Ask HN: Domain Registrar to Switch from Moniker? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Domain Registrar to Switch from Moniker?

4 pointsRomanPushkin8 comments

I've been using Moniker for about 10 years, everything was fine. But I can't live with their new UI. It end up with charging me twice because of that shitty UI and numerous errors. Finally, now it shows that I have no domains at all. So I can't set my IPs, DNS, update records, etc. Ticket submitted, but the quality of response is ultra low. What domain registrars do you use?

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I really couldn't recommend Hover enough. I switched from Gandi (who I was very happy with - and still am, in fact, they're a great registrar too). Their interface is great - incredibly clear, simple and fast. Their support is even better.

The only downside is the email hosting. I was used to free email hosting from Gandi so it's annoying having to pay now - $10/year/mailbox.

Huge advantage of Hover: if you have domains elsewhere, you can give them your credentials for the old registrar and they'll log in and transfer your domains over (and DNS, etc). Saves a bunch of time.

Finally, if you don't go with Hover, go with Gandi. Their interface isn't nearly as nice but the support is good and they won't screw you around.

I may be out of touch but I'm still using Namecheap. Even though their interface isn't the fanciest, it does the job and they offer pretty good DNS service too if you need that in a registrar.

I have no experience with Namecheap at all but it's definitely worth picking a good registrar. Before I moved to Hover, I had some domains at Gandi and some at 123-reg. My most important domain was knocked offline after 123-reg failed to renew it (they said they had renewed it, invoiced me for the renewal but then didn't renew it). It took them ~5 days to get it back. Up until that point, I'd never had any trouble with 123-reg (I thought they were fine - they did the job), but then I lost access to my main email account for 5 days.

It really pays to make sure you have a good registrar.

Hover are a scumbag registrar and should be boycotted the same degree as godaddy.

ICANN rules require registrars to support DNSSEC for clients, but hover use their "reseller wholly owned by the registrar" status to avoid consequences for not implementing support for DNSSEC.

To add insult to injury, they claim they "support" DNSSEC because you can submit a support ticket for them to manually upload the required data, at a cost of $500 per time per domain.

Whilst that may be bad, I hardly think it puts them in the same tier as GoDaddy. In fact, it seems your problem is mainly with Tucows, rather than Hover. Nevertheless, the problem with GoDaddy isn't the feature set or product offering, it's the way they treat their customers. Hover could certainly bring the price down on DNSSEC support but that really doesn't make them a "scumbag registrar". Do you really think that's fair?

Tucows own hover. Several staff even work on both the wholesale and retail teams.

They responded to customer queries about DNSSEC support for four years with "yes it's coming soon". It was only when someone filed an ICANN complaint that they admitted they are not and were never working on support, and have no plans to.

They specifically market themselves as "no upswell, no hassle" - so yes I think their behaviour warrants being called scumbags and any number of other less polite names too.

I use name.com and I've bene using them for what feels like a decade?

They're fine, nothing special—but that's what you want, right? I register domains there, and the name-servers automatically get set to my defaults, so I don't interact with them much.

Importantly, they aren't obnoxious about up-selling, they send 2-3 email notifications before a domain expires (1 month out, then again in the days before expiry), and you can mark individual domains as auto-renew or not.

Amazon and Hover are worth a look.

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