Does anyone have suggestions for a good registrar for domains? I'm not interested in the squarespace hosting products and I don't think they are great at being a registrar / dns provider.
Another option I haven't seen mentioned yet is Spaceship.
I've moved four domains to them over the last few months away from Gandi, and am globally very satisfied.
It is a Namecheap spinoff to allow them to "cut the cruft" and restart fresh without having to deal with technical debt.
It has a few rough edges (the interface is not the clearest because it uses a different paradigm which takes some getting used to) and it doesn't support all the features of more established players (the biggest ones for me being the lack of an API and the absence of a raw/advanced zone editor), but they are consistently cheaper than Porkbun (for how long we'll see, but for now I've renewed my domains to their max to benefit from the current prices) and also have quick, efficient support via chat.
They have some enjoyably modern features, such as a DNS propagation map so you can follow in real time the propagation of your records' modifications to their servers across the globe.
All in all I'd say it's a great registrar for individuals and small ventures for whom price comes first, but the lack of an API will probably turn away more technical or demanding customers (which are probably already better served by the likes of Cloudflare). Of course, as others have alluded to you can also just use them as a registrar and define other nameservers.
Namecheap is ok, but unfortunately they also practice a despicable trend in domain registration, which is to hijack domains with less than five letters and classify them as premium, right on the act of registration. A concrete example: When trying to register aucky.com [for an auction site], a domain resulting from brainstorming and creation, previously non-existent, I was informed that it was a premium domain and therefore subject to other acquisition conditions. I did not accept it and had to content myself with the registration under my country's TLD, which has less punch than a pure .com. My failed domain is up for grabs in the premium market, and the issue will have to be settled in court. This is almost criminal and it has to stop.
A never mentioned but crucial issue with Cloudflare is that you are required to use their nameservers; you cannot change to use third party NS without transferring out.
> All domains using Cloudflare Registrar must use Cloudflare DNS on a full setup. This also means that you cannot change to another DNS provider while using Cloudflare Registrar.
> We built our registrar specifically for customers who want to use other Cloudflare products. This means domains registered with Cloudflare can only use our nameservers. If your domain requires non-Cloudflare nameservers then we’re not the right registrar for you.
