I’m currently on the lookout for privacy-respecting domain registrars. What are you guys using and why?
Edit: I’ve registered my domain with Porkbun. I got a really cool one, it’s called reallyaweso.me!
Namecheap.
It wasn’t GoDaddy.
name.com. I don’t remember why I picked them, but they do no BS and the service is fine.
I stick with the big name registrars and then just use the cheapest for that TLD.
Namesilo, cheap and never had issues
Namecheap for registrar and Cloudflare for the name servers. Always keep those services separated so if one dies, you can still get into the other service to fix it.
I was thinking Cloudflare as a registrar and AWS as name servers, but good choice regardless.
Is it possible to do that? Afaik they don’t allow to use different name servers if they’re registrars
I had the domain on a registrar that didn’t allow changing name servers (Tophost for 6 euro per year) and I had to “hop” with ovh for 60 days before having cloudflare for a registrar as they didn’t allow to transfer the domain with different NS
Cloudflare doesn’t allow me to change my name servers? What blasphemy! I had never considered this, I thought it would be allowed by default. Where can I read about this?
I’m looking for a cheap domain registrar with terraform support
It’s the main reason why their domains are so cheap. Their thinking is that since you have to use Cloudflare services to use the domain, you may look at the paid services and decide to pay for one, or suggest it at your workplace.
They charge wholesale price for domains, so they make $0 profit on them. Effectively it’s a loss leader to hook you into the ecosystem. That’s the same reason why VMware ESXi used to be free for home labs - users would become advocates for it and use it professionally.
I’ll paste the comment I made earlier:
Oh boy, I was unaware of the fact that I can’t use my own nameservers with cloudflare. Definitely not going to recommend them anymore
Which registrar do you suggest with good API support? Most of my infrastructure uses Terraform and Salt
I use Porkbun for most of my domains. They appear to have an API but I’ve never tried it: https://porkbun.com/api/json/v3/documentation#DNS Create Record
I’m not familiar with Terraform or Salt but maybe you could try use something like https://github.com/StackExchange/dnscontrol as an abstraction over the DNS provider.
Salt is an alternative to Ansible. However I prefer HashiCorp’s Terraform for day 0 deployments. Unfortunately, PorkBun doesn’t seem to support Terraform, so I’ll keep looking. I’ll take a look at the link you sent, thanks.
Out of curiosity, if you don’t use these IaC tools, how do you manage self-hosted infrastructure?
If a registrar goes out of business, ICANN transfers the domain(s) to another registrar.
If a name server business fails, you change name servers through your registrar.
You can’t really fix registrar services in your name server, nor name server problems through your registrar. (Unless, of course, your registrar is also your name server.)
If your registrar goes down but the NS are on a different provider, the root servers will keep that NS record and all will be well. You can go to a different registrar and transfer it over, but in the meantime it’ll be fine and you can do whatever you need with your DNS.
If the DNS provider goes down, you can go to your registrar and quickly change the NS to another provider. It’ll quickly be back up on your new DNS servers.
Believe me, I’ve done this for 3 decades because one or the other have gone down on me more than once and I’ve had minimal downtime with this separation. Even when I was running my own NS, I kept more than one NS outside my server farm so if my connections went down, I could pop the farm up on a backup colo and point my tertiary accordingly.
After a bit of research, I’m forced by facts (NS records can be cached for an undetermined time) to see what you’re saying. Thank you for teaching me.
The workings are, of course, a bit more complicated than what either of us have said (here’s a taste), but there is a situation as you describe, where separating the registrar from the name servers, and the name servers from the domain, could save the domain from going down.
Well, I kinda simplified it, but yes, the root servers will keep the NS records as long as nothing else updates it (or nobody requests it for longer than the TTL that came with the last lookup) which is why it works.
Happy to help.
Namecheap because I pay 88 cents a year for my domain.
Which TLD?
(Numbers).xyz
I only use it for stuff for me. If you do a real name it’s more.
I rent a domain from namesilo
We usually just say that we’re registering a domain name, or renewing the registration.
Renting a domain usually refers to something different entirely. It’s when someone owns a valuable domain name, and someone else pays them a monthly or yearly fee to use it, like renting a house. It’s sometimes done with premium domains that would be very expensive to acquire outright.
Ah, thanks for clearing that up!
Gen.xyz
Cloudflare for support (tooling), Njal.la for privacy (run by the pirate bay founder), porkbun for a happy medium and for the cool kids.
Njal.la. They buy the domain for you and let you control it. They also don’t give whois information by default.
Namecheap, cheap, easy to use, easy to setup DDNS, helpful support staff. I have heard horror stories of them selling popular domains out from under their owner but none were recent.
Same. I buy all my domains there. And in case someone needs a proper API and support for the dns challenge, host your DNS at DeSEC.
The thing that I don’t like is that lot of these DNS hosts don’t support using them for secondary DNS… It looks like deSEC is the same :/
I like using my own DNS server as a hidden primary because it lets me do bulk and programmatic updates more easily.
I’m using DNSMadeEasy for some of my important domains because they have the fastest servers, their service is really reliable, and major brands are using the same DNS servers so it seems like I can trust them. However, after being acquired by DigiCert, their prices went up over 10x… the $60/year plan I was on is now $675/year.
HE’s free DNS supports secondary DNS but their reliability isn’t great. DNSimple supports it but I’m over their limit of 100 records for some zones. Hexonet supports it but I couldn’t figure out how to get it working and neither could their support.
Never heard of DeSEC before, but it looks damn cool! Been looking to get away from CloudFlare.
What makes you want to move from Cloudflare? They are the least expensive option
Some European ones because the domains have European TLDs.
.eufor example is only available by EU registrars IINM. But also, I do my best to keep the money local where I can.not true anymore, everybody can buy eu domain
I don’t think that’s true anymore. I moved my .eu to porkbun (which is an American company) and it works. Also, I just tried registering a new .eu domain with them and it works - and they have very good prices! (I’m not affiliated with them)
Porkbun
Not kosher and offered best price
Technically Cloudflare has the best prices
Cloudflare locks you in to using their DNS though. I’d rather pay a bit more to avoid vendor lock-in.
Oh boy, I was unaware of the fact that I can’t use my own nameservers with cloudflare. Definitely not going to recommend them anymore
Namecheap bc I typed where to buy cheap domains and that was the first one.
I use Infomaniak, as they follow swiss privacy laws and had the cheapest registration for .ch when I registered it first.
