Ask Slashdot: Advice For Domain Name Registration?

codepigeon writes: I would like to ask for your advice on selecting a domain name registration service to use (possibly registration with website hosting?). The last time I registered a domain name was around 1999, so I am out of touch with the current offerings.

I have visited a few of the major players' websites. They seem (mostly) similar in prices and services. I have also seen both positive and negative reviews for those companies. I am concerned about being locked in, or surprised with hidden fees. (I paid $75US for a year of service in 1999, now it is only $10.99US?)

I have been trolling Slashdot for about 15 years and respect the views of the users here more than anywhere else. I would love to hear your advice and/or warnings in this matter. I am looking to register a domain name for a development studio that is at the ground level (read: I'm the sole member). I have published a single app to one of the big app stores already and want to have a 'web presence' to publish information about my software and give users a place to submit complaints/requests. I currently don't see the need for any kind of major backend support for the website; simple HTML or JavaScript.

Which is the most trustworthy company to use for registration? Which ones have hidden fees or privacy problems?

Comments

You're the troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

So it was you, all along?

Re:You're the troll?

[cwsumner]

The language has changed since 1999. I think the word you are looking for is "lurking". 8-)

NameCheap

[cultiv8]

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

Re:NameCheap

[hcs_$reboot]

Tried a few and basically among the serious ones you get the same services for a different price. So I chose the cheaper, namecheap.com, and have been happy since.

Re:NameCheap

[_merlin]

I'd be happy to recommend NameCheap for .com and .com.au domains as well. But I have a question about domain name registration myself: I'll soon have to register some .cn domains, does anyone know a good registrar for .cn domain names with IDNA support?

Re:NameCheap

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I checked Namecheap doesn't support DNSSEC or DNSCurve. Deal breaker for some :/

Re:NameCheap

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had really good experiences with:
    - Gandi. Their slogan is "No Bullshit", and that is exactly how they behave. They don't try to up-sell you on services you don't need and their web interfaces work perfectly. They also offer OK hosting.
    - DreamHost is my go-to choice for non-technical folks who want one-click, semi-managed installs of WordPress or Drupal.
    - AWS is quite good if you are looking for something more professional, but your level of knowledge needs to be a bit higher.

Re:NameCheap

[arglebargle_xiv]

I'd be happy to recommend NameCheap for .com and .com.au domains as well. But I have a question about domain name registration myself: I'll soon have to register some .cn domains, does anyone know a good registrar for .cn domain names with IDNA support?

Check your spam folder for many messages from providers who'd be more than happy to register a .cn for you. They'll also sell you bulletproof hosting if you need it.

Re:NameCheap

[seoras]

I recently came across this on a forum about NameCheap which would make me steer well clear of them
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=86&topicid=165962

Re:NameCheap

[_merlin]

Haha very funny. Just one problem: none of my spam actually has anything to do with that. Most of it has something to do with HARP, energy independence, diabetes, saving on mortgages and losing weight. I assume these are things Americans worry about.

Seriously though, I will be doing business in China and need Chinese domain names. I honestly don't know who a reputable .cn registrar is. Hosting isn't a problem.

Re:NameCheap

[Larryish]

NearlyFreeSpeech.Net

Solid shared hosting and reasonably priced domain registrations.

https://www.nearlyfreespeech.n...

Re:NameCheap

[jvj24601]

Mod parent up. I use NFSN for my sites as well. I picked them for their hosting, and switched my domain registrations to them because I support their business model.

Re:NameCheap

[fnj]

There is absolutely no reason you have to use your registar's name servers. You can set any name servers you want.

Re:NameCheap

[seoras]

From the forum poster: "The NameCheap terms and conditions state they will pass the domain on to a third party at their discretion from 12 days prior to expiry."

12 days prior, doesn't sound like any of the registrars I've used.
Sure go ahead and use NameCheap but read their T&C's very carefully first.

Email notifications aren't reliable, I keep a reminder alert in my calendar for my domain renewals.
Having said that I get bombarded by renewal reminders from freeparking, networksolutions and godaddy when I have a domain a few months from expiry.
You know, the "renew now and save 10% off" types?

Glad this wasn't one of my domains that got the chop 12 days prior to expiry and then held to ransom to get it back...

Re:NameCheap

[jawtheshark]

I pretty much use gandi for all my needs. They do .cn domains. Gandi is probably not the cheapest, but you get quite a lot for your money.

Re:NameCheap

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I checked Namecheap doesn't support DNSSEC or DNSCurve. Deal breaker for some :/

--

Twitter (2013): Ah, we're adding DNSSEC support in the near future. Hang tight :)

https://twitter.com/Namecheap/status/294872690102267905
https://community.namecheap.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8597

Nearly two years later and it's still in the near future guys! No wonder people are leaving them ^_^

Re:NameCheap

[Big Hairy Ian]

Wow mines 90% penis enlargement spam I just want to know how they know I need it :D

Re:NameCheap

[cdrudge]

Or...pay better attention to where your domains are expiring, especially if they are tied to a commercial venture.

Re:NameCheap

[JWSmythe]

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

Re:NameCheap

[QuietLagoon]

I agree about NameCheap. Their customer service is nothing short of excellent. They also have great prices on SSL certs (and sell certs that are not Comodo-based, which for me is a big plus). The customer interface for your account is quite intuitive.

Re:NameCheap

[QuietLagoon]

I've been getting routine expiration notices from NameCheap. They start a month before the domain is due to expire, and repeat as the expiration date nears..

.
I'm sure you can find one horror story or two or three about any business out there, some of which may even be true and not planted by competitors. If you really "steer clear" of a business because of one bad review on the Internet, then you must not buy anything.... ;)

Here are a couple of reviews that use more than one data point:

Best domain name registrars

Five Best Domain Name Registrars

Re:NameCheap

[Lexical_Scope]

+1 for Gandi here.

The fact they support 2FA using Google Authenticator (and my Yubikey Neo) is a big win for me.

Switched to them from Tera-Byte who are bloody awful.

Re:NameCheap

[wolrahnaes]

Or if it's a commercial domain, just buy a really long registration. It's not like domains are expensive, I've had a few clients who were renewing their domains annually and had expired one or come close to it a few times because they were doing it annually, but when I pointed out that it would only be a bit over $100 to not have to think about it for years they jumped on the idea.

Re:NameCheap

[pnutjam]

nearlyfreespeech.net is my go to for hosting and registration. They are transparent and do a great job of keeping costs down while providing excellent service.

Re:NameCheap

[rahvin112]

The original story is just unbelievable. Namecheap is pretty generous, they allow a grace period after expiration that all you have to do is pay the reg fee to reinstate (no penalty). But they have no obligation to do so and I don't blame them in the least if two weeks into the expiration they decide to auction the domain off. If you intend to keep a domain you shouldn't be paying yearly. Take advantage of lower prices today and register it for a decade.

Re:NameCheap

[Fallon]

I haven't gotten around do doing 2fa with them (shame on me, although I haven't logged in in ages as name registration for a couple personal domains doesn't really require any ongoing maintnance), but have been using Gandi for years. They have very good privacy & rights policies (you own your domain, not the registrar owns it on your behalf type junk). Not the cheapest, but good from the security, nerdy & rights minded Slashdot crowd.

Re:NameCheap

[edibobb]

I've tried all those. They don't work.

Re:NameCheap

[JWSmythe]

Honestly, I have a lot of names that renew yearly. It's not really practical to buy everything at 10 years. Even at Namecheap's pricing, a .com is $102.90 for 10 years. That's a lot to drop on a fledgling project that may never become anything.

Re:NameCheap

[McKing]

Another +1 for Gandi.net. I have six or seven domains registered through them and I couldn't ask for better service.

Re:NameCheap

[Reziac]

This is why my domains are all on automatic renewal. Also if for some reason an auto-payment doesn't go through (Discover card was bad for this, which is why I don't use it anymore) 1&1 sends me a second notice, rather than automatically confiscating the domain at the first opportunity.

Re:NameCheap

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Like they need it with all the other +1's, but a +1 from me too! Their support is really great.

Re:NameCheap

[coldrestart]

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...

Re:NameCheap

[xenoc_1]

Yet another +1 for Gandi, and mentioning a few specifics that haven't come up, as to why.

1. Good nameservers and the ability to have full control of your DNS zone file, in both a form-based "easy mode" and raw-text "expert mode". Once you start doing a lot of custom DNS; especially if you might split what services you have for that domain across multiple providers (e.g. a Linode or DO droplet, email on a different one, or Google or Zoho, subdomain for git, some different dev, staging, beta subdomains) it's really nice to have direct easy-edit access to your zone. In that sense, easier than Namecheap's DNS (which I also use on some domains registered their and via their FreeDNS on some not registered there), which is only form-based.

