Ask HN: Where have you registered your domains and why? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Where have you registered your domains and why?

75 pointstzury107 comments

From business perspective, I am simply tired of $5.99 domain register fee that turns $59.99 a year later.

Then comes the security aspects, after all, the NS records are to be managed by the registrar.

So, kindly share where have you chosen to run your domains, and I am sure the community will benefit of hearing about a decent domain name service.

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I've used a few registrars over the years in different ways.

About 10 years ago I used pair.com because they also had PHP hosting and that's all I knew at the time. I did little with them.

I think for a very brief period I actually used godaddy for one or two domains.

A few years later I used gandi.net because they were "no BS" domain name registration, which I think was a direct reaction to having a hard time using godaddy. I mostly used it to point to custom slicehost servers. Later I also configured the DNS to point to github pages. Since they're in France, there's an extra step and extra few minutes before you get your domain names approved.

A few years after that I started using namecheap instead, and still use them. They give me the same amount of control as gandi.net but with a simpler (less confusing) interface, and they're in USA so they don't have the same delay that gandi.net has. I've pointed them to EC2 instances but mostly to github pages.

Recently I experimented with buying a few from Route 53 on AWS, mainly so I could see if it was all that big of an improvement to have everything on AWS. For some reason I'm getting charged like $2 every month for some (or all?) of these domain names, and it's a charge that's slightly annoying to me, mostly because I don't really understand what the charge is for (I think they said some sort of DNS routing fee or something?). I did like the integration with other services that Route 53 gave, but the flexibility and customization needed to get that integration working seemed like overkill and was definitely harder to figure out than the other services. Again I've used them successfully with both github pages and EC2.

Personally I would go with namecheap if I had to buy another domain name.

+1 for namecheap.

+2 for namecheap. After an unbelievably horrid experience with 1and1 I switched over to NC and their support has been simply a breath of fresh air. Fast support, knowledgeable reps, everything (usually) works, at a good price.

Pry NC out of my cold dead hands...

I wouldn’t go with namecheap, this is why: https://medium.com/@alexandernst/from-successful-to-zero-tha...

Thanks, this is not the first such story I've read. Should be noted though that we have had similar issues with country registrar's. Especially Germany that deny certain name servers for no reason

I can imagine painful story can be told about every company out there. No one gives perfect service. No one.

That said, who is recommended instead?

Anecdotally, I've ran into a lot of stuff over the years that I've needed namecheap's support with and they'll stay with you on a live chat session as long as it takes to make sure everything is getting resolved.

Ha! I too am being charged for Route 53 for what, I have no idea. Very confusing service.

There's a fee of $0.50 per hosted zone and month for Route 53, in addition to the $0.40 per million queries. This is optional if you don't want to use Route 53 for DNS, so you can still use a free option like Cloudflare instead.

Most registrars would reach out & ask you to pay for premium DNS after some sort of soft limit anyways. Companies like Google pay thousands for their DNS. Free DNS is a form of over-selling. Cloudflare also has a history of shutting of people's service after they hit some soft limit, and asking you to upgrade to paid.

I've had that talk with cloud flare. They didn't come over very aggressive and confirmed that I wouldnt have a issue when I stay on free.

Also a big fan of Namecheap.

I too used Gandi at some point, but had an issue which led to a lot of BS. In short, and while not their fault, my credit card expired and that caused a few domains (5 or 6 -- all related) to go into quarantine. It was bad timing.

While their fee for registering the domains was not that high, getting them out of quarantine would have cost me $50 or 75 per domain. I transferred them out to IWantMyName (a NZ registrar, great service + works really well) _without_ having to pay any quarantine fees and just renewed them there for a year. Gandi refused to waive the quarantine fee saying "it was impossible", which was BS. My credit card had expired two days before.

I get that nothing is for free in this world, but if it would've been me in their situation, I would have waived the fee on this one occasion. Years later, I still retain those domains through IWMN.

gandi.net provides email hosting too, 5 users, included in price. Most other registrars, including namecheap, charge extra.

