Ask HN: Which domain registrar and hosting provider do you prefer?
I'm looking for a place that's around the average $10/year or lower and has a nice web panel design to manage domain names.
I use Kimsufi for hosting and never had any issues. Was a customer of online.net at the same time but only until the recent price hike.
At the time I chose Gandi for the 2 factor auth, and because it was a European company, but in the meantime there is plenty of other registrars offering the same.
Just curious, but who does that? I can only afford to renew a small handful of domains, never mind 200+. I presume they are all monetized in some way?
They can also register your domain, and the integrated interface makes it very easy to sping up a new site from a GitHub repo, assign it a new domain name, get SSL and be up and running in ~2 minutes.
After some research I landed at Hetzner who allow me to just edit the BIND zonefile according to my needs. No oversimplification that takes away features but also no hand-holding. I don't know why you asked for a 'nice web panel design' but afaik these providers usually don't have the HN-audience as their target. They target those 'non-techies' who need some sort of web-presence and to limit their support-needs they usually dump-down the UI to the basics.
(ps: they are in the USA: Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, and maybe Nevada?)
For the last 15 years, I have run OpenDomain - a project that gives domains to OpenSource projects for Free. I have used almost every registrar and I am actually a sub-registrar through TuCows and SrsPlus where I can be a domain reseller.
* namecheap.com: It's cheap and easy to use. Has a lot of TLDs to choose from.
* freenom.com: Started using free domains, dropped most of them, kept a few as paid domains, which I don't regret.
Hosting:
* server.lu (now part of server.com): Luxembourg is a great location for hosting, especially with a 1Gbit port. I still have my old contract which I don't plan on terminating as long as them don't force me. Getting the full bandwidth throughout Europe. Not the cheapest plan, but one of the best dedicated servers I ever owned.
Gandi, I've used them for over a decade now and never ceased to be impressed.
> hosting provider do you prefer?
Joyent, (full disclaimer, I worked here previously) they really got containers right, just compare Fargate or ECS with Triton both as a developer and an operator. Joyent's path makes much more sense to me. Manta is also impressive, and being able to spin up a container right where an object lies is perfect for some workloads.
I’ll (hopefully remember to) switch my domains over to (probably) namecheap as it’s usually the most recommended one in these threads to save a few bucks a year when it comes time to renew them.
I like that they at least seem smakk, their panel is great, I can buy a new domain in well under a minute, and their branding is a little funny.
For hosting, currently Linode, but I am also working on deploying to Digital Ocean in tandem for extra resiliency. I'll use failover GeoDNS to balance between the two.
CloudFlare for DNS
Vultr or DigitalOcean for hosting
(The question becomes. What do you mean by manage domain names. The full shebang. Or only the simple stuff, like email & web forwarding.)
I use domain registrars from all over the world. And am familiar with domain registrars from all over the world. It's a result of the land rushes of the early 2000's. Where names were awarded in a round robin fashion. Pre-registering* with as many registrars as possible could increase the chance of obtaining a name. For the most part I've stuck with and had good experiences with the registrars that got me the domain names I was after. So you can just about pick any registrar and get a fairly good experience.
However; they have their quirks. I transferred some names to a register because their prices were low. But then found out they renew names once a year. As they're expiring, for only one more year. So every year I'm on pins and needles hoping my credit card won't be denied for some reason. I ran into trouble with some other companies in the fall this year when a new credit card was issued to me, and the old one stopped. Just as names needed to be renewed. Just as my Amazon Web Services bill came due.
Some registrars used to have clunky interfaces. Many have upgraded and that's no longer the case.
I would want a registrar that allows multi-year registration and auto renewal. Email & web forwarding. The ability to easily change name servers and modify DNS records (you may need to provide domain ownership to your hosting provider through modification of your txt record). A registrar that makes it easy to lock and unlock a domain, and makes it easy to get the authorization code needed to transfer a domain. A registrar that let's you have your zone file when you want to transfer to another registrar. A registrar that let's you set a privacy policy so your email address isn't shown in the whois database and so you don't receive spam messages. I have somewhere shy of 140 2nd level domain names. And I used to see 140 of the same email. You want a registrar that gives you backup name servers and name servers that won't slow you up.
(I believe my .tw domains don't allow auto renewal; and you have to renew before the expiration date. A gotcha.)
There might be legal considerations. You might want to register domains in a country where the laws are different - to avoid trademark problems.
I would want a register that isn't on shaky financial footing. Where if the registrar went out of business my domains might be tied up and/or available. It's happened.
So I guess what I'm saying is there's a lot more involved then just price.
There are a lot of domains that are much more expensive then $10/yr. Maybe those expensive domains would be worth registering if you could get a more sensible name. Maybe an extension reserved for the business you're in. As an example; if you're Wells Fargo, wellsfargo.bank $10/yr. seems kind of low. Unless the registrar tacks on charges for name servers, email & web forwarding, ... I think it used to cost $35 a year through the only registrar, Network Solutions. So I don't mind paying $15 or $20 at all. My .tw names are normally $40/yr. And other extensions can be much, much higher.
Google domains is easy to use and doesn't cost any more then the other registrars I've been using.
* I ruefully found out how credit cards actually worked after the land rushes started. They can authorize transactions on your card even though you haven't won the domain name(s). So if you want to get involved in a round robin land rush. You really want to have a high credit limit.
I get .tw names from www.bookmyname.com (Online SAS) in France for less then half the cost
DNS: CloudFlare
Hosting: Linode