2. Free IMAP/POP/SMTP/webmail email with your domain. It's not great, it's max 1GB storage overall and 5 mailboxes (near-unlimited aliases), unless you pay extra, but that's fine if you simply need a way to send/receive mail from your domain in "real email programs" as well as in RoundCube webmail. It has spam filtering but no configurability thereof. Mail is hosted in their Paris, France datacenter. For my domains where I don't do a whole lot of email, it's perfect, saves the need for a hosting plan or for hosted email, or of the hassle of running my own server in one of my droplets (each of which I do indeed do for some of my domains).

3. Free first-year SSL/TLS cert (underlying issuance by Comodo but Gandi as the cert issuer) with every domain. Which trumps the $1.99 at time-of-registration-only low-end Comodo cert that is basically the same thing, from Namecheap.

4. Gandi includes domain privacy for address, phone, email for all contacts that are individual contacts - your name shows, but that means that you indisputably own the name. If you are a "corporate handle" (in other words, if you fill in the "Company Name" field), then you cannot mask your address and phone, but they still mask your email.

5. (Maybe good or bad depending on your preference) Gandi still uses the old concept of "handles" rather than "customer accounts", at least optionally. Thus it's possible to have entirely separate IDs as the Registrant, Admin Contact, Tech Contact, and Billing Contact, on any domain. Those are entirely separate logins to Gandi. You don't have to do that, you can make everything just one. But any difference in address, email, name, is by definition another contact. This is powerful, but confusing to newbies to domain ownership.

6. First-time domain registrants (not first-time per domain) get a half-price coupon for a year of Gandi Simple Hosting. "SImple Hosting" is actually "Gandi Complicated Hosting" compared to typical shared hosting: no email, no cPanel, no "hosting panel" at all, but panels for the VPS, for the apache daemon, for PHP APC, and for whichever one database you choose. But it's a lot simpler than managing a full bare VPS, as it's a managed Platform as a Service, and sold as such as a PaaS. Given that a size S is only $2.50/month or the more-reasonable starter, a size M, is only $5/mo at that discount, it's a great deal. I've been running both some development and some client production sites on Simple Hosting for a few years now, and in many ways it beats the heck out of shared hosting. It's basically a tech-stack-specific, managed VPS on which you don't get root, but do get a lot of control otherwise. You get to take a half-price shot at this with your first domain registration, and no, it doesn't have to involve that domain.

Items 3 (1 year free SSL per domain) and 6 (1 year half-price Simple Hosting per customer) aren't tied to the domain which entitled you to them, nor to its period of registration. You just have to order the certificate before that registration period is up. I've gotten Gandi certs from a domain, only a few days before transferring that domain out, and the cert is good for a year, of course. I've used Simple Hosting promo coupons the same way, near the end of their 1-year validity.

Re:NameCheap

[_merlin]

Thanks. I've registered three domains with gandi, including a .com, a .cn and a Chinese script domain name. Seems good so far, I like being able to edit zone file fragments in BIND9 format in addition to the "friendly" editor.

MyDomain

[Anonymous Coward]

I like MyDomain... I don't care about their privacy policies or whatever, it's just a good cheap service. The GUIs on all the registrars are pretty awful, so I figure if they're all bad, go cheap. In over 15 years I've only seen a DNS related problem occur once or twice.

Heh, slow news day. Here's your answer...

[TurboStar]

I'm not going to recommend anyone specific because most are not bad. I budget $1/month for my domain. I let my web site host do it. There's two big things to consider. Can you easily transfer to another registrar if needed? Can someone too easily hijack your domain? Exploring these questions will send you down the right path.

Re:Heh, slow news day. Here's your answer...

[Quirkz]

I like keeping host and registrar separate. That way if something goes wrong with the host (and I've had lots of bad experiences with hosts, some of which may be due to being poor and looking too cheap during the 90's and 2000's) it's easier to move the domain somewhere else.

Registrar services are generally straightforward and low interaction, while hosting services may require frequent interaction and can really depend on quality technical support. They're different enough in my experience that you don't necessarily need or want the same company doing both.

Not GoDaddy.

[dgatwood]

Besides that, you're probably fine with any of them. My GoDaddy experience can best be summed up as:

• On their hosting service, they limited all processes run by your user account (not just CGI) to a certain number of seconds. This made it almost impossible to upload large files, because they invariably timed out before the upload could finish.
• Despite that limit, the service was still unusably slow because of all the WordPress and PHPBB instances whose full-text searches stink on ice. Requests to move my (purely static) content to a server that wasn't so bogged down were denied.
• Then, I tried to buy a cert from them. After I made the purchase, but before it actually became available for me to retrieve, they cancelled the purchase and told me that they no longer offered the number of years that I'd bought, despite the fact that I bought it using publicly available links on their website.

Let's just say I ditched them within the first month, and we'll leave it at that. I switched to DreamHost, and haven't looked back. Their service isn't perfect performance-wise, but it is so much better than GD that it isn't even funny. (Yes, I know you're just asking about domain registration, but lots of folks do one, then the other, so....)

And whatever you do, don't get your hosting from the same company that provides your domain names. There are far too many horror stories of hosting-related disputes leading to frozen domain names.

Re:Not GoDaddy.

[Terje Mathisen]

I've had a single .org domain registered with and hosted by DreamHost for 7-8 years now, absolutely no problems.

I also have 6-8 other domains here in Norway (.no) which are all registered locally but still hosted on the same DreamHost account.

Dirt cheap, very stable and OK performance wise.

I have a tiny search program written in perl (http://tmsw.no/pi-search/) which allows you to search for any given string within the first billion digits of pi:

Even though the database + index needs about 5 GB, so obviously not cached in memory, I tend to get replies within 0.1 seconds or so:

Find 19570725

Found at 45,109,789: 061632112341128 19570725 293694235201198

Total time = 0.099406 seconds (8 suffix lookups)

I.e. my birth date is located about 45 million digits into pi. :-)

Terje

Re:Not GoDaddy.

[fred911]

Let's not forget about their behavior with SOPA which in itself speaks all that needs to be said.

Re:Not GoDaddy.

[dwywit]

My experience has been that you get what you pay for. Had a domain registered with crazydomains, chosen because one of the other directors of the organisation is one of those folks who will always take the lowest bid. Surprise, surprise, we got nickel-and-dimed for everything else, and tech support was not encouraging. I quietly changed it to planetdomain (since then, absorbed by netregistry) when renewal time came around, and things are much better, even though we pay more.

I wouldn't touch anyone with words like "cheap", "crazy", or other trigger words in their business name.

On the other hand, I just can't see the value in anything from MelbourneIT.

Re:Not GoDaddy.

[LordWabbit2]

My experience with GoFuckYourselfDaddy was also not pleasant. Had a VM with them which they arbitrarily shutdown due to "unusual traffic" took them a month to respond and restart the server, not even sure what the "unusual traffic" was since I was barely using it except for some ftp's. Maybe the "unusual traffic" was due to the fact that there was barely any traffic. Also it was slow, I think they have horribly oversold their services.

Re:Not GoDaddy.

[rwa2]

Eh, we've been using GoDaddy to sign our top level public wildcard SSL certs for a couple of years now. They had competitive prices for those things (~$200/yr for 2 years, which we couldn't beat anywhere else while shopping last year), and the process was fairly automated and relatively painless.

We still learned how to sign wildcard certs as our own certificate authority for lots of internal backend subdomains, though.

Re:Not GoDaddy.

[BitZtream]

So now I have your name and birthdate ... Time to steal some of your identity.

What digit does your SS# start at, if you don't mind?

Re:Not GoDaddy.

[reynols]

I have been with GoDaddy for over 10 years now. I have quite a few domains registered with them and a CentOS 6 Linux VM, which I ssh into and do pretty much whatever I want. I haven't had any problems with them at all. Not to say that problems don't exist, just that it is possible to have a good experience with GoDaddy--I have also only called their support a couple times in the last 10 years, so that might be part of the reason for the lack of bad experiences.

I also agree about having hosting services with a separate provider for all of the reasons given here. Yea, I am breaking that rule, but the VM hosting was an afterthought and just something to play with.

Re:Not GoDaddy.

[dgatwood]

I was using their shared hosting to serve images associated with my domain, with the HTML served from my home server over DSL—basically as a poor-man's Akamai. Unfortunately, what I found was that their site would randomly take the better part of a minute to respond to a request. That meant that sporadically it would take longer for them to serve an image than for me to do so from my home DSL connection, and pretty much the entire transfer time was spent waiting to get the first byte back from their server.

At some point, I decided to gather statistics on the problem by using a machine at work (typically approaching or reaching gigabit speeds) to make a very short request to the server every couple of minutes. I forget what percentage of those requests took more than half a minute to come back, but I'm pretty sure it was in the double digits.

