
Ask HN: What is the best recommended domain name registration site? - ceasos
I am a newbie regarding the domain registration to host my projects. Google search routed me to these as poular ones:
1. namecheap
2. GoDaddy
3. name dot com<p>What factors should I consider before buying any one of their packages. Frankly I don&#x27;t have enough money, Help me decide with your wise advice on this please. Thanks
======
oneJob
Noooooo!!!!

None of those. I go with Gandi.net

Check them out. They are good people and give back. Never anything but great
experiences with Gandi.

You'll get a free year of ssl certificate and 50% off hosting. But, to really
do it on the cheap, get a BeagleBoard Black and a free micro instance with AWS
to route traffic to the BBB, which you just run at home. One time cost of
35$ish plus domain registration costs.

Also worth noting, going with a company like Gandi over GoDaddy has many non-
immediate and intangible bennifits. A simple Google search on customer
problems and company practices of GoDaddy should provide lots of material. In
the long run, you don't want to have to be dealing with headaches surrounding
domain registration. At all. That should be fire-and-forget. Pay the extra $5
or $10, you'll save yourself plenty of frustration and extra admin time going
with the right registrar.

~~~
dangrossman
I would never register a domain name with Gandi. They essentially reserve the
right to terminate your service if anything on your site is morally upsetting
to them. Given most registrars have no policies about what you host on your
domain except that they'll comply with court orders, why would you give the
right to police the content of your site to Gandi?

Given almost every site has some kind of UCG -- forums, comments, reviews --
it's impossible to guarantee compliance with Gandi's service agreement. Hacker
News could not be hosted on their service given the content of some of the
discussions here.

\-------------------------------------------

> You acknowledge and accept that, in accordance with Our Ethics the use of
> any of Gandi services associated to Your Gandi Account:

> * it is expressly forbidden for use in any way that engages or participates
> in practices that are deviant, abusive, illegal, or prejudicial; and

> * must be appropriate to the age and sensibility of each of the persons that
> any of the Content is destined for, directly or indirectly, published or
> made available to via the technical solutions used

> ...

> You acknowledge that the following elements are considered as constituting
> material breaches of Your contractual obligations:

> * if We are made aware of, or discover that You provide, or are engaged in,
> in any way, directly or indirectly, through Our services:

> * any provocation or encouragement to commit crimes or offenses, and
> particularly crimes against humanity or encouragement of racial hatred;

> * activity or Content of racist, xenophobic, or negative character;

> * activity or Content of pedophile character, or that is liable to
> constitute or be associated with, either directly or indirectly to it;

> * child pornography, or the trivialization of such acts or encouragement of
> violence, suicide, or the use, production, or distribution of illegal
> substances, or acts of terrorism;

~~~
soulshake
Hi, AJ from Gandi here. To my knowledge, we don't shut down anything unless we
are required to by law or there's spamming involved.

~~~
dangrossman
Would you buy a car from a dealer that required you to sign a contract stating
they could take your car back if you carry a passenger who says something
racist? Would you do so even if they promise they don't enforce that clause,
when there's ten other dealers in your town that don't make you sign anything
like that?

~~~
soulshake
[Speaking for myself, not Gandi, and IANAL] To answer your question, I'd
probably read the contracts of the other dealers, find their clause saying
they reserve the right to take the car back for whatever reason they damn well
please, sigh in helpless frustration at the state of contract law, and make my
decision based on all available factors, including the actual experience of
other people who purchased cars from that dealer.

------
archimedespi
Just _don 't_ use GoDaddy. Just NO. They've been _way_ overcharging people
forever, and their services suck. The two registrars I'd recommend are
Namecheap and Google Domains.

Yes, Namecheap's site is slow. But their support has been great and they're
cheap. (also they have really cheap $1/year whois privacy)

Google Domains is nice too, almost everything is $12/year.

------
talawahdotnet
I used namecheap for a while, they are pretty decent. I switched to
[https://www.namesilo.com](https://www.namesilo.com) about a year ago because
namesilo doesn't charge you extra for domain privacy.

Namesilo keeps pricing very low, simple and straightforward ($8.99/yr for
.com). I haven't had any problems with them so far.

Stay far away from GoDaddy, they try and lure you in with discounted pricing
then jack up the price on certain features later on. They are constantly
trying to up sell you something else and they make transferring your domain
away unnecessarily complex. At least that was the case when I last used them.

------
nstart
Very few recommendations for hover.com. Strange. Hover for me has been
excellent for domain names. From your question, its unclear if you are looking
for a company that does both hosting and domain name registration. If you are
ok with a company that does just domain name registration, my combo is
hover.com (domain name), and digitalocean.com (project hosting).

(Very much aware of potential DNS issues of this. Haven't invested time to
figure this out yet)

------
zokier
Interesting that so many recommend Gandi, I wonder if there is some timezone-
bias in play.

