Ask HN: Recommended Domain Registrars? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Recommended Domain Registrars?

49 pointsbrundolf79 comments

I'm currently on Hover, which is mostly fine. Except it doesn't support a certain kind of DNS record (can't remember which; ALIAS maybe?) which is necessary to get requests without the www. prefix to resolve correctly to my Heroku apps

Google Domains is out because I don't use Google products/have a Google account

Security is a high priority because my emails go through one of my custom domains

Those are about all of my requirements; it's also just hard to know which registrars are trustworthy

Would be very grateful for recommendations

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Namecheap. Easy to use and never had a problem with them over the years.

You can use Cloudflare now too as a registrar but I decided to keep my registrar and DNS separate

You know, I saw that about Cloudflare and made an account just now, but couldn't figure out how to use it as just a registrar without also signing up for their main DDOS-protection service (even if there is the $0 tier). I'm not really worried about DDOS attacks for my site and the idea of being forced to set it up rubs me the wrong way.

Am I missing something, or are these products really entangled like they seem to be?

You can use Cloudflare for DNS only without proxying through their service, so you can even leave your domain at Hover.

To only use Cloudflare for DNS, just add a record and make sure the orange cloud icon is off to disable proxying. However, your observation is mostly correct. Cloudflare offers at cost domain registration as an extra benefit (or lock in) for their customers, rather than as a general service and as such, you can't change your nameservers away from them.

Got it, thanks. I don't (think I?) especially care which nameservers I use, I just didn't really want Cloudflare needlessly intercepting/interfering with my actual traffic

I would strongly recommend against namecheap.

You can only tell how a registrar handles problems when they occur. I ran a large non-controversial content forum ranked high globally, but a user posted illegal image, namecheap.com suddenly sent me a link warning that they will suspend my domain completely within 24 hours, if I did not delete two problem images (which were inappropriate/troublesome images but in the context of the forum posts, "a very poor attempt at humor").

If I missed the warning email or checked my email after 24 hours they would have completely suspended my domain. I'm talking about a site with MILLIONS of visitors per month and ten thousands of posts per day, not some small blog. I thought the warning was SPAM then looked at the headers and then found it was really namecheap.

I do wonder how other registrars handle this. Who did you go with after that experience and how are you sure it wouldn't happen with them?

Context of the illegal image matters too. I'd be very pissed if it was a common shock image like goatse or a dead body, but more understanding if it was child porn. Basically would it be permissible on reddit?

I do use namecheap and don't check my email every month, so that is quite worrying.

What do you think would happen if MarkMonitor completely shut down Google.com, Microsoft.com, or Amazon.com because of a user submitted image hosted on one of their subdomains?

Obviously some images are more harmful and illegal than others, but Namecheap has absolutely no business acting as judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to something that in no way passes through any part of their infrastructure.

If they’re not hosting the DNS or web servers hosting the offending image then they should stand down. They took down Imgur for not deleting an image within I believe it was 2 hours of notice. Completely unprofessional.

I get the impression companies like Google, Facebook, and YouTube go through this all the time, and have a team ready to handle such moderation requests.

I'm not sure what legal rights or responsibilities the registrar has, though. Obviously someone is going through them because it works and it's probably easiest for them to just ignore a request if it's not their responsibility.

> Context of the illegal image matters too. I'd be very pissed if it was a common shock image like goatse or a dead body, but more understanding if it was child porn.

Why should content be a concern, or relevant, for a registrar?

If this was a CDN then I guess that this sort of meddling could be debatable, but DNS?

If I ran a business I would not allow customers that break the law. Would you?

Do internet service providers or apartment rentals or car rentals police your usage of their service?

So why would a glorified traffic signal be allowed to deny you service just because it disagrees with you?

I've been using happily Namecheap for quite some time (slowly migrated away from GoDaddy which is kind of horrible). However, this shared experience could be a big red flag for many people :|.

I'm wondering if someone else can relate?

Where did you end up moving to instead?

In the end I checked what 4chan used. In the past they used Gandi. Currently they use Cloudflare.

I went with Gandi as I suspect their support is more geared toward domain specialization. I don't like companies with no margins, and as Cloudflare domain sales officialy have no margin so they are definitely cheap in price, I find their non-paid non-enterprise support bad in quality. Gandi seems ok support and policy wise. Gandi also has paid telephone support if needed in emergency which is fine with me.

Namecheap's DNSSEC implementation has broken a number of times and last I looked their API was pretty poor.

