Recommendation for Reliable and Cheap Domain Registrars?

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ReturnedSword

Active Member
Jun 15, 2018
526
235
43
Santa Monica, CA
I've been using GoDaddy for years now, but I'm finally fed up with their shoddy website and seemingly high prices. They seem to add on services, change services or tiers, etc without proper notification. I can't complain about their customer service, which is nice and gracious, but really I shouldn't have to give them a call in order to correct things they auto charged.

Are there any recommendations for some registrars that are cheap and reliable, with WhoIs privacy and transfer protection?
 

StevenDTX

Active Member
Aug 17, 2016
493
173
43
been using name.com since they were domainsite.com. Never an issue and their prices are reasonable.
 

wsuff

Member
Aug 16, 2015
75
13
8
Porkbun.com has worked nicely after I got tired of Namecheap's promo rate on new reg and potential higher cost on renewal.
 

azev

Well-Known Member
Jan 18, 2013
768
251
63
Been using namecheap.com for many years now, reasonable priced, and free domain privacy as well.
 

BeTeP

Well-Known Member
Mar 23, 2019
653
429
63
Google domains. Not the cheapest at $12/y but it has privacy and DNS hosting included. It also helps that it is supported by pfSense/OpnSense's DynDNS client out of the box.
 
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pricklypunter

Well-Known Member
Nov 10, 2015
1,708
515
113
Canada
I just recently consolidated some of mine from various registrars. I had been with those registrars for years, one of them for over a decade, and if I'm honest, up until now they were decent, if not the cheapest by comparison now. But recent changes/ company buyouts and declining service etc, forced me to look for a new, better registrar come renewal time this year. I must admit, after having looked at loads of registrars offerings, over the course of several weeks, comparing all the reviews I could find about them, good and bad, and trying out a few of the more interesting ones I discovered along the way on a dry run etc, I finally came to the conclusion that really only 2 of them stand out for bang for buck and good service.

I don't know how price sensitive you are, but I made the decision this time round, of rather than looking for the cheapest that had a good reputation, I would just ignore price altogether in my search, and look for one that could give me what I actually needed, without any of the compromises I would usually make because price was a factor. It finally came down to either Namecheap, or Dynadot. Both of them offered what I needed at reasonable cost, had the least pain in terms of cPanel usage and have good, if not stellar, reputations for dealing with any issues quickly and efficiently. In the end, I went with Dynadot, their cPanel is a bit nicer and they have a slight edge in the customer service dept I would say, but I would have been happy going with either of them in terms of service, price and pain factor.

My conclusion to this journey was that apathy, status quo bias, or whatever you want to call it, prevented me for doing this a long time ago when the services that I had been using started going downhill. Probably for much the same reasons why people rarely, if ever, change their banking institutions, but now that I have looked at what's available outside my comfort zone and made the change to what I believe is better, I do actually feel better :D
 
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Serverking

The quieter you are, the more you can hear...
Jan 6, 2019
510
212
43
NameSilo has been good to me for .com domains for years.

HEXONET the same for non .com domains.
 

redrum

New Member
Jun 7, 2019
3
0
1
I pay 9$~ per .com & other ltds at the moment. If i spend more ill get even lower cost.
 
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ReturnedSword

Active Member
Jun 15, 2018
526
235
43
Santa Monica, CA
Wow thanks for all the replies! I'll definitely have a starting point to compare now. After a cursory look through some services, it seems like the Google service is quite convenient with the included WhoIs privacy.

My issue with GoDaddy isn't really their customer service. It's mainly them changing the price every renewal period, and me finding out there are random extra add-ons I don't recall adding to my account. We have been with GoDaddy for years, and never audited our purchases from them until last year and I was quite upset to find the add-ons that were tacked on some point after the domains were initially purchased. They tried to claim that perhaps someone I authorized had added it inadvertently though that's not the case. They declined to refund the service charges even though some of the services had never even been set up (especially the ones that provided dubious security "benefits"). They did give me a credit for about 50% of the charges though. This renewal period it happened again so I'm pretty much fed up.