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Come on. We've seen enough of this, see the Trump deregulation of broadband providers to see people's data. We have to assume that anyone having our data is selling it unless there is a written statement indicating no data will be given to 3rd parities without the customer explicit consent. There are VPN companies who will put in writing "no traffic logs kept". Hopefully such companies honor those words. Free services have to be used with extreme caution. The irony is you can get you own email for as little as 5-10/month and you get your OWN domain. http://www.namecheap.com/ http://order.1and1.com/ http://www.name.com/ I've left out GoDaddy because they seem to have regular (if brief) service interruptions (probably from overload plus cyber attacks as GoDaddy is very, very large). There are other of course. Of course I suggest reading the privacy policy in full. Perhaps we'll start taking privacy more serious, given we have so much effort in business and government to eliminate it for profit.

Namecheap and Comodo are replacing these SSLs for free https://www.namecheap.com/secu...

SoylentNews subscriber here. I also pay to host my own stuff on Linode and use Namecheap as my registrar. In addition, internet routable IPv6 at home.

Frankly, websites that exist solely because of advertising can die in a fire. Nothing of value will be lost.

All that needs to happen is some serious momentum towards IPv6 adoption and federated protocols such as XMPP. DNS might remain a bugbear, but it would be neat if an ISP wanted to offer either 6RD or native IPv6 and also allow me to set up say vel-ex-tech.customers.awesomeisp.com and give me some way to point that at 2600:1337:543:8A30::1 (or ::2 depending on how they're routing from my personal /64 if ::1 is on the ISP side). Not saying that will ever happen. Hey, maybe it has the side effect of giving people who know wtf they're doing with technology an escape from Eternal September.

(Also note: if I wanted to have vel-ex-tech.customers.awesomeisp.com point to my desktop, I'd add 2600:1337:543:8A30::10/64 say as an address and have the XMPP server bind to that address. Then for non-server traffic use IPv6 privacy extensions to generate a random address in the /64, so on the rare occasion I go to MyFace, one day I'm coming from 2600:1337:543:8A30::DEAD:BEEF, then next day 2600:1337:543:8A30::1234.)

Granted, another alternative is some kind of micropayment service. I want a way to direct my money towards websites that are doing actual investigative journalism. I feel the hidden danger of advertisement-based services is that the mainstream players like WSJ, WaPo, etc get all the pageviews simply for having a brand when what I really want is something like Breitbart or The Root (flame away, well aware of both sites' biases, just examples of the kind of detail in reporting I want). Sites that repost repost the AP and Reuters feeds don't need my money--I can go straight to AP and Reuters myself. (Hey, they deserve at least a few peanuts for cranking out short summaries of events in different parts of the world!)

I've also perused the Namecheap TOS regarding domains, and I don't see anything in there about passing the domain on 12 days prior to expiration as this guy claims...

I just skimmed through their ToS, and I don't see anything resembling the "12 days prior" thing.

Buried in there, it says they'll let you reactive a domain for a fee. It's the first paragraph after "22. AFTER EXPIRATION OF THE TERM OF A DOMAIN NAME REGISTRATION"

The paragraph after that talks about their option to auction it.

"After the reactivation period, you agree that we may either (i) discontinue the domain name registration services at any time thereafter, (ii) that we may pay the registry's registration fee or otherwise provide for the registration services to be continued, or, (iii) if we auctioned the domain name services to a third party, that we may transfer the domain name registration services to such third party."

In another part, it states that they process the renewal charge on the day of expiration.

I've never been a NameCheap domain customer, so I can't positively say anything. But I imagine if they were stealing domains before renewing them, domain overlords would not be pleased.

https://www.namecheap.com/legal/domains/registration-agreement.aspx

I've been pretty happy with NameCheap, the CEO recently did a AMA on reddit, you should check it out.

I asked google and they pointed me to this provider's instruction page for using caldav/carddav on android. Dates to October 2014

Looks pretty straightforward for CardDav - just add an account.