When transferring-out domains from Namecheap to Porkbun, I was horrified to learn that the email address used for domain registrations wasn't what I expected.

Somehow the registrant email address was set to their whois proxy address, which meant I could not receive my transfer-out EPP code.

I had to contact their support who reset it back to what I had set during purchase and I could receive the EPP code.

easyDNS.

The founder, Mark Jeftovic, wrote the book[0] on domains. pg commented[1] back in 2008 that, "I use EasyDNS. They're expensive, but reliable and never do anything evil."

I've mentioned them a few times over the years; here's my comment[2] from 2015: "Mad props to Mark Jeftovic and easyDNS. Found his service by doing a WHOIS on ycombinator.com when looking for a new registrar a while back. easyDNS has the cleanest and most logical interface for managing domain names and DNS records that I've found. And Mark's blog posts (like the one above) are great. Here's another favorite: http://blog.easydns.org/2014/01/29/welcome-to-easydns-press-... ".

[0] Managing Mission-Critical Domains and DNS: Demystifying nameservers, DNS, and domain names https://www.amazon.com/dp/1789135079/

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

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9358129

I'll second this. I appreciate the CEO's outspokenness on privacy, security etc. And they're just a decent and inexpensive registrar to boot.

Another +1 for EasyDNS here. Been migrating all of our domains to them from hover over the last ~6 months or so after, after repeated terrible support experiences with Hover.

EasyDNS clearly has staff that know their stuff, and get things taken care of, even if their web interface is a bit clunky in comparison to Hover.

Looking at the Heroku page about custom domains, it lists EasyDNS directly:

https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/custom-domains#configu...

  * ANAME at easyDNS

With a link to: https://kb.easydns.com/knowledge/aname-records/

So, looks like it should work. :)

As a bonus, EasyDNS is one of those places that's known to _not_ automatically roll over to legal requests. So, that reduces the risk of having your online presence disrupted by anyone sending dodgy legal request (or even a forged one).

> easyDNS.

They price their offering a tad on the expensive side. From a cursory search, easydns prices some domains at between 2x and 3x the prices offered by the likes of namecheap.

Another vote for easyDNS. I have been using them for 15 years or more, and have moved all my personal, business and customer domains over there. The user interface is simple and easy to use, and the service is rock-solid. I am happy to pay a bit more for such an outstanding service.

Porkbun.com - domains at cost, all the TLDs, super nice people, great deals and newsletters, and free domain sale parking page.

+1 to Porkbun. Their website is one the more minimal side, but it's been quite reliable for what I need (buy domains and edit DNS records). Their prices are low and transparent.

Porkbun is my go-to as well. I left Gandi several years ago after quality and UI speed deteriorated. As an aside, I've enjoyed the little bits of humor sprinkled into Porkbun's UI such as the "back end" being the pig's rear, and the nonsensical dejigamaflipper option :)

+1 for Porkbun. The site is clean/simple and they support WebAuthn with the ability to add multiple keys. They also have an extra password option for important domains which I set to my phone PIN so it isn't written down everywhere.

For DNS, I use Cloudflare for everything.

Came to say this.

How are they making money with that? What’s the catch?

Porkbun sells .com, .net, and .org domains at cost, but adds small markups for other TLDs to earn their profit.

> We currently, and historically, have sold .com, .net, .org domains at cost. That means at the cost we pay the registry + fees we need to cover, such as regulatory taxes and card processing fees, without any profit for ourselves.

> When we mark up other, standard domains, typically the most we do so is $1 + those fees. We often do less than $1.

https://blog.porkbun.com/2021/06/23/how-much-does-a-domain-n...

CloudFlare also claim to sell .com at cost, their price is $8.57 per year. Porkbun's price is $9.03 per year (ignore first year promotion).

They must have different definitions for "at cost". Cloudflare charges the wholesale registry cost plus the ICANN fee. According to their blog post, Porkbun charges a price that would allow them to break even, which also includes regulatory taxes and payment processing fees. Since Cloudflare doesn't factor in these additional taxes and fees, they're losing a little bit of money for each domain they sell. I guess Cloudflare considers this a marketing expense to promote their CDN and other paid services.

Cloudflare is the least expensive registar, but they don't handle new domain registrations (only transfers and renewals), and they offer fewer TLDs than Porkbun. A combination of Cloudflare and Porkbun is the most cost-effective way to register domains in the long run, unless you're willing to deal with registrars that steeply discount only the first year.

I see, thanks for the info. Btw, Cloudflare do offer new registration now, though it's currently marked as "beta", maybe only certain accounts have access to it.

