With Gandi hiking their prices and doing some shady stuff on top of that, I’m on the lookout for a new domain registrar.
So far, the alternatives I’ve checked out are:
- Porkbun: solid, but limited list of TLD’s, missing a few I need
- Cloudflare: cheapest, easy to use platform, but they require you to set them up as authoritative DNS provider, which I’m not ok with.
- NameCheap: mixed reviews, not so cheap anymore
It seems quite hard to find a decent, no-BS registrar with ok prices. What are your recommendations?
Bonus cookie points:
- privacy-focused
- EU-based
- supports less popular country TLD’s (e.g. .ro)
Switched from Gandi to Netim recently and it seems like a pretty good drop-in replacement. They are EU-based and include email (that they operate themselves).
They do (as one of the few registars) have all the TLD’s I’m looking for. Not the cheapest but decent prices regardless. Thanks for the tip!
I use Cloudflare, very good and doubt you’ll find anything cheaper for most domains. Lots of free add on services you can use as well.
Just depends on how you view them as a company. You do however also know they will be around long term.
I used to have the vast majority of my domains with Gandi, but over recent times, I’ve favoured Porkbun and most of my domains are now with them. I used NameSilo for a while, but their prices aren’t as competitive as they once were. Tried Google Domains for a short while, but was concerned if I was ever to lose access to my Google account, I could lose access to my domains.
Namecheap is still good, and honestly very well priced. The main issue is that they don’t support automated DNS verification for things like let’s encrypt certbot.
This is because they make money selling SSL certs.
If you can live without wildcard certs, or are willing to update them manually, it’s fine.
I’ve used NameCheap for about 5 years now and it’s alright. I don’t have to deal with them so much since I only have one domain and my setup is pretty simple.
Same. I’ve been using NameCheap for years. I have 3 or 4 domains for different things. I really just need a registrar to hold my names and DNS which rarely changes. My domains auto-renew every year and I barely have to think about it. They’re fine for my needs, no complaints.
Namecheap is still the cheapest I found for certain TLDs, would be curious to find another though!
Cloud flare is cheaper than namecheap. Cloud flare sells at cost. Namecheap might be cheaper for the initial year, but they will make it up on renewal
Yeah I agree with you especially if you talk about the renewal price since Cloudflare price is a non-discount price, it is not like the others.
