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So, about 9 years and 10 months ago, I renewed my main .com domain with Network Solutions for what seemed, at the time, to be a reasonable price - something like $200 for 10 years, if I recall correctly. A couple of years earlier, GoDaddy et. al. burst onto the (well, at least my) scene, with revolutionary low prices, etc. - not really, but they did put some competition into the industry, and maybe that's what kept NS's prices lower.
Today, NS wants $320+ to renew for 10 years, they seem to be no-option bundling their ID shield product in with the registration cost - which, maybe 20 years ago, I might have appreciated. But, since that old name and address have been published from here to kingdom come for the last 20 years, I don't actually want a private registration anymore.
Any opinions on domain registrars? Have any of them every given any normal customers any problems? NS has been "pay and forget" for 20 years now, but they're up for renewal in 2 months, and I'm wondering if I should be shopping for somebody cheaper.
[soylentnews is registered with gandi.net and as far as I know, we have had no issues with them. They have over 700 TLDs (Top Level Domains) available. If you have fewer than 45 domains to register, their "A" rates apply. This comes with: 2 mailboxes (3GB Storage; unlimited e-mail forwarding and aliases) and a free 1-year Standard SSL certificate, data privacy (100% GDPR-compliant hidden email address for whois), live DNS management, and unlimited support.
Current prices:
.org Creation: $14.95, Transfer: $14.20, Renewal: $17.20
.com Creation: $15.50, Transfer: $12.50, Renewal: $15.50
--martyb]
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday May 24 2019, @08:30AM (22 children)
I figure they'll be around, and they tend to at least try to make good choices across the board.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Friday May 24 2019, @08:43AM (11 children)
Just wondering, if one disagrees with the practices of an organisation, is a boycott a reasonable approach. So, for example, if one disagrees with Google's pervasive culture of surveillance, is it then morally sound to purchase a product from them in another sphere? Is it morally sound to deselect that organisation?
From a legal perspective, I believe that boycott is not an acceptable practice (for example when putting a large contract out for tender).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 24 2019, @09:20AM (7 children)
Uhhh... what? How's boycott not legal?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by realDonaldTrump on Friday May 24 2019, @11:32AM (1 child)
I hired Nikki Haley -- great looker, great Deal Maker, and very smart cookie -- to be my United Nations lady. She did a tremendous job with United Nation. Where she stood up to the bias against Israel.
And Nikki, before she came to work for me, was the Governor of SC. And she was their first woman Governor. She signed the very special law that says, you can't boycott Israel. Known as the BDS. Sounds dirty, sounds like something you do in a dungeon, right? It's not that -- don't we wish it was that? Boycott Divestment & Sanctions. Nice way of saying, anti-Semitic. She passed a law against the horrible anti-Semitic movement. Very strong move against the boycotters. Thank you, Nikki!!!
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by realDonaldTrump on Friday May 24 2019, @06:18PM
(cont) By the way, SC law against boycotters passed UNANIMOUSLY. Very bipartisan!!!!
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday May 24 2019, @12:14PM (4 children)
I beleive that if one issues a large contract, laws exist regarding the tender process. If one cannot show due process then one may be open to civil proceedings. IANAL. For small stuff this isn't necessary (I can't remember where the threshold is in EU, I think it is few 1000 euros or so). I realise legal =/= moral, and I realise that big contract =/= small purchase but there is some correlation.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday May 24 2019, @08:32PM (3 children)
South Carolina, they have a magnificent law. Signed by Nikki Haley( former employee of mine). And that one makes it ILLEGAL to do business with folks that boycott "based on race, color, religion, gender or national origin." Including Jewish or Israeli. It's known as FAIRNESS!!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 24 2019, @09:07PM (2 children)
So a legally mandated boycott of bigots... neat!
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday May 25 2019, @05:52AM (1 child)
Yes, a law making it illegal to boycott bigots. One of the things that brought down the bigots that were running S. Africa was boycotts. This law is designed to prevent stopping segregation in the future as certain countries scream that they have a religious duty to be bigots and we're bigots for not agreeing with their politics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @08:33PM
yeah, and how'd that turn out?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 24 2019, @12:06PM (2 children)
This type of broad boycott initiative is strongly biased against large, multi-faceted companies. Sure, your little vendor hasn't done anything heinous to the Nepalese tundra mouse, yet, simply because they don't have enough of a footprint to make such compromises in the larger world where there is a choice between bringing reliable internet service to the Dalai Lama and the questionable effects of high energy microwave transmissions across the native range of the Nepalese tundra mouse.
