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December 9, 2005 5:58 AM   Subscribe

What's the most reliable place to register a new domain? Register.com seems expensive, but on the up and up.
posted by jgballard to Computers & Internet (51 answers total)
 
I have been using godaddy.com for years, and have never had a problem.
posted by stupidcomputernickname at 6:05 AM on December 9, 2005


I'd say the correct answer to that is anything BUT register.com, who are a bunch of overpriced crooks.

The good news is that these days, registrars are plentiful and numerous, so they compete on low price, customer service, and value added services. Here's the full list.

I personally recommend godaddy or joker. You are going to get a ton of highly personal and subjective suggestions, I recommend that you go on price and features.
posted by Rhomboid at 6:07 AM on December 9, 2005


$10 a year at Dreamhost, and it's a great company with which to do business. Use godaddy.com if you like torture, I guess.
posted by rxrfrx at 6:13 AM on December 9, 2005


You might also be interested in some rankings:
By Size
By Growth Rate
(more at webhosting.info)
posted by Rhomboid at 6:14 AM on December 9, 2005


I second Dreamhost. Cheap and reliable. Assuming you don't already have a web host, that is.
posted by pazazygeek at 6:16 AM on December 9, 2005


I like (and use) Namesecure.
posted by wheat at 6:17 AM on December 9, 2005


I use aplus.net, $7.95 a year.
posted by geekyguy at 6:25 AM on December 9, 2005


Whatever you do, don't register with 1and1.com - they are AWFUL!
posted by antifuse at 6:31 AM on December 9, 2005


joker and gandi are good.

I used to use register but they are idjits. recently my ex-girlfriend got a mail from them saying her email account was about to expire -- said email account was never hosted by them, and her domain was transferred away from them many years ago. but it sure freaked her out.

right now all my domains are on godaddy. I definitely thought about transferring to some other less-tortureful registrar, but then I figured, wait until the expiration dates and make godaddy do a little work for the money I paid their dumbasses.

I happily use dreamhost as my webhost but wish they would charge a little less for registration, then I'd be happy to transfer everything to them.
posted by dorian at 6:32 AM on December 9, 2005


I'll second, third or even fourth GoDaddy. Absolutely no worries, pain free, easy greasy for years now.
posted by willmize at 6:35 AM on December 9, 2005


For those using godaddy, here's some relevant links.
posted by puke & cry at 6:36 AM on December 9, 2005


antifuse - What's wrong with 1&1? I have a few domains there and I've never had a problem.
posted by Jomoma at 6:42 AM on December 9, 2005


GoDaddy.com is who I'd used for years. There was a recent hub-bub with the owner/founder's blog and his feelings on Gitmo. I haven't registered with them since.

aPlus.net is a somewhat shady operation in terms of how they treat your data. They are well known for spamming and solicitation via phone. They won't remove you from their call lists without some serious words being exchanged.

I've recently used RegisterFly.com, and days later got a call from aPlus.net at the number I used in the registration. It was a new number that I'd not yet filled any form out with.

Dotster just lowered their prices and haven't proven evil. Yet.

Yahoo! Domains is also cheap as dirt, they use MelbourneIT and I've heard mixed things about them.

I don't usually recommend registering a domain name with your host unless you know for a fact that your domain name is not tied to the hosting (meaning that if you stop hosting with them, you will need to maintain your domain name). Make sure you can easily repoint or transfer your domain if you decide to go this route.

And if you do go that route, I've got a handful of companies I'd suggest.
posted by FlamingBore at 6:43 AM on December 9, 2005


I use dreamhost for hosting and am generally very pleased with all their services.

I've never used them for domain name registration, though, because I've always used gandi.net They are - even after the dollar tanked - reasonably cheap if not the cheapest anymore. But the main reason I went with them is their terms of service, unlike some registrars, provide that you own the domains you register through them.

Here's a web forum discussing some registrars, and including at least one rave for gandi:
http://www.webmaster-forums.net/archive/index.php/t-16122

Here's a usefule thread from Joel on Software.

I've seen a lot of smart people using GoDaddy but have no personal experience with them.
posted by mikewas at 6:46 AM on December 9, 2005


Absolutely recommend (second) avoiding 1and1. They are indeed the worst internet company you could ever deal with. There have been multiple green and blue threads thrashing their shitass service. I got in on their "free for 3 years" service and left after 1.5 months as it was a ripoff.

