If you’re looking for domain registration/DNS reviews, you probably know how hard it is to find pages that aren’t just poorly concealed spam or astroturfing ‘affiliates’. While for a registration option better than GoDaddy, I found a bunch of suggestions on Hacker News, in this post from 2008. Hacker News is a social bookmarking site targeted at tech startup entrepreneurs. Its users tend to be technically proficient, and it has an extremely high signal-to-noise ratio in its comments.
To create this table, I simply read through the comments and added each recommended registrar. The ‘upvotes’ column represents the tally of upvotes received by comments which mentioned the registrar in a positive light. The ‘negatives’ column reflects the number of upvotes received by comments about the registrar which were generally negative. This is by no means a precision ranking method, but it should provide a reasonable summary.
‘Privacy’ refers to whether the registrar offers private registration. ICANN rules dictate that a current address be listed, which creates obvious privacy concerns. This can be avoided by (technically) legally transferring the domain name to a 3rd party, which is referred to as “domain privacy,” “private registration,” or some other, proprietary term.
The pricing column data are correct, to the best of my knowledge, as of March, 2011.
Update September 7, 2011: This HN comment indicates that Name.com has some evil in their Registration Agreement. They automatically park your new domain, serve up their own ads, but make you legally responsible for the content of those ads.
| Name | Upvotes | Negatives | Base Cost | Privacy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EasyDNS | 24 | 0 | $19 / yr | ? (spam guard is mentioned) |
| NearlyFreeSpeech.NET | 12 | 0 | $8.99 / yr | $0.01 / day (approx $3.65 per year) (plus possible document/voicemail forwarding fees, normally don't apply) "RespectMyPrivacy" |
| Dynadot | 11 | 1 | $9.75 / yr | $2 / yr |
| Namecheap | 35 | 6 | $10.16 / yr (price varies by TLD) | $2.88 / yr "WhoisGuard" |
| 1&1 | 14 | 4 (sort of) | $8.99 / yr | Free? |
| Google (sort of) | 5 | 0 | $10 / yr | No? |
| DynDNS | 3 | 0 | $15 / yr | $9.95 / yr ("Secret Registration") |
| Gandi | 6 | 0 | $15 / yr | Free |
| DirectNIC | 4 | 4 | $15 / yr | $5 / yr ("directPrivacy") |
| Joker | 6 | 0 | $12.80 / yr | No? |
| Name.com (also Domainsite.com) | 3 | 1 | $9.99 / yr | Free? |
| Register 4 Less | 1 | 0 | ? | ? |
| Yahoo! Domains | 4 | 0 | $9.95 / yr | $9.00 / yr |
| Netfirms | 1 | 0 | $7.99 / yr | Free |
| Domain Monger | 1 | 0 | $17 | ? |
| DreamHost | 11 | 1 | ? Included in hosting plan? | Free |
| GoDaddy (aka Domains By Proxy) | 7 | 2 here, here | $11.99 / yr | $9.99 / yr |
Notes
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The complaint against NameCheap is that it was an eNom reseller, and eNom has a reputation for handing over domains. As this forum post mentions, NameCheap has been an ICANN accredited registrar since December 2007, so presumably the complaints about NameCheap are no longer valid.