Obviously, I got a terrible server that was badly configured and/or massively overloaded. Obviously that won't happen to everybody. The reason I left is that even after proving definitively that the server sucked, and requesting that my content be migrated to a server that wasn't overloaded, they refused to fix the problem. Every server provider will have problems now and again. What matters is how you handle them when they happen, or in this case, whether you handle them when they happen. GoDaddy didn't, and that makes them a terrible provider even if only a tiny percentage of their customers have problems, because you never know when you're going to find yourself in that tiny percentage.

Re:Not GoDaddy.

[dgatwood]

I'm also using GANDI as my registrar. I'm reluctantly letting DreamHost provide DNS for one domain, and deferring part of another domain to their nameserver, but otherwise I've always preferred to keep my DNS servers in-house (literally), for maximum control. My primary is a Mac Mini, and my secondary is a Raspberry Pi.

Re:Not GoDaddy.

[dgatwood]

And today, after almost six years of reasonably reliable service, I'm starting to have my doubts about Dreamhost. Two nights in a row, I made minor changes to the configuration for my domains through their Web Panel, and the Apache server on their west coast shared hosting box died and never came back on its own. The first outage was 2.5 hours. This outage is ten hours and counting.

Anybody know a good shared hosting provider with better reliability? This latest failure brings them down to barely two nines YTD, not including scheduled maintenance.

Google domains - cheap, reliable, easy to use

[Anonymous Coward]

I finally pried my domains out of godaddy's/domainsbyproxy's cold dark hands. Godaddy + domainsbyproxy privacy is ~$28/year, while google with privacy is $12. Plus, I can understand the service and not be deluged in upselling.

Re:Google domains - cheap, reliable, easy to use

[thisisauniqueid]

I switched all my domains over to Google Domains too. Love it, and I have no plans to use anything else from now on.

Re:Google domains - cheap, reliable, easy to use

[SighKoPath]

That was a bug with Google Apps for Work, not with Google Domains. It has been fixed.

Avoid lock-in...

[BabaChazz]

host with someone different from where you register your domain. That way if you find the hosting isn't to your liking, you can repoint your DNS and won't get held to ransom. What I'm doing at present is registering with MyDomain and then hosting on GoDaddy, which is fine for low-volume sites.

For my Canadian sites, I register with webnames.ca, use MyDomain's DNS service, and host on whatever's cheap.

Hover

[SteveMurphy]

Hover (www.hover.com) is great. No bait and switch tactics, spamming you on your way to checkout, sleazy superbowl ads or other gimmicks. And you get private listings included in the base price. They aren't the cheapest, but they are competitive. They will even switch you over for free.

Re:Hover

[bad-badtz-maru]

I can second this, I've used Hover for over 10 years, from back when Tucows first offered OpenSRS.

Re:Hover

[SirAudioMan]

Yes, Hover is great. I have used them for several years and never once had a problem! I make it a point to always use one company for domain registration and another for hosting, even if it costs a bit more. I believe they are Canadian as they are owned by Tucows which is a Canadian company.

Re:Hover

[Anubis IV]

Seconding Hover. The guys behind it, Tucows, are the same quality guys behind Ting Wireless and have been one of the best domain registrars for years now. They'll handle all of the DNS work of migrating your existing domain for you if you want them to, that way you don't have to worry about it, and their tools for managing your domain are simple to use compared to most.

Gandi

[Anonymous Coward]

No bullshit! https://www.gandi.net/no-bullshit

Re:Gandi

[hcs_$reboot]

No bullshit! https://www.gandi.net/no-bulls...

Gandi: why pay less?

Re:gandi

[normaldotcom]

Gandi is a great registrar. They don't try and convince you to buy a bunch of extra services when you register your domain, they have a very user-friendly web interface for DNS record management, and they are very light on email (and any emails they send are in plaintext, nice and simple).

Free "private" registration to remove your contact info from the WHOIS data is another big plus. The only downside is that their prices seem to be a bit higher than some competitors.

Re:gandi

[dopeghost]

Another vote for Gandi but to answer your question specifically....

Trustworthy?
Gandi are widely regarded as being the most ethical registrar out there so if behaviour to date is a good indicator of future trust then their reputation speaks volumes.

Hidden costs
No hidden costs. They do tend to be a pound/dollar or so more expensive, however that leads me onto...

Privacy
...each domain includes their whois guard service for extra privacy by default. This usually costs extra at other registrars so, all told, gandi works out as cheap, or cheaper, than most other registrars if you value your privacy,

Comparison
There's horrible companies out there who engage in question practices so it really does make a difference who you go with

To give an example here's some of my experiences with 1&1 which might help you understand the sort of difference a good registrar makes....

• - Incessant cold calling with vile pre-written scripts designed to prey on un-technical people's ignorance (this was almost once a week at one point and took several attempt to get them to remove me from their list....)
• - Hidden transfer costs on various domains
• - 'anti-pattern' upselling of other services on their site
• - Weird billing practices (such as billing you months away from when the domain renewal actually happens)
• - At least weekly email spam that's relatively hard to unsubscribe from.
• - You don't so much register a domain with them as you have 'an account'.

To go into that last one in a little more depth it means that they insist on auto renewing your domain and will charge you to transfer a domain away so it's often easier just to pay.
Eventually my CC details with them expired and I decided to just let the domain go rather than continuing giving them money.
However in response they started sending me ever more threatening emails about my CC card being expired and then sending letters to my house saying they'd pass the debt for auto renewing my domain on to a collection agency!
What's worse tho is the domain name didn't need renewing for 8 or 9 months but they had reregistered it anyway just to try and make me pay even tho they knew my CC details were expired!!

Ps. No affiliation to Gandi, just a fan that thinks they've proved themselves as a company and deserve your money. Also think Namecheap are pretty good, though Gandi would be the one i'd recommend first and foremost, particularly amongst slashdotters!

Dreamhost

[Nonsanity]

I've been using Dreamhost for over a decade now and I've always had both a good experience and a good feeling about the company. But then, asking this sort of question, the most prevalent type of answer will be from people whoâ"like meâ"have used only one service and are therefore recommending it. A lone data point wrapped in anecdote does not useful information make. So take my mention of Dreamhost merely as a single vote of confidence for that company. Check out their blogs and pricing plans yourself and compare. :)

Re:Dreamhost

[lager_monste]

I second this. Dreamhost is great. I have numerous CMS sites on their servers and life is good.

Re: Dreamhost

[spongman]

I recommend draemhost, too. Been using them for ages for registration, hosting and email. They're cheap and helpful. They don't screw you for late fees or sell your domains if you mess up. The shared hosting isn't screaming fast but apparently you can easily upgrade to shared or dedicated VMS - though I haven't seen the need.

Re:Dreamhost

[djo26]

I'm also a big fan of dreamhost with the same caveats of not using other providers...

Hover

[Anonymous Coward]

Hover.com is really great. Simple interface, has all the features/record types you'll need, and they are just super helpful if you ever need to talk to them. Not tricky at all and nothing hidden. They are slightly more expensive but we're talking a few dollars a year and it's really worth it. I just can't believe how bad other services are by comparison. Godaddy's crazy complicated interface, Networksolutions is just plain terrible in every single possible way and then even worse somehow.. just use hover.

Re:1and1.com

[hcs_$reboot]

1and1.com is $0.99 for the first year for a .com, then it's a yearly $14.99. So why the hassle of having to migrate to another registrar after one year? $14.99 is expensive.

gandi.net

[Velimir]

Highly recommend gandi.net

Re:gandi.net

[hcs_$reboot]

Why? More expensive. DNS changes (new subdomains records, not updates, ie no cache interference) take ages to be taken into account. Their DNS sucks (once, their 3 servers were down at the same time!) and is slow. Seriously. Why? Namecheap updates their DNS tables instantly, is faster, is cheaper.

Re:gandi.net

[Nikademus]

I agree with gandi, they have always been great with me and they have very good support too.

Re:gandi.net

[heypete]

Highly recommend gandi.net

Agreed.

Although not the cheapest (a .com with NameCheap and whois protection costs $13.57/year. With Gandi it's $15.50), I find that you get what you pay for: for an extra ~$2/year or so you get clueful staff who respond promptly and competently to issues, built-in whois protection (lots of registrars charge extra for that) that ensures that you're still the legal owner of the domain (your name is listed as the registrant, but all the contact information can be masked with Gandi's information by the whois protection), the ability to add DS records for DNSSEC (neither NameCheap nor Hover allow this), a good API if you want to do things programmatically, and a great UI. You get a free SSL cert when you register/transfer in a domain, and SSL certs can be purchased from them (they chain up to Comodo) for a reasonable price.

They support a variety of organizations, including the EFF and Debian, that do good works on-line and off-.

Also, they're located in France. This offers some protection from various US shenanigans when it comes to seizing domains (assuming the TLD is not US-based), if that's something you're worried about. It's not perfect, of course, but it's something to keep in mind.

They offer decent, anycasted DNS service. Their nodes are located in Paris, Luxembourg, and Baltimore, so they have reasonable resolution speeds in Europe and North America. Nothing fancy, but it works well. You can, of course, use any other DNS host you want (e.g. one run by your web host, a third party service like easyDNS, etc.).

