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Ask HN: Domain Name Registrar for Developers?

1 points by tevon ↗ HN
I've used GoDaddy, Squarespace, and now Google Domains is shutting down.

Is there a good developer-focused domain name registrar? I've found GoDaddy very painful to use, currently can't remove a website from our domain(!) so will be transferring to another service.

I want a clean, simple, domain registrar focused on technical use-cases, not small personal sites or marketing sites, does this exist? Does everyone else just use Route 53?

5 comments

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tobinfekkes
I'm not sure what deems a registrar to be more developer-friendly over another. I prefer it be simple, and that they get their revenue from registering domains (and adjacent services), not entirely different markets.

For what it's worth, I've used namecheap for +15 years and have no complaints.

dtagames
1&1. Now called Ionos. Been great and dev focused for years. Simple UI for actual DNS record editing instead of a dumbed-down configurator.
jdrmar
I'm coming from a bit similar situation and I decided to build something for this. Basically I see the domain registration itself as a commodity service (ie just go for the cheapest one), and then DNS management etc you can do through a common interface. A way to achieve this is to:

  1. Register the domain at whichever place is the cheapest. 
  2. Set the nameservers to the ones belonging to the DNS management service. 
  3. All domain name management can be done from the DNS panel at the DNS management service.
Not sure if I'm explaining it clearly, but please have a look at our service at https://dot.bs if you're interested. We're comparing a 140 domain registrars on price and provide the service I described above.