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I've used a few registrars over the years in different ways. About 10 years ago I used pair.com because they also had PHP hosting and that's all I knew at the
by _diyu 8y ago
I've used a few registrars over the years in different ways.
About 10 years ago I used pair.com because they also had PHP hosting and that's all I knew at the time. I did little with them.
I think for a very brief period I actually used godaddy for one or two domains.
A few years later I used gandi.net because they were "no BS" domain name registration, which I think was a direct reaction to having a hard time using godaddy. I mostly used it to point to custom slicehost servers. Later I also configured the DNS to point to github pages. Since they're in France, there's an extra step and extra few minutes before you get your domain names approved.
A few years after that I started using namecheap instead, and still use them. They give me the same amount of control as gandi.net but with a simpler (less confusing) interface, and they're in USA so they don't have the same delay that gandi.net has. I've pointed them to EC2 instances but mostly to github pages.
Recently I experimented with buying a few from Route 53 on AWS, mainly so I could see if it was all that big of an improvement to have everything on AWS. For some reason I'm getting charged like $2 every month for some (or all?) of these domain names, and it's a charge that's slightly annoying to me, mostly because I don't really understand what the charge is for (I think they said some sort of DNS routing fee or something?). I did like the integration with other services that Route 53 gave, but the flexibility and customization needed to get that integration working seemed like overkill and was definitely harder to figure out than the other services. Again I've used them successfully with both github pages and EC2.
Personally I would go with namecheap if I had to buy another domain name.
- kotrunga 8y ago+1 for namecheap.
- SlowBro 8y ago+2 for namecheap. After an unbelievably horrid experience with 1and1 I switched over to NC and their support has been simply a breath of fresh air. Fast support, knowledgeable reps, everything (usually) works, at a good price. Pry NC out of my cold dead hands...
- alexandernst 8y agoI wouldn’t go with namecheap, this is why: https://medium.com/@alexandernst/from-successful-to-zero-thanks-to-namecheap-d392c76b2ffd https://medium.com/@alexandernst/from-successful-to-zero-tha...
- tmikaeld 8y agoThanks, this is not the first such story I've read. Should be noted though that we have had similar issues with country registrar's. Especially Germany that deny certain name servers for no reason
- SlowBro 8y agoI can imagine painful story can be told about every company out there. No one gives perfect service. No one. That said, who is recommended instead?
- rando444 8y agoAnecdotally, I've ran into a lot of stuff over the years that I've needed namecheap's support with and they'll stay with you on a live chat session as long as it takes to make sure everything is getting resolved.
- Cacti 8y agoHa! I too am being charged for Route 53 for what, I have no idea. Very confusing service.
- pfg 8y agoThere's a fee of $0.50 per hosted zone and month for Route 53, in addition to the $0.40 per million queries. This is optional if you don't want to use Route 53 for DNS, so you can still use a free option like Cloudflare instead.
- joshribakoff 8y agoMost registrars would reach out & ask you to pay for premium DNS after some sort of soft limit anyways. Companies like Google pay thousands for their DNS. Free DNS is a form of over-selling. Cloudflare also has a history of shutting of people's service after they hit some soft limit, and asking you to upgrade to paid.
- herbst 8y agoI've had that talk with cloud flare. They didn't come over very aggressive and confirmed that I wouldnt have a issue when I stay on free.
- charlesdm 8y agoAlso a big fan of Namecheap. I too used Gandi at some point, but had an issue which led to a lot of BS. In short, and while not their fault, my credit card expired and that caused a few domains (5 or 6 -- all related) to go into quarantine. It was bad timing. While their fee for registering the domains was not that high, getting them out of quarantine would have cost me $50 or 75 per domain. I transferred them out to IWantMyName (a NZ registrar, great service + works really well) _without_ having to pay any quarantine fees and just renewed them there for a year. Gandi refused to waive the quarantine fee saying "it was impossible", which was BS. My credit card had expired two days before. I get that nothing is for free in this world, but if it would've been me in their situation, I would have waived the fee on this one occasion. Years later, I still retain those domains through IWMN.
- mariushn 8y agogandi.net provides email hosting too, 5 users, included in price. Most other registrars, including namecheap, charge extra.