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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?
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?
So it was you, all along?
I've been pretty happy with NameCheap, the CEO recently did a AMA on reddit, you should check it out.
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
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.
Besides that, you're probably fine with any of them. My GoDaddy experience can best be summed up as:
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.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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 (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.
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.
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.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
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.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Avoid them like the plague.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
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.
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.
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.
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.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
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
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
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.
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.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
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.
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.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
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.
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.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
$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.
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
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.
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,
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/
These guys are crazy!
Please, whatever you do, avoid NFS at all costs!!!!