Namecheap does free forwarding tho. Something some others are missing.

Not forwarding. Email hosting. That is, access it over web, POP3, IMAP, send email via SMTP...

Currently I use namecheap for their simplicity and speed yet they have all the options if you need them. Tried GoDaddy and went away screaming since they have some super shady practices. Willing to try Google Domains since I use GCP a lot but its not available to me as of now.

Gandi.net for the last 14 years. Not the cheapest but good service and no upsell.

I concur. Gandi.net has excellent support, predictable pricing, and a reasonably good admin interface. Also, their email reminders (e.g. to renew a domain or verify information) are pretty much plain text and straight to the point, which is all I want.

I'm a Gandi user and but I hate that they insist on leaving my email address in the WHOIS data.

I think that's only certain domain suffixes?

.com domains seem to be obfuscated okay these days...

e.g. https://v4.gandi.net/whois/details?search=davewasthere.com&s...

Hmmm, was the service updated?

I couldn't get my emails obfuscated on .com and .io addresses about 2~3 years ago. Just managed to get it done.

It's probably due to the GDPR. My understanding is that a lot of registrars are removing all personal information from WHOIS due to GDPR concerns.

What's GDPR?

The General Data Protection Regulation, coming into force on May 25th in the EU.

https://www.eugdpr.org for more information.

I use gandi as well for all my domains (about 100). But ever since they switched to the new v5 platform. I've been getting very inconsistent problems. I had to migrate all the domains to the new platform, but every so often I find some domains that haven't been migrated. All on the same account with different handles, which makes it hard to find the ones that haven't been migrated

Totally agree on the new platform - absolutely dreadful.

Otherwise, best I have used - and I've been through all the usual suspects.

I use Dreamhost for almost all of my domains. I have been hosting with them since 2003 and for simple hosting needs they have been just what I need, no hassle, no attempts to sell me other products I don't need, and reasonably responsive tech support in the (pretty rare) cases when I've needed it. Based on that hosting experience I started moving my registrations to them as well (mainly from GoDaddy but a few from Network Solutions), and by now almost all of them are with Dreamhost.

I have a few domains that are with GoDaddy simply because I paid for ten year registration years ago when they had special deals for that, and the ten years haven't expired yet. When they do I expect to move those remaining domains to Dreamhost as well.

I have also been with Dreamhost for years and register domains and use shared hosting with them for a few websites. I have nothing but good things to say and I think it's really cool that they are Employee Owned.

Ten or so years ago when I was in high school and I put up a PHP web proxy at Dreamhost so that I could browse blocked sites on the school desktops. It ended up on some web proxy list and got flooded with traffic. I got the most kind email for such a blatant ToS violation:

> I've had to disable your domain due to it almost crashing the server because someone was hammering the proxy you put up there. We do not permit public proxy scripts on shared webservers; please remove the software. You may reenable the domain with non-proxy content if you wish.

Second this. I have more than sixty domains held at Dreamhost. Going on my 10th year. Their live chat for support is phenomenal.

Hover.com, great user interface with no bloated advertisements. Moved there from GoDaddy years ago.

And their support is always phone call away too.

Regardless of with whom, I recommend not using the same service you host with or use for development. Don't place yourself in the position to be held hostage -- whether deliberately or through neglect.

Some services allow you to designate another account as an "administrator" without giving up your control over the domain's ownership.

That said, don't forget to renew your registration! You are going to want to whitelist messages from whomever you register with.

This may vary with a more substantial presence and formalized agreements beyond random user account boilerplate.

IWantMyName.com for reg (cheap, reliable, "do one thing well", nice UX).

DNSMadeEasy for DNS, same reasons.

IWantMyName for the same reasons, and good customer support from the dev team.

Gandi.net for years now. They've made recent changes that fixed my biggest gripes, and have pretty good docs for getting everything set up. I especially appreciate their private domain registration, meaning that my address isn't associated with my domain.

