I used to host all my domains with NameCheap and moved them all off after a run in with their customer service, who I found to be really arrogant:

NameCheap send out their reminder emails telling you a domain is about to expire in the format: "Your domain <somedomain.com> expires on MM/DD".

Several times I had domains expire or almost expire because, being in Europe I naturally read 'MM/DD' as 'DD/MM' which, under certain circumstances looked like a domain was expiring several weeks in the future, when it was expiring imminently.

I emailed NameCheap customer service on a couple of occasions about this. Pointing out that, for their customers outside the US, their expiration notice emails were liable to be mis-read and I suggested they either use 'DD/MM' when emailing customers in Europe or --even better- just spell out the month name, so there's no possibility of confusion.

The first time I got no response at all. The second time, I got an email back from NameCheap Customer Service saying "We're an American company. We use American date format"

So I thought 'Fuck you then. You'll not be wanting non-American customers, in that case.' and immediately transferred all my domains elsewhere.

I'm currently using gandi.net. Not as cheap as NameCheap but no complaints so far.

Oh. And to address something raised by the OP: there's no way you should have to pay $150 [or anything for that matter] to revive a domain that expired the day before. I'm not sure what the grace period is. But, in the past, I've renewed domains that had expired a week or more previously and never had any problem. Nor have I ever had to pay any 'fine' for doing so.

GoDaddy are shysters. I'm actually surprised someone fitting the HN demographic uses them. I thought their reputation was pretty well known in techy circles and most savvy people actively avoided them.

NameCheap doesn't "steal" domain names, they're just a domain name registrar. They may locked your account, but they can't (and won't) steal domain names.

It sounds like someone may have gained access to your account or there may have been some other issue. It's usual for them to have ask for video proof that you're the domain owner.

Some people may consider this a reason to continue to support them.

Their policy on exceptions seems pretty reasonable.

    Are there any exceptions?

    Yes, we continue to provide services to:
      all anti-war media, protest resources and any type of websites that are helping to end this war and regime;
      Russian citizens who are not Russian residents and don't support this regime in any way;
      independent journalism;
      non-profit organizations.

But I guess people who support Russia's genocidal attack on Ukraine are still going to be salty.

> moved domains to the local registrar in my country

can you explain what you mean by this? how do you find the "local registrar" for a company, what does that even mean?

Same. I've been using Namecheap for around 10 years and have never had a bad experience.

Porkbun is great - their live chat support in particular was really great to me recently when I was trying to recover a domain. They could've tried to upsell or pressure me in to paying the (extortionate) recovery fee but they didn't and instead advised me on the process/when I'd be able to register at normal price

Are you sure it was Namecheap that was selling that domain for a higher price or someone else listing it and trying to sell it. I'd expect most if not all short and pronounceable .coms to be taken. Some other registries (not registrars) do sell premium domains for a higher price themselves - i.e. ccTLDs are entirely up to the corresponding country and the new gTLDs also don't have as many restrictions on what the owner can do with them (e.g. they don't have to sell you domains at all).

If you actually have a trademark to the domain name then you can try the ICANN dispute process. If your entire claim is that you thought of the domain name but someone else bought it the good luck.

I haven't had issues with let's encrypt with them in the last 2 years, though I do recall seeing free SSL promotions and never a certificate.

How exactly do they make it hard to use Let's Encrypt? The HTTP challenge just needs the A/AAAA records that your web server needs anyway and for the DNS challenge (only really needed for wildcard certs) they do seem to at least support using your own name servers (as do most registrars): https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx...

Nowhere is safe. Make an offline list ahead of time, try each domain one by one, and register them the moment you've confirmed they're available. Save your payment details to your registrar so you minimize the time between the search and registration.