top | item 32094546

(no title)

Speaking of registars, what does HN recommend?

I was a happy namecheap user until they decided to go all political against Russian citizens. I am unsure as to what service I should migrate to.

discuss

teddyh|3 years ago

Like I have said previously¹ about choosing a registrar: If you have regular backups, and if some downtime is not really a problem, it might be fine to use web site hosting, e-mail (and in extreme cases even DNS hosting), from some fly-by-night el cheapo provider. But your domain name registrar? Pick them carefully, don’t skimp, and make sure they have good support. Because when things go pear-shaped, you really want to be able to actually talk to someone to change your web server or e-mail DNS records (or even DNS servers) to somewhere else.

Big registrars can’t afford any support costs since they prefer to squeeze the price down as far as possible, and therefore they prefer to simply lose or outright drop any customer in case of any and all problems. Conversely, small registrars may charge more, but have better (i.e. actually existing, and sometimes even dedicated and personal) support for when things go wrong, and have a vested interest in keeping you as a customer.

A small registrar might also be so small as to know you personally, which will help monumentally against any social engineering attacks.

Full disclosure: I work at such a registrar, but you’re probably not in our target market.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30818950#30821221

_notathrowaway|3 years ago

Does your company have a website? You didn't divulge it in your linked post.

archi42|3 years ago

I'm using NetCup for my DNS. They're based in Germany, operate from Nürnberg and expanded to Vienna (Austria) a while ago. DNS can be managed via Web UI (which I use) or API (but no ddclient support). I am not doing much with my domains besides mail, but afaict it worked as reliable as to be expected. I don't know their political views.

Speaking of ddclient, maybe check supported DNS services: https://github.com/ddclient/ddclient I don't think it's a good measure of quality, but if someone bothered extending ddclient for their service, it's probably not that bad. Plus if you ever find yourself wanting to use ddclient, it's nice having your provider supported. (NetCup is not supported, which is why I have to run an extra service on my Linux box instead of simply using the OpnSense).

mcintyre1994|3 years ago

I like gandi.net but have no idea of their political stance re Russian citizens

up6w6|3 years ago

https://news.gandi.net/en/2022/03/for-all-the-people-and-one...

> Cutting off Russians and Belarusians would only encourage the creation of different closed worlds and digital networks. We have chosen to hold out our hand to these people. We are not at war with them. Only their leaders, and their madness, need to be stopped. We will of course react quickly against war propaganda of any kind.

Few points that made me choose them (though I would probably take Cloudflare if they supported the TLD of my domains):

https://www.gandi.net/en/no-bullshit

https://www.gandi.net/en/gandi-supports

4cao|3 years ago

I've been using Gandi for years and can highly recommend them. They have great user interface that doesn't get in the way and waste your time (as opposed to GoDaddy, which at least back in the day when I was using them would be showing several pages of worthless "offers" you had to decline every time you wanted to just renew a domain name). Gandi also has excellent and easy to reach customer service (although I didn't get much chance to interact with them).

Neil44|3 years ago

Google Domains is pretty no-frills. My only worry is if they randomly decide to nuke my Google account, as they are want to do to people sometimes, what happens to my domains.

93po|3 years ago

google domains sounds like an awful, awful idea for the exact reason you stated.

davegauer|3 years ago

Haven't had any issues with name.com since switching to them in 2018. Their interface leans form-over-function for my taste (massive waste of screen real estate), but I can always muddle through to the DNS record editing interface in less than 30 seconds, which is all that matters to me.

gumby|3 years ago

I use GKG for my personal domains. For all I know "they" are just a single person in her basement. Has worked fine for many years and isn't expensive.

mrstumpy|3 years ago

I have been using DNSimple for years with good results

kruuuder|3 years ago

I'm a happy INWX customer.

e63f67dd-065b|3 years ago

You can’t get any better than Cloudflare, they sell domains at cost and have really good DNS tools.

Anunayj|3 years ago

I really like Cloudflare too and have all my domains with them, they take 0 fees as a registrar, so I get domains at the same price as the registry price + ICANN fee.

However one downside with choosing them is, you're effectively locked into their DNS, since they don't seem to expose the ability to set your own Nameservers, which is ok if you planned to use them for Authoritative DNS anyway.

mkbkn|3 years ago

I use NameSilo and recommend them.

usrn|3 years ago

I like easydns.

timbit42|3 years ago

Porkbun

crispyalmond|3 years ago

Seconding this. It's the easiest interface I've found by far for domain management. Having only used NameCheap before; it's great. My needs are pretty basic though, just pointing at a couple VPS.

sofixa|3 years ago

> I was a happy namecheap user until they decided to go all political against Russian citizens

You should be unhappy with the Russian government who are the ones enacting a genocide, not companies that either due to conscience, internal or external pressure, or sanctions, decide to boycott the whole of Russia. Being against war crimes is not a political stance.