Domain names seem expensive in comparison. The cheaper VPS that I use for playing around is just $10.29/year.
I thought I’d get a domain name from RackNerd as well, but they’re $24.95/year + I think $4.99 for privacy.
I’ve checked Namecheap, and that seemed great, until I found that renewal prices are often through the roof.
I don’t really care about it being nice. For now, mostly I just want to use the VPS as image host for Lemmy, since Imgur and Catbox are both a bit problematic.
And without a domain name, the images only show as link posts in the default LemmyUI (though it seems to work elsewhere). Plus it makes migration impossible.
Find the best prices for domain names here, from registration to renewal an transfer: https://tld-list.com/
Privacy should be free and by default.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters CF CloudFlare DNS Domain Name Service/System VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)
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As far as I know, Cloudfare is the only registrar that offers you wholesale price, as in the price asked by the tld owners. So, you a registrar can’t go lower, because that’s what they pay for it.
But, a lot of registrars will give you first year at a heavy discount (so, at a loss), just so they can ramp up the price to wholesale + a lot extra. I got my domain for like 5$, and they then asked for 40$ for renewal, while wholesale is around 25$.
So, I just transfered to Cloudfare for the renewal. Tbh I don’t remember if it was the first or second year, and what are the transfer rules, but I think it should be possible to just buy a first year at heavy discount with i.e Namecheap or something, and immediately transfer to Cloudfare for the first renewal at wholesale price.
I’m paying about $22 on Porkbun, they’re pretty good
I’m using ovh for my domains, it’s €13.5 I think for a .com renewal and that include whois privacy, a 15Go mail address and a 100mo website hosting.
Some will let you pay for up to 10 years at the 1 year price, so if you get a deal on a particular tld (as long as it’s not an abused one like .xyz) you can pay upfront and save a decent amount of money.
From memory you should try and avoid 10 year renewals since you can’t transfer to a new registrar for the first year of the new renewal.
You’ll probably want WHOIS privacy support, so make sure the tld supports it.
I paid $10.44 USD to cloudflare last year in May for a year of my .com domain. I have no complaints.
Nearly Free Speech https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/services/domains
I’ve got a few domains. I use Porkbun as registrar. They’re awesome, and the domains were pretty cheap. Under $10 a year each.
I’ve been on Namecheap for years.
The “hard no” list is GoDaddy, Network Solutions, and anything owned by EIG. They are literally the worst. Probably Ionos (formerly 1&1) too.
I recommend transfering to Cloudfare, since they have guaranteed wholesale price (no added fees, and only what the tld owner and ICANN asks), so they should be cheapest (since anything less is selling at a loss for the registrar, at least ifI understand right).
Namecheap has started overcharging me like 20+$ on a renewal compared to CF. So, transfering after a first year (which is where registrars like Namecheap take a loss and give you a discount) is probably the cheapest way how to go about it.
Namecheap is going downhills recently… They were sold to a private equity on September, .com starts at $18.
I use two: Namecheap and omg.lol.
Admittedly omg.lol isn’t a traditional registrar, but they do give you a domain name and other stuff (I don’t use most of it), but it’s $20/yr
Namecheap varies, but last I checked it was a bit cheaper. Not by much, maybe $15/yr for my .monster domain?
Beyond just the registrar you pick, try not to pick some vanity TLDs. The ubiquitous ones (e.g. .com and .net) are fine. For example .xyz has a bad reputation (due to its initial low price to register, it became used for many spammers) and might be blocked in unexpected places. Others might lure you in with a cheap first year but charge much higher for subsequent years.
In addition to that, ccTLDs (country code) can be a wildcard, especially if you don’t live in the region served by it. Although rare, the country registry can seize your domain. Most commonly though, many, including .us, do not allow you to mask your personal information (WHOIS privacy). I’ve had a .me for a long time and even though they haven’t been much of a problem, they are also raising the price for renewal faster than an equivalent .com, and so I’ve been thinking of letting that domain go.
If you trust your country’s ccTLD registry and they’re reputable, that’s less of an issue, however.
My first registrar was Google domains. As always, they killed the business. And sold it to Squarespace. I’ve been their customer for a year or two, nothing bad I can say, except the price was about 1.5 or even 2x of that from Cloudflare for com domain, so I migrated there. I have no deep understanding of the nuances, so I cannot say whether Cloudflare is a bad actor. At least I trust them to not elevate the price, as it’s not their primary business, sell domains.
Iirc Cloudflare sells domain names at cost.
Porkbun is pretty solid
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I Just transfered over to porkbun after namecheap decided to raise renewal cost again, wish id done it sooner.
Porkbun is goated