And if you do pay the $60, you can only manage a single legal entity. Which means, if you are the certificate manager of some organization, you can either get certificates in the name of that organizationation (after completing the paperwork and paying the additional $60), or for your own private sites, but not for both at once. Yes, after completing the paperwork for getting certificates for your organization, you lose the right to get certificates for yourself. Crazy, but true!

Huh. I didn't know that, as I only have ever done the individual verification. It's not uncommon for someone to wear many hats (i.e., to be affiliated with several organizations). It'd certainly be nice if their system allowed for a single individual account to switch between different "identities", so that one could issue certs for themselves or any number of organizations with which they're affiliated and which they've validated with StartSSL.

Have you suggested such an improvement to them?

Oddly enough, if you don't pay anything at all ("class 1 certificates"), you can get certificates for several associations and yourself at once. Of course, then you can't get wildcards or SAN certificates, so you are forced to use SNI (more hassle to set up, and might not work with exotic browsers).

Technically, yes, but policy-wise, no: Class 1 certs are not intended for commercial use.

Wow, a place where beer is even more expensive than here in Luxembourg! But seriously, I guess the $9/year is for plain certificates, no wildcard and non SAN? In that case it would compete with StartSSL's free offering, rather than their $60 plan. If it actually does include wildcard certificates, I would be interested in details.

It's hard to directly compare the two offerings, as StartSSL charges for validation but you can issue numerous certificates at no additional cost. Other CAs charge on a per-cert basis.

As you suspected, the $9 offering from PositiveSSL is for a single, non-wildcard, non-SAN certificate. NameCheap also sells Comodo PositiveSSL multi-domain certs for $30/year for up to 100 domains, which is quite a reasonable price. Of course, those certs are domain-validated only. Organization-validated multi-domain certs start at $90/year. That's cheaper than StartSSL, but only gets you a single cert with multiple SANs. If you needed more than one, StartSSL is the more economical choice. Wildcard certs are also available, with Comodo wildcards costing $94/year.

And if you do pay the $60, you can only manage a single legal entity. Which means, if you are the certificate manager of some organization, you can either get certificates in the name of that organizationation (after completing the paperwork and paying the additional $60), or for your own private sites, but not for both at once. Yes, after completing the paperwork for getting certificates for your organization, you lose the right to get certificates for yourself. Crazy, but true!

Huh. I didn't know that, as I only have ever done the individual verification. It's not uncommon for someone to wear many hats (i.e., to be affiliated with several organizations). It'd certainly be nice if their system allowed for a single individual account to switch between different "identities", so that one could issue certs for themselves or any number of organizations with which they're affiliated and which they've validated with StartSSL.

Have you suggested such an improvement to them?

Oddly enough, if you don't pay anything at all ("class 1 certificates"), you can get certificates for several associations and yourself at once. Of course, then you can't get wildcards or SAN certificates, so you are forced to use SNI (more hassle to set up, and might not work with exotic browsers).

Technically, yes, but policy-wise, no: Class 1 certs are not intended for commercial use.

Wow, a place where beer is even more expensive than here in Luxembourg! But seriously, I guess the $9/year is for plain certificates, no wildcard and non SAN? In that case it would compete with StartSSL's free offering, rather than their $60 plan. If it actually does include wildcard certificates, I would be interested in details.

It's hard to directly compare the two offerings, as StartSSL charges for validation but you can issue numerous certificates at no additional cost. Other CAs charge on a per-cert basis.

As you suspected, the $9 offering from PositiveSSL is for a single, non-wildcard, non-SAN certificate. NameCheap also sells Comodo PositiveSSL multi-domain certs for $30/year for up to 100 domains, which is quite a reasonable price. Of course, those certs are domain-validated only. Organization-validated multi-domain certs start at $90/year. That's cheaper than StartSSL, but only gets you a single cert with multiple SANs. If you needed more than one, StartSSL is the more economical choice. Wildcard certs are also available, with Comodo wildcards costing $94/year.

How long ago did the domains expire? My experience is that on the expiration date, your domains get held in a renewal period of 30 days where you can renew it at normal price without any possibility of losing the domain. After that period is an additional 1 - 3 months where the domain is in a different status where the registrar still has control over it, but you need to pay an additional fee (often called "redemption fee") to renew it. If you don't pay this fee the registrar is free to auction the domain or otherwise sell it to someone else.

