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?
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Top answers from the last 39580202 times this was asked:
- Namecheap
- Porkbun
- Gandi
- Cloudflare
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.
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.
Counterpoint, I quite like this. I’m terrible at keeping payment details up to date, and I’ve got long renewal periods on my domains. The early renewal attempt allows me to get an email that my payment is expired or revoked (due to a stolen card number or something) and I have a month to go correct it.
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.
This is the way. Never use the NS of your registrar.
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”.
I don’t agree and it’s no extra work to do it the other way. And when one or the other goes fucky, you can recover immediately.
I get that you’re likely exaggerating by saying “it’s no extra work”, but managing another account is markedly extra work. It will also cost extra because Cloudflare does not add any markup for registration, which is why they are the cheapest registrar.
I think the convenience and reduction of cost greatly outweighs the highly unlikely situation where “something goes fucky”. If it does, then what? You can’t make DNS updates for a little while?
The most likely reason to get locked out is billing issues, or maybe you lost your login information or something like that, which is going to be the same risk regardless of who your registrar is. Otherwise you’d have to be involved in some sort of legal issue associated with your domain and that is a much deeper issue than can be solved by simply changing nameservers.
Years ago I had a registrar go tits up without warning, taking about 70-80 active domains for an MSP’s customers with it. I managed their email servers and DNS, which was with the registar, of course. It was a bloody nightmare to recover that situation. Because we couldn’t supply them a DNS change to prove our control of the DNS, hence ownership of the domain, we had to individually affadavit each domain. Took weeks.
I get you don’t think it’s important, but there’s plenty of sysadmins that do, with experience backing that up.
What registrar was that? Were they as big as Cloudflare? How exactly did they “go tits up”? Isn’t the situation you describe a completely different scope from an individual’s usecase? It’s also an anecdotal point of data without including the full context of how common that situation is. “It happened to me once, and I have heard stories” does not necessarily mean it’s common enough for everyone to prepare for every time. I’ll remain skeptical of the
Mainly, though, I’m not saying it’s a bad idea in total. I just think that for someone who is inexperienced with DNS management and self-hosting, those types of concerns are already unlikely and just keeping the environment simple and cost less has far more value than being prepared for unlikely scenarios. It could even prevent self-inflicted issues by keeping it simple, which would be far more likely than Cloudflare’s infrastructure creating a problem that they have to remediate themselves.
If anything, the true argument for risk mitigation would be to have multiple DNS servers for redundancy.
I just don’t believe that, in this type of usecase, it’s worth pressing for and that there’s more of an argument to keep it simple.
Additionally, you can leave out trying to use your credentials and a hypothetical group of people to make your argument for you. It makes it seem like you’re trying to talk down.
Your registrar (the place you buy your domains) is 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.
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.
Gandi massively increased their prices 2 years ago.
For email hosting only. But yes, they are not as trustworthy as they once were
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.
Moved to Porkbun, saving about the same. The price creep pisses me off.
I’ll throw in for namecheap. Been with them for a while with no complaints.
I like pair domains.
Porkbun has been great
Seconded. I switched from namecheap when they raised the price of my domain. I never had a problem with name cheap but porkbin is cheaper.
Agreed.
I switched to Porkbun from Namecheap recently because Porkbun is somewhat local.
Porkbun is decent but cheaper if you have a dozen domains too
I’ve always used NameCheap. Can’t speak to their ethics, but customer support has been excellent the few times I’ve needed it.
Been using Namecheap for a decade or more now. Great company, no muss, no fuss, just works. The greatest thing is that they’re boring as fuck. That’s one of the best qualities to have in a domain registrar.
Also been using namecheap for years with no complaints. Boring and dependable.
Boring and dependable.
Just like I wish politics were.
In case anyone was wondering:
- namecheap: US
- porkbun: US
- INWX: Germany
- OVH: French
- onlydomains: NZ
I personally have been with onlydomains for a decade or so. No complaints.
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.What do you mean, decouple DNS and domain? The registrar is the authoritative source for DNS - how do you bypass that?
While yes, that’s true, you can point the domain to have 3rd party DNS servers.
For example Cloudflare.
You could register VMs with them or with another registrar. Same with DNS. Do it with your choice of registrar or use whatever else you maybe actually want.
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
Pair domains supports ipv4/6 DNS, Dnsmasq, and dynamic DNS. Cheap, 2fa secured and does the job reliably.
I’ve been with Porkbun since Gandi got acquired. No complaints.
Acquired by whom?
Total Webhosting Solutions
Namecheap
This. NameCheap actually responds to abuse reports, as well. Turns out they actually think it’s bad for business to allow grifters and con artists to use their services, unlike other major registrars.
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.
I use namesilo for everything but my .au domains.
I’m using Cloudflare, because it’s quite convenient since I always end up using them as DNS server.
They’re also slightly cheaper since they don’t take any profit from their registrar side, hoping to make it back with other services.
Also use Cloudflare as new domain registrar because I use them as DNS as well. I can’t say that I’ve had any problems with them at all.
Same, I also use Cloudflare dns, tunnels, and pages. Having these all in the same place makes it easy to deploy/keep track of everything
I have had a lot good experience with Porkbun.
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
Namesilo is quite good - cheap & been using it for 5 years now (coming from namecheap)
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.