They also offer three types of hosting: basic web hosting, "Simple Hosting", and VPSs. The VPSs are pretty bog-standard, so you won't see any surprises, but I find DigitalOcean to be a better value for VPSs. The "Simple Hosting" is interesting to me, as it's a sort of crossover between shared hosting and a VPS: you choose what type of instance you want (PHP, Node.js, Python, or Ruby), what database type you want (MySQL, PgSQL, or MongoDB) and how much resources you need and you get a dedicated instance of that type. Instances are managed by a hypervisor so other users on the same hardware are logically separated and don't interfere with your service. Additionally, they put a Varnish cache server upstream of your instance so it's extremely fast.

Alternatively, I recommend NearlyFreeSpeech.net for excellent hosting.

In short: Gandi is a fine registrar and I strongly recommend them.

Re:gandi.net

[monkeyxpress]

Recommended as well. They cost more but if you ever need to help from a real person it is totally worth the money. Fastmail use them and have a story about a rather crazy attempt to steal their domains on their blog. Being able to talk to a real person at gandi and put a stop to things saved their bacon.

As for the comment about their DNS, to be fair to them, they are really just a domain registrar. If you want a full service provider with hosting etc then they aren't the people for you (this focus is one of the reasons I like them). I run AWS anyway so I just want my domain to not be in the hands of a giant mega corporation stuffed full of marketing goons.

Oh, BTW, I got on to them because they are the registrar Amazon uses if you register a domain through AWS.

Also, if you aren't running a really popular site, and haven't paid much for you domain, to be fair it doesn't really matter and enom or godaddy should be fine. I paid about $2k for one of my domains (damn you hugedomains), and just wanted to get out of the cesspool of marketing and ripoff merchants that is the domain name world.

Re:gandi.net

[houghi]

I have them as well. No complains at a good price. I could go cheaper, but looking for one would probably cost me more.

To the original poster: I would NOT do registry together with webhosting. If you have an issue with your webhoster, they could hold your deomain hostage. What I have done in the past with an issue was just direct my domain elsewere. New nameservers and done.

And if you have issues with your DNS provider, transfer and done.

Re:gandi.net

[Foresto]

+1 for Gandi. I've been using them for over a decade, and have no plans to leave. They cost more than the dirt cheap registrars, but they're worth it, for all the reasons that heypete mentioned.

They recently adopted a motto that sums them up rather well: No bullshit.

agree

[rewindustry]

webnames.ca have been excellent, been with them going on twenty years.

cheap-domainregistration.com

[drkim]

cheap-domainregistration.com

$8.99 .COMs

I haven't used them for hosting, but no problems with name reg.

Re:cheap-domainregistration.com

[Slashdot Parent]

I can't find the renewal pricing for cheap-domainregistration.com. I'm guessing that there is a good reason for that, and the reason is that I wouldn't be happy with what I found!

Re:cheap-domainregistration.com

[drkim]

No, the price stays the same.

I don't work for them or anything, I just was saying I'm happy with their deal.

Read the reviews, take the cheapest

[hcs_$reboot]

First, determine what are your needs exactly. Domain rental + DNS hosting? + web hosting? + mail hosting? You usually need domain rental (obviously) and DNS hosting (convenient to setup specific subdomains, have the mail handled by google, etc... and the major ones all offer DNS hosting for free (and a few emails). And if you need web hosting, a separate offer will not be much of a hassle - just setup of one or two IP addresses in your DNS - but could be more expensive.
Once you know what are the needs, check the various offers, check the reviews (from independent sites) and take the cheapest. Some people keep this wrong belief in mind that if you pay more you'll get more, more reliability etc... That may be true for other things. Not for domain hosting.

Crosswinds.net

[Cruciform]

I've used Crosswinds.net for a long time. (Disclaimer: It's run by a couple of friends.)
DDOS attacks hurt them on the hosting front since they aren't a big company, but if you're looking primarily for registration and a great customer service rep then I'd definitely talk to them.

Re:Crosswinds.net

[Slashdot Parent]

I tried to access the site, and I got "Couldn't connect to the database. Please doublecheck your settings in dbconfig.php
All pending operations halted." Soooo... yeah, that doesn't inspire much confidence.

One company *not* to use: Network Solutions

[sydbarrett74]

Avoid them like the plague.

Re:One company *not* to use: Network Solutions

[JayAEU]

Indeed, ever since they were bought by Web.com service has been going downhill. I recently contacted them about a mail routing issue they had (my mail stopped working due to it) and service (though trying to be helpful) was unable to grasp the basic concepts of what was the issue at hand.

Re:One company *not* to use: Network Solutions

[hcs_$reboot]

Avoid them like the plague.

Usually their pricing is enough to scare away most of the normal human beings.

Re:One company *not* to use: Network Solutions

[ScuzzMonkey]

But... but... but... everyone else in this thread is saying that you get what you pay for! How could that logic possibly be wrong? :/

Re:One company *not* to use: Network Solutions

[facetube]

Parent is not kidding, holy hell. It took me two weeks and five phone calls to transfer ^W rescue two domains from them. Their transfer system had a stated turnaround time of 24-48 hours to generate a code, and then frequently would just not do it (or generate an invalid one). It was clear that they'd erected artificial barriers to domain transfers, in the hope of wearing people down in to staying. Thanks, long-gone previous employee!

Re:One company *not* to use: Network Solutions

[Wycliffe]

Avoid them like the plague.

Usually their pricing is enough to scare away most of the normal human beings.

Yeah, but if you register with them for 100 years, their prices are only $9.99 per year.

Tigertech is AMAZING

[nadahlman]

Tigertech.net is a relatively small web-hosting company based in Berkeley, CA. Their prices are competitive for web hosting ... domain registration, complete DNS zone control, MySQL, and optionally WordPress is included.

Their customer service is astounding. And their documentation -- I've never read such helpful, friendly documentation anywhere. Just go look at it! Look at this section on how to use custom scripts on their site: https://support.tigertech.net/...

They're the sort of company that not only writes a lot of documentation on navigating the obstacle courses of other domain hosts when migrating to their service, but also they don't make it hard to migrate FROM their service, either.

I've recommended it to friends and clients and never heard a single complaint.

Try 'em out and see what you think!

Troll !

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been trolling Slashdot for about 15 years and respect the views of the users here more than anywhere else.

Are you doing it now? It's quite subtle if you are, I can't make it out.

GD and Netsol highly (NOT) recommended

[WaffleMonster]

Find a smaller outfit ... once they grow to a certain size and let their marketing goons settle in and run the show you don't want to be anywhere near the resulting cesspool.

namesilo.com

[JayAEU]

Trying to get away from network solutions (lack of good service and not offering 2fa), I came across namesilo.com. The prices are good and everything works as expected. So far they have my recommendation.

Re:namesilo.com

[dr_blurb]

I second that. I moved all my domains to namesilo. Reliable, fast, and they support 2-factor authentication.

For .nl domains: transip.nl

Avoid like the plague: godaddy.

Re:namesilo.com

[uberbrainchild8437]

Ah, skipped over this comment. But yes I also recomment namesilo. I took some time to review several registrars late last year http://markustenghamn.com/best... (please note that I do have ads and affiliate links on my website)

What country?

[Anonymous Coward]

Presumably you are in the USA, but where you want your content hosted can hugely affect the answers you get here. I would recommend hosting outside the 'Five Eyes' if you care at all about your and/or your user's privacy.

It can't be said enough: DO NOT USE GODADDY! Everyone I know (including myself) who has used godaddy has their own horror story to tell. They are evil, lying, and corrupt to the core. It boggles the mind that they are still in business. They must be paying off the right regulators...

That said, I've used about a dozen hosts in the past two decades, and they all seem to jerk their customers around a bit, but not nearly to the level of GoDaddy.

Support is the most important detail to look for in a host. That said, I personally have yet to find a good (& affordable) host. Pretty much all of the rest are certainly adequate, but none I have found worthy of specific recommendation.

What people are saying about keeping registration & hosting separate is probably good advice, but personally I've never had an issue with that outside of GD.

In summary:
Registration: Whoever is cheapest. NOT GODADDY
Hosting: Whoever has the best support. NOT GODADDY

Good luck!

Re:What country?

[meustrus]

They must be paying off the right regulators...

What regulators? This is the 21st century dammit. Regulations are for industries that existed when our government worked.

Dreamhost

[Get_Plover]

I used GoDaddy for a long time.
Then whatsisname, the owner guy, goes and shoots up an elephant in Africa.
Now, maybe that elephant needed killing, I don't know,
  but it wasn't his problem to solve and he can figure out something more constructive to do with his millions as I see it.
So, in irritation that I was contributing to those sorts of endeavors, and even though I think Danica is hot,
  I switched my stuff to Dreamhost as I too read that people were happy with them.
Now I am happy.
One time my credit card info got compromised.
DREAMHOST ALERTED ME TO IT!
And quite a bit before my bank, because DREAMHOST had found it on a bulletin board somewhere and compared with their records, as I recall,
told me I might want to look into it.
They was right.