NameCheap's website contradicts your experience, stating that most domains with them have a redemption fee of $200 : https://www.namecheap.com/supp... I presume your domains had been expired for several months and had been fully released by the time you checked. $200 is actually on the high side, most registrars are closer to $80 for redemption fees.

Other sources: Personal experience registering domain names since 1998, and professional experience of several years working at a company that resells domain registrations.

As an example, NameCheap, an American registrar and host, sells Comodo certs for $9/year. GeoTrust are $10.95/year, while Thawte certs are $40/year. Prices drop by a few dollars for multi-year purchases. Gandi, a French registrar and host, offers Comodo certs for $16/year, again with discounts for multi-year purchases.

StartSSL offers domain-validated certs completely free of cost for non-commercial uses. Commercial users are expected to undergo validation (they validate both the person requesting the certificate as well as the organization) which costs about $100/year but entitles them to issue an infinite number of certificates for systems they control (i.e., no issuing certs for your friends, but issuing certs for your work servers is fine). In short, they charge money for what costs them money: signing a cert is essentially free, while validating identity is expensive.

There's plenty of options for cheap certificates, particularly if you buy from a reseller rather than from the CA itself.

What's ridiculous is that Google only put it in small text on their homepage, where most people don't ever go and it's hard to notice. So much for Google caring about the goodness of internet or people. For example, Namecheap put a whole page for it, and it's going to cost them business. Even while they aren't large as Google. Google didn't care at all.

They're also giving a dollar off and donating a dollar to the EFF if you transfer to them today: https://www.namecheap.com/moveyourdomainday.aspx

I moved one to them, but I didn't have one to transfer from Godaddy.

Just asking, why does Namecheap install outdated operating systems? According to their VPS page, they install Fedora 12. That hasn't been in service for almost 3 years. I talked to a hosting rep, and they said if i wanted something more up to date, that i would have to install it myself. Seriously? An operating system that hasn't received security updates for 2 years? But their TOS says nothing is their fault? They have a lot of features I would love to use, esp PostgreSQL and NameCheap API system for modifying DNS on the fly. Comparison

Namecheap may not be astroturfing, but they are putting out the word/cause.

I can't say if it is for business reasons or if they are drinking from the same water cooler as the rest of the anti-SOPA crowd. Namecheap might be one of the few GoDaddy is targeting as Namecheap is proclaiming that you should transfer not only to be against SOPA but to save endangered wildlife from GoDaddy.

http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2011/03/30/elephants/

N.C. has painted a target on themselves.

I transferred an expiring domain to Namecheap last week for reasons unrelated to GoDaddy's asshattery, but I saw a blog post (that I can no longer find, alas) pointing out something in Namecheap's TOS that bothers the hell out of me. Specifically:

You agree that Namecheap, in its sole discretion and without liability to you, may refuse to accept the registration of any domain name. Namecheap also may in its sole discretion and without liability to you delete the registration of any domain name during the first thirty (30) days after registration has taken place. Namecheap may also cancel the registration of a domain name, after thirty (30) days, if that name is being used, as determined by Namecheap in its sole discretion, in association with spam or morally objectionable activities (as well as any activities set forth in Section 4 above). Morally objectionable activities will include, but not be limited to 1) activities designed to defame, embarrass, harm, abuse, threaten, slander or harass third parties; 2) activities prohibited by the laws of the United States and/or foreign territories in which you conduct business; 3) activities designed to encourage unlawful behavior by others, such as hate crimes, terrorism and child pornography; 4) activities that are tortious, vulgar, obscene, invasive of the privacy of a third party, racially, ethnically, or otherwise objectionable; activities designed to impersonate the identity of a third party; 5) and activities designed to harm or use unethically minors in any way.