I recently transferred my domains to Google Domains. I tried serveral registrars over the years (Namecheap, GoDaddy, etc), but was tired of them trying to upsell me on a bunch of stuff I didn't want, plus their cluttered UI. So far working great; straightforward interface, fair pricing.

I still use Cloudflare as my DNS provider, mostly for its additional features.

ps: disclaimer: I work at Google, but not on the Domains team, and no relationship other than as a personal customer.

I don't work at Google and I use Google Domains, so there's that. $12.00 a year, no nagging, and I can do some nice things like email forwarding for a hundred email address from the domain and the ability to share administration with other people à la Google Docs. Just point a A record at GitHub and you get Pages to host there too.

I use Google Domains for work and personal stuff. It works, rates are reasonable, GSuite integration is nice, and I can administer DNS easily until I need to scale to a better DNS provider.

For all the services Google does, they have other motives than provide the said services which makes me uncomfortable using them.

Namecheap. Me domain discounts for students.

https://www.inwx.com. I am using them for about 5-10 years now (had ~30 different domains over time) and I was never disappointed.

- Pricing is fair and uncomplicated. https://www.inwx.com/en/domain/pricelist

- Lots of extra features, e.g. whois privacy, glue records.

- DNS hosting (in case you need it) is included, DNS servers are located in 5 different datacenters. (Although I prefer Cloudflare because they are the fastest according to https://www.dnsperf.com .)

- You have full control over your domain. It's even possible to update tech-c and zone-c (many domain providers do not allow this).

- You can manage everything through their web interface and an API. (Many domain providers I've had to use require you to contact support for things like custom name servers, domain transfer, change of domain contacts, and so on, which is completely insane.)

The only exception I've found is DNSSEC, if you want to use it you need to contact support and send them your values.

Namesilo for the following reasons: (1) pricing does not change (goes lower once you hit 50+); (2) free privacy and (3) free 100 email forwarding per domain. Have not tested their DNS yet.

For hosting, you guys really need to get on DigitalOcean instead of doing the shared hosting. For $5/mo, you can put 10,000 domains/websites there with Letsencrypt (free SSL) instead of paying $5/mo/domain

with hosting I agree, but I'd recommend vultr, so you can run openBSD :)

Currently use Namesilo.com for free Whois privacy.

I used to use Namecheap but they charged extra for Whoisguard, and I wasn't happy that they pulled the Daily Stormer (yes I hate Nazis, but IMO censorship should be handled by court orders not CEO's opinions.)

Used Gandi.net back in the day, had no complaints other than the price.

I switched from Namecheap to Namesilo and been very happy - same solid price all the time, plus included free guard.

If a disgruntled employee knows your domain name, they can call Namecheap and claim its theirs. I had such trouble at one of my companies - while they didn't get a hold of the domain, upon validating company name, address and domain name, Namecheap opened the ticket for them and kept our domain on hold for 30 days before the situation got resolved. They did not shut it down, but we were unable to access it or change any DNS records. From my understanding, anyone upset at you enough can contact them and claim the domain is theirs and you stole it from them. That experience made me move out to Namesilo for USA domains, and Marcaria for international.

Source: I'm holding about 50 domains in general since circa 1999.

Same, I have two personal domains with them and the free Whois guard sold it for me.

We use namecheap at work. Recently they have been messing up dns (I think it was a one time thing). Not a huge amount only like 3-6 domains out of 400ish, but it's silent. We caught most with monitoring, but have found several that slipped through the cracks since.

Porkbun - cheap, fast and support is quick to reply. AFAIK their policy is to charge $1 above the cost price for the domain. Free whois protection as well. Interface is fairly intuitive and as a beginner at the time, they answered all of my questions to the degree of detail I needed.