When Deepwater Horizon blew, a lot of people boycotted BP, and I don't disagree with them for doing so. I do question the overall effectiveness of such a boycott at bringing about the desired changes in the industry. For a time, in Florida at least, all it really meant was that BP branded gas stations had to sell for $0.10 less per gallon to maintain their customer volume, and in the longer term, a lot of BP branded gas stations were simply rebranded. So, I guess the gas station rebranding vendors benefited...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday May 24 2019, @12:24PM
> This type of broad boycott initiative is strongly biased against large, multi-faceted companies.
True. However
1. such companies have so much else going for them that the occasional anti-megacorp bias doesn't hurt.
2. Sale of pervasive surveillance intelligence is Google's business model. If torturing mice was the main business model of "Nepalese Acme corp", it would probably be okay to boycott them too.
I guess the mice are powering the microwave transmitters in tiny little wheels. Yoga powers so they never tire.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday May 24 2019, @08:33PM
Considering Internet access is a universal mammalian right, squeak for yourself, human -- my connectivity is *horrible* out near Denali. We have to go all the way into the monastery just to check our mouseMail.
-- Posted from my friend's mouseDroid
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 24 2019, @12:14PM (9 children)
$12/year for .com at Google, certainly beats $30+ from Network Solutions. I'll walk the process and see if they want fingerprints, blood samples, etc. One of the processes I was going through at Network Solutions wanted images of two utility bills, or other proof of identity and address - I can't imagine that everyone is doing this now?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday May 24 2019, @12:31PM (2 children)
At those levels, for just one domain, the price isn't the issue. What's your time worth? Lot more than minimum wage, perhaps $100/hour? Two hours of your time, that's the price difference between 10 years of Google or NS.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 24 2019, @01:43PM
That was the thinking that got me on 10 more years of NS in 2009... at this point, it's more of a principle question than just what this one domain costs. I might be registering a second domain, some day, if I can get enough of that valuable time to do anything with some ideas I have.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by number11 on Friday May 24 2019, @04:14PM
NS was the first vendor I used. They jagged around and played games, and then overcharged me. Slime.
GoDaddy was next. But their web interface sucks big time (or at least did when I was using them), and they were continually trying to upsell me.
NameCheap is nice and easy, and the only interaction with them is the email saying it's time to renew. Plus, they donate money to the fights for a better internet.
(Score: 4, Informative) by bryan on Friday May 24 2019, @05:22PM (2 children)
In my experience, Network Solutions is one of the hardest companies to transfer away from. Two months is probably not enough time.
I recently (this year) was involved with transferring around 20 domains from 4 different registrars (GoDaddy, Register.com, NameBargain, NetworkSolutions) to a new registrar (EasyDNS.) This was a company standardization thing - they wanted all their domains in their enterprise level EasyDNS account. While most domains (surprisingly, even GoDaddy) transferred without incident and where complete within a week or two, NetworkSolutions had some serious hurdles and dragged their feet for months. While all the other registrars used modern and largely automated tools, NetworkSolutions still uses Phone/Fax/Postal and lots of humans to do everything manually.
(Score: 2) by bryan on Friday May 24 2019, @05:25PM (1 child)
P.S. I also recommend Gandi [gandi.net].
"No bullshit" is literally their slogan.
(Score: 1) by sqrt(-1) on Saturday May 25 2019, @03:51AM
+1. Gandi is awesome, a long time OSS friendly entity. And along with the domain registration (which is not THE lowest pricing you will find) you get a generous email hosting plan.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday May 24 2019, @10:48PM (1 child)
> [Google] and see if they want fingerprints, blood samples, etc.
They don't need ID. They already know you.
Everything about you.
Everything.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday May 25 2019, @02:24AM
I'm pretty sure NS just has that "send us images of your utility bills" thing to help them to sell the privacy option, which is a big part of why I'm thinking it's time to dump 'em.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @11:11PM
i've had no such bullshit at namesilo.com
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 24 2019, @09:17AM (1 child)
http://www.registrationtek.com/ [registrationtek.com]
$15.00 per year, or just $13.00 per year for 5 or more years. I've had no problems for 10 years with them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 24 2019, @09:36AM
Also... this is a barebones registration service. You have to host your website on your own server or some online service. They have email forwarding with spam blocks included. They are an icann certified registrar.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 24 2019, @09:39AM (3 children)
Gandi used to be cheap years ago when their website wasn't so "pretty".
