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Comment by aerovistae | Hacker News Reader

Recommendations for superior alternatives? I'm an indifferent GoDaddy user but would be happy to switch to something else since I've never liked them as a company.

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Big fan of NearlyFreeSpeech.net and use them for any TLD they support, unfortunately not including some of the newer more esoteric ones like ".cool", but I'm sure that's probably in the works. I moved over from GoDaddy after GoDaddy pulled down seclists.org for Myspace with no due process: https://mashable.com/2007/01/25/myspace-godaddy/

Versus: https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/help/abuse

How do registrars “take down” domains? Is it a simple nameserver change that would then propagate over the next few hours?

Yes, in the same way a registrar would redirect a domain to an “expired” page during the non-renewal grace period.

I love http://domains.Google

You get free email forwarding (even wildcard), free domain privacy, free website forwarding (with ssl), Google infrastructure behind all of that and the authoritative DNS they offer.

Cloudflare also offers a registrar service and its good.

Second this. Transferred 8 domains a months ago from GoDaddy to Google.

GD was good when I was brainstorming ideas and wanted to buy domains for peace of mind just for $1.99 or some other big promo discount. But is goes to $22+ the next year, while the normal price is $12. Google.Domains offers flat $12 + lots of value in email forwarding et al. I used to add domains as aliases to my old free GSuite subscription just for emails, which was highly inconvenient. Also redirects from e.g. .org/.info/.net to .com is small but handy thing.

Last time I registered 3 domains with GD 3 months ago there was no promo give-away prices for the first year. Registered with them by inertia. But without almost free prices to "reserve" a domain dealing with GD makes no more sense.

One good thing about GD is that domain transferring from them to Google takes couple of clicks and is pretty fast. I did not have to leave my PC during the process - couple of page refreshes.

Cloudflare Registrar offers domains at cost, which makes it the least expensive option for the TLDs it supports:

https://www.cloudflare.com/tld-policies/

If you use Google Domains, you risk losing access to the domains if Google suspends or terminates your Google account for some reason unrelated to the domains.

You can add multiple Google accounts to admin a domain. Increases the survivability of access to them.

They better not be on the same G Suite account.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21826368

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24109809

Google Domains charges $12.00/year for .com renewals, compared to $8.56/year at Porkbun and $8.03/year at Cloudflare. With Google's reputation for poor support, most domain owners simply have no good reason to use Google Domains.

Interesting. I'd never considered Google for my domains.

Any idea if the '£10/year' is every year? Or does it go up after the first year?

Also, I found it weird that they promote a .app and .dev TLD as 'More Secure'.

They call them more secure because the whole TLD is on the HSTS preload list, so no downgrade attacks.

Which means that an SSL certificate is required

It’s the same every year. I’m sure they could raise the price later on, but if you’re that worried, you can extend your registration to 10 years for 10x the one-year price. And if they do end up raising the price, you can also transfer your domain away.

I think all domains under `dev` have HSTS turned on.

Does Cloudflare still require you to transfer in or can you actually buy domains from them directly now? The buy and then wait 90 days to transfer in thing is a hassle.

you can buy now but the tld is limited

how's google support?

It’s Google, I haven’t had any issue with the service and been using it since launch.

Biggest problem is that the site doesn’t work well in ios on iPhone so I use mobile chrome.

NameCheap (which I use) and Gandi are common recommendations on HN AFAIK.

I've had great experience with Gandi over the last 10 years.

Gandi is fine. Their domains are slightly more expensive than others.

Basically everyone else is a superior alternative.

I use gandi.net because every domain includes email hosting. And France privacy laws.

Same, but different reasons. I just like seeing 'No Bullshit' on their site, since that's basically what I'm thinking when looking for such services.

I just checked-out gandi.net, and I found their page in defense of No Bullshit. What a nice page to see amidst the many other sites filled with Bullshit.

https://www.gandi.net/en/no-bullshit

  "No Bullshit is our philosophy"
  "Above all, "no bullshit" is our golden rule—to treat
   our users how we want to be treated. It's a promise
   to respect your rights and to level with you about our
   shortcomings."