I found Hetzner's domain robot to be easy to use and cheap: https://www.hetzner.com/registrationrobot

The major downside is the limited range of TLD's it allows you to register: .de, .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .eu and .at (other domains are available through Hetzner's normal webshop)

With domain robot have full control over handles, name server entries, auth codes, etc. Annual fees are low (from EUR 3.28 to EUR 12.90) and don't increase year over year. The only additional cost are if you use their name servers (0.50 Euro/year).

Automation is only available through email interface.

iwantmyname.com, I think originally because I wanted to register my name, and they got me with their domain name. It's been straightforward enough with good service and no upsells that I've since registered other domains with them. I think they're based on Germany, which may be a positive for some folks here.

I don't know why so many people love namecheap... Name silo is 8.90/year and it comes with free privacy.

Any domain provider who doesn't have free privacy, or a bundle for < $9.00 isn't worth it. I've been w/ namesilo for a few years and they're top-notch, and have a good api as well.

Namecheap does provide free privacy and (i assume you talk. Com) is usually around $9.66 or so.

I agree that their API is horrible tho.

I took Paul Graham's advice a number of years ago and went with EasyDNS:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=150565

And I think it's also a good idea to use separate hosting companies and registrars.

PairDomains.com – boring UI, strong passwords allowed, two factor authentication via TOTP or SMS. Cover most of the popular TLDs but not many of the crazy new ones nor country based TLDs. Zero upsell, zero scammy lockins so far.

Namesilo is like $5/cheaper for .coms, and has free privacy, it also has 2-factor auth. I highly recommend them.

I live and work in China, so I use Aliyun, which is Alibaba's cloud arm, similar to what AWS is for Amazon. Aliyun itself bought 万网 (Net.cn aka HiChina) in 2013, and it's still a bit fractured, but works well enough.

For .com domains, it's ¥55 (~$8.8) per year with ¥20 discount for the first year (surprisingly transparent). One of the great things is the ability to pay ¥676 (~$107) for 10 years and forget about it.

For .cn domains, it's just ¥29 per year (also -¥20 first year), but you need to through the verification procedure to be able to use it, which requires a Chinese citizen or Chinese company credentials.

Google domains. Very simple to use and good integration with blogger.

GoDaddy, 1&1, or porkbun.com - cheapest choice

I have so many side projects that only last a year, so I typically just choose the cheapest option (which is often $1.14 )

I've used Dynadot for many years -- no BS, no upsell, reliable, easy to use. Also gandi.net for certain TLDs that Dynadot doesn't cover.

Dynadot is awesome, they also have free WHOIS privacy nowadays.

Well, I'll admit I didn't do a ton of research on it, but I moved all my domain names to "NameCheap.com" a few years ago and I've been happy with their services. They had a pretty sweet deal to move them over too.

I'd been using "Verio" for probably 15 years before and the last 5 of them were just awful. I should've never waited as long as I did to ditch them.

Take a look at NameSilo.com

I registered it here and there over the years. My first registrar was a local german firm, they were a bit on the cheaper side in both features and price. Atm I'm moving to OVH domains, which are sometimes a tad more expensive but I want everything under one roof and OVH is european + offers an API that is somewhat widely supported.

eNom (although prices have been slowly climbing over the years but I don't think that's unique to them specifically)

NameSilo.com is quite a bit less expensive.

Gandi.net for 16 years. Not sure why I chose them but stayed with and bought more domains because of role separation between owner and technical contact. Also the free email hosting, web redirection and email redirection are useful and it is annoying how much some registrars charge for these (Gandi doesn’t do .au domains)

I use iwantmyname for the reasons mentioned by the others. I originally met a bunch of the team at a hackathon in Wellington, New Zealand which is where they're based. They're a nice lot with no upsell and reliable service. As mentioned in another comment, they focus on doing on thing well which is nice.

joker.com - it is a Swiss company, and presumably would be harder to have my domains taken away than if it were a US company (not that I am expecting any such thing! but...). No tricks on pricing, the UI is decent but could be better organized, offer easy registration of just about any TLD, and they offer 2FA.