Anyways, you probably should consider actually reading the ToS for the
companies you are planning to do business with. I think at least Gandi has
fairly vague terms on which they can terminate the service:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3388928](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3388928)

~~~
matthewmacleod
I'm pretty sure almost every service in existence reserves the right to
terminate your service for "fairly vague reasons".

~~~
dangrossman
Yet only Gandi _explicitly_ reserves the right to terminate your service for
such odd things as discussing hacking, hosting a racist blog comment, or
hosting a Keurig coffee maker review that explains how to bypass the K-Cup
DRM. Generally, other registrars do not police the content of your domains
except to comply with court orders. Gandi's service agreement is very much
_not_ boilerplate.

~~~
soulshake
AFAIK it's a translation of the French contract. But we've seen this comment
enough times that our legal team is now reviewing it.

------
sinatra
If you trust Google, you can consider
[https://domains.google.com/registrar](https://domains.google.com/registrar)
too. It's fairly straight-forward, no nickel and dime, you get private
registration for free, and I am quite confident that it'll be hard for someone
to use social engineering to steal my domain from there.

~~~
kartman
DO NOT use google as a registrar. They suck.

I just finished transferring my domains out of google to namecheap.

We are a legitimate, normal business. They unilaterally banned our site and
took it down - with no access to transfer it out. Their technical team does
not give a response in a timely manner.

Our small startup's site was down for 8 days!! If you would like to avoid our
experience - never use Google registrar.

Now, I am reconsidering use of Google Apps or anything else from them for
businesses.

------
caseyf7
You may also register domains with Amazon AWS. They are reselling Gandi, but
it's $12/year and it's nice to have them all centralized under the AWS console
if you use AWS.

------
curiousfab
My domains are at Gandi and Hetzner. I do my own DNS with three VPSs in three
physical locations on two continents.

Gandi and Hetzner both offer 2FA to secure your domains, this is something I
find very important, especially with one of my domains having gained quite a
value to make it interesting enough a target for a possible theft, and another
being so dear to me after more than a decade of use, that I couldn't do
without it any more :)

------
jacques_chester
I've tried a few over the years and finally alighted on Gandi.

Not always the cheapest, but they're dependable, they're in the EU and they
have a very, very broad selection. The latter is important because I have a
fairly eclectic mix of domain names and I'm happy to pay a premium so I don't
have to deal with 3 different registrars.

------
internals
I love iwantmyname.com. Great company, great site, great support team, and has
almost every TLD out there new or old.

~~~
ilmiont
Me too!

------
petercooper
As a company, we own a lot of domains, so we like to spread the load. We use
lots of registrars. Of the major ones, I'd say Namecheap and Gandi are the
best. We also use DNSimple who are good but have since moved to "I Want My
Name" for the newest ones since they don't require you to upgrade your account
the more domains you buy (they price their services into the domain cost
instead, which works better for us).

All that said, I'd love to have a registrar that just sent us an annual bill
for all of our domains (even if it's in advance) rather than billing us
separately for every one. It's an accounting headache with all the expenses. I
believe GoDaddy does that, but.. no thanks :)

~~~
soulshake
Hello from Gandi! Thanks for the recommendation. You should contact our
corporate services team, as they might be able to make this happen for you :)
gandi.net/corporate

------
emilssolmanis
GoDaddy has had _a lot_ of social engineering scandals, I wouldn't ever do any
business with them.

Been with namecheap for quite a while, had no issues.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
I'm with Namecheap. Basic service is good, but the site is often _really_
slow.

I had a renewal time-out in the middle of a card verification last month - and
that's really not something you want.

------
ilmiont
I had this question a few months ago and eventually settled on iwantmyname.
I'm pleased I did. Simply fantastic service in my experience. Friendly
customer service staff who'll just have a light-hearted chat on Twitter and a
really, genuinely simple and useful control panel. Pricing OK, I'm paying
£9.90/year for a .net, can't remember about others. I highly recommend them.

------
speg
Former user of both godaddy and namecheap but I've been using hover.com for a
while now with no complaints.

------
altharaz
I definitely recommend Gandi.net.

They have a very easy interface to manage your domains and their zones. As a
result, if you develop your business and need more domains, you'll save a lot
of time.

Plus, they have a good customer service, they offer SSL certificate for 1st
year, and free emails addresses.

------
davismwfl
Almost all mine are registered with either enom or sitelutions.com.
sitelutions lets you choose a charity where they donate to and your portion
goes to the charity you choose (that they recognize). I have never had a big
issue with either, although Sitelutions support has been a little faster in
getting back to me when I have a question or issue but I have been moving more
to enom because we integrated an app we have with their reseller api.

------
pavlov
For some domains like .io, it's possible and convenient to buy domains from
the TLD registrar directly [1]. No need to involve a reseller in the middle.