I use domainmonster

[Chrisq]

I use domainmonster. No issues, reasonable price, just does the job.

godaddy and network solutions are the worst

[SethJohnson]

Absolutely correct. Neither godaddy or network solutions are technology innovators. They are merchants of a commodity service. They are running a business model of attracting suckers as customers and providing minimal service (i.e. outsourced to India) while sneaking fees in at any given opportunity.

Both are all about marketing. That's why you see them sponsoring race cars in NASCAR.

One Word: NameCheap

[TechnoGrl]

Been using them for 5 or 6 years now
Excellent (!!) service, competitively low prices, fantastic control over your domain (be the master of your domain!)

Switched from GoDaddy because of their extremely poor customer service and questionable business practices and politics :(
GoDaddy was a BIG supporter of SOPA and PIPA (google it up)

Also be sure to google Namecheap cupons and save a few bucks - there are always monthly specials

I like dreamhost

[SpzToid]

Gotta agree with Dreamhost first and foremost as a domain registrar. If you search back past Slashdots, you'll see folks have chimed in to say how simply searching and pricing your desirable domain name at a lot of registrars, effectively and immediately places your desirable domain name on other people's (or the registrar's) radar. In other words, it is not kept private for you, and if you delay much at all, you'll probably see someone else (like the registrar themselves) might very well snatch it up, so you'll at least have to pay more. I can vouch this doesn't happen with Dreamhost (I've tested it myself, along with the other registrars folks had mentioned, and saw those results too). Domain name searches at Dreamhost remain private. GoDaddy was one of the abusing registrars I am referring to, if I recall correctly. I've had assets on Dreamhost now for 10 years, this coming summer.

Also, if your website needs are as simple as you have written of, then dreamhost is an absolutely fine host. Their customer service is very good, prompt, and helpful too. A very good deal for the price, if your website needs are so simple.

That being said, I can tell you the cheapest level at Dreamhost is not suitable for a heavy CMS like Drupal. If you are running something like Drupal, then you should really buy the whole VPS. Dreamhost has invested heavily in their VPS options in the years since I was seriously trying to get Drupal to work over there, but I find Linode.com and digitalocean.com VPS options to be very good for the task. Also, just so you know, my recommendation for Linode and Digital ocean is based on my own rather heavy server installations and configurations.

Finally, domain names are like wo/men. All the desirable ones are already taken.

Siteground

[Cornwallis]

Great for hosting - excellent support - and not bad for domain stuff. (They actually resell Tucows domain services.) I've never had a problem with them. They also are the official host for the Joomla i believe and excel in Joomla/Drupal/WordPress services.

I also use namecheap for domains but avoid their hosting. Kinda flaky.

And GoDaddy is to be avoided at all costs - not just for their service and upselling but for their support of SOPA.

[cosmotown.com] guarantees their renewal prices

[thomastan]

Renewal prices are same as registration prices. Privacy is free. Prices are cheaper than all other places, service is flawless.

Namesilo.com

[uberbrainchild8437]

$8.99 or less (always) and free privacy and more :D Use them for all my domains now Previous and 2nd choice is name.com, great support and nice people if you are into that kind of thing

Gandi

[Noryungi]

'nuff said. Gandi is easy, fast, reliable, and above all honest: no hidden fees, no surprises, and all the functions you need.

I use it for all my domain registration, and I have never ever had a complaint with them. I have no idea if their hosting offers are as good as the DNS registration, though, and I have heard some bad things on their VPS. Make of that what you will.

I have been trolling Slashdot for about 15 years and respect the views of the users here more than anywhere else. I would love to hear your advice and/or warnings in this matter.

Flattery will get you nowhere.

Domain Name Front Running

[RoccamOccam]

Whatever you do, don't check with a registrar to see if your domain name is available, unless you're prepared to buy it at that moment! I recently had GoDaddy appropriate a good domain name that I was considering. It turns out that this reprehensible practice is quite common.

Re:Domain Name Front Running

[Cruciform]

I've always used the DomainTools site to do my searching, since I've never had any issues with them grabbing up domains. I've not registered through them though.

I heard that GoDaddy did it, ran a test case, and saw it snatched up immediately. They are pure scum.

Re:Domain Name Front Running

[jsepeta]

This reprehensible practice has been going on for a decade. It sucks.

Re:Domain Name Front Running

[Anonymous Coward]

I always use "whois -n" (whois lookup, but don't redirect to registratar whois servers) from the command line to test a domain. That way you avoid any 'domain tasting'.

Re:Domain Name Front Running

[swell]

I have a number of domain names, and have some names I may want. I also have trademark names that are not active yet. I would dearly love to Google these names to check if they are claimed, to know what their history is, to see if I can make them my own.

You can bet that google, bing and yahoo are all alert to a search with no result. You search for a term like 'flipple' and if there are no results alarms go off in the search engine. Some human will look at that term. Does it have any usefulness? Could it be the name of a domain, a business, a device, a service... Could we sell it so someone?

You have exposed your clever word to people who have the means to exploit it while you are twiddling your thumbs. It's gone.

Webnames.ca

[XB-70]

Don't use GoDaddy. Period.

We have used webnames.ca for over a decade. They are principled, courteous and honourable. We have never had an issue or been victims of lock in.

The Canadian dollar is tanking so it's great value for Americans (26% off)!

Seperate Domain Registrar from Hoster!

[Qbertino]

The only general advice I can give you - since I'm not in the US and I presume you are - is to seperate your Domain Registration service from your hosting service. That way you can, in a jam, close down your hosting without having to give up your domain. Or simply redirect the domain if you have to scale or something.

However, it might be worth looking out for a Doman Registrar that offers to handle all the email stuff - setting up an E-Mail server is a real drag.

Most of my domains are tied in with an ancient hosting package, and it's a bit of a drag, quite simply because today I probably wouldn't use webhosting offers altogether but rather run my on webspace on some cheap Linux vhost.

Re:Seperate Domain Registrar from Hoster!

[GaryOlson]

Pobox.com also provides Domain registration, email hosting with your domain(s), and DNS web redirection. Been using them for 18 years; good stuff.

Re:Seperate Domain Registrar from Hoster!

[braindrainbahrain]

Agreed! Domain Registration != Domain Hosting. If you ever wondered who owns the domain you have hosted somewhere, do a who is and find out who the domain is really registered to.

Joker.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Joker.com
I'm very happy with them. Cheap, a lot of fuctionality (DNSSEC, DYNA)
$ 13,70 .com domain for a year, € 6,68 for a .de domain

Personally I wouldn't put my eggs in one basket.

[petermgreen]

If the shit hits the fan at a domain registrar there is a good chance your domain will remain active but with no way to reconfigure it until things are straightened out. If the shit hits the fan at a hosting provider there is a good chance your server will disappear.

So putting both at the same place seems stupid to me.

gandi

[lkcl]

gandi.net because they have anonymous redirection of the whois data. they handle hostmaster messages in store-and-forward so that your details are not given out. there are other benefits as well, not least that they properly grok ipv6.

Nearly Free Speech .net

[wwphx]

I've been with them for years after my original registrar/host went belly-up. I was with GoDaddy briefly until they started the crap that they were doing (don't know if they still do, don't care). Anyway, NFS.net is inexpensive, they offer per-byte hosting, and they have an anonymity service available which I avail myself of. I definitely recommend them, they've been trouble-free for me.

netsol

[Dave White]

I've used many, but have had a domain registered with Network Solutions for 15 years. I've never had any issues with them, and have complete control over my DNS settings. However with others, sometimes I do not. EuropeRegistry for example, does not allow you to add TXT headers properly, and their documentation is a little sub-par.

1and1.com and Linode

[Ecuador]

I have been on 1and1 for over 10 years (since they had done a "free 2-year linux hosting" around '04) and I have had zero problems. Very fast shared hosting, tried their virtual hosting, also good, great prices. They don't have such a good reputation, but if you read through the bad reviews, a specific pattern emerges: it always starts with a failed auto-payment. Just be very careful with your credit card, don't let it expire, don't let it go over-limit. 1and1 will not warn you twice and they will suspend your account quickly.
While for most uses I recommend 1and1, when I have needed a versatile linux server with 1-click backup, I always go to Linode. It is like you have your own VM server running, as you can make all kinds of Linux images with your custom partitioning and boot the one you want etc. Backup is auto or 1-click. More expensive than 1and1 of course, but you are not getting the same thing.

