Hi,

I was wondering if anyone could provide suggestions on a best registrar for domain names? To me, "best" and cheapest are not the same thing.

My current registrar has OK service, but has locked the domains and did not respond to an email about how-to unlock. On webhostingtalk forums, this has been noted by other users of that service. The locking of the domain makes it difficult to transfer away.

I also did a search for "best registrar" on WHT forums and the suggestions run more along the cheapest registrar ($8 and below), not the "best".

I am looking for ability to manage dns and have URL forwarding. Email forwarding might be useful. Definitely don't need "free" homepages or webhosting.

I have a short list of registrars and wondered if there should be any additions or subtractions from this list? Most of these are in the $15/yr range for a .com registration.

registerfly.com
doster.com
pairnic.com
myostrich.net
directnic.com

I appreciate your suggestions and experience.
--
Rob

SW Montana's Online Community
Modular Model Railroading

1coms.com have been good to me over the last 2 years. I have about 8-10 domains with them. Online DNS updating, customizable to your own NameServers, email catching, and more. Not bad price either...

One not to go for, is Register.com. I starting paying their $35/y prices when I first started making sites...but now I realise what an extortion they are, for the services offered

Cheers

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk

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I think almost everybody has been there, done that!

I can recommend http://www.joker.com/.

Ivan
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Iyengar Yoga Resources / GT Plugins

Ivan,

Have you had any troubles transfering away from joker.com? I saw a post on WebHostingTalk that mentioned joker was difficult to transfer domains away from.

After further research, RegisterFly should probably not be included in the short list. I also had a typo in my original list, doster should be dotster.com

Another option someone suggested is to become an enom reseller. I am not sure that would work for me, as I need to transfer away from a troublesome registrar.
--
Rob

SW Montana's Online Community
Modular Model Railroading

You've heard bad thing about Registerfly? I've been with a lot of the various ones (and yes Andy I did the register.com $35 one too once) and I think Registerfly is one of the better ones. At least with me I guess. Lots of functionality and a decent price. I was told once that GoDaddy is the best register and I'm having one heck of a time getting a domain name we bought out of their system. They want to process an invoice for $0.00 and want a credit card. Weird...

Howard J. Brubaker
Wizcom, Ltd

Best company I have found so far, is http://www.1coms.com . $12 domains, and you can pay via CC or PayPal. Nice admin interface, with mail redirects and page forwarding I have a few of my domains with them...whilst the rest of them with Register.com, until the expire

Cheers

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk

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Why don't you apply to become your own tagholder? That's what we did. We were fed up of dodgy registrars so we're now our own tagholder and can just register names ourselves.

- wil

How'd you do that, Wil?

That would certainly be of interest

On a related note, I'm also wondering where someone can get their own IP numbers. What I mean is that web hosts have to get them from somewhere and then they assign them to clients. Can we get our own IPs if we choose to host our sites using a T1, etc.?

Many thanks

------------------------------------------

Theres not really much point in me doing something like that....cos I only have 8 domains Also, that would require me running my own nameserver, right?

Cheers

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk

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They are assigned to you by the company who provides your dedicated line. So yes if you rented a T1/T3 etc then you'd be able to get a block of IP's. You can probably lease a Class C or half a Class C license or more if you needed them.

Becoming a domain registrar is pretty costly. I use bulkregister.com myself - you can buy domains for $10 and also resell them. You have control of all details such as technical/administrative contacts and nameservers. You can register new nameservers too with the click of a button. In effect you are just using Bulkregisters registrar account instead of buying your own.

You may want to check this out:

http://www.icann.org/...rs/accreditation.htm

http://www.icann.org/...ation-financials.htm

Contradictory to what Paul mentioned, it didn't cost us anything to become a domain registry. We registered with Nominet UK so that we can register any .co.uk or .uk domain -- that's all we use for our clients and ourselves. You register a tag so that when you want to register a new domain you just send an automated email and the domain is registered with all your details from your tag instantly. Very neat. You probably have to have to prove you're a company reputable enough to get a credit account (I think they start at 500 for a limited company) and you must get clearing from company's house, but if you're a registered business then that should be no problem.

As for an IP address ask your bandwidth provider, or again, register yourself with RIPE to do all this yourself, although this is a little bit more difficult to prove the case for assigning yourself a new IP address. We've finally managed to get a block for ourselves but that was after going through Telehouse (a neutral bandwidth provider) in London.

Note : this information is based on an UK limited company. I have no idea what it would take to this the other side of the pond.

- wil

 

Yep, that makes you a reseller, not a registrar. Registrars are ICANN approved. Selling through nominet sounds the same as how I do it through bulkregister. I can automate registrations via email and have a control panel to manage every domain I register.

Nope, we have an official ISP tag.

- wil

Nominet is the registrar, you are the reseller. See Nominets FAQ:



That doesn't make you a registrar. To become a registrar you need to be approved by ICANN and have to prove you have at least $70,000 capital. All the details you need are provided at ICANN.org

Btw, I think you mean IPS

IPS?

- wil

OK. I get how we're getting muddled up with terminology here.

At the end of the day, we won't have to go to some random website to register our domain names and wonder what will happen to them.

- wil

Yeah, Internet Protocol Service.


I'm not muddled :)

 I'll put in a plug for the French registrar gandi.net. I have close to 100 domains registered with them. The advantages are:

• They're cheap - 12 Euros/year


• They've got an excellent contract, acknowledging up front that you're the owner of the domain, and you can do anything you want with it; they have no rights in it.


• They've got good web-based domain management tools.


• In addition to the usual url- and email-redirections, they offer a complete custom DNS service, free! If you host your own domains, as I do, on a dedicated DSL connection, you can use their DNS servers instead of having to set up your own or pay somebody like EasyDNS.

I've been working with GANDI for several years now; their service has been excellent, and the few times I've needed help, they've responded quickly and in English. My only complaint is that their servers are occasionally slow, early in the morning EST.

Richard