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Ask HN: How do I choose the right domain registrar?

5 points by ElongatedTowel ↗ HN
I'm trying to secure a somewhat decent .com domain so I have a space to put projects or even a blog so I can find some work. Also to have a mail address that does sound a bit more professional.

So far I've looked trough the usual articles (blogs, lifehacker stuff, e.g.) which advise against GoDaddy and recommend sites like Hover, Namecheap, Name.com and Gandi.

They all seem to offer nearly the same stuff for nearly the same prices. I'm really not sure who to take or if it even matters.

Not all of them offer cheap mailboxes. I really like to have name@domain.com without too much hazzle or beeing bound to gmail(which costs money anyway if you want to use your own domain if I understand correctly?!).

Gandi comes with a free mailbox which I guess is great. Namecheap asks for an additional tiny fee. Name.com doesn't host mail. Hover asks for another $20 which is a bit steep.

I'm living in Europe, does it matter whether I use an US-based registrar? Does it if my site would be used for a business?

I'm beeing overwhelmed by choices.

4 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 6.3 ms ] thread
manacit
It sounds like Gandi might be your best bet - they offer five free e-mail addresses, a free SSL cert, and other benefits if you register a domain with them.

When all is said and done, a lot of the registrars around are reselling from the same company, and it doesn't make a huge difference who you go with. After the GoDaddy fiasco, there was a lot of talk about alternatives: http://kevnull.com/2011/11/domain-name-registration-alternat...

justhw
I'm not very familiar with Gandi but I'd suggest you go with Namecheap. I currently host most of my domains with Godaddy, though I've never had any serious problems there there, the terrible customer support and the fact that they try to up-sell me (some crap like a site badge) every time I login is infuriating me.

Namecheap has good customer serivce and IMO is worth paying the little extra. You can hook up Namecheap to Rackspace mail for ($2 a mo).

Location does not matter. Nope, business or personal, it's totally fine.

orangethirty
Location does matter. With US based registrars you may be bound to US laws/regulations.
cnu
I use gandi for all my domains. Even use their mailbox for 1 domain and haven't had a problem. I would recommend only gandi to anyone.