Note the part about "Namecheap in its sole discretion" and imagine that the guy answering the "abuse@" email is having a bad day. Suppose I have a blog on a domain registered through them and I:

1) Embarrass a local politician.
2) Get AdSense revenue from a post saying that the Egyptian government sucks.
3) Say I think it's OK for someone to smoke pot, even if it's illegal where they live.
4) Say something that someone, somewhere, thinks is vulgar or obscene.
5) Make fun of Justin Bieber.

Namecheap could decide in its sole discretion that any of those is sufficient to delete my domain from the registry. Frankly, that's bullshit. I know that Namecheap is unlikely to do something so boneheaded, but I'm utterly against them having the right to yank me off the Internet just because they don't like what I've said. And although I'm talking here about Namecheap specifically, I recognize that a lot of other registrars have similar terms. Does anyone use a more freedom-respecting registrar that they would recommend?

Namecheap hasn't been an enom reseller for a while. see here. Not affiliated, just a happy customer.

They are indeed an ICANN accredited registrar but they also remain an eNom reseller as well. http://davezan.com/does-enom-own-namecheap.html. It is apparent from their emails that in my case they decided to transfer my domains through eNom. Either that or they provided me with a four year old transfer authorization notification.

"From: Namecheap.com info@transfer-approval.com Attention: Universe II Re: Transfer of UNIVERSEII.COM eNom, Inc. has received a request from Universe II on 22 Dec 2011 to become the new registrar of record."

Either way it's fine with me. My only criteria is that they are not Godaddy!

Also not affiliated with any registrar or reseller; just a happy new Namecheap customer.

Use "NODADDY" a Name.com for 10% off transfer ins (COM, NET, ORG, TV, INFO, IN, US, CO, ME & TEL) and also receive 40% off any hosting plans.
HostGator is doing 50% off Shared / Reseller / VPS first month. Coupon code: NOSOPA
Name Cheap has a "special discount deal": BYEBYEGD
DreamHost use NOTOSOPA you get your first registration free.

I can't claim credit for this, all came from Reddit

Name.com has a page where they talk about how they don't support SOPA, but "calls on Congress to search for a new way to protect intellectual property rights." So they sound like they'd support alternate legislation that is slightly changed (like OPEN), but honestly almost as bad.

Be aware that many registrars may just be trying to steal business from Go Daddy, and are just pretending to be against SOPA in order to do so. It would be wise to research the policies of these companies before just going for the coupons.

Namecheap hasn't been an enom reseller for a while. see here. Not affiliated, just a happy customer.

Excellent, I'll have to take a look as well.

I assumed that was just an "anything to take GoDaddy customers" move, but found this pretty cut-and-dry:
http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2011/12/22/we-say-no-to-sopa/

Use "NODADDY" a Name.com for 10% off transfer ins (COM, NET, ORG, TV, INFO, IN, US, CO, ME & TEL) and also receive 40% off any hosting plans.
HostGator is doing 50% off Shared / Reseller / VPS first month. Coupon code: NOSOPA
Name Cheap has a "special discount deal": BYEBYEGD
DreamHost use NOTOSOPA you get your first registration free.

I can't claim credit for this, all came from Reddit

Jeff Epstein has put up a step-by-step guide detailing the easiest way to leave GoDaddy:

http://blog.jeffepstein.me/post/14629857835/a-step-by-step-guide-to-transfer-domains-out-of-godaddy

Take special note of that trick to confirm the transfers at the end, because it can save you a five day wait. There are also ways to export your zones if you made the mistake of using GoDaddy as your DNS provider. Several other registrars are running deals right now, too. I've heard people saying that NameCheap (which is anti-SOPA) will let you keep the time you had paid for, so if you registered a domain for 10 years, you won't just lose it all. They even have a coupon of SOPASUCKS

While NameCheap appears to be the most active anti-SOPA registrar, other honorable mentions include MediaTemple (the CEO has tweeted that he is opposed to SOPA) and DNSimple (which offers a discount for those escaping GoDaddy),

Whois lookup yeilds little....

http://whois.domaintools.com/primariesforpalin.com

Registration Service Provided By: Namecheap.com
Contact:
Visit: http://namecheap.com/

Domain name: primariesforpalin.com

Registrant Contact:
      WhoisGuard
      WhoisGuard Protected ()

