Some registrars are only good for initial registration, as renewal rates are out of line. Namecheap also has reasonable WhoIsGuard. Basically they run a business based on the value they provide.
I've also been quite happy with them. I moved from Godaddy to Namecheap a long while back, but never enjoyed the management interface there. The name.com interface seems to work reasonably well and they offer me discounts on a monthly basis for some of my TLDs.
GoDaddy. Not because I agree with their policies, or their constant up-sells, or their spam. But because they are cheap, in my experience have great telephone support, and are the registrar most likely to have directions for setting up custom DNS settings with other sites (simply as a result of their popularity, they tend to be the one that tutorials are written to).
+1. For some reason, only GoDaddy can expire all your domains on a specific date (for example 12/31) so that you don't have to renew your domain names at random times. Seems fairly trivial to implement and is a MASSIVE annoyance-saver for customers. For example, pay $12/yr domain expires on 12/31 of this year (instead of 3/4) so maybe on 12/29, you can look at your list of domains and figure out which ones you want to renew.
But Google domains win for the free privacy guard (GoDaddy charges $25/yr for domain & privacy, Google domains is $12/yr)
I too use Uniregistry, decent price and decent UI. Not sure what you mean by "terrible brokers"? Are you referring to the founders history of domain trading?
Amazon Route53 (which is backed by Gandi). Not the cheapest but the convenience of managing my domain in the same place as my DNS and other cloud services and the powerful access control capabilities of AWS make me willing to spend a dollar or two more per domain per year.
Edit: having the domain scriptable / accessible via the AWS API and CLI is a nice feature as well.
In the past I had some domains with my hosting company, some with iwantmyname.com, and a couple with a local registrar (because buying Finnish domains (.fi) requires a personal ID, and most registrars didn't support them).
I started getting annoyed that they were spread amongst different registrars, and I couldn't look in one place to see when things were due to expire. So I picked Amazon as my registrar and moved everything there. (The good news is now they support .FI domains too!)
I quite like Hover. I moved from Namecheap awhile back because of the old Namecheap UI. Only found out later that Hover is owned by Tucows, who also owns Ting, which coincidentally is my data provider of choice, and whom I also love.
I was a fan, until they used their "Hover is a reseller" (the parent company, Tucows is the registrar) excuse to get out of supporting DNSSEC, as required for all registrars.
They then "gave in" and said "OK, we can do this manually, on request, for $500 per-request".
Namesilo is the best imho -- 8.90 for .com's a great API if you're wanting to resell, they have tons of gTLDs as well, and some of the best prices.
The biggest benefit though is FREE domain privacy (usually an extra $10-14/year). Also 2 factor auth, and other features... I can't say enough good things about them.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 61.5 ms ] threadSome registrars are only good for initial registration, as renewal rates are out of line. Namecheap also has reasonable WhoIsGuard. Basically they run a business based on the value they provide.
But Google domains win for the free privacy guard (GoDaddy charges $25/yr for domain & privacy, Google domains is $12/yr)
Edit: having the domain scriptable / accessible via the AWS API and CLI is a nice feature as well.
In the past I had some domains with my hosting company, some with iwantmyname.com, and a couple with a local registrar (because buying Finnish domains (.fi) requires a personal ID, and most registrars didn't support them).
I started getting annoyed that they were spread amongst different registrars, and I couldn't look in one place to see when things were due to expire. So I picked Amazon as my registrar and moved everything there. (The good news is now they support .FI domains too!)
I know buying a domain is not a complex thing nowadays at most registrars, but it was one of the best/smoothest webshop experience I ever had.
They then "gave in" and said "OK, we can do this manually, on request, for $500 per-request".
Never again.
The biggest benefit though is FREE domain privacy (usually an extra $10-14/year). Also 2 factor auth, and other features... I can't say enough good things about them.
That they only do domains is another big factor for me.
I just wish they supported .au domains