I recommend Godaddy as I've not have probs with them. I register with them and I host at Dreamhost.

If you're going to be getting a host, I would recommend Dreamhost and if you pay a year in advance there they will give you the domain name for free and update it (for free) every year that you renew with them.
posted by dobbs at 6:53 AM on December 9, 2005


Avoid www.great-domains-4-u.com... I paid at paepal.com and my site's still not up. My Paypal account seems to be cleaned out, too.

Seriously, I switched a few years ago from Network Solutions (which had a horrendous E-mail based management system for my older domains, and no, they didn't know how to switch it to the web-based panel) to Dotster, and I'm happy with them. As the above poster said, they don't seem to be evil yet.
posted by rolypolyman at 7:05 AM on December 9, 2005


I third avoiding 1and1. I did some work for a client who hosts with them and it was a nightmare getting access to the account and the db management tools, on their linux accounts, were almost non-existent (no phpMyAdmin, no shell access to command line MySQL tools). I had to write an ad-hoc php script just to set up my db tables. It was just one stupid thing after another.

The admin control panel was under-powered and overly-clunky. And many really basic changes required a lot of time for the servers to reconfigure themselves. Seriously, go with mediatemple or dreamhost.
posted by wheat at 7:31 AM on December 9, 2005


GoDaddy can give you problems if you use forwarding, rather than handling the DNS properly.. the story is here.
posted by wackybrit at 7:38 AM on December 9, 2005


I love pair and pairNIC for registering and hosting. They are more expensive but the customer service and interface is incredible.
posted by miss tea at 7:52 AM on December 9, 2005


I use GoDaddy for domain management and registration. They make it very easy to manage multiple domains, especially if you have more than 50. Even though I do not agree with Bob Parsons' political beliefs, I don't let that cloud my business decision to use them. I also don't use their domain forwarding service, which from the Slashdot thread, appears to indicate their tech staff are biased against anything but IE. The grief they are getting from the tech crowd will probably result in them fixing this problem.
posted by camworld at 7:52 AM on December 9, 2005


I second Pair and pairNIC -- the service is very, very good.
posted by words1 at 8:06 AM on December 9, 2005


After that whole godaddy thing I went throught hat thread and pulled out all the registrar recommendations. I ended up at namecheap.com but you may find some others in that thread that look good to you. Plus you get to read about Bob Parsons at the same time.
posted by misterbrandt at 8:26 AM on December 9, 2005


*through that
posted by misterbrandt at 8:26 AM on December 9, 2005


I've used NetSol, GoDaddy, 1and1, Dreamhost and Yahoo at various times, ... and I've never had the least trouble with any of them. My only real annoyances with any of them was with GoDaddy's habit of trying to upsell you multiple times during checkout, and that Yahoo's parking page looked exactly like those domain squatting search pages. But once I was registered and moved to my own domain servers, I haven't had the least problem with any of them.

My advice is just get the absolute cheapest one you can find, currently Yahoo @ $2.99/year, and save your reliability worries for when you choose your webhost.
posted by boaz at 8:32 AM on December 9, 2005


In my experience, Godaddy and Dotster can both be trusted. I've used both, and currently have or manage domains on both. Godaddy apparently has some issues as an ISP, but they're mostly around blocking by country AFAICS, and they have no impact on domain registration.

I have recommended Dotster in the past for a cleaner interface. It used to be about 50% more expensive than GoDaddy, so I would tell people who weren't experienced with domain maintenance to go there in order to avoid gettign confused by GoDaddy's relentless upsell. (That said, I've never found Godaddy to be dishonest about their upselling, just relentless. I can deal with relentless if it's not dishonest.)

