I'd be interested in a neutral registrar, who wouldnt comply to random silly laws. Such as impacting freedom of expression, or who would not kidnap your domain.

Management, interface. I have been with some "small-time" regional registrars and some of the interfaces where terrible. Simple tasks become complicated (and sometimes impossible), often I found myself emailing them because their interface didn't have a certain functionality.

Not Hover. They store passwords in plaintext, they've probably got some other glaring security issues too.

This website states that Hover is a "reformed offender" regarding plaintext passwords:

http://plaintextoffenders.com/reformed

Their response to requests for DNSSEC support was pretty epicly terrible too.

Basically they used the argument "we are a reseller" (even though they're owned by the registrar) to avoid the rules about supporting DNSSEC, and then relented by saying they could do absolute bare minimum to allow its use on a one-off case for $500 per domain.

This was enough to make me move. I'm using namesilo and couldn't be happier.

I had a similar experience with Hover and DNSSEC. Also, as stated on their site now: 'OK, .cn domains are a bit tricky to transfer. Trust us, we've helped a lot of people through the process. We'd love to help you too: give us a ring at 1-866-731-6556 so that we can sort things out for you. At no charge of course.' ...which is very misleading. They do not offer .cn domain transfers at all. I reported this 3 months ago but they still have not changed the wording as they said they would.

Look for 2 factor auth.

If this isn't enterprise production business stuff, it really doesn't matter. They're just selling a commodity. Go with the cheapest one.

The one that's just as likely to screw you over as it is to fuck up something technical?

Yeah that sounds like a good choice.

Trust, word of mouth from people who used the service before. 2FA a must.

Used namesilo and route53 for awhile now, happy customer.

[Editing for formatting.]

Ease of use.

Amount of up-selling you'll have to deal with.