Ask HN: Who's the Best Domain Registrar?

6 points by quinto42 ↗ HN
I'm so sick and tired of GoDaddy. There must be someone better!

8 comments

[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 34.0 ms ] thread
This comes up with some regularity.

I use 'moniker.com', I'm pretty happy with them but I only register my domains there, everything else is on my own servers, so if you go for hosted DNS and other goodies I can't tell you much.

Moniker prides itself on never having lost a domain and their prices are pretty good.

Previous experience would lead me to stay away from bulkregister/enom, godaddy and netsol.

Are you doing API-based or automated registrations? If so, check Tucows. The pricing isn't the best, but the API integration is good.
I like Dreamhost. I can stick unlimited small PHP or even Rails sites there for just $10/month, and their control panel is excellent. You can mask your domain ownership for free as well. $9.99 per domain is not the cheapest, but it's competitive, and I trust them more than any other top-25 volume web hosts.
Another datapoint: I couldn't be happier with Dreamhost's registration. Well ... I'd like it if they offered more country codes. But apart from that, they're excellent.
Ive spent alot of time in this field and can give you a perfect answer:

Serious domainer (buying + selling domains for a living): Moniker or Fabulous.com - Both are designed to handle mass updating of domains easy and for optimal parking. Monikers support is 9-5 and fabulous is invite only. Both are still fantastic.

Everyone else: Name.com :

Why name.com? Outstanding support staff, Free privacy, Low prices, Great reputation in domaining community. Outstanding security.

You are right to not use godaddy. They are pure evil, see godaddysucks.com for more proof. I recently moved all my domains off of them just to be safe.

Also, do not use a domain registrar thats tied to a host ( dreamhost or otherwise ) - While they may be a good HOST, they can not simply compare to a dedicated registrar. I do believe they are nothing more than opensrs resellers anyways so their involvement is limited and should you have a problem, prepare to jump through quite a few hoops.

do you have an invite on moniker?
fatcow is ok for me for the last 5 years I use them for my blog