That slogan has probably done them more good business than they know.

Same. I like to see it myself and look for it each time I visit.

I consider it a canary. When that go÷s away, time to evaluate things again.

No spam either. Their UI is also really transparent. You can even edit all of your DNS records as a single plain text file.

CloudFlare (yes they are a registrar now) or Gandi are my go-tos! Never had an issue.

GoDaddy are just bad in every conceivable way.

Wow, I didn't know CF did registrations (makes sense though). And looking at their rates shows they don't markup prices. For example, most places charge $12 for a .com address. CloudFlare charges $8.03, which is their cost, they add nothing.

Yep, can't wait 'till they support .cc and whatnot.

The same cloudflare whose ceo decided to deplatform a client not too long ago?

For DNS hosting, not just name registration, EasyDNS is far and away the best. Epik and Namecheap are also really good, and a bit cheaper, if you don't need all the services EasyDNS provides. Both EasyDNS and Epik have a strong commitment to supporting free speech (especially Epik, the DNS hoster for Gab).

I've been using EasyDNS for years.

I'm a big fan. I've never had any issue at all, and their DNS hosting seems incredibly robust (I'm not qualified to really analyze it - there's a reason I don't do my own DNS).

We use AWS Route 53 for domain registration. Works like a charm.

They use Gandi under the hood. Using Gandi directly is a much better experience

If your servers are in AWS, then Route53 is a no-brainer - it lets you do things no other DNS host can do, and it's infinitely better plumbed into the AWS ecosystem (CloudFormation automation, etc.)

Can also recommend them. No race-to-the-bottom scammy upsell shit since... it's basically just there as a value-add on AWS. And you're piggy-backing on all the infrastructure/support/etc that people expect from AWS instead of a domain registrar where people are generally shopping pretty exclusively on price.

And you can expect that they're not going to turn _into_ a scammy registar at any point since, well, it's AWS.

I second Route 53 for domains. It’s straight to the point and clear cut unlike other registrars that try to upsell gimmicky features at every step.

Dynadot.com, they've been around a long time, for me it's been the provider I always come back to.

DNSimple is great for domain names.

I've been using https://internetbs.net/ for the better part of a decade now.

They email me once a year that stuff is about to expire, I renew it.

I've never had to interact with them otherwise about anything, which in this case means they're clearly doing something right.

I like Porkbun personally.

I have used https://joker.com/ for 20 years, and have yet to find a single thing to complain about.

DirectNIC. Based in Louisiana. Been around forever. Fair prices.

Can’t comment on its customer service, because in 23 years I've never had anything go wrong.

Thanks for the support and being such a loyal customer reaperducer.

I work for Directnic. I can confirm Directnic has never and will never engage in activities as described by the OP.

If you (or anyone) has any questions, needs assistance with anything relating to Directnic, feel free to reach out. My email is mrobertson@dnc.io.

I migrated everything to Namecheap a couple of years ago, they have been great. I’m happy not to be giving money to GoDaddy any longer.

I use ipage for domains and hosting and never had a problem with it. I am looking at my past bill and I paid $96 for a year of hosting. I don't use it for much, just static HTML. I use ftp to push changes. Dead simple.

Looking their site they have an intro deal going now to host for a year for $2/month

$96 for static hosting is a crap deal.

I've been using Hover for years and like them.

Appreciate it! I can personally state for the record we don't do what is alleged. I also seriously doubt GoDaddy does it.

Epik, Namecheap, Fabulous for domains.

Thanks for the support and being such a loyal customer bhartzer. Always good to hear from you.

For those that don't know me, I work for Fabulous.com. I can confirm Fabulous has never and will never engage in activities as described by the OP.

If anyone has any questions, needs assistance with anything relating to Fabulous, feel free to reach out. My email is mike@fabulous.com.

Hey Mike! Hope you're well.

dnsimple has been a fantastic provider for me for at least 5 years. it’s just... simple.

Namecheap

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