Otherwise I like EuroDNS [2]. They have decent service and a pretty good web
UI overall, compared to some of the other companies.

[1] [https://www.nic.io](https://www.nic.io)

[2] [https://www.eurodns.com](https://www.eurodns.com)

~~~
jordanpg
What are the other "domain[s] like .io"?

~~~
pavlov
Many of the odd national ones like .to, .as, .ac, .sh ...

These are country codes where the state that controls the land doesn't have an
interest in managing the domain, so it's been sold to a 3rd party company.

------
jkkrrk
If you're interested, I'll host your domain for free. I have lots of bandwidth
on my VPS, with nothing to use it for.

~~~
ekimekim
There's a distinction here between DNS hosting (telling people what address
"foo.com" should point to) and domain registration (making it known that your
server "owns" that domain and is where people should look for information
about it). The former is just running a DNS server, anyone can do it. But the
latter involves being an official "registrar" and paying alot of money to add
names to the root nameservers' lists.

~~~
jkkrrk
True. I meant I am willing to host the site itself with free bandwidth, if
interested.

------
moepstar
Got all of my domains at [https://www.inwx.de/en](https://www.inwx.de/en) and
couldn't be happier.

Usually, they're even on the cheaper side of the spectrum too and for the one
support case i've had with them they've been good and fast to reply.

Also support 2FA via Google Authenticator.

~~~
junto
Nice to see a German company here.

Side note: What is it about German company websites and extremely small fonts
and "busy designs".

------
robertlf
I've been with name.com for probably five years now and I've been pretty happy
with them. If I've ever had a question, I can call them and get right through
and have my question answered. They haven't given me a reason to look anywhere
else.

------
ndabas
Google Domains (if you're in the US) or AWS Route 53. They cost about the same
($12/year for most domains, including private registration) but AWS charges
extra (about $6/year) if you host your DNS with Route 53 as well.

~~~
kartman
I posted till a bit further down:

DO NOT use google as a registrar. They suck.

I just finished transferring my domains out of google to namecheap.

We are a legitimate, normal business. They unilaterally banned our site and
took it down - with no access to transfer it out. Their technical team does
not give a response in a timely manner.

Our small startup's site was down for 8 days!! If you would like to avoid our
experience - never use Google registrar.

Now, I am reconsidering use of Google Apps or anything else from them for
businesses.

------
blakesterz
I was with GoDaddy & NetSol for years. I found NetSol was particularly
terrible. Been with NameCheap for a few years now and haven't had any trouble.
Not a great interface, but the price is right and support has been fine.

------
vbezhenar
I used mydomain.com and namecheap.com. Both worked well. Namecheap has fancy
looking front page and terrible looking control panel, but nothing really bad
about it, it's usable.

------
adrianmacneil
iwantmyname.com is great. I've used them for several companies - clean, simple
UI, good prices, many TLDs, auto renewal, and helpful support team.

------
twovi
hover.com is probably the best that I have used.

------
saryant
I use Namecheap, which offers 2FA. I'm sure others do as well at this point
but that's a requirement for me.

------
guide42
I like joker.com

~~~
coreymaass
Another vote for joker.com. I've never seen them advertise, and I rarely hear
them mentioned. But it's no thrills, no ads, no upsells, just simple domain
ownership and DNS management. I've used them for at least 10 years.

------
coreyp_1
None of them. They are all too expensive. If they give you a discount on
creating the name, then they charge you through the nose to renew it.

My current strategy is to ping pong my domain names between GoDaddy and
NameCheap, using coupon codes as much as possible. I don't particularly care
for either company, and I think that both are _still_ too expensive, but I
don't have an alternative at the moment that I am aware of.

------
mdotk
Uniregistry. Domainers prefer it from what I can gather, and they should know.

------
nomad101
namesilo.com -NameSilo is good too. I have been using them for a while. They
don't charge you exorbitant renewal rates like some others do. Fuss free
registar.

------
toothbrush
NearlyFreeSpeech.net?

~~~
bsilvereagle
I'm assuming the downvotes are for the brevity of your answer.

I've been using NFS for years on low traffic sites and have not had any
issues. For the unfamiliar, it's pay as you go for bandwidth and storage, with
discounts as you start using more of each.

The interface is ancient, and they pass CC costs on to you, but for the price,
I've yet to find something better.

------
ceasos
Thank you all for your words of wisdom. Appreciated !!

------
saganus
bluehost has worked for me quite well although it's not really the cheapest
option.

~~~
imaginenore
Fuck bluehost.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/3jdwzc/bluehos...](https://www.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/3jdwzc/bluehost_just_suspended_my_account_for_seeming_to/)

~~~
saganus
I guess it would be nice if someone could suggest a registrar that has
absolutely zero complains.

