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.

Do porkbun have a terraform provider?

E: https://registry.terraform.io/providers/cullenmcdermott/pork...

Not sure if it works though

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.

Other registrars just send an annual email asking to verify your contact details. Done. Icaan satisified. No need to actually harass your clients.

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.

> That kyc thingy is icann requirement

Is it really? Or just contact info is enough?

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...

What's the problem with Namecheap (I have my domains there right now)?

I bought a domain on Namecheap instead of Porkbun for the exact same reason!

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!

Their extremely weird and annoying adverts in the UK have ensured I will never use any of their services.

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.

IONOS requires you to make a phone call to talk to their retention reps before you can cancel anything

Isn’t that illegal in several markets at this point (unless you also initially signed up via a phone call)?

1and1 would call my house trying to sell me shit.

Namecheap is terrible and cannot be trusted, you can google tons of horror stories.

Without a doubt, Porkbun is one of the best. Their staff is knowledgeable, helpful and efficient. Highly recommend them.

Any recommendations for people looking for a strictly European registrar?

Infomaniak

Netim

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.

I went to Infomaniak when moving from Gandi because at the time I found the text contrast too light on Netim ahah, seems better now.

But they seemed quite proactive on Twitter around the time people left Gandi en masse.

Namecheap is definitely on my “never use under any circumstances” list for reasons I outlined in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18091287

The full thread is worth reading for more feedback on a range of registrars, particularly Namecheap: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18086522

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.

I use namecheap too.

Apart from their UI being, huh, I've had no problems.

Can you elaborate on Cloudflare?

I currently have some domains there (moved a few years ago from Godaddy), so is there something I need to worry about?

Cloudflare is on the GP's "do use" list, not the "do not use" list.

I think the HN consensus is that Cloudflare is a reasonably safe bet.

Though keep in mind that domains registered through CF must use CFs nameservers, you can't point them elsewhere. That's the trade-off for getting the domain at cost.

That's true. I have my domains on Namecheap and my DNS on CF. I think it's just that little bit of extra safety to spread the risk a little.

This is a "do use" list, so recommended services.

Porkbun seem popular, I do use them for a couple domains. I haven't heard of anything egregious.

I use porkbun for all my domains, I’ve never had any issues and they don’t seem to gouge you on price for the smallest things.

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.

Route 53 is outrageously expensive for domains, one should only use it, if they need AWS’s DNS product.

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

For .com as of Aug 2024, Verisign says they charge $10.26 wholesale, and ICAANN charges $0.18/domain for a total of $10.46/yr wholesale.

Route53's .com is $14/yr. So the three year price is $42.

Three year prices from a few registrars (there's so many pricing games the "per year" price is nonsense in most cases):

    Cloudflare: $31.32 (-0.06)
    GoDaddy: $46.93 (+15.55)
    Namecheap: $41.24 (+9.86)
    Namesilo: $51.87 (+20.49)
    Porkbun: $29.61 (-1.77)
    Route53: $42 (+10.46)
    Spaceship: $28.98 (-2.40)

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.

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.

Namecheap payment system works just fine.

Me: "Namecheap has horrendous billing UI"

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'm with Namecheap and they're decent but one big minus is how inaccessible their API is, would put them on the bottom of the "do use" list.

I've been using namecheap for over a decade and have had zero issues with them.

INWX

Been with INWX for >10y, never had an issue.

INWX is really great and they also support just about every TLD.

I'm very happy with INWX, but their API is a bit lacking when it comes to limiting the potential blast radius.

It's either full access to everything or, thanks to their support for creating a special account on request, only full access to DNS management.

OVH is pretty good

Yes, never add a problem here (in France).

easyDNS (not to be confused with DNSEasy or DNS Made Easy). Very happy customer for many years and there are not many companies I can say that about.

If you are in Germany donaindiscount24.com is good option too.

Beware! The OP was originally at a good provider which got bought out by Team Internet. See:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42364033

If you take a look at:

https://www.domaindiscount24.com/en/about-us

You will see that Team Internet owns them as well. So I would personally bve on the fence if I would consider them good or not.

Thanks! I did not know that. I mentioned them because I have never had trouble with them over some decades.

They were my second registrar. In fact more like the first "real" registrar, because before and in the 90s I registered via a one-man show.

But of course things can change. Let's see how this develops.

Gandi?

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.

Wow, I never knew that to be the case! How would I find a registrar that supports .at LTD? Cloudflare, AWS, Google—neither supports it.

From looking through https://www.nic.at/en/my-at-domain/at-partnerfinder the only one that I knew and did not hear shit about seems to be OVH.

Others might be good, but no idea who exactly, many small unknown companies in the list that could be either great or shitty.

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'm using dynadot for my .at domains

Dank

Bought by a private equity company.

Went back on their contract obligations already, hiked prices, etc. Will be milked to death.

Best to consider them dead.

They were sold to another company a year or two ago and now some people are a bit wary

i just moved all my domains off gandi because they doubled or trippled 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.

I've been doing this too, every time a renew comes around I shift it to Namecheap.

I've noticed that Gandi has become SUPER expensive as opposed to Hover lately as well. I'm just letting domains expire instead.

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.

wow that's 4 times as expensive!!

seems like gandi didn't just multiply the prices but raised them exponentially.

beware of namecheap though. see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42364240

I've read my fair share of Namecheap criticisms over the years and remain unconvinced.

I point my nameservers somewhere else and then forget about Namecheap for a year.

god no - gandi absolutely suck now for both service and price. I moved all my domains to netim.

What's wrong with aws lmao

Nothing. He said that they are one you should use.

Hover is fine. Never had a domain shut down though.

I have one on dynadot because Hover doesn't support the TLD, and the website sure is a lot more awkward.

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 use pananames.com, they for sure won't do things like OP described

I use infomaniak from switzerland. Mainly because I can physically go to their office and discuss in person if there is a problem.

I used infomaniak once, I'm sure you spended quite some time at their office.

Joking aside, why?

Namecheap is on my personal "never use; fuck them" list. I moved my domains to Cloudflare, and I am happy since then.

Porkbun is great.

I use Namecheap and sadly still Gandi for old domains.

The only issue I experience with Namecheap are included redirects which have something like 90% uptime.

Route53 domains is seriously not needed for anything - just add zone in AWS and point your registrar to new NS.

>Route53 domains is seriously not needed for anything

If you're already hosting on AWS, then you'd only have one potentially hostile company to deal with instead of 2.

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

I've had great experiences with NameSilo.

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.

Namesilo?

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.

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.

Namecheap's been out a while, I'd drop them from your list too. Porkbun's in for now.

The upper two have had several known issues with them. I haven't heard anything about the latter one, but that doesn't mean they're free of issues.

I have used dreamhost forever and have had a lot of domains through them for over 20 years. Never had a hitch and excellent customer service.