      Fax:
      8939 S. Sepulveda Blvd. #110 - 732
      Westchester, CA 90045
      US

Administrative Contact:
      WhoisGuard
      WhoisGuard Protected ()
      +1.6613102107
      Fax: +1.6613102107
      8939 S. Sepulveda Blvd. #110 - 732
      Westchester, CA 90045
      US

Technical Contact:
      WhoisGuard
      WhoisGuard Protected ()
      +1.6613102107
      Fax: +1.6613102107
      8939 S. Sepulveda Blvd. #110 - 732
      Westchester, CA 90045
      US

Status: Locked

Name Servers:
      NS1.DREAMHOST.COM
      NS2.DREAMHOST.COM
      NS3.DREAMHOST.COM

Creation date: 17 Nov 2010 18:36:00
Expiration date: 17 Nov 2011 13:36:00

Yes. I don't know if it's related, but Namecheap is currently under attack too and I'm personally affected by it. You cannot currently make any changes to DNS records and the domains resolve slowly. That means tens of thousands of customers and businesses.

What does everyone suggest that they would do? Of course they will have to get the one that causes trouble for so many other customers. anyDNS was also being tolerable about it - they told wikileaks they will cease the service for them after 24 hours. During that time all it would had taken from Wikileaks was to change their nameserver records somewhere else. No domain has been taken down.

http://www.namecheap.com/learn/other-services/ssl-certificates.asp I messed that link up some how.

I do deploy them but I do avoid getting robbed by Verisign for these and other certs by shopping around.

Currently I pay around $10 a year for individual host certs, and $126 a year for wildcards.
http://www.namecheap.com/learn/other-services/ssl-certificates.asp

If you have a large number of street facing certs the wildcard is the most cost effective solution anyway but for lower volumes I use individual certs as well.

It has some cost but the reduction in uninformed user headaches is well worth it.

I agree - I host over 100 domains through Namecheap, and have never had any problem with them. I left GoDaddy because of their PlaySkool, Javascript intense interface, long before I had enough domains to be worried about the privacy and security implications.

I also like money. A lot. In that line, here's an affiliate link to Namecheap that might make me some :)

Alternative Registrars to GoDaddy?

Namecheap.com.

I use them exclusively.

I wasn't willing to shell out $100 (about half my yearly profit!) for the stupid certificate.

It's not quite as bad as all that. Namecheap offers "RapidSSL" for $13 a year. They even have a deal where you can get a free SSL cert with registration or transfer of a domain. Still, yeah, SSL certificates are kind of a racket.

I'm using Namecheap; they're reselling eNom and never had any problems with them. Domains are $9.29 and often less with coupon codes.

http://www.namecheap.com/ / http://www.rapidssl.com/

They're just the same as your expensive SSL certs, but just come from a company with a name less 'known' [but never revealed to the users..], as opposed to Thwarte.

I was also recently trying to find a registrar that was not 'evil' and settled on Namecheap after seeing numerous recommendations. They used to be a reseller for eNom but are now a fully accredited registrar.

Disclaimer: I work for a web host and get to deal with registrar BS on a daily basis. We partner with OpenSRS (Tucows) who I would recommend but they do not sell direct to the public.

http://www.namecheap.com/

namecheap.com

Lousy name, perfect record. DNS hosting and WHOIS protection.

Check out NameCheap.com. They are an eNom.com reseller.

GoDaddy's reputation is not one of a few bad stories. In my opinion, GoDaddy tries to confuse non-technical people by offering services they don't need that are presented as valuable.

"What we need is a list of known good registrars..."

Any recommendations?

eNom.com is the real provider for many domain name resellers. For example, NameCheap is one of many who buy from eNom.com.

eNom.com has been competing with its re-sellers with eNomCentral.com. Note that eNom.com is now apparently doing what GoDaddy does. In my opinion, GoDaddy.com tries to get more money by confusing people who have little technical knowledge.