(Score: 3, Informative) by j-beda on Friday May 24 2019, @12:47PM
We have been happily using NameCheap for a few years - https://namecheap.pxf.io/c/483253/386170/5618 [namecheap.pxf.io]
but the prices you quote for NS are not TOO unreasonable, and if you are content with their service, it might be easier to just renew for another decade and save your time. How much is your time worth?
(Score: 2) by Bill Dimm on Friday May 24 2019, @07:18PM
I've been using NameCheap for several years and it's been working fine for me.
(Score: 1) by optotronic on Saturday May 25 2019, @01:52AM
I've been using NameCheap for ~3 years now for most of my domains. The price is decent, but I often have trouble getting their website to do what I want. As I recall I was unable to renew multiple domains in the same transaction. Also, some domain settings didn't work as explained in online help.
(Score: 1) by jman on Friday May 24 2019, @09:41AM (3 children)
NetSol charged $35/year 25 years ago. Competition, what competition? ;)
Over the years have used NetSol, 1&1, Moniker, some others. Finally settled on name.com, and have been with them about five years now.
Have had little trouble with them, and you can get an actual human on the phone if there are issues (think they're based in Colorado).
Currently have around 100 domains with them, mostly for other folks. Their rates are reasonable. org and com are currently about $13/yr. Got a couple of G's new 'dev' names for myself for around $17/yr. Have heard since the influx of new TLD's that rates may be going up for all registrars (thanks, ICANN), but no hard data on that possibility.
I don't host with them (Linode for that, run my own DNS, Exim, etc.), but they offer all that stuff, too.
Good luck with your search!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 24 2019, @12:19PM (2 children)
I've been hosting with myhosting.com in Canada for 20+ years, they've been easy enough, though not always the cheapest, and they have sort of jacked up my plan to $15 per month when it could be less if I'd jump some hoops with them.
Myhosting.com just changed their nameserver names, which is what kicked this whole thing off.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by jman on Friday May 24 2019, @06:55PM (1 child)
You must be on a shared server then. Can't remember the name of the Canadian firm I used around 2000 but they were $75/mo for business. Yikes!
Tried MidPhase, Hostgator (both shared, so if someone else on your box gets super busy, you suffer), eventually settled on Linode. Been with them about ten years now. Depending on your needs, their plans start at $5/mo. They recently converted to all metered billing, but my always-on 24/7/365 rate stayed the same. It's some sort of cap on the metered amount.
I believe that with whatever plan you choose, the advertised resources are guaranteed (i.e., VPS, not shared).
They used to do free upgrades, so my plan isn't even listed anymore, but I have 10G of memory running on a Xenon E5-2680 (2.5Ghz), nearly 200G of SSD storage, and a monthly transfer quote of 6TB. It's way more than I need but nice having horsepower & bandwidth to spare just in case a one of the sites should get "busy".
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 24 2019, @07:37PM
Oh, yeah, my site is nothing special, shared server is fine.
I am looking at developing some live connected apps, and there's an amazing amount of stuff out there like CloudAMQP that makes that so much easier than it used to be.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 24 2019, @09:54AM
baremetal.com has been good to me over the last 15+ years.
Small firm, run in BC, Canada... website works fine, but not all glitz and glamour. Also handles glue records just fine (surprisingly, registrars sometimes still have issues with them...)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by datapharmer on Friday May 24 2019, @11:47AM (1 child)
If price is your only motivator cloudflare.com sells domain registration at cost and will extend any remaining time on your renewal (instead of resetting it like some providers do). Typally $7-$10 depending on TLD. I'm not happy about their "flexible ssl" and I'm not convinced they aren't a front for the NSA, but with any large provider they are probably working for, with or compromised by the government already and their registrar service seems painless enough so far. *shrugs*
(Score: 2) by datapharmer on Friday May 24 2019, @11:55AM
Oh, and I should say you must use their nameservers but aren't bound to use their other proxy services, etc., so consider if that is a non-starter for you. If you aren't hosting your own nameservers already it is probably fine - their nameservers have been pretty solid, but I wouldn't put anything on them that was going to jeopardize someone's personal security if your site is utilized for a geo-politically controversial purpose.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 24 2019, @12:52PM
They're not just cheap - although that's nice - they actually know what they're doing.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 24 2019, @01:14PM
I've been with Register4Less.com since I stumbled on them so long ago I don't even know how long I've had the domain anymore. They have always had excellent customer service (the 2 times I've needed it in all those years). Their prices remain competitive. The price includes self-managed DNS (but it's not mandatory), a simple e-mail forwarding service (again not mandatory), and the option for hiding your registration details (also not mandatory). Despite all that, their prices are competitive with registrars that charge extra for such services.
