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Ask HN: What's the best Domain Registrar?

6 points by leoh ↗ HN
I've been looking for a good new domain registrar. I know that a lot of people distrust Go Daddy these days. But who are the good domain registrars?

18 comments

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Tzunamitom
A friend of mine runs http://www.namecheap.com - I have massive respect for them after they ran an anti-Go Daddy campaign when Bob Parsons posted the elephant killing video, and again when he supported SOPA...
jnt8686
I'm assuming you have massive respect for their clever use of a PR opportunity?
Tzunamitom
No. I have massive respect for their clever use of two PR opportunities.
kappaknight
Namecheap.com seems like a good option. However, I have a few international TLDs that they don't manage, so I ended up going with Name.com (http://name.com). They too ran an anti GoDaddy campaign and the service seems straight forward enough w/o all the stupid upsells that GD does.
mirsadm
I've been using namecheap.com for a while and they are, in general, pretty good. One issue I have noticed is that their redirecting service seems to be pretty unreliable. It appears to work 2/3rd of the time. The other 1/3 it gives off all sorts of errors.
joshontheweb
Hover.com and ghandi.net aren't the cheapest but they are easy to use and don't bombard you with up sells and ads
[dead] staunch
Been using 1and1.com for years. Cheap. No complaints.
staunch
Been using 1and1.com for years. Cheap. No complaints.
joealba
If you want a registrar and DNS host, I've had great luck with http://dnsimple.com

Great customer support, and they're always adding new features. And having 3rd party DNS hosting separate from your server provider makes switching providers easier.

molsongolden
I just started using Name.com and it seems great so far.
kenna
Moniker is my favorite hands down: http://moniker.com They are also a favorite of domainers for their features and support. In my opinion they have unmatched security, and will fight to keep your privacy when using whois protection (unlike another popular registrar listed here as an alternative to GoDaddy, from my own personal experience).
cmatthias
Plus, their control panel pages to assign custom nameservers doesn't work half the time! (or at least, it didn't in 2010 when I used them).

And, should you instead choose their DNS service, they'll throw in some free 3-4 hour total outages with no explanation from customer service! [1]

My recommendation would be to stay as far away from Moniker as you possibly can.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=moniker+dns+outage

dcassiano
dynadot.com is a good option. Cheap and always do promotions for customers.
mchannon
Definitely not the most full-featured, but dot.tk sells .tk domains for free.