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Ask HN: Recommendations for a New Domain Registrar?
With the announcement of Google Domains shutting down and being sold off to Squarespace, I find myself losing the one registrar I had any trust in. In retrospect it was REALLY dumb of me to trust that a Google product that wasn't Ads/Youtube/Search to not shut down, but here I am.
I dunno much about Squarespace -- haven't used them at all, since I prefer making my own websites/apps -- so I'm leery about using a registrar that's so focused on products and addons and other stuff.
I'm looking for recommendations for a registrar that:
- Has a reasonably modern interface
- Has easy to use DNS settings etc
- Has modern features (WHOIS protection etc), preferably built-in without needing to pay out the ass
- Doesn't have scummy practices (*cough* GODADDY *cough* GANDI *cough*)
Thanks ahead of time!
- rogerkirkness 3y agoPublic service announcement after doing my own research: if you use Google Cloud, you can move to GCP Cloud Domains, which seems like it will still exist.
- sandy_mountains 3y agoWhere did you see that? I’ve been trying to figure out whether Google Cloud Domains is impacted by this change myself.
- rogerkirkness 3y agoUpdate: people have learned from leaked internal emails GCP Cloud Domains is going to be shut down too. I might have to Degoogleify at this point.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- JoeMayoBot 3y agoI've been using https://www.namecheap.com https://www.namecheap.com for a while and am pleased with the service.
- pid-1 3y ago+1 I've been a namecheap costumer for about five years for both personal and business stuff, can't really remember having any issues.
- ehPReth 3y agoThoughts on Cloudflare?
- tiernano 3y agoI moved nearly all my domains (50+) to Cloudflare a few years back, saving me something like 200 quid a year from my old provider. Only domains outside cloudflare are my .ie domains, which are currently not supported and I think one or 2 others that haven't been supported yet. Handy to have the rest of the cloudflare services on there too.
- ehPReth 3y agothanks!
- jameshiew 3y agoGreat but only so long as you want to use their nameservers. I had a domain with them that I wanted to use with AWS Route 53 nameservers which I was unable to - then I had to wait the standard ~60 days before I could transfer it out which caused a headache in the meantime.
- ehPReth 3y agooh that’s a major bummer they won’t let you customize NS records for domains you buy on their platform. not a huge deal for most of mine but some of them… thanks for the warning!
- tiernano 3y agoYou can set NS records for subdomains though... I have done this for a couple of domains where i have internal.<domainname> and that points at Route53. I also use Route53 for my Reverse IP lookups, since Cloudflare does not seem to support this (unless i missed something). On an related note, what does Route53 give you that you cant do on Cloudflare?
- pfooti 3y agoi like hover.
- menshiki 3y agoHad a domain with them for 2-3 years, every year they rise the price by $1-2.
- codegeek 3y agoNo matter which one u choose, don't go with Godaddy. Thank me later. My suggestion is Namecheap or Cloudflare.
- VoodooJuJu 3y agoI have experience with porkbun and namecheap. I recommend porkbun. Mostly because they have the best prices and they work. Namecheap works, but the renewal prices get jacked up and I don't appreciate it. In addition to that, I remember reading here on HN about namecheap screwing with someone's DNS records and blocking/banning someone because a twitter user complained about the registrant being "problematic" or something.
- guraf 3y agoNamecheap is known to drop "problematic" users without notice and their website is filled with dark patterns. I was banned with no explanation around the time they banned all Russians customers. I have no ties with the country but I have a Russia first name so I have to wonder... I have no idea why people keep recommending them around here.
- zhte415 3y agoporkbun.com does what you want. I noted several in the recent Gandi thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36321783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36321783 I was noting principally European-based registrars: inwx.de (DE) BookMyName.com (FR - LOL modern interface, but part of Scaleway) netim.com (FR) freethought.uk (UK) https://www.nic.ch/registrars https://www.nic.ch/registrars (CH, a list of Swiss registrars)
- menshiki 3y agoCloudflare Registrar has the best prices since they literally don't make any money on selling domains. They also fulfill all your requirements. I recently transferred my domain from Hover to Cloudflare. No issues and I can save some money. Hover is fine but their prices have been getting more and more expensive.
- jameshiew 3y agoCloudflare is straightforward to use but watch out, they don’t let you use custom nameservers, which is very unusual for a domain registrar. As great as Cloudflare’s nameservers are, this was a dealbreaker for me and I eventually moved all my domains off of there.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- newoldhead 3y agohttps://njal.la https://njal.la privacy-oriented domains for 15€ a year.
- tortilla 3y agoDynadot (been using them for ages)