The quest to find the best registrar!!

[cyphix]

Ok... a recent thread sparked this. Please document which regsitrars you have used & any experiences you have had with them, good or bad & we'll see how each one comes out looking.

Here are the ones I have used:

enom

Good functionality, decent support, nice features, good prices.

However, sometimes if I register a domain there it takes hours for it to get registered. Also, for the life of me I cannot figure out how to register a domain without using the "list wizard". I just use that to register 1 or more domains now.

dotmaniac

I used this registrar before I entered the domain reselling world, they overtook another registrar or something, tucows reseller. Don't know a whole lot about them really... they seem ok, but not reseller prices.

directnic

Nice registrar & everything, but not a lot of features. No pushing mehanism which really hurts them since if you wanna sell a name you have to transfer to a different registrar rather than push to another persons account.

There prices are also too high for resellers. Hear they are very secure tho.

godaddy

I have several names there... good prices & features. However, hand regging names there is a pain, have to go through TONS of crappola to reg the name & also had MANY problems when I finally reached the checkout page of them declining my CC becasue their script kept changing my state to "washington" when I enetered a province below the state field instead... they are not very "international" friendly..... their support didn't really help with this matter either.

Other than that they are generally ok & answer support emails in decent time.

registerfly

Not a lot of experience, but I have one or two names there. Support is lacking - especially the live support.

I had one name there I sold & I pushed it out & it still showed in my account even tho I told them to take it out.

When you have a name for renewal over there they email you EVERY DAY until the name goes on hold... yes, they emailed me this about the name I pushed to someone else.

Other than that... their interface is too slow & annoying.

dotster

Decent interface, but could be improved.. I mean, how are the names sorted exactly? Don't seem to be alphbetically.. I have to look through my whole damm list to find a name I am looking for.

Prices are too high & one big gripe, they charge for LOCKING!! I mean, who charges for that nowadays?

They also email you for every domain you have when they send out the yearly? notices to make sure you whois info is correct.. isn't one per account enough?? I don't need 75.

totalregistrations

Got a snap through them, not much experience.

directi

Ditto.

nominate.net

Terrible. Interface is bad & confusing & you cannot change the ownership info without getting the former owner to fax something through or something.

namebay

Got a snap through them, not a lot of experience, but their interface could
use some improving.

I regged a name there yesterday & used their support.... their support is VERY good from what I can tell. Very friendly & explains things well. No cookie cutter responses which I value a lot.

domainname

Got a snap through them, not much experience.

domaindiscount24.net

Have some snaps through them. Interface could be improved slightly, had some troubles pushing a names there once, which ended up being because I got confused because of the interface & didn't do something correctly.

Support is pretty good however. Quick responses.

1dni

Got a snap through them, not much experience.

rackshack.net / ev1servers.net

Not much experience.

namecheap

Ditto.

namescout

Ditto.

fabulous

Ditto.

catalog

Not much experience there but wouldn't want to get any more snaps there after my short experience with them.

Their support is very lacking, it took 3 reqeusts to support to get a problem fixed with the nameservers.... they even closed the first ticket without even fixing the problem or respoding to me. Opened a new one which was greeted with "getting to this now" & wasn't done until I updated the ticket again asking what the hold up was 1+ days later.

4domains

Got a snap through them, not much experience.

domainstobeseen

Got a snap through them, not much experience.

Just from my personal experience I choose enom as my favorite registrar... however I know others have had problems with them so I don't want to wait for those problems to happen to me until I move my domains elsewhere.

Score:

enom: 1

 

[Anthony Ng]

My take is that you don't really need to find the "best" (which would be a really difficult "quest"), just stay away from the "worst".

 

[websitedeveloper]

self edit

 

[cyphix]

Geez.... I think you should definately do a chargeback if you had set your names off of auto-renewal & didn't request any names to be renewed out of RGP @ $35/domain.

You could also cancel your CC & get a new one so they no longer have the number.

 

[cyphix]

Oh.. how could I forget..

Network Solutions

They were of course my first registrar I used. They pissed me off & were being a royal pain in the ass when I had to get some account information to gain access to my account again.. I faxed them information as requested & put a special note on the fax explaining something, but noooo.... they chose to be asses, so thats when I found another registrar & transferred out of there to the registrar that got taken over by dotmaniac.

Never used them since.

 

[dbird]

I just tried hostway, and the dns updates took a long time, over three days. So I plan to avoid them in the future.

 

[OnSpec]

Still a big fan of Moniker/DomainSystems.

* Phones answered by real people (remember the good ol' days?)

* Easy to use interface, domain mangement, renewals, changes, pushes, reporting.

* Owner is very "hands-on"

Nothing but kudos at this point.


Edit: spelling

 

[91corvette]

I use Dnbuy. There are actually 2 sites (www.dnbuy.com and www.dnbuy.net). There is a new site that will be combining both of these in the future that is going to be at www.dnbuy.com. Although i have never used registerfly, from what many people say they are similar.

 

[theparrot]

I have had bad luck with Hostway as well.

As for register.com, I had to update something the other day over a slow celluar phone link to the net, and really noticed how many ads they had on the admin pages, and they are not cheap, so they should not need to try and make money that way on functional pages.

So far I like enom. Could not reach anyone at RegistryFly, and their replication page was broken, which was a blessing in disguise since it allowed me to find enom.

NetSol is ok, but pricey. I had decent luck with Joker, but these days they are more expensive at $12 then others.