I have a website name, however I have not chosen my hosting company yet. I would like to register the name, while I am still researching hosting companies. Can anyone tell me a good place to register my website? I am looking for a company with the following criteria.
No hidden fees.
Pays the registry for the number of years I ordered upfront.
Gives direct unfettered access to my Whois record, registrar locks, auth codes.
I Control over DNS settings, I.e hostname records, mail exchangers, and name servers.
Offers free Whois email privacy service and will never sell data to a third party.
Doesn’t monetize domain.
Never front runs prospective domain searchers.
Good customer service (answers the phone).
10 years + experience selling DNS services.
Have you checked Namecheap out? We don’t register domains with them, cause we have our own reseller accounts from some other registrars, but usually I hear good things about them. Some other can mention to Godaddy, one of the biggest registrars, but my experience with Godaddy was not very positive.
I prefer easydns.com, they are not the cheapest, however their DNS services combined with the domain registration rock! It is very easy to manage multiple accounts. Their DNS servers are top notch, and the rare time you need to call to speak with someone, their tech support is awesome (English only). I do not work for them or make any money from them, I just have used them for years for my domains. I’ve periodically tried other registration companies and never found as good of a service. As an added benefit they don’t spam you with new offers.
Of note for you PHP aficionados PHP uses easydns.com for their dns and domain management.
Many people seem to have negative things to say about Godaddy. My opinion of them is great. I always use them for my domains and hosting. They may not match all the criteria you explain but would be my first choice.
Their reputation as a registrar is quite good but worse than abysmal as a host. Just the same, I’d never use the same company to host and act as my registrar as that’s only begging to have problems. A word to the wise should be sufficient on that score (and has been spoken many times in this forum).
Everyone has given you suggestions already on which registrar to go with.
I will go one step further and say if you are satisfied with the registrar, you mind as well check out their hosting services as well.
Having the bill for both domain and hosting on one statement is a solid organized plan of attack.
Au contraire! Having all your eggs in one basket is dangerous in the web registration & hosting world as it is in real life. Too many times, having a registrar attempt to be a host (e.g., GoDaddy) or visa versa (typical of many hosts) is an invitation to disaster. Look at the HostOnce thread and read some of the problems there and you’ll be a believer that you NEVER want to use a host/registrar combination.
This argument of not having your hosting with your registrar derived from the advice of not having your domains with your website as before, terms of service would often mean you had to pay a pretty penny to transfer your domain, if you were even able to transfer it. Now days, with ICANNs new rules, transfer are fairly easy, so that’s not much of a rule.
Getting ICANN off it’s dead @$$ can be a major problem which is best avoided by sticking to the old adage/advice. Just look through the other posts here to see what problems others have had (e.g., HostOnce). You can lose one (registrar or host) and recover fairly quickly but you just can’t afford to lose both.
You can never lose a registrar and recover…and the ICANN transfer process is automated - and fairly well regulated. HostOnce falls under my “don’t leave your domain with your host, but it’s not bad to have your hosting with your domain registrar.”
(*Experience coming from 11 years of ownership and administration of ICANN accredited domain registrars and hosting companies)
You know, I’ve had that similar suspicion in the past that certain domain registrars were looking at the available domains searched for on their sites and would register ones they thought were good before the prospective customer could decide which one to register. That’s why several years ago I started using InterNIC to do my available domain name searches so no crooked domain registrar could register an available domain name before I decided on it.
InterNIC is run by ICANN.
As for domain name registrars, I have used and recommend both Namecheap and GKG.net.
I would not suggest you to use a domain registrar as a web hosting provider (I saw some of the guy have said you do not put all the eggs in the same basket). Just register a domain with any ICANN accredited company and go find a good web hosting company that meets your criteria. This will give you more options.
Meanwhile putting all the eggs in the same basket is not good in some cases, if you are working with a good vendor, there is no issue at all for registering domains with your hosting provider. In fact, it saves time a bit when you need to work with one vendor only, instead of multiple ones. Each story always has two sides.
godaddy is the best solution for everything but their costs are expensive. ipage.com and hostgator are also offering really good offers with less money
If you’re going to hype GoDaddy, provide some specifics because they’re reputed to have HORRIBLE web hosting (although good as a registrar). There have simply been too many members reciting problem after problem with GoDaddy for you to make that blanket statement.
