Ask YC: Where do you buy domain names?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=377301

by wooby • 18 years ago

28 31 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Godaddy used to be the best but is now a mess of hot garbage. What's the cheapest, simplest registrar?

qhoxie• 18 years ago

I use http://namecheap.com. I have for many years. They had issues with a ddos attack a number of months back and handled it gracefully; ie. the owner was continually posting updates on the forums and helping users individually.

mikeyur• 18 years ago

I second this. I love namecheap, not quite the cheapest registrar anymore, but I have found them much more helpful than GoDaddy or any other registrar I've used.

I just finished moving all my domains to them last week with their newest promotion, like $6 transfers or something.

mahipal• 18 years ago

Thirded. They're also one of the few registrars to tell you explicitly that "you own the domain in your name." Their free private registration offer is a nice touch, and their control panel is pretty solid and thorough.

rshao• 18 years ago

Ditto. I just finished moving everything off of godaddy recently. Another thing I like about namecheap is that they provide you with nameservers, which was a big plus for me since I didn't want to host my own on the same box I put everything else on. Pretty sure godaddy didn't, but I could be wrong.

aneesh• 18 years ago

Their support staff are reasonably knowledgeable & responsive (response time is hours, not days), which is more than I could say for other registrars I've used.

jadence2• 18 years ago

I use namecheap as well and have one complaint. They don't allow you to specify the order of your nameservers! Regardless of the order you input your name servers the primary, secondary, tertiary nameservers will be assigned randomly with no way to specify the order. I sent a support request to namecheap and got the following response. Grrrr

Hello,

It does not matter which order they are listed, because when the nameservers are queried, they are queried simultaneously, and the first one to answer is assigned by the Registry to that particular query as "primary" at that point in time.

What this means is that regardless of how they are listed, the order of the listing does not determine which nameserver is queried first.

The order that the nameserves appear in the Registry is not up to the Registrar, and cannot be changed by the Registrar.

dcurtis• 18 years ago

This is how DNS works. It has nothing to do with NameCheap.

misterbwong• 18 years ago

I registered a domain with namecheap based on recommendations from n.yc and had a very positive experience. Free whois guard is also a big plus.

noodle• 18 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=150561

tsally• 18 years ago

http://nearlyfreespeech.net

I am a big fan of these guys. Their technical knowledge is top notch and their pricing plans are perfect for small websites. Heck, I even remember them emailing me letting me know that ICANN fees were going to go up, and I should thinking about renewing my domain name before the price went up. Talk about customer service.

streety• 18 years ago

I've not used nearlyfreespeech.net and they may well be as good as you say but the example you give does not demonstrate this. I have domains with namecheap and godaddy and remember being contacted by at least one of them the last time ICANN put up their fees.

kngspook• 18 years ago

Seconded.

They're really, really good at what they do. They recently migrated their email-forwarding system, and it was one of the smoothest migrations I've ever seen...

matthall28• 18 years ago

NameCheap.com

amazoom• 18 years ago

name.com - their new .com names are only 5.99 (with coupon)

jaytee_clone• 18 years ago

Domains are pretty cheap anyway, doesn't matter which one you use.

The cost of the it is probably a few orders of magnitude less than the time you need to spend to come up with a good domain name. Thus, it's really not worth it to consider domain price as a decision factor.

Now, as far as functionality goes, namecheap.com is pretty good.

bmj• 18 years ago

I would just be sure that you actually own the domain, not the service. Early in my life was a web developer, I made this mistake, and it took a bit of effort to wrest ownership of the name back.

I use Dotster, and have found their service and interface perfectly acceptable. They, too, sent me an email saying I should I should renew my domain name before the rates went up.

reidman• 18 years ago

Been using http://domainsite.com for about 5 years now. Low prices, not nearly as much BS as GoDaddy. Sorely lacking in the user interface department (again, not as bad as GoDaddy), but aside from that I've never had problems with them.

s_tec• 18 years ago

I've been using domainsite.com for about the same amount of time, and have nothing to complain about. They are simply an inexpensive, straightforward place to register domains. Their user interface seems fine to me too.

Jem• 18 years ago

> again, not as bad as GoDaddy

I don't think anything is as bad as the GoDaddy UI.

guruz• 18 years ago

I use Prosite.de for 3 domains, they host the DNS for me only. If you are german you could too.

https://www.prosite.de/member.php?refid=5000140259&s=ma (Affiliate link)

http://www.prosite.de/ (Non affiliate link)

peter123• 18 years ago

if you're still not totally opposed to using godaddy, someone just sent me this great deal... $1.19 per domain: http://searchalldeals.com/deals/view/169384/0/1-Year+Domain+...

hs• 18 years ago

i use 1and1.com ... no idea if it's good or not

any comment?

joegebbia• 18 years ago

these guys are on the same level as godaddy.

decode• 18 years ago

Once a long time ago I saw that DJB recommended www.joker.com and I've been using them for the past 5 years. They're not the cheapest (it's been $12 a year since I started using them), but I've never had any problems. The web UI is fairly simple to use, and they don't spam your email inbox.

wmeredith• 18 years ago

I use Dreamhost. That's where my hosting is and registration is $9.95/year with free privacy. I've never really had any problems with them. They can handle the Digg effect and their customer service is decent.

secos• 18 years ago

I second. Have all my domains with them and am very happy. The one minor complaint I have is that they do not let you manage your DNS records very easily. I usually switch my name servers over to Slicehost and manage from there.

aniketh• 18 years ago

How is the uptime of the websites? I've always wanted to try dreamhost considering they have amazing packages, but there are a lot of scary stories out there

nickh• 18 years ago

I use gandi.net for my .com, .org and .net domains. Their interface is great, but I can't comment on their support because I've never had a problem =P

For .ca domains, I use easydns.com .

omarchowdhury• 18 years ago

Moniker, Namecheap

Ask YC: Where do you buy domain names?

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