I didn't think Moniker's last interface could get much worse, since it was so non-standard in design. But I was wrong. The new interface uses more design standards, but the thing doesn't even have basic functions like manual renewals or the ability to see domains that expired a day ago so you can renew those. It is literally the worst thing ever. Worst than NetSol. Combined with the Moniker's famously slow customer service, it's an abomination.
Even though I still have around 500 names in there, I've never actually registered a name with Moniker. The only reason I use them is because I use Snapnames, and that's where many names go. Compared to many of the alternatives that catch for Snapnames, Moniker itself was actually preferable.
My favorite registrar the past few years was Enom, until recently. They're literally a couple blocks up the street from me in Kirkland, and sometimes it's nice doing business with people you can hold accountable in person. However, that said, they seem to have let most of their smarter people go the past few months after they were purchased by Demand Media.
Now Enom can't seem to get anything right. They won't send domain verification emails many times. (and the email admins from Rackspace say it's definitely on Enom's end) Their previously good email forwarding often just doesn't work now.
I lost tons of good .guru names because Enom's system system would pretend to registrar them (and I had to dump in thousands of non refundable dollars into my account before even tring to buy them), but they wouldn't actually go through. So many damn things are just left broken. Worse, the now fake tech people (they used to have quite a few brilliant ones) act like anything I dare mention to them is MY fault, like I'm some big born yesterday dummy, when their system being broken is clearly broken due to their own incompetence. The worst part of Enom going down the pooper is that I'm finding is that there's no easy way to transfer somewhere else in bulk. It's tedious to unlock domains and request auth codes, especially in any kind of bulk. Ugh.
Inforg, I'm shocked to see that you'd talk about abusive relationships and don't lump GoDaddy into those. Ha! $20 fees for having the perfectly valid whois info (I swear they may an employee fake complaints just to rack up more fees). Placing 60 day transfer locks on your domains for any little reason they can think of (like applying a new "domain profile"). There's tons of ways for nefarious souls to DDOS you with GoDaddy, and GoDaddy will charge you for the privilege -- something I've honestly never had a problem with with any other registrar. Recently they stole a bunch of my best .guru registrations I put through at $39. Claimed they didn't go through, but this was only when the name was great and it would benefit them. Corrupt people. Bad. I hope them treat you better than they do me, but I don't like their little games in general and I could probably sue them for what they did this year.
NameSilo is the registrar I've been carefully evaluating the past few months. I initially tried them when Enom started acting wonky, not expecting them to be any good... but man, they're great. That said, I don't expect them to STAY good forever -- all companies seem to go through bad periods.
For however long it lasts, right now... NameSilo has a very plain looking but VERY functional interface for mass domaining. Free privacy (but not as good as NameCheap if you want to generate new records daily to mess up DomainTools a bit). The support is INSANELY fast, and open to many good ideas. I've asked for features that they then went to implement within a week, much to my surprise. One of the cheapest registrars out there, which why I avoided them for years, but I didn't understand that they were trying to be disruptive. I'm guessing that sometime down the line they'll have to rate jack a bit to keep their service level up.
This is the company, right now, that seems to be trying hard to make a quality, low nonsense product. Eventually they may get lazy, sure, but this is a golden time for NameSilo, I'd say.
A huge benefit to NameSilo, too, is that you can export all your names with auth code via CSV, so if you need to make mass exodus outta there, you can. I'm having a hell of a time with all the steps I need to take to unlock and obtain auth codes for Enom, now that I don't trust them anymore. Of course this is now an issue with Moniker, too. At least with Moniker's weird old interface you could do mass auth code requests with a simultaneous unlock. Sure, they wouldn't always actually do the unlock.. but at least you could get 80% - 95% of our domains out with relative ease. And the remaining 5 to 20% would eventually get unlocked after months of sending them tickets. Now, sadly, it's even worse than that.