Re:1and1.com and Linode

[fbumg]

I also have had 1 and 1 for well over 10 years, and have never had a problem. And, I have also never missed a payment. My credit card did expire one me one year. They sent me an email informing they had tried to bill me and couldn't, and gave me a bit of a grace period (a week I think). I paid it immediately and never lost service. Now, I hardly do anything on there any more, it's all static crap except for my step-father's business site. Well, that's pretty static too but doesn't quite fall into the "crap" category. The only other service I have experience with is GoDaddy, and that was just to help a friend who had hosted there. The problems I had there were in no way GoDaddy's fault, so I would think you will be safe there as well. If it is just a simple site to have some content out there, I'd say you have plenty of options and just need to pick one. Now, once you get into running your own servers and such, best to listen to these fine Slashdot folks and then do some more homework on your own.

Re:1and1.com

[NJRoadfan]

...and they don't know how to bill. Of course they don't even appear to have a billing dept. One day late (or your payment doesn't process properly) and its sent to a collections agency.

Trustworthy? Gandi or PairNic

[XNormal]

Gandi.net. French open source geeks. They've been in the registrar business for about as long as you've been on Slashdot. Many consider it an advantage for their registrar to be outside US jurisdiction. Their terms of use and conduct in the face of legal challenges have received thumbs-up from privacy activists and lawyers.

PairNIC, operated by Pair Networks. From their web site: "Launched in January 1996 and profitable since its second month of operation...". I have hosted with them for many years and their reliability is unbeatable. If you are a US-based business you can't escape US jurisdiction anyway and probably won't mind paying a couple of dollars more.

Re:Trustworthy? Gandi or PairNic

[Skater]

PairNIC, operated by Pair Networks. From their web site: "Launched in January 1996 and profitable since its second month of operation...". I have hosted with them for many years and their reliability is unbeatable. If you are a US-based business you can't escape US jurisdiction anyway and probably won't mind paying a couple of dollars more.

I've been using Pairnic for all of my domain names, no complaints, and the prices seem reasonable. I use them to host my website, too. At one point I switched to someone else (phpwebhosting.com, I don't know if they're still around) and complaints from my site's users about slow/unresponsive pages went from zero to daily, at least. I switched back to pair.com and those complaints dropped back to zero.

Re:Trustworthy? Gandi or PairNic

[Anonymous Coward]

The entire Pair company is good (quality and morality). They are the only company I recommend to people for registration and for shared hosting. If you want to use a VPS, then Linode.

Those 2 companies are #1, period, end of discussion. Nobody else is better at their jobs.

Stay away from the likes of the ultra cheap hosts, they all suck. GoDaddy, 1&1 (Europe's version of GoDaddy).

Joker

[badzilla]

www.joker.com never had a problem

hosting...

[azander]

Disclosure: I work for a very small ISP that offers hosting and domain registration.

Why go with one of the big corporations? All they want is your money. The smaller "mom-and-pop" providers and hosting companies are just as good, and possibly better then the big ones.

Our little ISP offers registration, domain privacy, web hosting, and email. Our hosting is mostly via FTP though we do have a simple control panel available. We offer support via email and phone.

We aren't the cheapest out there, but we are also not the most expensive.

Your hosting should be based on what you need first, then pricing. Just because someone is big and cheap doesn't mean they are good.

If you want to, check us out at http://www.netonecom.net/ We even still cater to dialup because our area is STILL mostly dialup because the big corporations don't think there is enough population density to change that.

az

Searching for unused domain names securly

[original bit basher]

Before you can register you need to find an unused name. The best way I know of for searching for unused domain names is to use the V3hois "Domain List" service at http://www.v3whois.com/domain-list.

The beauty here is you see all similar registered names which allows you to spot unused names. Also the names you are search for are never on the Internet so domain-name squatters never get a hint of what you are searching for no matter how they monitor DNS look-ups.

Re:1and1.com

[mysidia]

$14.99 a year is not expensive.

For a domain name it is. Go buy yourself a 10-year domain registration at OpenSRS, Name.com for $11/Yr, or Namecheap for $10.50, or EasyDNS for $12/Yr.

Let's see.... the 1and1 registration costs $150. The others are $135 or less for 10 years.

EasyDNS

[PuddleBoy]

I migrated away from NetSol years ago when they became a marketing machine.

EasyDNS has great support and is very easy to use. You have the option of an email address with them that appears in the official public record, but only works from within easyDNS.

I have a couple dozen domains with them.

Re:EasyDNS

[johnnys]

This! A hundred times this!

EasyDNS have been my registrar of choice for years. EXCELLENT support, competent people, good prices and NO problems. I also recommend you look into their history and the exceptional corporate responsibility they have demonstrated.

I am not affiliated with EasyDNS except for being a very happy customer.

Re:1and1.com

[Anonymous Coward]

1and1.com is the worst decision for a domain registrar you could ever make. If you want cheap hosting they are ok for that however you should register your domain with GoDaddy and then host at 1and1. My experience with 1and1 is that they overload their servers resulting in slow performance (RAID 5 spinners for virtual machines, I checked and asked their rep). A company whose website we were trying to relaunch originally registered with them and we needed to transfer the domain away to another registrar to complete some more advanced DNS setup. When 1and1 received the request they said it would take two weeks to transfer it. The reason is that they have up to two weeks to transfer domains and it is their policy to do that (in order to make it difficult to move away from them). So the bottom line is I would never host with them. I have also had dedicated servers of my own with them and they were so-so but I do know how to maintain them without any support help.

Re:Personally I wouldn't put my eggs in one basket

[cdrudge]

If the shit hit the fan at your domain registrar, your hosting may be useless anyways if you rely on that domain name as your business front. And if your hosting disappears, you'll have your backup that you can move to a new host. Right?...

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

[paysonwelch]

I used to host my own sites on a couple of dedicated servers in the data center where I used to work. After leaving that position I had to migrate my sites so I spent a year making a pilgrimage moving my sites from one shitty host to another. At my current position they prefer to use AWS instead of hosting their own hardware (debatable) however for the price and the service (basically 100% uptime) AWS is perfect for what OP is doing. A t2.micro instance could easily host what OP's site would be and it's roughly $10/mo if you use the AWS Linux AMI. AWS of course has many other options that OP may want to investigate such as the Elastic Beanstalk.

Re:Amazon Web Services (AWS)

[Scorpinox]

To give more info on Amazon Web Services: They recently added domain name registration. It's very barebones, but also really easy to configure. So if all you want is the domain name, you know what you're doing, and all your servers are setup somewhere, you can point the records at them very easily. But if you also want email forwarding or something else or convenient bundled features, you might want another service.

Re:Amazon Web Services (AWS)

[PsndCsrV]

+1 for AWS. I'm using Route53 + S3 for a personal static site. I'm using a different registrar currently -- I didn't realize Amazon was also a registrar, so I might have to check into transferring.

Re:enom

[monkeyzoo]

I have had several domains with active-domain.com AKA enom.com AKA domainpanel.com for several years. It's a good basic domain and DNS service for $11.99/yr (.com) + $2.50/yr for whoisproof. I also use easyDNS for their DNS+ services ($55/yr) on one domain. And I recently tried Amazon Route53 for a couple new domains $12/yr (.com), which includes whoisproof. The latter is good, but the $.50/month DNS fee ends up making it more money compared to enom.

Namesilo

[nmpg]

Well, I like Namecheap, cheap and reliable, and with access to the new TLDs. Yet, if you're going to even cheaper, but without possibility of registring a domain with the new TLDs, than Namesilo is the way to go.

Many hosting providers offer a free domain.

[SQLGuru]

I pay $8/month for hosting with Arvixe.com (the Linux hosting is cheaper/month) and comes with a free domain name. If you're going to pay for hosting beyond a free "parked" page, it might be better to shop for hosting instead of shopping for a registrar.

EasyDNS

[pigiron]

They are inexpensive, provide a complete line of hosting services, and have been in business for years. Plus they are located in Canada.

Gandi

[facetube]

Advantages: Offices in both France and the US. Provides a free 1-year domain-validated SSL/TLS certificate with every domain, and will happily sign a 4096-bit certificate despite advertising only 2048 bits. Provides free e-mail service with any domain, with up to five accounts and unlimited per-account aliases. Free WHOIS e-mail aliases. Free private registration for TLDs that allow it (a lot of them do, a few don't, some TLDs in Europe default to it). Lots of TLD selections, including some of the more obscure country-specific ones that not all registrars offer – believe it or not, there are still TLDs that need an e-mail from the registrar to change WHOIS information; Gandi has done this for me multiple times without any issue. Has a Xen-based hosting service with data centers in the US, Paris, and Luxembourg. Has a credit system for hosting, and a prepaid account that works with all of the services. No problems at all with domain transfers.

Mixed advantages/disadvantages: Militant about paper/fax documentation for things like company-to-individual ownership transfers, which in theory protects domains from being stolen through social engineering. Support is efficient and helpful, if a little terse at times. Substantial non-US presence, if hosting resources outside of the US is your thing.

