Now that Google is getting out of the Domain registration business, I’m curious what everyone is looking at for New registrar. Looks like SquareSpace is going to honor the price for now but from what I can see they are going up once we have to renew.
Never have used google ( really don’t like the way they have taken over the domains eg .dev)
Porkbun, Ionos, Gandi the world is full of them some better than others. Just watch out for those that make changing DNS or glue records a pain. Some do very competitive 1st year discounts but there are quite a lot of price increases filtering through about now. Like anything shop around
Never used Google’s registar. In addition to those registars already mentioned, whois.com is also pretty good. I currently use both namecheap and whois.
Whois and Namecheap both let you lock in a domain at the stated 1st year price (some .extensions are heavily discounted), and both let you lock-in a domain for up to 10 years, with the total price quoted (including any discounts). The longer you lock a domain in, the less the savings. I find a sweet spot at around 3 years. I find the interface at whois easier to work with (personal preference), with namecheap requiring you to go to the checkout cart to find savings for extended years, where whois does this right up front.
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Virtualmin GPL has API support for registration via NameCheap, Gandi, and whatever “rcom” is. I use NameCheap.
Whatever folks are mostly settling on for registration, if they have a reasonable API, we can probably add it.
For managing records, we currently support Amazon Route 53 in GPL, and Google and CloudFlare in Pro, I believe (plus Virtualmin managing them with any number of Webmin managed secondaries, or via remote systems managed by Cloudmin Services).
Nothing … never used Google
The problem is not so much “selecting a registrar” but more of a problem of selecting a domain name and tld just about everything sensible has already been claimed and most of those are just claimed by speculators in the hope of reselling at silly prices. The number of meaningless tld seem to be increasing almost daily simply adding to the mess. (.spammer .con anyone?) you also need to remember that most browsers assume you are US based and default to a .com you also need to think of the user. so the-highest-ever-shop-on-planet-mars.jupiter may be available to register but will it ever get typed into a browser address bar. also remember the internet is global (unlike what most registrars would have you believe) CNNIC registrations for example.
NameCheap offers .gdn TLD for registrations, which isn’t overloaded (yet).
I have gotten used to the GoDaddy panel layouts and have been with them for many years for all my clients. Not to be a salesman for them, but as with some other registrars, they do have 24/7 phone support.
Most of the names I’ll be registering are my business names and therefore are not subject to the scammers that register all the common names. I originally went with google for the simple fact I felt since they dominated the DNS game in the beginning I would cut out all the middle men and just use them for registration as well. I figured since “many” people used their 8.8.8.8 in the dns spot on their network cards it would help register my sites easier. They were almost instant when any changes were made and didn’t require the 24 hours to propagate like many registrars require. And the fact that they were only $12 per registration and renewal. No gimmicks no discounts and all that jazz to muddle thru. So far haven’t been transferred over to SquareSpace but what I can read on their site is that they are honoring the $12 initially but it appears it is only a temp discount and they will be implementing their renewal tier once they have us onboard. Guess I’m just going to have to get use to the higher prices from this point forward.
.gdn doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Folks like domains to be memorable and sound relevant to what the site is for. (.com isn’t great, but it was the first for use by commercial sites so it’s the one everyone still wants…sometimes, for sites that aren’t .com, people add .com when typing it in anyway, even now, because people have no idea how any of this stuff works.)
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We switched all of our registrations to NameSilo after much research. We also register new domain names with NameSilo for our legal clients when we form new business entities or named divisions for them. If you decide to use NameSilo, then use this hyperlink and coupon code which are particular to us as the referral source and will reduce the registration fee by a dollar:
https://www.namesilo.com/?rid=c034d52lz
Coupon Code: S&H-NS-Ref-$1-Off-2020
One of the things that we especially like about NameSilo is that it is one of the few domain name registrars that supports encrypted communication with our authoritative domain name servers (DNSSec). More security is almost always desirable.
This one looks promising, I’ll check it out more thoroughly
and if they don’t then the browser does it for them!
.tv is also very popular (can’t think why) but the domain sitters seem to have taken nearly all of them to resell. Domains are a bit like property the domain hogs buy them at low prices then sit on them “parking” to try to get a big resale price for them.
I use namecheap for about twenty years. Browser always finds coupons for renewals. Tech support is 24/7 and all the features are there.
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