Thanks, this is good to know!

Another +1 for Porkbun. I usually use domcomp.com to compare prices and Porkbun is basically always in the top 3.

This and cloudflare, cause google domain's not available in our country.

I also use Porkbun, but the first thing I do is forward DNS to DigitalOcean, since they have Terraform support.

I like the wide range of TLDs they have.

+1 for Porkbun. Nameservers are set to Cloudflare (not proxied) as I found them to be the sweet spot for speed of response and UX.

Big +1 for Porkbun. I feel a bit bad because I use them only for domain registrations, and then point out to Bunny DNS or Cloudflare DNS. I don't host websites or email with Porkbun either, mostly because moving existing setup from elsewhere is a pain.

+1 have had hundreds of domains with them, never an issue.

+1 for Porkbun. I used to use Namecheap until I had a couple of negative experiences with their customer support team. I then left for Porkbun (and Cloudflare for some domains) and never looked back. Porkbun is cheaper than Namecheap in the long term, and their website is really straightforward.

Not quite all TLDs. They don't have .lc for example.

The website was very Korea-themed, so at first I thought it was a Korean company.

However they must have different versions and detect your country based on IP address.

https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/

Just works. Dead simple. No frills. Feels like something from the early 90s. I've been using it for DNS for the last 10 years with multiple domains and no issues.

I will second nearlyfreespeech.net. I like the old-school user interface, and the customer support people really know what they're doing.

Gandi. Never experienced any bullcrap with them, but I only use their domains and the accompanying mail-solution.

When I'm a bit cheap I use bookmyname because they make zero profit over DNS. It can't be cheaper. The company behind, Iliad, is big and rich. The website is old and not user-friendly but it is maintained.

Otherwise my default is Gandi.

https://www.bookmyname.com/?wl=en

https://www.gandi.net/en

> Otherwise my default is Gandi.

Gandi also gives 3 emails with 3 GB each with a domain.

I enjoyed the post about cloudflare.

Adding another perspective: the important aspects of domain registrars changes depending on what you plan to use them for.

You noted a specific kind of dns record, and also security.

For dns records, you aren’t locked to a domain registrar. DNS records are offered by which nameserver you choose. (I apologize for being pedantic, but once you realize you can register their domain one place, and then serve dns records from another place…things get much easier.)

Another thing to consider are domain disputes and privacy. You didn’t mention either, but they (can be) serious considerations.

I’ve really appreciated www.tld-list.com to help identify which registrars offer the best value- including whois privacy.

Regarding domain disputes, you might want to look into different hosts to see how they are handled. There isn’t (or does not seem to be) a specific standard regarding what is required to dispute a domain. We’ve all heard horror stories of a domain suddenly switching ownership due to a mysterious fax to the registrar.

I appreciate www.namesilo.com because they don’t fluctuate on their .com prices, have reasonable renewal fees, and offer Whois privacy for free (when possible). I have 20+ domains with them, so that should give you some perspective of how little I know. ;) My affiliate link: https://www.namesilo.com/register.php?rid=e1d6e83hi

One last comment: if your current issue is a dns record, then I’d recommend changing your nameserver to cloudflare or some other dns provider. This way, you don’t have to transfer your domain to a new registrar (which can be a hassle). Instead, you just change the nameserver record in your domain’s hover.com settings.

Hope you figure it out!

Thanks for all the info!

I ended up changing both (servers and registration) over to Cloudflare. It was annoying that proxies were on by default and I had to turn them off manually, and the website is kind of fiddly to be honest (I had to input my payment info three times), but overall I trust them to have good security practices, and they have a reasonable-enough track record when it comes to disputes and business dealings. I feel like I know what I'm getting, and all I really want is for my personal site and email to do what I need and not get compromised.

I recently discovered tld-list.com - finally a way to sort by renewal price rather than the standard introduction price so many places show!

This led me to porkbun (https://porkbun.com) - which I am considering using for some .top domains to try them out - if anyone has any experience with them please enlighten me!

I do not like godaddy since they went stock marker years ago, and was moving all my domains to uniregistry - but then godaddy bought them out - and somehow made the support worse - and then gave all my .top domains to some company that doesn't do US wording and stuff very well - and jacked the price - so I'm letting them expire there and getting new ones.

