Personally use Porkbun since Namecheap's API is poorly-documented and they attempted a KYC audit for purchasing a $100 domain.
I am fine with the identity verification, but their ticketing system seems to have sent all of my e-mail to their spam box, because they would never respond. I attempted opening tickets explaining the e-mail situation, but they wouldn't listen. In the end, I gave up and let them deactivate the account.
Moved to Porkbun, purchased the exact same domain (no KYC required!), and have been a happy user of their API for about two years now. They also have much more lax requirements for API usage compared to Namecheap. Porkbun also supports WebAuthn and logging in with a security key. It's overall a much nicer service than Namecheap.
That kyc thingy is icann requirement, its how domain registration works. Icann require every accredited registrar to verify registrant details so registrar would randomly ask for id, passport etc. That include porkbun, they're bound to their contract with icann as an accredited registrar too. They probably won't ask today but maybe tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or next year, or never.
They already got your details from your card details and decide its enough. Something like vpn, using niche browser, details on card not tally with registration details etc etc would throw off their threat mitigation system. Also different business operated differently, their payment gateway behave differently etc etc. Too many random factor to avoid xxx specific registrar because they ask for kyc when the kyc itself is a requirement.
The requirement in the contract is nowhere near that specific. Contact info validation is sufficient for almost all registrars. It's possible a given registry has higher standards, or maybe one registrar got some order to be more thorough, but great reason to avoid given this is a commodity and there are actually good alternatives. (I broadly like Tucows and Cloudflare)
Namecheap is on my NO NO NO list, along with GoDaddy (and a bunch of others). Google Domains was also on this OH GOD NO list, but thankfully Google did the Google thing and killed the product.
Most of my domains are on Namecheap since the times when wikipedia's domains were there. Hopefully, my low-key personal domains are of no interest to anyone...
I've been using IONOS (formerly 1und1) for the last 20 years for all of my DNS and hosting needs and couldn't be happier. Their uptime, non-obtrusive policies, and customer support have all been top notch. Can't recommend enough.
As an example; I had a dedicated server that I was leasing that I wanted to upgrade, the sales tech noticed that the plan I was currently on had been retired/replaced and credited my account with difference of what I had payed vs the new payment tier which amounted to six months of billing on the upgraded server. You can't really put a price on that kind of honesty!
Back when I was using them, their ToS disallowed a whole lot of perfectly benign content, like pictures of celebrities. If you had a blog about movies and posted a picture of an actor, your account would get deactivated and your data simply deleted. I wouldn't ever trust them for anything I care about.
I read this as you having to contact them in order for them to credit you for overcharging you for a retired product when the replacement equivalent was priced lower.
Why didn't they proactively inform you that your service was retired and there was an alternative available?
It sounds like this must have been going on for a while to be worth 6 months of service in difference alone.
I left 1and1 close on 2 decades ago. If you consider this a story of good service, then I would suggest you try some other provider.
I strongly encourage people to only recommend domain registrars if they have verified that customer support won’t completely fuck you over when something goes wrong. Recommending registrars when you’ve only experienced the happy path is doing a disservice to the people you are trying to help out.
Namecheap gave me a quick response and help when requested support regarding a DNSSEC issue. So not everyone has bad customer experience when they needing it.
easyDNS still seems good for those who want a more old style "full fat" registrar like gandi was? I know some folks I respect who have long used it alongside Route 53. Though they don't appear to support hardware tokens which is a major black mark in my book in 2024.
As well as Gandi, DNSimple was another higher service one I really liked that went crazy on pricing. Agreed the registrar scene nowadays seems like a quite small "do use" list vs a couple of "don't use" :(.
I've been using easyDNS for 5(10?) years... Never had a problem with them and highly recommend them. I do 'hobby stuff' - nothing fancy, but it always just works. One time I called to ask if they support wildcard sub-domains (www..example.com or whatever..example.com) and actually had a real engineer pick up the phone :-) (btw - it did work, very well actually :-) )
The backup mail spool is nice too...
all in all - not the cheapest - but worth the piece of mind in my book :-D
All diffs given against the $31.38/3yr wholesale price from Verisign+ICAAN.
Not sure how that qualifies as "outrageously expensive".