Some of the negative stories about GoDaddy on Slashdot:

GoDaddy Holds Domains Hostage
GoDaddy Caves To Irish Legal Threat
MySpace and GoDaddy Shut Down Security Site
GoDaddy Serves Blank Pages to Safari & Opera
GoDaddy Bobbles DST Changeover?
GoDaddy.com Dumps Linux for Microsoft
Go Daddy Usurps Network Solutions
Alternative Registrars to GoDaddy?

Other reasons not to buy from GoDaddy: NoDaddy.

I suggest that everyone check to see from whom your domain name provider buys your domains. eNom.com is the real provider for NameCheap, one of many who buy from eNom.com.

eNom has been competing with its re-sellers with eNomCentral.com. Note that eNom is doing what GoDaddy does. In my opinion, GoDaddy tries to get more money by confusing people who have little technical knowledge.

I moved all my domains away from GoDaddy for many reasons, not just those reasons given in a Slashdot story, to NameCheap.

I don't know any domain name reseller that is inexpensive, reliable, and honest.

SgtChaireBourne, off topic: You asked to tell you what Domain Name Registrar I chose. I chose NameCheap.

See where you can find your EPP auth codes in the RegisterFly control panel

I had heard very good things about Namecheap for sometime so I transferred all my RegisterFly domains there this morning and everything went smoothly. For those interested in Namecheap, use coupon code "marchmadness" to get $7.99 transfers instead of $8.88. This coupon code isn't associated with me in anyway.

Any recommended registrars out there?

Here are NameCheap.com's features. Anything missing from Enom.com's features? Is NameCheap.com really an Enom.com reseller?

I'm another happy NameCheap customer; I have been using their services for around 3 years. Their prices are cheap, and they offer a clean and very usable control panel. In addition, customer support was quick and helpful in the few times I needed it.

A quick google turns up a lot of registrars.

I had a domain name registered at godaddy for a while, but I left, exactly because of the horror stories from their (alleged?) "we'll pull any site that generates complaints without investigating one bit" policy. I don't host anything controversial (in fact, I use my domainnames almost exclusively for e-mail), but all it takes is someone deciding to (fake) some spam advertising your domainname, and you can kiss it goodbye.

Something godaddy pulled on me was that when it came time to renew, the registration rates offered to me were higher than for new customers - and no discount for 10 year registrations.

So, after some forum reading, and weeding out suspiciously cheap registrars, I decided on namecheap. As the name implies, they're cheap, $8.88 per domain per year. At the time they were slightly more expensive than godaddy, now they're slightly cheaper.

They're an eNom reseller, so they probably offer the exact same services as any other eNom reseller, but they're cheap.

I'm personally a fan of NameCheap, they use geotrust, my suggestion is to go with geotrust, I haven't had any problems with them but I do register the cert with a custom e-mail address like ssl@companyname.com that way if it is a spam target it's isolated.

And when you pick a name, buy it immediately, as the registrars are known to watch the queries for domain names, and if they see a good one, they'll grab the domain themselves and then offer to sell for a lot more. So today you find reallygooddomainname.com and it's available, but tomorrow it might not be -- tomorrow they want $1000 for it.

Certain registrars and resellers are notorious for selling "recent inquiry lists" to domain kings. I actually lost a domain name this way a few years back, after checking availability. It was very unlikely that specific domain name, which was meant for a personal site for a family member, could have been picked by accident by someone else with the same two-day period (while I was mulling it over).

After that experience, I became very cautious about where to check domain name availability. OpenSRS used to be good for a simultaneous WHOIS search and check of availability, but now they have this annoying captcha. At NameCheap, an Enom reseller which I've used for years for most of my small collection of domain names, I've never lost a prospective domain name after an inquiry and subsequent mulling, although apparently they did recently decide to keep as a "pay for click" empty parked domain name one that I decided to drop as superceded (for a business idea) by a more relevant term. I've not had problems either with GANDI, but haven't used them for new domain names for years.

There are undoubtedly many decent registrars and resellers, and a few bad ones run by slimebags, just as with any type of business.

