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Comment by severino | Hacker News Reader

Regarding tip number 1, how can one find an enterprise-class domain name registry? Any advice?

Pick your top 10-100 large enterprises, especially those with a major internet presence. Use whois to find the registry they use. See if you can get sales to call you back.

My experience is many years old now, but when Network Solutions's incompetence resulted in our glue records getting changed by hackers, the startup I was at switched to MarkMonitor. At the time, MarkMonitor charged a large premium per domain year, and a significant annual cost to setup 'registry lock' (which prevents the customer or the registrar from making changes to the domain without going through a proccess with the registry), and they had IIRC a $10k/year minimum spending commitment. A lot has changed since then, it's probably worth getting them on the phone if you're serious about your domain, but it's probably still going to be expensive. Get on the phone with at least CSC Domains as well.

Most enterprise class registrars (registry =/= registrar) are brand protection and brand monitoring services. Quite expensive for individuals and probably not in the price range of OP, according to the description of his circumstances.

I've used name.com, namecheap.com, sav.com and porkbun.com as registrars without difficulty, although one will always find anecdotal reports of problems other users have had with any service.

GoDaddy, on the other hand, is to be avoided. It's like the PayPal of domains. Awful customer service and dark patterns everywhere.

How about Cloudflare Registrar?

I like them as a company, but I wouldn't use them as a registrar if there was a significant risk of UDRP. Domains are not their core business and customer service is close to non-existent if you're not at least a pro-level customer. For your case, you should use a dedicated domain registrar, such as the ones I outlined earlier. Infomaniak is another registrar that I've found good in terms of customer service and price. They're Swiss based, and I've found them to be competent and professional.

I understand and really appreciate the feedback.

Thanks! Does it make a difference that the registrar is in your country, or at least in your "continent" (i.e.: EU) for those bad things that can happen like UDRP, etc.?

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