You can make your own trade-offs, but for something that's literally the foundation of my online identity, business, etc I'm willing to pay $3.50/yr over wholesale for a company with a reputation, support, and generally aligned incentives.
You may choose to instead tie your online identity and business to someone charging less than cost to save half the price of a big mac a year. But I will find it hard to dig up much sympathy when we all find out _how_ they're planning to make money doing that.
You can use any registrar with R53, so it's more like:
if you really need to have domain registration written in Terraform and the other registrar doesn't provide it
I'm also looking to move my domains out of gandi but stay with a european registrar. Did someone try netim customers' service?
They say on their "about us" webpage that the company is still owned by the founders, so I would think the enshittification hasn't started yet. But if some have experiences to share it would be nice.
Another happy Hover user. Been using them many years. Not the cheapest, but a reasonable markup and works well, and hasn't shown signs of enshittification. Knock on wood.
Well you're not going to get reliable service if you want to know which one is cheapest. You want the professional registrar large corporations use if anything.
I’ve been using Hover since they advertised on 5by5 a decade and a half ago, and never had a single issue. They never bother me nor do I need to remember they exist. I only hear from them when they need ICANN contact confirmation or to remind me a domain is expiring.
I've used Register4Less for over a decade and I've been thrilled with them. They're slightly more expensive than the cheapest options (by a buck or two), but this is more than made up for by the fact that they're the only registrar I've ever used who have proactively reached out about minor issues. Every time I've needed to email them, I've gotten a response from somebody who can fix the problem within minutes.
Though keep in mind that domains registered through CF must use CFs nameservers, you can't point them elsewhere if you need to. They sell domains at cost so of course they want to keep you in their ecosystem so you might pay for something else.
Namecheap has horrendous billing UI with their products, also not PDF so makes it hard for freelancers when you have many domains and your accounts want an PDF. Easiest is a registrar that mails you invoices in PDF.
their billing works just fine, i pay with it all the time.
They support credit/debit cards, bitcoin, and Paypal.
I went with Namecheap especially because of their seamless payment method,
Used to struggle at times paying for my domains with Gandi, etc.
You: "their billing works just fine" [then talking about payments, when I wasn't talking about payments but billing, "The process of sending an invoice (a bill) to customers for goods or services" -Wikipedia]
They have their billing for domains and products spread over several pages, there is not one place in the UI where they have all payments/billing combined, they don't have PDFs as I've stated and they don't sent invoices by email. Their billing UI is horrendous.
I'd prefer a 'do not' list, because 'experience quoted'. Any one of the names you mention could be bought/ new CEO etc tomorrow and start the turdification (tm) slide.
Another happy customer of NameSilo here. A handful of .com, .net, and a .org domain registered with them, and I've never been personally irritated by anything they've done.
They hiked prices massively so I wanted to transfer away, it was a massive shitshow.
Auth-codes given on the website were expired and they took 2 weeks to give me the correct ones near the end of the registry period.
Support was extremely unresponsive. As this this was a side project I couldn't spent time on every day my domain went into quarantine for a short time. They answered 2 days before the end of the rental period, when requesting the auth codes ~2.5 weeks before.
Will never use them again after this experience.
Porkbun is my new home for most stuff and domains.lt for .lt which porkbun doesn't offer yet sadly.
Thanks for Porkbun suggestion, I'll keep that in mind; it doesn't support .at but I'm now tempted to move my other domains there. Gandi used to be good, it's a shame what it's become.
i just moved all my domains off gandi because they doubled or tripled the renewal prices.
i am guessing they are milking their existing customers who don't notice or don't have the knowhow or resources to move their domains, and once those wise up to that they will lose a lot of them
apart from prices their operation didn't seem to change after the sale. although i only have a few domains so i probably didn't interact with them enough to notice anything else
Damn, that's good info. I have all my domains on Gandi and noticed the pricing changes, but I just stupidly assumed that it was something the registry operators were causing. Sucks to have to leave Gandi, their UX is great, no stupid upselling, very clear website.
One of my domains on Gandi was up for renewal. I've noticed they charged ~$140, while Namecheap charged ~$35. Easiest transfer decision I've ever made.
- Namecheap
- Cloudflare
- Route 53 (if on AWS)
Any others?