OT: Domain Registrars

[Philip J. Koenig]

On 26 May 2002, at 13:01, Ronnie Gauthier boldly uttered: 

> Yes, I looked and saw that. Seems liks an average price and just 
> marketing strategy. So whats the point, that you buy the cheapest you 
> can get? I use them because they answer their phones. The domains 
> under my control are all business' and I dont tollerate registration 
> or transfer problems. It is too easy for a customer to switch 
> elsewhere now days and most will blame me and also take their hosting 
> elswhere at the same time. They dont care who is at fault only that 
> their site is unreachable.
> 
> On Sunday 26 May 2002 08:01, David Aikema wrote:
> > On May 25, 2002 07:16 pm, Ronnie Gauthier wrote:
> > > buydomains.com
> > > As the domains under my control come due I have been transfering
> > > over to these guys for the past 1 1/2 years without any problems.
> > > They are
> >
> > I just took a quick peek at these guys and noticed that they were
> > offering a free web hosting service so I decided to see what
> > exactly the catch was.  It turned out in order to receive that they
> > would require that you spend the great value price of $15/month for
> > 4 (pop3) email accounts.  That sounds ridiculously high!  It's more
> > than I pay for hosting either of my domains and I get loads more
> > included in the packages.
> >
> > I personally use Namecheap (www.namecheap.com) for my domains. 
> > Nice and cheap, and while they don't offer phone support their
> > prices are much lower than buydomains.com and email support is
> > generally very responsive.
> >
> > David aikema


The "state of the domain" report doesn't even list namecheap or 
buydomains or their parent companies in their Q1 2002 report. (the 
smallest registrars listed have less than 12 domains registered)  
Unless they're just reselling someone else's service (most commonly 
Tucows), this is ominous.  Namecheap doesn't even run their own DNS 
servers.

I get nervous about tiny domain registrars because, among other 
things, what happens if they go out of business?  Also lots of 
registrars have nasty policies and terms which do things like give 
them the right to sell your info or spam you (register.com, dotster) 
or charge outrageous fees to transfer to another registrar or update 
registrant info (godaddy), and so on.  Some registrars have a history 
of "domain slamming" via telemarketing etc. (ie alldomains.com)  Many 
registrars also "automatically renew" and charge your credit card for 
all domains whether you want to or not.  Always read the fine print.

I have settled on domaindiscover.com because they do an excellent and 
reliable job, aren't likely to be going away anytime soon (#14 on the 
State of the Domain report and rising, they also have a longstanding 
solid ISP/webhosting business - tierranet.com), 24x7 *excellent* 
phone service, uncluttered website and secure web-based forms to make 
changes to domains (pretty cool to see updated whois info on a domain 
10 seconds after you click the "OK" button), never had any whois 
server problems (like I periodically see with companies like Tucows 
and Register.com), and excellent policies which among other things 
don't usurp your domain rights, or subject you to spamming.

They aren't one of the cheaper registrars, but reliability and 
service are far more important to me and my clients than a few 
dollars a year in fees.

For individuals who just want to play around with a domain for 
personal use and it's not critical to them (but price is), the world 
is full of cheap registrars.  If I were to go with one of those who 
is just reselling some other service, I might be inclined to suggest 
a Tucows reseller if only because if they go under, at least Tucows 
will probably take them over and re-assign them to another Tucows 
reseller with similiar terms/conditions and your domain records are 
still held in the same database.

Phil


--
Philip J. Koenig                                       pjklist at ekahuna.com
Electric Kahuna Systems -- Computers & Communications for the New Millenium