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Ask HN: Moving away from GoDaddy - which registrar do you recommend?

12 points by duhmain ↗ HN
GoDaddy is the king of bad usability and tacky marketing, but until now I've been okay with this because they're cheap. But when I heard that their DNS servers are slow I decided I'd be willing to spend a little more to get a good registrar.

What registrar would you recommend? I've heard a lot of good things about Gandi.net, but I can't find any new reviews of them here on HN. Are they still a good registrar, and are there other good alternatives to GoDaddy?

20 comments

[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 57.4 ms ] thread
gbrindisi
If your domain needs are limited to classic tdls (.com, .net, .org) I'do go with nearlyfreespeech [1].

They are one of the few bullshit-free hosting/registrar companies out there.

[1] http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net

sagacity
We've many sites running on domains registered with GoDaddy (but hosted elsewhere) and have not noticed any problems.

Still, if you're looking for an alternative, try:

http://www.moniker.com/

HTH

cmatthias
My advice is to stay far, far away from Moniker. I use them at work, and their UI stinks: for example, when changing my domains' authoritative nameservers it will occasionally switch the nameservers back to the default (Moniker's own) without telling you. I contacted their support about this and they essentially said "yes, this is a known issue, and we don't have an ETA for a fix, so suck it up."

The reason why I was changing nameservers in the first place is because their own DNS service has gone completely offline three times in the last year and a half, making my company's websites inaccessible for hours at a time and costing us several thousand dollars in lost revenue.

I have had no issues using NearlyFreeSpeech.net for registering my personal domains.

aeontech
I've been using http://register4less.com/ for a few years. The price might seem higher than some others, but it includes whois privacy protection that godaddy charges extra for, as well as a dns zone editor and a nice UI.
us
For .com, .net, .org, and .info, I like Fabulous.com. For everything else, namecheap is a good alternative.

HOWEVER, I wouldn't use them or Godaddy for hosting or DNS or anything else. If you're fine with Godaddy as a registrar, use an alternative DNS and hosting service.

sagacity
Yes, Fabulous.com too is a good alternative for domain registration.
ohashi
If those are your TLDs, Fabulous is the best registrar, bar none.
hardik988
If price is not an object, I would recommend Gandi.net - absolutely no nonsense domain hosting ( I even received a free SSL certificate, though I don't know if that offer is still on.) . Another good option is Mediatemple, who are giving away $5 domains as long as you're with them (that's a really great deal).

You can find HN archives on domain names here:

http://remembersaurus.com/askhn.html#domain-names http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive#t...

NearlyFreeSpeech an NameCheap are great alternatives as well.

kingofspain
I've used Namecheap and Dreamhost recently for domains. Dreamhost offers free privacy (Namecheap too but it's implied that's only free for the first year). Both are $9.9x.

Mediatemple were doing domains for $5 and I'm sure they're reliabe enough.

znt
I wouldn't do any business with Mediatemple. They wanted me to purchase a hosting service just to do a 301 redirect whereas GoDaddy or Name.com do it for free.
tam7t
http://www.hover.com/ I haven't used it but some of my friends have. They do private registration, DNS management, and forwarding for $15/year.
kamilski81
We used to use GoDaddy and MediaTemple but have since switched to eApps. It may be a little pricey but their support service is phenomenal and uptime is 99.9%....we're pretty happy with it
kvdr
Currently 1and1 is running a promo for $5 domains. They are pretty good generally. Nothing special though.

Would recommend eurodns or namecheap.

kongqiu
Haven't had any problems with Hover, 1and1, or Dreamhost.
runjake
Name.com

Btw this question gets asked here at least once a month, so search back to get a wider set of answers.

tuananh
IWantMyName and Dynadot
ohashi
Fabulous was recommended by another poster. My favorite registrar but they require you to either pay a lot ($30 retail) or own a lot of domains to get an account. They cater to portfolio holders.

If you don't fit, checkout NameCheap.com.

mcpherrinm
I've been using easydns.com for my registration and DNS hosting needs. They have an excellent feature set, as well as reasonable prices.

I haven't done any particular stress testing of their DNS servers, but their documentation suggests it should perform well. I have noticed no problems empirically.