Web Hosting Reviews, Tutorials & News

There’s quite a discrepancy between the cost of a domain and its importance. Control over the domain name is the key to a web site and all the bookmarks, feed readers and search engine rankings it might have. You can back up your content and host it elsewhere should you ever loose your domain, but you cannot easily regain your traffic.

At the time when you’re registering a new domain it’s not worth more than the $7-10 that you’ve spent for the registration fee. But 5 years later it might be your main source of income, and losing it could be a devastating blow. That’s why choosing the right domain name registrar is so important, and why it shouldn’t matter whether the registration fee is 1 dollar higher at registrar X than at registrar Y.

This is what you should look for in a registrar:

• Shouldn’t have a track record of taking away/down people’s domain because someone sent some random complaint through email. I am not saying that the registrar should cover a criminals back, but there have been cases where registrars took down domains for pathetic reasons. Actually, a registrar should not take down anything without a court order or a DMCA notice - EVER. Any registrar that goes beyond the absolute must should be avoided at any cost. The last thing you want is a trigger happy registrar. Google for “[name-of-registrar] shut down” and similar to check up on the trigger happiness of a registrar.
• Live updates of DNS settings. Not a daily update to save server costs or because they aren’t capable enough to handle live DNS updates. This might not be a big issue for everyone, and I am assuming that you’re going to use the registrar’s DNS service which not everyone is going to do (but which I recommend, see below to be explained in another post).
• No track record of holding customer domains hostage once they try to move their domain to another registrar. As with many subscription based services be it on- or offline, registrars too will show their true face once you dare to try leaving them. Again, google your registrar with the appropriate search queries.
• A control panel that doesn’t take an hour to load and one that isn’t redundant or confusing.

Enom

Had a ton of domains with them. They never harrassed me with anything. That’s a good thing. Control panel o.k. but could be leaner. Loads like 500 Kilobyte of Javascript with every page load.

Moniker

Claims to be very secure regarding domain hijacking, and I have not heard otherwise. They might be a good choice for valuable domains. Unfortunately their DNS doesn’t propagate immediately which is a bit of a turn off for someone who wants to actually use the included DNS service. The control panel is quite bad. I recommend moniker for people who don’t change stuff on their domains every other day. They have some unique features, i.e you can register domains for a short while to check out wheter they have any traffic, and then give them back, and you’ll get your money BACK (minus the ICANN fee of 20 cents). Moniker has phone support during business hours but I cannot attest to the availability of that as I never needed that. Once you need SUPPORT at a registrar (why would you need support) something’s already gone wrong. But having the possibility of phone support doesn’t hurt, of course.

Namecheap

“Just” a reseller of Enom as people repeatedly say, and it’s true but Enom is not the worst registrar to be a reseller of, and besides that, the control panel of Namecheap ROCKS. If you want to use their DNS service, and you are rather impatient when you need another subdomain, then they’re pretty good. The control panel is lightening fast and well organized and the DNS is live as in LIVE.

So these are the 3 registrars I recommend: Namecheap, Moniker, Enom. If you have several domains, spread them among these registrars so you’ll never depend on a single company. (The same applies to web hosting providers).

Whatever registrar you end up with, be cautious when you find something weird or uncommon. There’s no reason to let you wade through 3 pages of promotional “offers” each time you want to register a domain, or to extremely hide the links for transferring domains out. Do absolutely not care about the domain price (it should be below $15 though) and research your prospective registrar in Google first. See how seemingly big and established registrars can in fact be really “evil” by searching for ”registerfly”.