ve never needed to contact their customer service, so I cannot comment on that.
I’ve been with 1984.is for some time as well. They’re international domain is 1984.hosting. I’ve also had contact with their support and they’re friendly, knowledgeable and straight on point.
I had to transfer my domain and they wanted the domain key. Not wanting to send that over insecure email asked if they have a GPG key and told me they do, sent me a link to their site to get it and a specific mail to send it to which I then was able to send over. The process of contacting them and getting everything set was very speedy and I felt in good hands.
I’m using Cloudflare, because it’s quite convenient since I always end up using them as DNS server.
Also use Cloudflare as new domain registrar because I use them as DNS as well. I can’t say that I’ve had any problems with them at all.
I moved all my domains from Google to OVH, OVH have an API so you can get certs with certbot. You could also use the API to update records for a dynamic home broadband
I have a server with OVH. I hadn’t realised they’re a registrar also.
Yeah, OVH do website hosting as well
Iwantmyname.com ticked almost all boxes last i looked. Hasnt been mentioned yet. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=iwantmyname.com&sort=byDate&type=comment
INWX has been great so far, have been with them for about 6 years at this point. Also had good experiences with their customer support.
+1 for INWX
-1 for INWX. Still waiting on a domain transfer, domain is stuck for about a month, chat support was useless
I’ve been happy with Hover for several years. They don’t bug me and they’re owned by Tucows so they’ve got decades-old staying power.
I can’t believe they’re still around
I have two domains through Porkbun. Never had an issue with them. No-nonsense, simple UI, good prices.
Tested porkbun and namecheap. Namecheap has a nice and reactive support from my experience. Porkbun also helped me quickly.
