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Ask HN: What domain registrar do you use/trust?
I have a domain that's pretty valuable to me registered on Godaddy and I want to move it from there after reading the recent thread on HN about how they can squat on domains.
I already found their 301 redirect to be a pain and would love to get some credible suggestions for a trustworthy alternative.
Thanks! :)
- three_legs 6y agoI have a lot of domains registered on Gandi.net I don't have a lot of experience with other registrars, but they were recommended to me many years ago as an "ethical" choice
- zhte415 6y agoI also use Gandi. Reasons: They're straightforward with pricing, throw in a good if basic email service for each domain (two addresses), customer service is responsive and technically competent, provide a useful newsletter but are not pushy with it.
- sdevonoes 6y agoI also use Gandi. So far no problems (but I'm not very picky). I think the main reason to use Gandi was that I could search for any domain without the fear of it being bought the next day by squatters. I don't really like their web UI/UX though.
- troydavis 6y agoFWIW, Godaddy says they don’t do and have never done that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24523901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24523901 Their evidence is thorough. There are plenty of good reasons to change registrars, but the story you read probably wasn’t caused by Godaddy.
- viraptor 6y agoWhile what they do is a bit more nuanced, they do cause a mess: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2327499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2327499 By reserving the domain they make it more likely you don't buy somewhere else and more likely that someone will spot the interest and front run you. "By February 2007, the CEO of Go Daddy reported that of 55.1 million domain names registered, 51.5 million were canceled and refunded just before the 5 day grace period expired and only 3.6 million domain names were actually kept." The fact that they don't actually buy for a long time is not really interesting IMO.
- troydavis 6y agoThe 2011 situation you linked to, domain tasting, wasn’t the registrar reserving a domain (like someone claimed occurred last week). Domain tasting was when an actual end customer reserved the domain, tested how much traffic it received, and let it expire without paying if it wouldn’t make them money. There was still an explicit purchase from a customer, the customer just didn’t actually pay. This obviously harmed the ecosystem and I’m sure not advocating for it (nor recommending Godaddy), but it’s not an example of a registrar front-running real customers.
- godot 6y agoI've been using Hover for 7 or so years by now and have had no issues; I've always been able to do whatever I need to do at a registrar easily, cleanly and quickly. I also use it as my main domain search (both logged in and logged out) and have never had any issues of a domain being snatched after I searched for it. While I'm at it, here are some more anecdotes. I started on casual web dev in the late 90s and started with Network Solutions because that was the only registrar for a .com back in the days. They were OK at first, but after registrars opened up it was apparent they wanted to maintain being the most expensive option. By early 2010s I moved my main domains away and ran into a lot of difficulties moving; they make you jump through enough hoops I'm guessing in hopes you'd give up. It was not a good experience. In the early 2000s when registrars first started opening up I also had a couple of domains on Joker. They were cheap and kind of ok but for many years their site was consistently very slow. Eventually I also started having a lot of account issues there. In the end I stopped using them by virtue of me stopping work on the sites using the domains I registered at Joker. One of my startups in the 2010s, my cofounder used domain.com as a registrar. It was not good. We would have tons of issues with any sort of DNS or nameserver config, things wouldn't work or propagate correctly, and so on. I don't have a take on whether they are trustworthy or not, but there were just tons of technical issues. I've also briefly used Gandi once for a specific TLD my startup needed to use, and in my limited experience there wasn't any issues.
- BinaryBuddha 6y agoWe're still waiting for you.
- rshnotsecure 6y agoGoogle Domains I have liked. There is DNSSEC, support for some of the more exotic records. You can secure access, if you're really motivated, with G-Suite Enterprise with Titan Key + Advanced Security turned on. Otherwise AWS Route 53.
- gkbrk 6y agoThere was a recent discussion on this here [1]. Posting a link in case people who shared useful information in that thread miss this one. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24513514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24513514
- r_singh 6y agoThanks, I wonder why it didn’t show up in my algolia searches...
- jamil7 6y agoI've used iwantmyname.com for years and trust them. Small independent company out of New Zealand.
- theXspidy 6y agoPorkbun is great. Good support. Easy to use dashboard.
- samuelma 6y agoI haven't registered a domain for quite a while, but when I did, it was using GoDaddy. And no, I don't trust them, it was just a way to keep the hosting separate from the domain provider.
- davismwfl 6y agoI have an account with eNom and have had good experiences over the past ~10 years with them. Price wise it isn't the cheapest (~$14/year retail for .com) but it is still inexpensive overall and also covers a pretty large variety of TLDs, plus offers an API. I generally point my domains to AWS which is where I manage everything, so I have not used eNom's other features extensively but they offer a number of related services.
- alexmingoia 6y agohttps://porkbun.com https://porkbun.com no contest. Great prices. Free domain privacy. Friendly support. Good newsletter. And funny.
- gesman 6y agoNo one mentioned namecheap yet? I use them for infinitely long time and had no problems (besides the moment when they changed their user interface few years ago that caused backlash from technical users - but nothing functionally wrong, just stupid UI "improvements")
- ceezuns 6y ago+1 here, been using namecheap for about 4 years, no problems at all.
- jamieweb 6y agoCloudflare Registrar - it's one of the only truly security-oriented ones out there, and they offer wholesale rates, which is a nice bonus.
- secondbreakfast 6y agoDNSimple I posted about them here a few days ago, but they are unbelievably better than every registrar I've ever used. And I've used Namecheap, Godaddy, Bluehost, Google Domains, the list goes on. They're profitable, bootstrapped, going nowhere, been around a long time. Their dashboard is so simple and they make it easy to use DNS templates, but they also have a simple and friendly API.
- hatboxreappoint 6y agoNamecheap, the catch all email feature is great for signing up to websites. https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/310/2214/how-to-set-up-a-catchall-wildcard-email-address https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx... anything@example.com
- davchana 6y agoDynadot, for ease of use, no push ads & pricing (I use domcomp.com for pricing comparison). Namecheap sometimes. Hexonet for search & sometimes buying too. I trust all above three from experience.
- kelt 6y agoPorkbun and NameSilo for me.