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Comment by nt2h9uh238h | Hacker News Reader

The reason we're not using AWS is because we couldn't switch our entire network of a few thousand .at domains over here easily. It would have meant months of work. So we went with a competitor.

@AWS my 5cents: adding many more TLDs is one of the highest ROI investments you can make.

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Is domain registration a big part of your hosting world? Surely anyone can register a domain with anyone and point DNS?

Registrars generally have terrible APIs for managing DNS delegations and ownership details. There are also good reasons to be able to manage DNS zone contents, delegations, and ownership through a single coherent set of APIs.

First thing in I do when I register a domain is point its DNS to Digital Ocean nameservers (some registrars even offer this in the signup process - no login or further setup required). That way all my domains are managed under one account irrespective of where they were purchased. They offer every DNS setting you would ever need (unlike some registrars) and their propagation is always super fast. Their API is top notch. The best thing is it's a free service, and the only service of theirs I use. No need for their cloud services. Just amazing DNS.

It sounds like you are talking about a zone contents API, and I agree that it's important to have a good one. But it's also important to have a good API for managing a domain's delegation and ownership information, so that you can ensure all your domains are managed consistently. Just pointing the DNS for a domain at a good DNS provider doesn't help with managing its delegation if the registrar is crappy.

if your business involves registering a high volume of a specific domain then yes, help with managing those would be vital, but most people registering domain names are web developers registering on behalf of clients

This doesn’t make sense. Domain registration is different than DNS. Many would argue keeping your domain registration separate is probably a good thing. Sounds like your problem was with the registrar (making it hard to update NS records to Route53 or anyone else) not AWS.

So you don't use AWS simply because you can't host dns there? Oddly almost everyone I know using AWS refuses to use Route53.

You'd of been fine to use AWS without route53, it's basically the standard. As discussed in this thread, separation of concerns is wise.

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