Can anyone recommend a South African registrar that provides DNS management for .co.za domains?

September 23, 2009 1:28 PM

Can anyone recommend a South African registrar that provides DNS management for .co.za domains?

We're* taking over a South African domain and we need it to be transferred over to us. It looks like you can't transfer .co.za domains to 'international' dns providers like DynDNS or GoDaddy (i.e. those two have explicitly said it's impossible so I'm assuming this is true for others).

All we want to do is transfer the domain to us, take control of the DNS and point it to our existing server (so we don't need hosting etc).

Reliable is essential, easy to use is good, and free/cheap is a bonus.

*Where "we" are a non-SA company

posted by Hartster to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

I don't have experience with any South African registrars, but you might consider contacting a South African intellectual property firm and asking them for a recommendation as a courtesy. (I've used Adam & Adam and Webber Wentzel in the past for IP work and was satisfied with their work.)
posted by Majorita at 9:54 PM on September 23, 2009

Best answer: Finding a registrar that allows you to edit the DNS yourself is an ongoing problem for .co.za domains. There ARE some companies that do this, but they're expensive and you have to worry about whether they'll be around long term too.

Here are some to look at:

http://sadomain.co.za/
http://www.afrihost.com/
http://web4africa.co.za/ (parent company is in Nigeria...)
http://www.africaregistry.com/
http://www.webafrica.co.za/
http://www.marcaria.co.za/

Alternately ask Arthur Goldstuck for his advice on this - he's the most knowledgeable person on the Internet in South Africa:

http://www.worldwideworx.com/
posted by worldshift at 5:52 AM on September 24, 2009

Response by poster: I'm marking worldshift's as the best answer as I ended up sending an email to Arthur Goldstuck who sent a swift and helpful reply.

I'm (probably overly cautiously) not posting exactly what or who he said due to the whole private email/public forum thing, but he provided some background on the company that the site is currently registered with, so it looks like we'll set up an account there as, while it's not the cheapest, it looks like being a reliable and solid company with a good user interface. If anybody wants to know the company, drop me a Mefi Mail.

[From my experience elsewhere, price is a very confusing variable in Domain/DNS management. Some cheap/free providers can be cheap/free as they're useless, while other expensive providers can be pricey as they're rip-offs/flakey businesses]
posted by Hartster at 12:44 AM on September 25, 2009