Surprised no mention of http://www.freenom.com/ yet. Granted, I'd doubt anyone would want to run a business domain off this, but it's great for little projects and personal sites/experiments.

I use OVH for all of my domains because you can register probably any TLD on the planet with them. It is quite cheap as well - and they offer free (minimal) hosting and email forwarders as well. DNSSec and full control of everything.

AWS. I like the integration with Route53. Don’t care much about the price differences.

I've been using https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net since 2007 and haven't had any complaints thus far. No-frills but cheap & reliable.

I used to use name.com and iwantmyname.com.

Now I use domains.google because it's simple to manage DNS records, the user interface is very clear and straightforward, and it's automatically integrated with my existing GSuite account.

Surprised that there has only been a couple of mentions of Namesilo. Cheap, straightforward/easy interface, but still plenty of options. Don't think there is any cheaper reputable registrar is there?

Agreed. None that I've found and I've been looking.

What's the cheapest domains to buy and hold? I'm not into investing just building crazy stuff and putting it out there for giggles. So I'm open to any domain that's wins out as the cheapest.

I like google domains. I think that I get the fastest DNS service through them. The administration interface also feels very fast. They cost a little bit more than most, but the faster DNS is very nice.

hover.com, super simple and easy to use.

But a lot more expensive than NameSilo.com, which I find simple and easy-to-use.

Hover (owned by Tucows) lost me as a customer when they refused to support DNSEC (Registrars are required to support it), using "But Hover just resells Tucows, we aren't a registrar" line, and then when pushed, offered it as a $500-per-change option.

I'm pretty happy with NameSilo.

My only "gripe" is they have a smaller range of ccTLD's, and they don't (currently) offer .au domains, which is likely what I'll need next.

Route 53, Amazon. I like the UI, fully featured, better than godaddy, I trust it's transferrable if clients part ways from my services.

> I am simply tired of $5.99 domain register fee that turns $59.99 a year later

Unfortunately this seems pretty common with a lot of new gTLDs.

At NameSilo.com, registrations, renewals, and transfers are all the same low price.

I’m surprised no one has mentioned uniregistry. Their interface is great and they offer both DNS and private registration for free.

NameSilo

They've got competitive pricing, free privacy (WHOIS guard), a straight forward interface, and an API for those who need it.

namecheap. switched during last the major godaddy fiasco. cheap enough, easy enough.

http://www.whtop.com/review/namecheap.com

https://medium.com/@alexandernst/from-successful-to-zero-tha...

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1678818

Internet.bs for their low prices and simple email notifications of expiry dates.

I use Namecheap to register my domains and Google Cloud Platform to host my DNS.

pair Domains. They’re independently owned, price competitive, and don’t upsell.

aws - first class aws integration (obviously) and transparent price

name.com - they offer consistent discounts for those of us with numerous domains and their control interface isn't as frustrating as the one at namecheap.

Namecheap. A friend told me that there is really cheap. :P

Gandi & DNSimple.

Namecheap now, used to be GoDaddy but they were trash.

Consider switching to anything else: https://medium.com/@alexandernst/from-successful-to-zero-tha...

Uniregistry.

Namecheap

Canspace

hover.com, super simple

But quite a bit more expensive than NameSilo.com which is also simple to use.

transip.eu

eNom

GoDaddy has improved significantly over the last few years. It's nice to have everything in one place.

Never, ever, ever, ever again. I'll make sure my great grandchildren will know better than to ever get entangled with GoDaddy. I'm not going to tell my whole story but the tl;dr is their whole existence revolves around upselling, hard-selling, and outright deceiving, all to extract max dollars from you.

GoDaddy is a bad company. They upsell, and they're expensive. There's way too many horror stories to list to deal with this.

Having everything in one place isn't a good thing. If you have a problem with GoDaddy, your domain is there too and you can't just up and leave. With your domain elsewhere, and a backup of your site, you can leave at any time.

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