12mo ago

Private and/or cheap places to register a domain

You have 5 seconds to answer 😃

I'm currently using namecheap to buy cheap domains, I know they are not necessarily cheap in long term, but first year + coupons make them almost free

But now I've got some domains I don't want to just use one year, and it gives pretty much a lot of issues with pricing and privacy

So please, people, share services you use, and tell me whether they are private and/or cheap and/or have all those countless generic domains and not just .com .org .net

52 comments

Porkbun is sort of the darling of the self hosting community. I settled on them after doing a huge comparison of prices and features of all the different registrars available to me. Porkbun was by far the best.
- Out of curiosity, why did you use HTTP instead of HTTPS?
  
  Totally unintentional. I'll edit it.

I used to use Google Domains, but then they sold that off to Squarespace.
Now I just use Cloudflare directly lol which also includes their free services, which is quite the value IMO
- which also includes their free services
  Well... their free services remain free regardless of your registrar. Still, I don't really mind supporting them given how useful they have been even in just the free tier.
  
  Yea poorly worded, I meant that the free services would kick in directly rather than having to mess with nameservers and crap like I used to do whenever I bought a domain on Google lmao
- Same

TLD-List is a pretty good resource to compare different registrars for any tld.

Porkbun: probably more private than others.
Cloudflare: less expensive, best in class security, but less privacy obviously

netcup.de
- https://www.netcup.eu/ for those who need an English version :p

For something cheap, my vote goes to name cheap. Their support was actually better than I expected too. For something private njalla is really good. Not sure what's a good mix of both though, maybe CloudFlare? I know you can move your domain to them, so I presume they also let you register directly through them.
- Namecheap is a quality service for sure and I’ve used them myself, but they’re only cheap to buy. They really stick it to you when it’s time to renew.
  
  Not really? Their prices are in line with any other registrar.

Namecheap, Namesilo, and Porkbun are the ones that people around here seem to like.

I mostly use CloudFlare registrar since I'm already using them for my job. They don't have first year promo or anything like that, but they sell all domains at cost price and it integrates nicely with their other services. Sadly it does not support .ca domains yet but it does support lots of TLDs.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters

DNS Domain Name Service/System
HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web
HTTPS HTTP over SSL
IP Internet Protocol
SSL Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption
4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 10 acronyms.
[Thread #465 for this sub, first seen 29th Jan 2024, 21:15] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

Fewer Letters	More Letters
DNS	Domain Name Service/System
HTTP	Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web
HTTPS	HTTP over SSL
IP	Internet Protocol
SSL	Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption

there are lots of cheap domain registrar options but if you're looking for a cheap .com I always go for cloudflare, they also offer .org for pretty cheap and many other options as well. The domains other than the common ones are pretty decently priced as well. I migrated all my domains there last year and it's really simple, integrates with their DNS really well and payment is pretty streamlined.
- Yeah tbh if I’m already going to be using Cloudflare for DNS, might as well use them for their registrar as well. One fewer entity to trust.

Cloudflare
- There’s a vocal handful group of people disliking CloudFlare because of their irrelevant “privacy” concern here — you can absolutely use the registrar without using their CDN features. Also, reality check: with CloudFlare’s market reach, there’s zero chance nothing they do online isn’t already MITM’ed already. Having said that, Cloudflare uses their registrar as loss leader, so they give their wholesale price to end users registering, and as such you’ll have the cheapest price available for the domain extensions they support. You can then just set your DNS without their orange cloud and traffic on your domain aren’t going to flow through their CDN.
  
  So they profit from high-profile commercial users to subsidize the free tier (proxy, tunnels) and cheap DNS. What's wrong with that? It's not like we absolutely need those (proxy is nice but you can use vps, tunnels are also offered by ngrok).

1984.hosting is a cheap and private cloud provider and domain registrar I've used for years with much success

Namesilo

I would stick with namecheap (for now) and pony up for a multi year registration. If in 5 or 10 years they are jacking the price up then you can use another registrars cheap port option to get a discount. I did this recently between godaddy and namecheap. I had one domain left with godaddy that I have owned for over probably a couple of decades at this point and they were seriously jacking the rate up on me, I ported it to namecheap for a massive discount.

With Google domains transferring to Squarespace I'll be transferring my one remaining domain with them to something else soon enough.
I already moved all of my other domains over to a local provider I use for work that has treated me well, but this one last google domain address has my self hosted services on it and I was using some features that I didn't want to have to transfer so I kept it with google. I was using their ddns service too but my IP is now sticky (effectively static but can change in some rare circumstances) and it has only changed once in the last 3 years so I think I'll just manually manage the A records if needed until I either go fully static or use a third party ddns provider. I also use email aliasing to use me@mydomain with gmail.

I use Dreamhost, can't speak to the privacy but the rates are pretty good

123cheapdomains.com

Honestly the best place to register a domain is http://ww

gen.xyz?

Idk about cheapness But I've been using dynadot and it seems like a really good balance of cheapness and quality

Hostinger is pretty cheap I think.

For self hosting, I've purchased .eu domain for ~24€, for 5 years. Later on it will be 11€/year.
I'll get another domain for similar price and for 5 years. :)
Lithuanian service, so I am not going to mention it. :)
EDIT: typo, 11€ per year instead of month
- 11€/month? Do you mean per year?
  
  Ummmm probably, yeah, per year.

asurahosting?

NameCheap.com

https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/
pay for what you use
- They aren't looking to host a website. They are looking for domain registrars
  
  They do that too:
  https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/services/pricing
  
  ha, uh, that is what they do there. maybe go take a look before jumping to conclusions. they also have great privacy costs for those domains

52 comments