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Ask HN: How to know which TLDs are “safe”?

7 points by hellofunk ↗ HN
I've been looking to register a new domain and while all the good stuff is taken on the popular TLDs like .com and many others, there are a lot of great lesser-used TLDs that seem attractive, but I don't know how to gauge the safety/security/durability of these as I think I've read that there are different owners/systems for different TLDs (Google is often mentioned here as an "owner" of some that it uses for questionable purposes). Is there a way to get some accurate and easy-to-interpret info on if a TLD is "ok" (for lack of a better word) ?

I was burned years ago by an attractive TLD where its owners raised the yearly renewals to like $150 from the original $30 without anything I could do about it, so I had to either give it up (which I did) or just eat the fees. So I'd like to know which TLDs are also immune to that sort of thing.

6 comments

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hellofunk
I suppose I could just buy a TLD and register it for like a decade to avoid price hikes in the short term.
cpach
I like .net, at least for my personal stuff.
rotterdamdev
.eu
cpach
That’s an interesting idea, but I’m not sure if it’s available to people outside of the European Economic Area (EEA).
tsjq
domain names are almost not immune to that sort of thing: price hikes. only way is to buy for 10years . and, in most cases, that hikes up the price for you on day one.
katsume3
I never renew domains. I just let them expire after a year and register a new one in its place. The web is ephemeral in nature anyway and that's why I do it. Then you have the ten-year time window limit to deal with, and who even knows if your registrar will be around by then.