Given all the activism for cancelling online, I might try to find where strumfrunt got domaining from - really feel that domain names, dns, and pipe to /from the net should all be dumb-pipe / immune to X Y and Z pressures, but some of these places put PR reputation in the MSM as more important than principals and it's lame to deal with sometimes.

my 3 cents

> There isn’t (or does not seem to be) a specific standard regarding what is required to dispute a domain

Glad you asked, actually there is! (kinda[1])

You can check UDRP[2] (Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy). If you receive a dispute notice on a gTLD/newGTLD that doesn't use UDRP, you can redirect the lawyers to this procedure or complain to the ICANN. This is a good way to eliminate bogus complaints because an UDRP procedure is ~$1000 to initiate.

[1]: UDRP is an ICANN procedure so it's not necessarily available on ccTLDs (2-letter TLDs), but these should have their own procedure (Afnic for .fr has Syreli for instance)

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Domain-Name_Dispute-Re...

I have used Dynadot for years. It's one of the few providers I know of which allows you to give back the domain name within the grace period (for a small fee) if you change your mind.

I can recommend inwx.com. Germany-based company, cheap domains, great interface to manage many domains, very reliable.

You don't have to change your registrar to add a DNS record (unless your registrar does not support glue records). You can still use the same registrar and simply use a third party DNS provider (such as CloudFlare or another well known alternative).

> such as CloudFlare

If he's going to use Cloudflare DNS, OP might as well transfer the domains to Cloudflare.

I use AWS registrar, primarily because I trust in their security policies. I recall the plight of the owner of the N twitter handle[0] and I do not believe it should be possible to talk AWS into phishing a domain from an AWS account, which is my primary concern. I have always felt their security procedures to be top-notch whenever I have dealt with them in this way, having used AWS for over 10 years. With other registrars I do not know how good their policies are.

[0] https://medium.com/@N/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter-username-...

If you're in the EU, take a look at https://www.inwx.com/en — I'm a client for the last 12 (!) years and they're still doing the same: Just. Fricking. Domains. Prices are retail + margin (that's why they mostly look weird), always one of the cheapest, and _if_ you can buy a TLD, you can buy it through them (last I heard was they were working on North Korea).

Interface is from the 90s, no BS, full access to DNS config and transfers, no upsells, just hardcore neckbeard admin stuff.

I like.

>no BS, full access to DNS config and transfers, no upsells, just hardcore neckbeard admin stuff.

I'm still looking for a UK version of this…the holy grail.

I've used register4less.com for a couple decades: their interface is old, but works, and they always included WHOIS protection in the base price.

They are not the cheapest registrar, though.

I'm using namecheap.com for my DNS and hostings, because two things:

1. A really good customer support.

2. You can purchase all products & services with crypto.

Gandi.net

Has anyone here had experience with Glauca? I'm curious about them because they support RFC 2136.

Please note that registrar and DNS provider are different things. You don’t need to have them both at the same company. Personally I use Dynadot as the registrar and Cloudflare as the DNS provider.

I find your example good in that it shows you can have the registrar as one things and dns handled via secondary provider, feel the need to mention since op said "Security is a high priority because my emails go through one of my custom domains" - that cloudflare stated they are now spying on web sites and sending things to three letter agencies with guns, so if security and because email was mentioned, privacy is important, I'm not sure cloudflare dns could read your emails like they would web site data going along the pipe - so that's maybe not a problem.

Obligatory reminder: Sensitive messages should never be sent over email. Signal is the best system for those messages.

I already turned off proxying, and I assume (maybe bad assumption) that most emails these days get encrypted in transit anyway

Also for privacy I’m mostly just focused on profiling by ad companies. For security my concern was someone using my DNS to take over my email, and thereby all my other accounts

I am from the Netherlands and I am very happy with transip.nl

The only thing I dislike is not getting ample warning when domains are close to renewal. They just send a new bill without warning me beforehand.

I have been happy with google domains for many years, but seeing as that's a non-starter: I've been looking at domains.com. Does anyone have experience with them?

Porkbun, switched all of my domains there a few years ago and no regrets, they are cheap and honest.

Someone recommended NameSilo many years ago here on HN and since then I use them. No issues so far.

I'm a very long time Dreamhost user. Never had any trouble with them.

I've been pleased with dreamhost, both as a host and registrar.

I can second this; I've been with them for 8 years without complaints and really appreciate the record detail masking for my .net domain

I use Cloudflare for domain registration. Cheap, reliable, honest.

I use Hover because of the private who is thing.

If you have privacy concern, try njal.la.

I really like cloudflare registrar. It’s a simple, cheap, no frills service from a trustworthy company.

Namebase.io.

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