Every few years I look at other options. I haven't left yet.
(Score: 1) by Quickkeen on Friday May 24 2019, @01:32PM
I use gkg.net for my domains. Transfer of domains in for over 5year is about $8.85 per yer. Normal domain registering is $10.25 a year (when going over 5 years).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 24 2019, @02:25PM
easyDNS
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 24 2019, @04:10PM (1 child)
Now that godaddy is censoring domains randomly(You have 24 hours to transfer..) apparently you need to worry about who they will come for next.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday May 24 2019, @04:45PM
Yeah, that really is THE thing now with all network services. Price isn't that important once reliability and political stability have reared their head. The early days of the Internet were a idyllic utopia where we only had to worry about technical issues. Now the tech is mostly a solved problem and politics is everywhere. So yeah, +1 for Epik and their firm policy of just being in the business of exchanging money for a service.
Network Solutions isn't banhammering yet, but they don't support DNSSEC and look increasingly uninterested in ever getting around to it. Who knows, they might not even have the technical chops to do much of any upgrading of services at this late stage, they are old, flush with money and almost certainly fully SJW converged because of that. No details on Network Solutions LLC but it is a wholly owned subsidiary of web.com and it looks fully converged.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 24 2019, @06:27PM
gandi: https://www.gandi.net/en/domain [gandi.net]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 24 2019, @06:48PM
Namesilo. $8.95, no additional fees. Free privacy.
(Score: 1) by eliphas_levy on Friday May 24 2019, @10:32PM
I use them since 2003 and have no beef or problems, extremely reliable. Great hosting service (and pricing model) too. No unneeded bloated features.
They use publicdomainregistry.com as the real registrar service, at about the real cost, and the .com is $10.34.
Can't think of any downsides if you comply with their (very small) policy.
Look at their ToS and policy here: https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/policies/ [nearlyfreespeech.net]
This is a sigh.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 24 2019, @10:42PM
I know Godaddy does. Probably NS does. Dotster probably does.
I've yet to see one that says they don't, or otherwise exclude that they do.
Anyway, if you happen to search and find one that doesn't, please post an article on it. I will been needing a new place to put an authoritative zone in the near future.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday May 24 2019, @11:37PM
How much (if any) of this site's traffic comes from any of the domain registrars? Maybe the ones that have a vested interest in the site staying up would be good partners [deming.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @12:59AM (1 child)
Please, never do business with Network Solutions.
They have a well documented public history of shady business practices that hold your domain hostage until you pay the ransom. Just Google the many practices: domain tasting, locking your domain when you attempt to transfer it out, etc.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday May 25 2019, @03:29AM
Same with GoDaddy. Notorious for holding domains hostage at the slightest excuse. Also the most overloaded shared hosting around.
Me, I've had domains and hosting with 1&1 (Ionos as they now call themselves) since 2003. No longer the cheapest for domains (I think it's $14.99 for .COM and a bit more for others), but lower end for hosting, and what I get for the same money keeps on growing and beats everyone else I've investigated. Haven't annoyed me enough to cause serious shopping for a replacement. Tech support email can be slow to respond, but will be a Real Human with Real Clues, and phone gets you a human too. I'm on on auto-renew... apparently including upgrades, because changes in their plan offerings have twice happened right when I'd decided to upgrade, and were entirely painless (I did nothing, and there it was). DIY control panel for domain management etc. I have about 25 domains, mostly pointed at various directories under my hosting but a couple pointed at other hosts. Private is now default.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by wirelessduck on Sunday May 26 2019, @12:37PM
No Bullshit philosophy: https://www.gandi.net/en/no-bullshit [gandi.net]
Gandi supports non-profit organisations: https://www.gandi.net/en/gandi-supports [gandi.net]
(Score: 1) by lcall on Tuesday May 28 2019, @09:19PM
I have used https://pairdomains.com [pairdomains.com] / https://pair.com [pair.com] for many years for domains & hosting, and found their prices reasonable, helpful documentation, prepackaged various services etc and support etc to be excellent. I just got email from them that I can add DNSSEC to my sites in a few clicks, which I plan to do.