Which Domain Registrar Is Your Favorite?

I have only started buying domains a few months back. Before I actually took the big step and signed up for a new domain, I pay attention to the discussions on some webmaster forums. From the discussions there, I realized that everyone has his or her own preferred domain registrars. What’s yours?

The seasoned webmasters would, probably not have a single favorite domain registrar. It is more likely for them to have multiple accounts with different domain registrars, as this would be convenient for sellers to push domains to their accounts. By buying and selling domains registered through different registrars, they actually get to know about them better, their quality of their services, their reliability and efficiency.

For the small time webmasters though, who would buy maximum a few domains per year, there is a big probability that they will start buying their first domains from a single domain registrar and continue doing that for their subsequent domains if they are satisfied with the domain registrar in the first place. A similar scenario can be observed with the purchase of web hosting.

Considering the importance of having a good experience during the purchase of your first domains, I would like to recommend here several domain registrars which I have had experience with. So far I could only comment on the pricing, the ease of use and the quality of the assistance provided by the registrars, I wish I could talk about domain transfer but I don’t have the privilege to do that just yet. Anyway, here are a few registrars which I have tried, I consider all of them to be good and would highly recommend them, but that is my own opinion. In any case, you should take this as a starting point, write down their names, their website addresses, go google about them and enquire further in webmaster forums before you try them out.

GoDaddy
GoDaddy is an unanimous choice among most webmasters, it is fairly safe to say that GoDaddy is the world leading domain registrar. It is a standard setting domain registrar, every so often domain registrars would be compared with GoDaddy. There has not been much complaints from its clients, I suppose that its staffs are very professional and you should have no trouble during domain transfers. GoDaddy is also known to provide affordable and stable hosting. Unfortunately, I do not have the privilege to register a domain through GoDaddy yet, mainly because it does not accept payment from unverified PayPal accounts. Enough said, its price for a new dot com domain is $9.99, there is no free WHOIS protection, but you could probably get discount coupons by googling. Discount for mass purchases is also available.

Namecheap
Namecheap is a good domain registrar, I have 1 dot com domain registered through NameCheap. I do not have any problem setting the domain name server (DNS) to point my domain to my hosting, this is really unfortunate because I don’t have the chance to evaluate the support given by the support team. Its fee for new dot com registration is currently $9.29 per domain, which comes with a free 1 year WHOIS protection. I hope the WHOIS protection is free for subsequent years as well, otherwise I would consider transferring my domain to other registrar. Payment methods include credit cards, verified and unverified PayPal.

Name.com
Name.com is actually my favorite among 3 registrars that I recommend here. I have 2 dot com domains registered through Name.com and helped a friend to register one domain through it too. It is fairly easy to change the name servers of your domain, but on Name.com there are other more advanced settings such as DNS management settings. I have emailed the support several times and the staffs got back to me in less than 12 hours each time, they actually read through my problems and provided me with genuine advices, and don’t just point me to their help documents. Thumbs up for their support! Here are other reasons why I like registering my domains through Name.com: its fee for new dot com registration is only $5.99, and the new registration comes with free WHOIS protection (indefinitely as long as your domain is renewed through them, I suppose) and free Google apps which include 6GB email capacity (which you can create up to 200 email addresses with your dot com suffix for friends and family), free webpage creator powered by Google, calendar, etc. This means that for as low as $5.99 (and $9.99 for subsequent years), any family can have their own firstname@lastname.com email addresses and some simple webpages without having to worry about separate web hosting accounts, now this is a great deal! Payment methods include credit cards, verified and unverified PayPal.

There you go, these are the registrars which I have dealt with and would recommend to any budding webmasters depending on their needs. As for GoDaddy, I would confidently register my future domains through it, if I have my PayPal account verified.

Do you have your own favorite domain registrars? Which one is your most preferred registrar and why? Do you have advices on how to choose a good domain registrar? I hope you would be willing to share your advices and tips with us by commenting here.