Like I said, it has worked for me. I didn't say they were perfect.

Please show me what domain registrar do you use that you would recommend, and
then let's see if there aren't any horror stories whatsoever.

~~~
thaumaturgy
You have a point, every time there's a recommendations thread someone comes
along to crap on the most popular recommendation (I'm guilty of that too).

I've had to work with a pretty large number of different registrars and
hosting companies over the years -- part and parcel of being a troubleshooter
-- and I'd place Bluehost squarely in the middle of the pack. They've never
done anything infuriating, which puts them way ahead of a lot of other
companies, but there's also not really anything about them that sets them
apart from the rest of their competition, other than maybe their size.

------
chrisked
using domaindiscount24.com. Fair prices, great interface, amazing service.

------
thaumaturgy
> _What factors should I consider before buying any one of their packages._

Since nobody answered this part:

First, I don't recommend having your web hosting and your domain registration
with the same company. It's convenient, and most people will never have a
problem with it. But, when someone does have a problem with it, having both
hosting and domain registration with the same company can make things harder.
If your account is suspended for some reason, you lose access to _everything_
; if your hosting is with a different company and you lose access to the
domain name, you can get another domain name up and running with minimal
effort and point it to your hosting company. If you have a problem with the
hosting, you can keep your domain and set up new hosting. Either way, you have
half as much trouble as you'd have if you were using a package deal.

Second, take a very close look at their terms of service. Anybody can have a
bad experience with an otherwise good company; terms of service tells you what
kind of company you're likely to be dealing with. People have pointed out
elsewhere in the thread significant issues with Gandi's terms of service, for
example. Another one is NearlyFreeSpeech.net: if you ever have a problem with
your NearlyFreeSpeech.net service and you try to get a freelancer like me to
help you out with it, that freelancer will find it nearly impossible to work
with NFS. You _really_ don't want to hitch your wagon to a business that will
make it unnecessarily difficult to work with their support when something has
gone wrong.

Third, speaking of support, take a very very close look at what kind of
support they offer. Gandi doesn't offer phone support; if you have an urgent
problem, you have to rely on email along with all of its crappy other issues
and their really slow turnaround time. Look for someone that offers phone
support, and before ordering service, go ahead and give the phone support a
call and see how difficult it is to reach a live person, what the wait times
are like, and how easy it is to understand the tech support person. When you
do reach someone, just tell them you waned to see what their support was like
before ordering service, they'll understand. (It'll be an easy trouble ticket
for them to close.)

Do NOT go with the cheapest possible domain registrar. It's just not worth it.
The most expensive registrars are like 15 bucks a year for most common TLDs.
Going with the cheapest possible one might get you down around $3 a year, so
you're saving a dollar a month to buy yourself a headache in the future. There
are a couple of domain registrars to avoid: Network Solutions (because they
make transfers extraordinarily difficult and because their web interface is
confusing as hell) and Gandi (nonexistent/terrible support and stupid ToS).

Be careful about going with cheap hosting services. Most of them will put you
on a shared plan that will guarantee that your site will go down if it ever
gets a little bit of traffic. Most of them have really stupid server
configurations that can make managing multiple sites really confusing. I've
seen some horrifying security policies and responses from several companies
(HostGator immediately comes to mind). NearlyFreeSpeech.net is the cheapest
possible web hosting, but they don't offer mail hosting and if you ever need
support there's a good chance you're out of luck. They specifically do NOT
want to have newbies for customers.

GoDaddy has been a big bad problem often in the past, so what I'm about to say
makes me a little sick to my stomach, but: they're really not so bad anymore.
I've had some excellent experiences with their support over the last year, and
they're one of the few companies that offers phone support for everything.
Their support people -- most of them, not all of them -- know how to use a
commandline and can poke around in server configurations and can talk to you
at a level you'll understand. I don't hate having to deal with GoDaddy
anymore. That said, do NOT use their mail hosting, they have significant
problems with it and nobody there seems to know how to fix it. And nobody's
wrong for telling you to stay away from GoDaddy, they've had a well-deserved
awful reputation for a long time.

Lastly: if you really don't have much money, and you're just getting started,
and you don't need anything very fancy (or controversial, I don't make enough
money to put up with the headache of supporting a hate site), contact me at my
email address in my profile. I will register a domain for you for free (and
make sure you have full access and control of it) and also host it for free,
mail service included. I admin my own servers. I don't offer the very fastest
support response in the world, but you'll have a phone number you can call.
I've done this for a couple of other people on HN and no complaints so far (as
far as I know).

------
whistlerbrk
namecheap has been great for me. Don't use GoDaddy they are scum.

------
pcunite
dyndns (dyn.com)

------
imaginenore
internetbs.net

The cheapest by far. They don't screw you over on the renewal like most of the
registrars.