If your domain is at all important to you, I STRONGLY recommend buying into some kind of privacy protection. That will make it much harder for people to social-engineer a domain hijacking. It may approximately double the cost per year per domain, but domains are pretty cheap right now.
posted by lodurr at 8:34 AM on December 9, 2005


puke & cry: For those using godaddy, here's some relevant links.
misterbrandt: After that whole godaddy thing.
As noted in the linked Mefi thread, Bob Parsons has apparently recanted those positions.
posted by lodurr at 8:39 AM on December 9, 2005


What is it with the horde of people that always come out of the woodwork to recommend dreamhost on any metafilter topic? I looked at their shared plans and they are really not all that special. The minimum you can get away with is $10/month with a $50 setup charge, or prepay a year for $120. Do you guys not realize you can get similar or better deals elsewhere WITHOUT wasting $50 in setup fees of having to pay for (and be locked in) for a year? I mean I can understand if you're a happy customer or whatever... but something about the number of people that crawl out of the woodwork every time without fail to recommend these guys makes me think that a large part of mefi just doesn't realize that you shouldn't have to pay nearly that much for quality shared hosting.

Don't even get me started on the absurdity of a 120GB bandwitdh allowance on a SHARED server. Unless you're streaming content, or offering large file downloads, you're going to run into the "thou shalt not use too much CPU" gotcha of a shared host long before you hit that limit.

/sorry for the derail

posted by Rhomboid at 8:54 AM on December 9, 2005


Dotster. $6.95 right now (usually $14.95) and killer domain admin front end. Used for years, never a problem. Not so expensive it hurts, not so dirt cheap that the service sucks.
posted by BorgLove at 9:04 AM on December 9, 2005


The question I have is:

Which of these will do DNS for you for free?

Godaddy does. Joker does. I've used both and am happy with both but would like to consolidate my domains somewhere. Who else does?

The Godaddy nutjob recanted his position and apologized, by the way.
posted by twiggy at 9:09 AM on December 9, 2005


I've used both registerfly.com and namecheap.com. They both do the job, but my preference is namecheap, since registerfly's interface can be pokey at times.

As an aside, a lot of the smaller players are actually resellers for larger domain registrars. I believe both of the above are enom.com resellers.
posted by SteveInMaine at 9:16 AM on December 9, 2005


I can also recommend Gandi (12 euros (about US$14) per year (they'll convert your credit card payment)).
posted by yz at 9:30 AM on December 9, 2005


I'm on 1and1's 3-free-year deal and I've never had any problems with the service. Domain registration is only $6, and you can always forward the domain (which I've done with no problems) to another webhost.
posted by pmann at 9:38 AM on December 9, 2005


My husband and I are both registered with DomainMonger and we haven't had any problems at all. That, and they give you 90-60-30 day notices of the domain expiring, so if you're a dork like me, it's hard to "forget" and lose your domain. We had a free 1-and-1 registration and they were just really, really slow, and as I recall, hard as hell to get in touch with.
posted by Medieval Maven at 10:26 AM on December 9, 2005


derail:

The Godaddy nutjob recanted his position and apologized, by the way.


Actually, if you read the last fpp about him, he posted a clarification - not an apology.

/derail

posted by puke & cry at 10:27 AM on December 9, 2005


I usually suggest Dotster. A couple of my web hosting customers had domains parked at Godaddy and have had several problems with them.
Keep an eye on the small print - some of the cut-rate hosts/registrars also own your domain name. ie, you register the name, but you can't move it away from their hosting. Dunno if that's too common anymore.

Register.com likes spammers, too. I worked for some spammers that would register hundreds of domains with register.com at a time.
posted by drstein at 10:35 AM on December 9, 2005


GoDaddy's habit of trying to upsell you multiple times during checkout

I'd call it more than a "habit of trying to upsell". It's more of a sleazy effort to deliberatly mislead inexperienced users into signing up for more service and expense than they need or want to. I couldn't believe how underhanded their signup procedure had become when I last registered with them a few months ago. Their prices, service, and tools otherwise are very good but I don't want to give money to slimy types. So, it's back to Gandi for me in the future.
posted by TimeFactor at 10:39 AM on December 9, 2005


Rhomboid scribbled "The minimum you can get away with is $10/month with a $50 setup charge, or prepay a year for $120."

Shop around for there deals a bit (google dreamhost discount). I got 2yrs of their minimum plan for $97 with no setup fee and that includes the single free domain registration offered with that plan. I'd do all my admittedly minor internet host/registering with them except they don't register .ca
posted by Mitheral at 12:02 PM on December 9, 2005


Which of these will do DNS for you for free?