Disadvantages: Not the cheapest; a year of registration seems to average between $12 and $16 USD. Website UI is a bit on the complex side, but it starts to make sense quickly. User names are of the form XY1234-GANDI, and can't currently be customized. There are a couple of unusual (to US people) fields on the company-specific administrative contact information forms (e.g. a SIREN number for tax compliance in France).

Conflict of Interest Disclosure Statement: I don't have any financial/employment interest in Gandi; I just host a couple domains and a Xen instance there.

Re:1and1.com

[master_kaos]

gOh wow, a whole $15 difference for 10 years. Big whoop. Penny pinching at the finest.
Maybe in 6 years domain names will only be $5.99/year for renewal and then you screwed yourself!\

Dyn.com

[jonored]

I've had nothing but a good, solid experience with dyn.com, but they're certainly not the cheapest - a name is $15, DNS service to use it is $35. Dunno if there's a charge to delegate the name to a different DNS provider. They're still good at having subdomains pointing to not-so-stable IP addresses, though, and you can but are not required to set up your entries as you wish up to just a count limit (75 records per domain). Haven't tried their email forwarding from the domain stuff.

Re:Dyn.com

[eihab]

I've had nothing but a good, solid experience with dyn.com, but they're certainly not the cheapest

Seconded. Dyn is amazing and has been nothing but stable for me over the years.

They do not charge you extra if you host your own DNS or point it to another provider. They just charge the $15 per domain and (I believe) $10 for secret registration if you opt for that.

For hosting I've been using Digital Ocean.

You have to know your way around a Linux machine (they offer FreeBSD too) to configure the firewall and enable swap, selinux, etc. The default Ubuntu and CentOS VMs leave something to be desired in terms of security safe guards, but nothing that can't be remedied in an hour.

That said, their value proposition is great. $10 a month gets you 1GB ram, 1 CPU core, 40GB of SSD HDD (insane speed) and 2TB of outgoing bandwidth (traffic IN doesn't count).

name.com

[Atrox666]

I haven't really tested performance but I've had a much better experience than GoDaddy.

easydns.com

[kamakazi]

Why?

They are reasonably priced. Definitely not the cheapest, but reasonable.

They are outside the US (Canada).

They actively resist pressure from people like the City of London police, unlike some other fairly well known registrars.

The guy that founded it, Mark Jeftovic, blogs frequently and aggressively about what he considers good service, and I find myself most of the time agreeing with him.

They do do web hosting as well, haven't used it myself.

Their real claim to fame is their DNS service, which I have used for several years, primarily because it is "real" DNS, as in I control all the records in the zone file, and supports dynamic DNS well.

There are not the cheapest, but they are a compan that cares, and it has shown in my dealings with them.

Recommendation against

[mu51c10rd]

I can only say anyone but GoDaddy.

dyndns.org

[rwa2]

I've been using dyndns.org since 1999, and upgraded to the paid service about 10 years ago. $30/year gets you, like, 30 custom subdomains, and some other features that I don't use much but seem useful.

Yeah, you have a bit less flexibility with the domains you can choose, but they have a great selection that you can get creative with. And the flexibility of being able to turn on a dime and switch hosts and IPs immediately is great... you don't have to wait hours or even days for DNS changes to propagate. Lots of clients for windows, linux, and even random wifi routers make it easy to update records to point to where ever in the world you boot up, ao you can serve stuff from home or anywhere in public clouds or even from your smartphone.

Certainly worth fussing around with in addition or even instead of a "real" DNS registrar. I think they still have a free tier, and are always useful for doing quick demos for hack days and such.

Re:dyndns.org

[ancientt]

My experience is similar. I have appreciated how easy it is to work with. I point one domain at my home server, a sub-domain of that at Google AppEngine and my other domain at Google Sites.

Your needs will determine who the best host is for you. Here's what works for me:

• Self hosting: this allows me to build complex things and access very large amounts of data at no per-month cost, but bandwidth cannot go too high without causing a problem
• Google Sites http://www.google.com/sites/ov... : Free hosting for basic content
• Google App Engine https://support.google.com/a/a... : Big stuff to small stuff, pricing is free to pretty widely variable.

Gandi.net

[freelunch]

I have been using Gandi since around 2000. A few years back I was late renewing a domain and didn't get it submitted until the day of expiration - I had hours to spare. That, combined with delays in whois expiration data updates, made me very nervous so I phoned Gandi and...... I spoke to a real person! They were friendly and helpful! They told me no problem, not to worry. There is even a grace period of a couple weeks after expiration where you can renew without penalty.

I am now a loyal customer and it would take a lot for me to change. Saving a few dollars over ten years? Not a chance.

godaddy if you know what you're doing

[a2wflc]

Their admin tools can be slow at times but have always worked. I've managed 5-10 domains at a time for over a decade - some with hosting at godaddy and some at other places. If I need to add service quick it's always been easy (e.g. a client decides they need godaddy's email blaster today or I decide they need a CMS set up for something they just decided to do this weekend).

Support has been 50/50 the few times I or my client has needed to contact them so it helps if you know what you're doing with domains, email, cms, etc.

For free ...

[CaptainDork]

... Geocities.

pi-search (was Re:Not GoDaddy.)

[belrick]

I have a tiny search program written in perl (http://tmsw.no/pi-search/) ...

This is about the most useful comment I've seen on Slashdot in a while

Re:1and1.com

[Quirkz]

I didn't use them as a registrar, so I can't comment on that side, but as a host they were a little spotty, and I had instances of hair-pullingly-bad customer service. Often you don't interact much with the registrar anyway, so it may not matter much as long as they don't break something.

Not Gandi.net

[JamieKitson]

I see quite a few people here recommend Gandi. I have to say I've had a really bad experience with them.

My biggest gripe is with their architecture, they have a very inflexible system which dictates that one user account is one entity and that entity's details are the same for each contact of each domain that is applicable. This means that if you want to change some detail for a single contact/domain, you have to create a new user account and transfer the domain to the new account. This transfer process is the normal domain transfer process and can be expensive and bureaucratic, even if you're not actually transferring the domain between people/entities. This is not something that they warn you about beforehand. I made the mistake of not checking that all my details on my domains were exactly the same before transferring them and ended up with five different user accounts!

On the plus side they offer two step authentication (although this didn't work out so well for Fastmail) and are very cheap, especially when you take anonymisation into account.

I agree

[vinn]

I'm just chiming in to agree. NetSol sucks beyond belief and is a small nightmare to work with, to top it off, you get to pay extortion level rates for poor service. I suspect their business model at this point is to basically rape and pillage fees from customers they still have from fifteen years ago when they were the only game in town.

Paying separately for the name server

[tepples]

There is absolutely no reason you have to use your registar's name servers.

Unless you want to avoid paying twice. If you don't use the name server that typically comes with the registration at no additional charge, you have to pay for both the registration and the name server.

Re:Paying separately for the name server

[CanadianMacFan]

I have my domain hosted at freedns.afraid.org and haven't had any issues with them at all.

Unlike domains, TLS certificates do not auto-renew

[tepples]

Or if it's a commercial domain, just buy a really long registration.

Agreed, and some search engines reportedly use expiry date to rank legit sites above spamdexing sites.

I've had a few clients who were renewing their domains annually and had expired one or come close to it a few times because they were doing it annually, but when I pointed out that it would only be a bit over $100 to not have to think about it for years they jumped on the idea.

Even though domains can be set to auto-renew, they would still have to think about it every once in a while because TLS certificates do not auto-renew.

Re:joker.com has never steered me wrong.

[grahamsz]

I too have been using Joker for probably a decade and have had nothing but good experiences. The whole thing is nicely automated, their messages all come gpg signed and their customer service is pretty good and they helped me out recently by making exceptions to their automated rules.

Re:DirectNIC.com

[lannocc]

Came here to second DirectNIC! Stable pricing and services... I'm a happy customer since 2001!

Geek-Domains.com!

[kindbud]

Of course! http://www.geek-domains.com/

Found this registrar recently, and so far very happy. Prices in line with the budget registrars. Lots of TLD available. Clean, modern DNS control panel: you can import a zone file and do other "advanced" things a geek would think to do, but it's also easy for novices. DNSSEC and SSL certs available, as well as web hosting, web mail, email services. +1, Like, Star, Favorite, etc.

Re:Geek-Domains.com!

[psyclone]

Looks nice, but not secure. They don't offer HTTPS for their website. When you login to your account, it's "re-branded" https://idp.secureserver.net/. Seems like they're too cheap to buy their own cert and host their own gateway to the domain management console.

Namecheap

[mr_mischief]

I've had no problems with these companies after years of use: SRSPlus (as a reseller) domain.com Namecheap Dotster The least expensive, best UI, most perks, and best opposition to things like SOPA has been IME the Namecheap option. They usually are the cheapest and are always among the cheapest of the options, too. I also don't remember Namecheap ever reserving a domain for registration only through them after I did a whois lookup through their web interface. Network Solutions (NSI) did that until ICANN told them to stop. SRSPlus is part of NSI so that's a strike against them. So IME I can recommend a few, but mostly Namecheap.

