Recommend Me a Domain Name Registrar

I've decided to go ahead and register a domain name or two. I'll probably park them for the short term, with the ultimate goal to create a photo album/blog/sales site. I actually got half way through the registration process at GoDaddy before hitting the privacy section. It's $12 to register each domain, then another $12 to keep that registration information private on the WHOIS database. That got me to doing a bit of research, where I found that some less than savory services handle the privacy in a way that they technically own the domain and are just subletting it to you.

So anybody out there that's done this a lot, any suggestions for decent registration services? I'd like to register one to two .com domains. I'd like a few email addresses. I'd like to avoid having my personal information plastered all over WHOIS, or if not possible I'd like to be able to use throw away personal information like a Yahoo! account (GoDaddy specifically discourages this). Finally some basic gratis hosting would be nice, but I'm not sure that's realistic. If not, I'll of course be returning to the gurus here for a recommendation as to cheap hosting

Thanks in advance.

NearlyFreeSpeech. I can't recommend NFS strongly enough.

I really like NameCheap.com - tons better than GoDaddy.com, but that's not difficult...

Both of them seem to have privacy screens of some sort too. No Danica Patrick, but I guess that's a loss I can bear

Thanks guys.

I should probably elaborate on why I recommend NFS so strongly. Just saying that I do probably isn't that helpful.

Why I Love NFS:

* The cleanest (zero-ads), most no-BS control panel ever. And, indeed, extremely clean and simple rest of the website too. Registrar websites don't have to be jam-packed with ads and a bunch of tiny, unnecessary text!
* Extremely libertarian Terms of Service. They're known as the registrar that hosts domains for many "controversial" websites. Basically, they're no morality police and they're not going to take down your domain or cough up your info just because someone comes knocking and asks for it (they have a VERY high threshold before they will give up info or shut your domain down)
* Very high transparency whenever there are service issues
* Excellent DNS service
* Just as cheap as everyone else

I've had good luck with Domainsatcost.ca. They're a Canadian registrar but they register all the common TLDs. They've worked well for me and their new UI is pretty nice. The biggest recommendation I can make though is to stay as far away from GoDaddy as possible. They're pretty much in the same category as Zynga for being ethicless scumbags.

NameCheap tends to offer a free SSL certificate with domain purchase, if you need a bonus to sway you one way or the other.

I've been using NearlyFreeSpeech for a while and I have been loving it.

I've been generally happy with site5.com for the past few years. The offer registrar services too that seems pretty clean and they give a lot of control within their instance of cpanel. Their hosting had a low point a while back, but seem to have recovered some stability. Might look into NearlyFreeSpeech some day here. I don't use much bandwidth or storage anymore as I remote host all my pictures off Picasa - just cache the xml feeds locally.

NFS sounds pretty good, and I'd suggest checking them out, but I've been using Namecheap for a long time. Their privacy service is called WhoisGuard, and costs $3/year. Obviously, law enforcement can still get your info, but J. Random Stalker can't.

I don't remember any ads or really tiny text on the Namecheap site. It's a little strangely organized, and navigating to the various functions can be a bit confusing. It's attractive and easily readable, but figuring out how to get where you're going can take some effort. It looks pretty heavily tuned for people who have a lot of domains, and takes some extra clicking when you have just one or two.

Whatever you do, don't use GoDaddy. They are slimy, slimy, slimy.

Joker.com is also good. Their site, when I last used it, was a bit strange and primitive. They are, first and foremost, Unix hackers, and their site design shows it. But they're a Tier 1 DNS registrar, one of the 'real' ones with direct access to the databases, and they have incredible, incredible infrastructure. If I were hosting a truly important domain, I'd use Joker, rather than any of the eNom resellers. (which is what Namecheap is.)

Thanks again guys, looks like NSF or Namecheap will be the way to go. I'll register my domains after lunch. Then begin figuring out hosting, design, what exactly I want to have on there, all that good stuff

I wish I had something to contribute, but I just want to log this conversation for future use.

Malor wrote:

I don't remember any ads or really tiny text on the Namecheap site.

