Least terrible domain registrars
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I wouldn't buy domains from Cloudflare from a risk mitigation perspective. At work I direct six figures of budget their way annually, but as a free-tier customer in my personal life I don't trust them not to fuck up at some point and lock my account. If I register my domain elsewhere I can bring myself back online by moving the nameservers. If it's registered at Cloudflare I'm fucked.
I have one of my domains on Cloudflare and was thinking of moving the rest of them there. What makes it harder to move name servers away from Cloudflare than other places?
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I've been using Namecheap for almost a year now with no complaints
I’ve been with namecheap for years too. No complaints
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I’ve been happy with Hover for several years. They don’t bug me and they’re owned by Tucows so they’ve got decades-old staying power.
I can't believe they're still around
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I was with Namecheap for years, and they're totally fine. I am now with Cloudflare because they're a bit cheaper and their API is well supported in various tools, and they also seem fine.
I use porkbun and you get cloudflare through them, not sure to what extent, porkbuns just cheaper, I like their ui, straightforward, everything you need on one screen.
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I have a server with OVH. I hadn't realised they're a registrar also.
Yeah, OVH do website hosting as well
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I have one of my domains on Cloudflare and was thinking of moving the rest of them there. What makes it harder to move name servers away from Cloudflare than other places?
Your registrar (the place you buy your domains) are where you update your nameservers. If Cloudflare have locked you out then you won't be able to change them. Other standard registrars will have far less cause, legitimate or not, to lock or disable your account, since they don't host/proxy your content.
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I want to get some domains for selfhosted stuff, but I'd like to use a registrar that I won't regret doing business with later, both in terms of ethics and potential customer service stuff. Who do y'all like most?
I've been with 1984.is for a couple of years now. I think my domains cost around 12 Euros a year each. Their web GUI works fine and I've never needed to contact their customer service, so I cannot comment on that.
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I was with Namecheap for years, and they're totally fine. I am now with Cloudflare because they're a bit cheaper and their API is well supported in various tools, and they also seem fine.
Exactly this. Also it annoys me that Namecheap tries to automatically "top up funds" over a month before renewals are due. I think they've always done it but it wound me up enough this year to move to Cloudflare.
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Another +1 for name cheap, been using em for a decade now. Their deals are stellar and renewal prices are on par with any other competitors usually
Transferred all my domains from nanecheap to CloudFlare and I'm saving like 1/3 of price on renewals.
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I want to get some domains for selfhosted stuff, but I'd like to use a registrar that I won't regret doing business with later, both in terms of ethics and potential customer service stuff. Who do y'all like most?
I switched to Porkbun from Namecheap recently because Porkbun is somewhat local.
Porkbun is decent but cheaper if you have a dozen domains too
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I want to get some domains for selfhosted stuff, but I'd like to use a registrar that I won't regret doing business with later, both in terms of ethics and potential customer service stuff. Who do y'all like most?
I use namesilo for everything but my .au domains.
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Your registrar (the place you buy your domains) are where you update your nameservers. If Cloudflare have locked you out then you won't be able to change them. Other standard registrars will have far less cause, legitimate or not, to lock or disable your account, since they don't host/proxy your content.
I'm not sure what the consequences are for ignoring it, but it would violate the ICANN RAA to lock a person out of being able to transfer their domain except for legal reasons like evidence of fraud or a court order. Sure, they can terminate your account on their services but they can't prevent you from transferral without violating their agreement with ICANN.
It would be a weird scenario that you're describing that would be unusual and exceedingly rare. You would need to be directly connected to something highly illegal for that to happen, not just a normal user.
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I find their website so awful and painful to use. Everything is difficult to find and just takes longer to accomplish than nearly anywhere else. I bought one domain from them once and will never use them again.
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I'm not sure what the consequences are for ignoring it, but it would violate the ICANN RAA to lock a person out of being able to transfer their domain except for legal reasons like evidence of fraud or a court order. Sure, they can terminate your account on their services but they can't prevent you from transferral without violating their agreement with ICANN.
It would be a weird scenario that you're describing that would be unusual and exceedingly rare. You would need to be directly connected to something highly illegal for that to happen, not just a normal user.
That's why I said I don't trust them to not fuck up, not that it's something that should ordinarily be expected. Additionally, especially considering how the rule of law in their jurisdiction is going recently I wouldn't assume it will always be this way.
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I have one of my domains on Cloudflare and was thinking of moving the rest of them there. What makes it harder to move name servers away from Cloudflare than other places?
You'll be fine to move them to Cloudflare.
What the other user is describing would be an extremely rare scenario, and you should be able to change registrars in that case anyway.
There's really not much of any practical benefits of that kind of excessive "risk mitigation".
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Top answers from the last 39580202 times this was asked:
- Namecheap
- Porkbun
- Gandi
- Cloudflare
Gandi massively increased their prices 2 years ago.
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I want to get some domains for selfhosted stuff, but I'd like to use a registrar that I won't regret doing business with later, both in terms of ethics and potential customer service stuff. Who do y'all like most?
I migrated from IONOS and Namecheap to INWX because it does support both domains I use.
And their prices were reasonable.Migration was quick and neat. Had to issues doing it.
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I've domains from both DomainMonger and NameCheap. If it were trivial, I'd probably move my domains to NameCheap. The web UX is a little better; aside from that, I've never had issues with either, not heard anything particularly bad about either.
But, yeah: +1 on the NameCheap suggestion.
Does UX really matter?
I'd rather decouple DNS and domain.
Feels like (no proof, just gut feeling) services like Cloudflare have better security and integration than the respective registrars. -
Gandi massively increased their prices 2 years ago.
For email hosting only. But yes, they are not as trustworthy as they once were
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I want to get some domains for selfhosted stuff, but I'd like to use a registrar that I won't regret doing business with later, both in terms of ethics and potential customer service stuff. Who do y'all like most?
Iwantmyname.com ticked almost all boxes last i looked. Hasnt been mentioned yet.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=iwantmyname.com&sort=byDate&type=comment