Re:1and1.com

[rahvin112]

You don't get rich wasting pennies. If there is a legitimate difference between the services that makes one better than the other then that can be factored in, but wasting money for the sake of wasting money is foolish.

Re:1and1.com

[andydouble07]

Minus $14.00 for the first year, so it ends up being less for the first 9 years,and not much different afterwards. Big deal.

$10.99 is just the starter price

[caseih]

I think you'll find you only get the $10.99 price the first time. after that it's typically more like $25 or more a year for a .com registration. At least it is on godaddy.

I would like to switch off of godaddy, but I only ever remember to think about it when it's time to renew, and from what I've been told, during this renewal time your name is locked and you can't migrate away. Not sure if this is just a godaddy cash grab, or if that's the way ICANN works in general. I use godaddy only for the name registration; I do all my own DNS and hosting.

Re:1and1.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Domain Names!! $12 a year and free contact security.

Bluehost.com

[cyberchondriac]

I had been registered via godaddy, and hosted by bluehost.com until last year, when I transferred my domain registration to bluehost as well. It just seemed logical to put it all together. No horror stories, and their pricing seems quite normal and competitive. Godaddy gave me some crap when I tried to transfer, but I finally managed to workaround their tricks and drop them.
As far as a host goes, I guess bluehost is alright; I really can't make an honest comparison of performance since they're all I've used, but overall I'm happy with them, decent bandwidth, pricing, and very little downtime. Decent support as well.
This all said, it must be a slow news day; domain registration is not that tricky of a procedure, even for non-IT nerds, and there are lots of good registrars to choose from.. except maybe godaddy and networksolutions.

GoDaddy Changes

[ColbyGoDaddy]

codepigeon - Full disclosure, I work for GoDaddy. We have made so many changes this past 2 years it is crazy. We have new hosting offerings, Cpanel, Managed WordPress, etc. All of which have been getting greatly improved reviews online. Our new CEO, Blake Irving, and executive staff are changing our ads, and are committed to web professionals, kick ass products, and women in tech. In fact Blake did an Reddit AMA as well and addressed many concerns that have plagued us and users in the past: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/c... Kindly,

Re:Better than most...

[houstonbofh]

Actually, there are different levels of service; Cheap and full service. The cheap ones are all very similar. The full service ones can offer things the cheap ones do not. I use SafeNames. They are soo full service that I can call my rep and talk names, pick one, and register it on the phone while driving, and pay in the next 30 days. My rep even helped me pick a name that I have received several compliments on... And their name servers allow you to edit the file directly, wihout web form games. They will also do a local contact for internation names that need it. (For bigger dollars) Worth the extra cost to me. http://www.safenames.net/

_not_ eNom

[marvinglenn]

Whomever you choose, I recommend against choosing eNom. I had a spam problem so bad on my personal email that I went to the ends of writing my own incoming server to handle the issue. I've found that blocking email from domains registered at eNom to be extremely effective in curbing my spam problem with only a very small number of domains that I needed to whitelist. Looking though my reject logs, eNom seems to be making a mint with spammers that register domains, spam immediately with them, and then abandom them.

Domaininfo.com

[pjwhite]

I have been using these guys since 1999 and have had no problems. Maybe they are more expensive than the cheap services, but I have no complaints.

Gandi.net

[Oddhack]

I've been very happy with Gandi.net for my modest needs over the last decade. No problems, reasonable responses from tech support to the occasional question, cheap, and not based in the United States, which I consider a plus. I mostly use it for email and web forwarding, though.

NearlyFreeSpeech? Are you kidding?!

[gurnec]

These guys are crazy!

• When their costs drop, they actually drop their prices... WTF?!
• They don't even have any unlimited plans, they charge for usage!! That means that my p0rn site which gets tons of hits isn't subsidized by everyone else!
• They actually charge for support! Why do I have to pay for support just cause I'm too stupid to figure anything out! I want my support to be paid for by everyone else who doesn't need support!!
• They have all sorts of burdensome requirements to file a DMCA takedown request, I don't have time for this when all I really want to do is silence my critics!!

Please, whatever you do, avoid NFS at all costs!!!!

Re:NearlyFreeSpeech? Are you kidding?!

[Reziac]

I checked out their pricing estimator
https://www.nearlyfreespeech.n...
and while they're inexpensive for most stuff, they'd cost me an arm and a leg for storage. I keep an FTP mirror that while it gets very little traffic, presently has over 40GB of files. That pulled the storage charge up to about 10x what I'm presently paying, and rather considerably offset what I'd save on my two dozen domains.

Anyway, I've been using 1&1 since 2003 and been nothing but happy with 'em. Shameless affiliate link:

http://www.1and1.com/?k_id=676...

EasyDNS

[SEGV]

How are we liking EasyDNS these days? I've used them for years, but I have my main domain coming up for renewal later this year. It's a .com, I'm in Canada, if that matters.

NOT from your host,DNS provider,email provider...

[jtara]

Do NOT register a domain with:

• - a web hosting company
• - a DNS provider
• - an email service provider

Register a domain with a domain registration company (duh!)

You should host your DNS elsewhere. Use a DNS-hosting company.

Host your website(s) elsewhere. Use a web-hosting company.

Host your email elsewhere. Use an email service provider.

This gives you maximum flexibility, and means that no one company can "hold you hostage".

It's ridiculous the mention names. People just vote for their favorite consumer-ish registration or hosting company. If you care about names, though - the ones that are mentioned are generally the ones to avoid...

advice on foreign services requested

[swell]

I'm in the US and I'm wondering if there is any advantage to using outside internet services. With our government intruding on every part of our lives, could this be a protective measure? Some countries seem determined to protect privacy within their jurisdictions.

Re:1and1.com

[mysidia]

1and1 is still more expensive, even for an 8 year registration. You will have to register the domain for 4 years or less, before the $14 off for the first year is favorable for paying the $4 extra per year over other registrars
$15 * 8 - 15 + 1 = $106 (1and1)

$10.50 * 8 = $84

Re:1and1.com

[mysidia]

gOh wow, a whole $15 difference for 10 years. Big whoop.

No. It's a $4 difference per year, with a -$10 difference for the first year.
Over 10 years it's a $40 difference, less the original discount. Imagine if you 5 domains, then it's a 40 * 5 = $200 difference over 10 years.

Beyond 10 years: we cannot assume the different remains the same. But you can see pretty clearly the 1st year discounted is designed to bait customers into their service, and their normal pricing is not highly competitive.

Maybe in 6 years domain names will only be $5.99/year for renewal and then you screwed yourself!\

This is not happening for .com or .net domains, in fact... VeriSign has made it somewhat apparent through their pattern of behavior that they are raising registry prices the maximum amount that their contract allows them to do without justification, which is about a 10% annual price increase every 2 out of 3 years.

Due to the ICANN settlement over Site Finder fiasco; they are essentially guaranteed that their contract as registry operator will renew perpetually.

The .Com and the .Net TLDs are the least expensive, and other TLDs are basically considered "premium", so they take their pricing cues from what .com and .net pricing are.

hover

[kv9]

http://hover.com/ is pretty cool.

Re:1and1.com

[mysidia]

I'm not making any point on whether or not you should or shouldn't use 1and1 for DNS registration in general. I'm just affirming that the above post's promo "$0.99 for the first year" is not a great reason to register with 1and1. Looks like a promotional trap, where they bet you'll not take the time and effort to chase the next promo Similar to a line of credit with 0% interest on purchases for 12 months and then 30% normal.

Assuming no grace periods. Is that CC a better deal than a 8% credit card? Sure, as long as you end the relationship when the promo runs out.

Domain registrars are basically selling a commodity, and for the most part the experience is comparable across registrars, but there are some that are really great (Especially for large numbers of domains), and there are some that really suck.

If you avoid the lower end of the spectrum, then there's really not much worth paying for more than market value on a commodity domain. At the high-end registry lock features may be worth it, but the average consumer doesn't want to pay an extra $200 a year per domain for a registry level lock and special security features.

Re:1and1.com

[cwsumner]

... WTF does that even have to do with whether it is expensive or not? So by your logic, if I tried to sell you a single can of coca-cola for $14.99, you'd say that's not expensive since you can make more than that by picking up two aluminum soda cans each day for a year?

It would all depend on how bad you wanted that coca-cola, at that time and that place! 8-)

I paid $5.00 for a coca-cola, once, and it was well worth it...

My Late Recommendation...

[KGIII]

I just noticed this question now. I have used NameCheap.com since they were pretty much a brand new ICANN listed registrar. IIRC they were actually just a domain name reseller (through Tucows or Twocows - can't remember how to spell it) way back when and then they moved up the ladder and became actual registrars. That would be when I started using them a great deal.