Here's what I mean. Let's register a domain:

NameCheap: Banner ad down the side, "limited time offer" at the bottom, a Related Links sidebar that's half ads ("promo! special offers!") mixed with links, two layers of tiny-text menu across the top, more menu stuff floating in the top right corner above that, loads of clutter. (I don't have a NameCheap account myself so that shot is clipped from a Google Image search)

IMAGE(http://www.upgradereality.com/images/namecheap2.jpg)



NFS: What I need and absolutely no crap:
IMAGE(http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/4959/screenshotkg.png)

Registrars's full-of-crap websites are just a "pet peeve" of mine, I guess you could say, which is why I'm so loyal to one that cuts out everything except the actual essentials. And I don't mean to single out NameCheap as what I don't like, because most registrars are much much worse.

I get for some people, this doesn't matter much, especially if you only occasionally log in to the registrar site. That's totally cool. I just want to illustrate when I say I love NFS because of how clean and junk-free it is, this is what I mean.

Hmm, I see your objection, but it's never bothered me to see banner ads for other things that a particular provider offers. It's like the ads for other XM stations on the XM radio ... they just don't bother me, it feels more informational than anything.

If it were punch-the-monkey banners, yeah, I'd be totally with you.

I do like the NSF layout, though. I'll have to consider them next time I'm registering domains.

Thanks for the tip, *Legion*. I've been using namecheap due to something on Lifehacker or ghacks or a tech site that I trusted (can't find the article now), but when my lease expires I think I'll transfer my stuff to NFS. Good policies deserve to be rewarded.

Well I'm trying to register using NameCheap and ending up with this:

NameCheap wrote:

.com, .net and .org technical issue on upstream registrar level

Dear Customers!
We need to inform you that currently our upstream registry experiences the issue with registration, renewal and reactivation of .com, .net and .org domains. Please do not attempt registration, renewal or reactivation of .com, .net and .org domains for now.
The technicians of the upstream registrar are already working on resolving the issue. Unfortunately there is no exact time frame for the issue to be solved. Please allow some time.
We do apologize for the inconveniences that the issue might cause you.
Thank you for your patience and understanding!
Sincerely,
Namecheap Support Team.

Not sure what that's all about. I'm tempted to head over to NFS as Legion makes a compelling case. The big reason I was going NameCheap was the free email forwarding though, which if I understand it would allow me to have an immediate email address while I figure out my hosting/design questions.

Malor wrote:

If it were punch-the-monkey banners, yeah, I'd be totally with you. :)

Heh. Like I said, NameCheap is not even in the ballpark of the worst offenders. I just found NFS after using some of those worse-offenders and between their clean page and their user-friendly policies, I'm just never, ever gonna leave, and look at every other registrar like they're teh enamy!.

There's another registrar, Gandi.net (their tagline: "No bullsh*t"), which is very clean too. I don't know about their privacy policies and such, but they were the registrar I was going to look closer at before I stumbled upon NFS.

Teneman wrote:

Not sure what that's all about. I'm tempted to head over to NFS as Legion makes a compelling case. The big reason I was going NameCheap was the free email forwarding though, which if I understand it would allow me to have an immediate email address while I figure out my hosting/design questions.

You can use the free Google Apps to do mail forwarding too. Basically, you:

1) Set up Google Apps for your domain
2) Create an account in GA with the address you want
3) Use Gmail's normal mail forwarding feature to have that account forward email to where you want it

The bonus, of course, is that you can also log into the account and use it directly. (The negative is that the setup isn't quite as brain-dead simple as a plain email forwarding feature).

We use this setup for a number of clients that want email forwarding.

Thanks for this thread, ever since hearing that Godaddy was up for sale I have been looking for a place to transfer my domains to. I think I am going to go with NFS, as Oso put, good policies should be rewarded.

Thanks Legion. I think I'm going to give NameCheap a shot to come out of this technical difficulty though. I dug around in NFS's FAQ a bit more and came upon this one:

NFS FAQ wrote:

Is your service easy to use?

No.

*snip*

Our service is designed for people who are comfortable with Unix-based web hosting, including manipulating MySQL and files using command line tools. To get good results for nontrivial sites, our members need to understand how Unix file permissions and ownership work, and how they apply in a secure web hosting environment.

That's all probably a good thing for someone who knows what they're doing, which is of course how they bill it. But for someone who's programming knowledge capped out at BASIC and some HTML back in the early '90s, it's a bit skeery.

So for me you'd recommend registering with them, and finding basic hosting elsewhere then?