If you mean which will let you alter your DNS for free, it ain't 1and1. In fact, they won't even let you alter it for a fee. They refuse to allow you to purchase a domain from them and host anywhere but with them.

Mitheral, the cheapest .ca registrar I've found is netfirms.ca.

Do you guys not realize you can get similar or better deals elsewhere WITHOUT wasting $50 in setup fees of having to pay for (and be locked in) for a year?

Well, "better deals" ain't always the answer. As I mentioned, I got 3 years for free from 1and1. The service SUCKED. I'd rather pay $120 a year to a company that answers my emails in a timely fashion and gives me the bells and whistles I want, even with their cheapest plan (which is, btw, $7.95 a month, not $10). Also, they offer a more than 3 month no questions asked money back guarantee so if you sign up for a year and find it sucks, it's easy to get your cash back. They also let you host as many domains with them as you want for no extra cash. (Others do this as well, of course, but still, on top of everything else, it's nice. I have 7 domains hosted with them all for the same $120 per year. Plus, I get at least 1 or 2 referrals a year, and they pay you almost $100 for each of them. Often, it works out they're paying me to host my sites--and that $ is sent by Paypal, if you prefer.)

posted by dobbs at 12:17 PM on December 9, 2005


Oh, and yes, Register does spam. I used to use them but moved everything to Domainmonger and then Godaddy years ago. Register still sends me emails about expiring domains trying to get me to switch to them. Unsubscribing has never worked.
posted by dobbs at 12:18 PM on December 9, 2005


I have a domain that I registered at 1&1 that I host at dreamhost, so I know it's possible. I just went to their manage domains screen, and changed from using 1&1's name servers to dreamhost's name servers. IIRC, registrar's are required to let you choose the authoritative name servers for your domain.
posted by boaz at 1:43 PM on December 9, 2005


I use 1and1 and don't have any problems whatsoever (I have a couple of root servers from them). Scads of bandwidth and so far no downtime (knocks on wood). Also, domain reg is only $5 (or possibly $5.99) with them.
posted by littleme at 1:55 PM on December 9, 2005


I use MyOstrich, who go through OpenSRS. If your company goes through OpenSRS, there's really not much of a difference. You edit with a common interface. For what its worth, MyOstrich has been good for me for 3 or 4 renewals over 3 domains.
posted by devilsbrigade at 3:03 PM on December 9, 2005


Here's their pricing page. You can get them for cheaper, but this seemed like a simple, painfree way to go (and it was).
posted by devilsbrigade at 3:04 PM on December 9, 2005


I register with Dotster and have domains at Dreamhost.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:47 PM on December 9, 2005


Metafilter is registered at dotster.com, so I figured they were okay, and they have been fine.
posted by theora55 at 5:52 PM on December 9, 2005


I have no idea what all these 1&1 haters are talking about. I've been on the 3 years free plan, and as far as I know my site has never been down. They always answer my questions extremely quickly, and I'm only paying the 6 bucks a year for the domain.
posted by Jomoma at 7:15 PM on December 9, 2005


I just have to give up yet another vote for Dotster. I've been with them for over 5 years, own dozens of domains... and there's never been even so much as a glitch. The special they are running right now is a steal at $6.99 per year.
posted by RoseovSharon at 1:38 AM on December 10, 2005


Here's another vote *for* 1and1. Dirt cheap and you can definitely register domain names with them and host elsewhere. Their tech support is alright. Nothing spectacular but not too crappy.
posted by edjusted at 7:53 PM on December 10, 2005


Seconding NameCheap.
posted by divabat at 7:31 AM on December 15, 2005


Well, when I registered a domain for my friend with 1and1, and tried to point the DNS elsewhere, 1and1 asked me for an extra $5. Also, I used them for hosting for a while, and on top of the downtime that I would get (for 3 months, I went down at least once a week), they never once responded to a tech support email that I sent them (approximately 20 emails, not one response). Hence, my suggestion to stear clear. YMMV, I guess.
posted by antifuse at 9:24 AM on December 15, 2005


I just sent this thread to my sister in gmail and an add foryahoo domans came up. Anyway, they're selling them for $2.99/year now.
posted by delmoi at 3:31 PM on December 20, 2005


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