DEV Community

Cover image for What's your favorite domain registrar?
Madza
Madza

Posted on

What's your favorite domain registrar?

Do you buy domains through various hosts or do you stick with a particular registrar all the time? What is/are your favorite/-s and why?

Top comments (40)

Collapse
 
vtrpldn profile image
Vitor Paladini • Edited

namecheap.com is the place to go.

I had some really bad experiences with GoDaddy and never looked back after moving to Namecheap.

They are cheaper, safer, more transparent, and I believe they offer more TLD options. What's not to like?

Collapse
 
mishmanners profile image
Michelle Mannering

Been using Namecheap for about 7 years. Highly recommend. I've never had an issue. I once even forgot to register one of my domains and it expired. Namecheap bent over backwards to help me out and get it restored.

Great customer service and really good prices.

Collapse
 
joelrozen profile image
Joel Rozen

I have everything split fairly evenly between Google Domains, AWS and Cloudflare.

However all DNS is through cloudflare (with some small exceptions on AWS due to having vanity nameservers that Cloudflare charge enterprise rates for).

I have a single domain with namecheap from a business I acquired last year and haven’t been overly impressed. I find their UI confusing and the hoops I had to jump through to get the domain transferred were insane (I don’t remember the reason but at the time of purchase they wouldn’t allow the then-owner to transfer it externally to NC, only to another NC account).

That said I just can’t really be bothered trying to transfer it out again either, so it just sits there.

Collapse
 
bobbyiliev profile image
Bobby Iliev

I quite like NameCheap as well!

Collapse
 
jamesthomson profile image
James Thomson

Yep! I've been using Namecheap for 10+ years. Never had an issue.

Collapse
 
kewbish profile image
Emilie Ma

Would second this!

Collapse
 
andrewbaisden profile image
Andrew Baisden

I transferred to namecheap in September after reading the messages in this post.

Collapse
 
zikrimarquel profile image
Marquel

Namecheap is cheap, I love cheap, I love namecheap

Collapse
 
derekcrosson profile image
Derek Crosson

NOT Godaddy...

Collapse
 
shaijut profile image
Shaiju T

why, any issues ?

Collapse
 
derekcrosson profile image
Derek Crosson

Transferring to a different registrar can be a nightmare...

Collapse
 
gokayokyay profile image
Gökay Okyay

Porkbun! They are sincere, have lot’s of discounts & promos, lastly their logo is adoreable!

Collapse
 
yoursunny profile image
Junxiao Shi

My vegan or kosher friends are sending complaints when I moved one of my domains there.

Collapse
 
lewiskori profile image
Lewis kori

I use porkbun too. Definitely one of the best.

Collapse
 
webbureaucrat profile image
webbureaucrat

CloudFlare is far and away the best.

Granted, CloudFlare's first-time registration is still early stages, so what I've done is to start with Name.com (reliable user interface and fairly transparent pricing) and then switch to CloudFlare after 90 days.

Also, I agree with what others have said that GoDaddy is pretty bad, but they do have more names available because of squatting/marketplace, so if it's not available through other registrars, I make sure to at least check there.

Collapse
 
fasani profile image
Michael Fasani

Any one who puts Daddy in a domain name has deep psychological issues! lol

I wish GoDaddy would disappear their entire life as a company has been about manipulating and deceiving inexperienced web surfers.

One of the internet’s best scams!

Collapse
 
andrewbaisden profile image
Andrew Baisden

My domain has been with HostGator since 2010! Wow 10 years I did not even realise until I just checked. It has been there since back in the day when I was using a shared hosting plan with them. These days I am using Netlify for hosting and I just point my HostGator domain to their DNS servers. Fortunately the domain billing is annual and cheap so I have not thought about moving it elsewhere if I even can do that never tried?

Collapse
 
thewdhanat profile image
Thew

Namecheap for the first year (they often have promotion), then Cloudflare Registrar & Google Domains for renewal.

Collapse
 
yellow1912 profile image
yellow1912

Ha ha, same here. Love cloudflare.

Collapse
 
perpetual_education profile image
perpetual . education

We use Google (domains.google) - which we feel a little weird about... but it's really easy and priced well, and the UI there is actually pretty decent - and we don't feel like we're getting screwed like everywhere else we've used.... BUT we'd rather switch to all smaller companies we can trust. Sometimes we buy from iwantmyname because they seemed to have the most TLDs.

Collapse
 
jcsh profile image
Justin Ho

I currently own 2 domains, 1 for my portfolio website and 1 for personal email / homelab dns.

Both are purchased on Google Domains so I can consolidate my payments but I redirected the homelab domain name servers to Cloudflare to get API access for ACME to my servers.

Collapse
 
reobin profile image
Robin Gagnon

Namecheap + CloudFlare is a combo that has done wonders for me in the past.

Collapse
 
poseidonrage profile image
Baqar Hussain Naqvi

Very first time i bought my domain with godaddy, (That happened in 2008)
From the very next year, I have sticked with namecheap and still with them :)

initially it was because of free whois. But they give great discounts and events randomly throughout the year.

Collapse
 
fasani profile image
Michael Fasani

I’ve become a bit lazy and I just buy them inside AWS with Route 53. A .com is $12. I drink the AWS kool-aid and I like it all under one roof!

Collapse
 
amt8u profile image
amt8u

namecheap.com - They give whoisprivacy for free.

Collapse
 
mishmanners profile image
Michelle Mannering

I go Namecheap all the way! They are great value, good service, and easy to use.

Collapse
 
badpractice profile image
Bad Practice

1&1 for the first year $1 .com, namecheap for .gg and .io, cloudflare forever after (when they start supporting .gg's)

Collapse
 
linehk profile image
sulinehk

why no namesilo.com?it good to me!