Teneman wrote:
NFS wrote:

Our service is designed for people who are comfortable with Unix-based web hosting, including manipulating MySQL and files using command line tools. To get good results for nontrivial sites, our members need to understand how Unix file permissions and ownership work, and how they apply in a secure web hosting environment.

That's all probably a good thing for someone who knows what they're doing, which is of course how they bill it. But for someone who's programming knowledge capped out at BASIC and some HTML back in the early '90s, it's a bit skeery.

That has to do with their web hosting service, not domain name registration. (If you read the rest of that FAQ entry, you'll note that all the text refers to web hosting).

I use them solely as a registrar, but they also offer web hosting which, yes, is basically a "here's a UNIX shell for you" service. But if you're purely wanting a place to register domain names, that part doesn't affect you. NFS is no harder to use as a registrar than a GoDaddy (easier, if you ask me).

It's quite OK if you want to use NameCheap instead :), just don't think that that part of the FAQ is referring to registering domain names.

You do point out a good point on the NFS FAQ, though. I may email them and let them know they're going to scare off people that just want a simple registrar.

Teneman wrote:

So for me you'd recommend registering with them, and finding basic hosting elsewhere then?

If you want easy hosting, yes, go with a Dreamhost or something for the web hosting part. I prefer Dreamhost (I used it for a few years) out of the popular shared hosts, others that people recommend include Bluehost, HostGator, etc.

Ask around and go with whatever people here are still using, as you'll have someone who can assist if you run into issues. (Same goes with the registrars: if you use NFS, I can help. If you use NameCheap, there's a couple of people here that can help. If you use something nobody here is using, you're on your own. ).

I generally recommend keeping your domain name registration and your web hosting separate anyway. It makes it easier when you want to switch web hosts to not have to fuss with transferring domain names.

For the record, I don't recommend 1and1.com for anything. Hosting, domains, etc. The price is tempting but I've found solid windows based hosting with better features for the same price ($5/month)

Dreamhost doesn't scale very well, and they overtax their hardware, but for a simple/cheap/easy site, they're a good place to start. They've got lots of nice control panels that make most routine maintenance about as easy as it can be.

Namecheap is an eNom reseller, so apparently eNom must be having trouble. NFS is probably also in the eNom cluster, so they'll probably have the same problem. It'll likely be fixed within a few hours at most.

NFS looks pretty cool. If they supported Rails/Django, I'd use them in a heartbeat. I'm pretty happy with ASmallOrange at the moment, though.

Ok, I was tying registration and initial hosting together, separating them out ought to make things easier. Makes more sense as well I suppose, as I won't necessarily need hosting right away. I've got some ideas as to what I want to do on the site, but for now it's more name parking and email address than anything.

To be super precise, there are actually multiple services involved:

1. Domain name registration. This is where your name and address are recorded as being associated with a given domain name, and two or more DNS servers are hardcoded into the system.
2. Domain name hosting. This is where one or more (you're supposed to always have two) machines run DNS servers, and know they're authoritative for the zone in question. Their IPs need to match whatever was registered for them in Step 1. This will let you create other services, like mail, web, and FTP. Most domain name registrars will include a basic version of this service for free, as part of the registration, but you don't have to use their systems for this at all.
3. Actual servers, be that mail, web, FTP, game servers, whatever. Some people host DNS on the same machines as the actual services, others don't. Depends on what you have available to you. Most people usually want two services, mail and www.

Each of these can be bought from a different place. #2 is usually included with #1, but typically lacks advanced features. Web hosts, like Dreamhost, can also do DNS hosting for you in addition to web hosting, and this is often the best way to go. Typically, you get access to most or all of the features of DNS, but wrapped up in a nice GUI to make it easier to figure out. DNS is not difficult, but it's very sensitive to small errors, so you have to be very careful when building zones yourself.

Well, my domains are now both registered, thanks a ton for the help guys. Now that that's done, it's time to decide whether to try to build my site from scratch (not likely), or which canned pro-photo site to go with.

I suppose more importantly, now that this first step is taken, I should decide exactly how far I want to pursue this and how many resources I want to invest...

Anyway, thanks again for all the helpful information guys.

Aren't some Goojers involved in Rebel.com? I started using them a few years ago (per a request here) and haven't had any problems.

Stylez works for Rebel.com's parent company. They also own DomainsAtCost.ca which is who I like.