Ask HN: What is your favorite domain registrar and why?

by ahnick on 6/13/2020, 5:23 PM with 5 comments

There are a lot of different domain registrars to choose from today: Namecheap, Google Domains, Hover, GoDaddy, etc. Who have you used and had a good experience with? Are there any registrars that you have sworn off? What are the most important features to you: cost? privacy tools? automation? or?

  • by user_agent on 6/13/2020, 8:00 PM

    OVH.

    They offer 1 free 5GB email account to every domain you register with them which I often find very handy. Especially for smaller initiatives that need just a contact@xxx.zz and nothing more. Plus they offer a free funny 10MB shared "hosting" with FTP which also can be used in a creative way.

  • by karmakaze on 6/13/2020, 11:00 PM

    Namecheap has a no-nonsense UI and has been providing free whois domain privacy for a long time.

    I've since switched some names to Cloudflare since I use their DNS anyway because of quick update/propagation.

    I've also moved some personal domains I'm not really using to NameSilo--horrible UI but I don't feel bad having a bunch of names I'm not (yet) using.

    Fastmail for email for these domains is cheap and easy.

  • by Rockvole on 6/13/2020, 9:50 PM

    Namecheap I found to be pretty good. I only need basic features so I moved to a cheaper (in Canada) registrar - porkbun and they have been totally fine.

  • by rman666 on 6/13/2020, 6:40 PM

    NameCheap has been pretty good IMHO

  • by dhruvkar on 6/14/2020, 2:40 AM

    google domains

    free whois privacy

    free email forwarding

    simple no-nonsense ui