By the way, a great place to check information on ownership of a domain name is here. Basic membership is free with a simple registration (use fake information and a throwaway email address if you are more comfortable with that), and they have lots of neat tools even for free memberships. Just make certain you only use it for domain names which you know are already taken, because the people who run it are in the business of reselling domain names, and giving them ideas isn't good.

Namecheap seems quite good. I like their site layout a lot. Everything makes sense and is easy to do... and if for some reason you're confused, they even have tutorials available. They also offer WhoisGuard, which anonymizes your contact information through a remailer. This means people can still contact you if there's a problem with a domain, but they don't automatically get your real name, address, and email.

They're also, as their name implies, quite cheap. $8.88/yr for domains, and another $5/year or so for WhoisGuard, if you want that. They offer many free services as well, like domain website redirection and good DNS management.

I haven't seen them do anything even REMOTELY duplicitous or sneaky.

Joker.com was my prior registrar. They are also good, completely non-sneaky, and inexpensive. They probably cost a little more than Namecheap does now, because of the decline in the U.S. dollar. I switched because Joker had nothing like WhoisGuard at the time. (I don't know if they do now or not.) I'm happy with Namecheap, but I'd use Joker again anytime.

I believe Namecheap is an eNom reseller, so they are a relatively small outfit, without the infrastructure of 'real' domain registrars, like Joker. The Namecheap site is better-designed and much easier to navigate, and they have a few features Joker doesn't. Joker can be downright cryptic at times. Everything works and does what it should, but the interface is 'early Linux desktop'... clunky and strangely laid out. Namecheap is extremely polished in comparison. That said, I've seen Namecheap's web redirects get squirrely a couple of times.

I used Network Solutions for many years, as well. They have a good interface and extremely robust infrastructure, but they're expensive. They're also complete bastards, and try to upsell you in unscrupulous ways. I suggest avoiding them. GoDaddy is another very bad outfit. And their CEO advocates torture. (he thinks we're not hard enough in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib). I suggest never, never using them.

On the whole, if you're running a small to medium site, Namecheap may be one of your best choices. If you're running a big setup, particularly if the registrar is redirecting your website or hosting your DNS, you'd probably be better off with Joker's superior infrastructure.

I will never use GoDaddy again. The differenrtce is only $25, which is about 1/2 hour of my time. Register.com may not be the cheapest, but their stuff always works.

Hah hah! To say Register.com is better at anything is quite amusing. Yeah, they're probably better than GoDaddy but that's not saying much. Ever heard of namecheap.com, active-domain.com, or Dotster? Hell, even Yahoo domains is better than both of them.

There is a saying which goes something like "You get what you pay for." If I buy cheap service from GoDaddy, I want to know if I get cheap service, or something better.

I think in the case of GoDaddy you do indeed get what you pay for. Try namecheap.com.

Does Go Daddy give you free DNS with your registration?

Yes it does. However, it's somewhat difficult to find in their interface. You have to set the domain to use their "parked" DNS servers. Once you do, you will be provided with a menu option titled "Total DNS Control". In there, you can configure A, CNAME, and MX records.

Currently I use Gandi.net ($15/yr) because...

GANDI is probably the only registrar that has a crappier control panel than Go Daddy.

My pet peeve are friends & family who know I have a web server, so they go register a domain name at some PAIN IN THE ASS but CHEAP registrar and then expect me to get it all working for them.

I feel for ya' man. But GOOD doesn't necessarily have to be CHEAP in the domain registration world. Even 1and1.com gives you a single A and MX record for $5.99/year (yes, their customer service sucks). However, for $8.88/domain/year, I'd recommend Namecheap.com. It's cheap, it's reliable, they offer full DNS control, they have WHOIS privacy for only $2.88/year (compared to $9/year at GoDaddy), and they even have DDNS support (nice when hosting on a cable modem or DSL). Plus, they're an eNom registrar, so if you ever decide they're not cutting it it's pretty easy to transfer away...

GoDaddy offers DNS, but it has a horrible management interface that you have to dig for. Namecheap.com offers the same, has a nicer interface, easier to get to DNS management screen, and offers WHOIS privacy for $2.88/year instead of GoDaddy's $9/year (which adds up if you have several domains).