After having written about what to consider when registering domain names, I’m now going to recommend a few domain registrars to you that I think are not only safe places for your domains but that also offer affordable prices, value-added services and a reliable customer support.
Structure of the article:
- What domain registrars should offer
- Moniker
- NameCheap
- GoDaddy
- Other registrars
What domain registrars should offer
When I was shopping around for a domain registrar where I could store the bulk of my domain portfolios, I was mainly looking at a few criteria only.
First and foremost, I needed a registrar where I knew my domain portfolio would be safe and protected against theft or loss. Like many domain investors, I have spent many thousands of dollars on acquiring domain names over the years. Losing a domain would be equal to losing all the money invested in it, as well as losing the future earnings potential. Therefore, security has always been the most important criterion for me.
Secondly, a domain registrar’s customer support must be reliable. It must be permanently available at least during business hours and on work days. Better yet, a registrar should have a support team on duty 24/7 in case there is an emergency with one of your domain names. Few things are worse than being on the verge of losing a domain or not being able to log into your account but then not being able to get in touch with the company your domain is registered with. Good domain registrars not only have an extensive FAQ section in place but also have a toll-free support number you can call at any time as well as an online support ticket system. Urgent matters should be answered very quickly.
Only now do I compare prices. For some registration fees may be the most important criterion when choosing a registrar, but for me security and customer support really come first. The extra cost of paying a little more for your domain registrations is nothing compared to the financial damage of losing your domains or having your account hacked. Still, prices do matter. But don’t be too cheap. There may be some registrars offering ridiculously low prices, sometimes even below the registry fee. It is unlikely that the registrars will be able to hold these prices for a long time, and if they try they will save money by providing a bad service. Registration fees of $7-10 per .com domain are fair to both you as the registrant and the registrar. Prices in this range cover the registry fee, ICANN fee as well as other expenses of the registrar company. You don’t want a registrar to rip you off, but you don’t want your registrar to go bankrupt and close down, either.
Now consider the extra services the domain registrars offer. Such value-added services include, for example, email forwarding, URL forwarding, whois privacy, web hosting plans, or web design packages just to name a few. Usually these services come at an extra fee, but it’s not unusual that the basic services like email and URL forwarding are included in the registration fees. When pointing domains to a specific location on the web, it’s mostly important that you’re able to change the domains’ name servers, but URL and email forwarding can be quite useful in some cases, so it’s nice if you can get this extra. Talking about security, a handful of registrars offers special security services for clients with valuable portfolios. Moniker, for example, has a new so-called “MaxLock” product on offer that provides extra protection for your domain names. Such services may be costly but they’re worth it in the end if your portfolio is worth a lot.
Finally, you should also be able to quickly manage your domain names. This is especially the case if you have hundreds or thousands of domains in your account. Making changes to such a large number of domain names piece by piece would be unacceptable, so make sure your registrar offers bulk tools or similar portfolio management tools. This allows you to make changes to many domains at the same time or to sort your domains into different portfolios. The changes you make should also be processed by the registrar in a timely manner. It’s just annoying when a registrar doesn’t process an urgent whois update or name server changes after hours. Today such changes should be automatically processed within minutes.
I think that’s about it. There may be other things to consider, but if you pay attention to the aforementioned you can’t do much wrong. On a last note, only use registrars that are officially ICANN-accredited. I also don’t recommend using a reseller company, because resellers are usually owned by individuals or very small companies that may not be around in the near future anymore.
Now, here are a few selected domain name registrars meeting the criteria listed above and which I therefore recommend using:
Moniker Online Services, LLC is one of the most popular registrars used by professional domain investors and large corporate domain owners alike. It is also my main registrar of choice. The company is based in Pompano Beach, Florida. In early 2008, Moniker was acquired by Oversee.net, the parent company of DomainSponsor, Low.com, Revenue.net and SnapNames, inter alia.
Moniker has a good customer support with a toll-free support phone number, support ticket system and a personal account manager for clients with larger portfolios. Personally, I’ve only had good experiences with Moniker’s support team. The prices for domain registrations can vary slightly depending on the size of your portfolio. The registration fee is around $8 for .com, .org and .info. For .net the pricing is currently below $7.
Today, Moniker is not only a registrar company but it also offers secondary market services like domain appraisals, domain auctions and domain escrow.
NameCheap is a smaller registrar company, but I used to have a lot of domains there before I moved them to Moniker. NameCheap has an attractive pricing structure and fast customer support. It’s also easy to make changes to domains or obtain EPP codes for transfer-outs.
As of this writing, the registration fee for all the major domain extensions is $9.69, .info domains can even be registered at a low $2.98 per year. Included in the annual registration fee are email forwarding, URL forwarding, DNS changes and, for a limited time, whois privacy.
GoDaddy is a special case for me. I don’t really like the way it promotes its services, I don’t like the cluttered website, the sometimes misleading checkout process, and I really cannot stand some of the terms of its service, such as the 60-day domain lock after whois changes. (This domain lock prohibits the transfer of a domain out to another registrar even if you only make minor changes to the domain name’s whois information.)
But still, I have used GoDaddy on a few occasions in the past, mostly when obtaining ownership of domains I have purchased from other domainers. GoDaddy is an extremely popular service and due to its marketing efforts the company is well-known outside the domain industry. Aside from the forced 60-day domain lock, I didn’t have any real problems with GoDaddy, though, so I will recommend them, in part based on my own experience and in part based on the experience of fellow domainers. I would still like to remark that I would strongly prefer the other companies mentioned above to GoDaddy, especially Moniker is by far the superior service compared to GD.
According to GoDaddy’s website, prices are $9.99 for .com, $8.99 for .net, $19.99 for .org and, which looks like a limited-time offer, $0.99 for .info. But beware: The ICANN fee is not yet included in those prices, so you will have to add another $0.20.
Other registrars
There are also a bunch of other domain registrar companies worth noting. I haven’t extensively used a lot of other registrars myself, so I can’t comment on most of them but I decided to list at least one of them here because I trust the ability to judge of my fellow domain industry peers:
One of the best and most secure domain registrars in the industry, besides Moniker, is Fabulous.com. Fabulous is owned by Dark Blue Sea (DBS) and it also operates a popular domain parking service. I don’t know why I haven’t used Fab yet (as it is sometimes referred to on domain forums). I guess it is because I’ve been a happy Moniker customer for a long time and there hasn’t been any reason for me to go to another registrar. Just like Moniker, Fabulous is mostly used by owners of large portfolios. It is a secure registrar and also offers competitive prices (users of its parking program may be eligible to lower prices than its other customers).
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Dominik, I definitely have to agree about Moniker. Here is my own little story about their fantastic support team:
Moniker proved their worth to me when I was trying to transfer a domain OUT of their service. Due to my own stupidity, I had forgotten to turn off the “domain privacy” feature, so it transferred to the new registrar with a fake name and a masked e-mail address owned by Moniker. Oops. I had lost control of my own domain name.
I must extend my thanks to the excellent technical support people at Moniker and one of their engineers in Los Angeles who spent their own valuable time helping me LEAVE their own services. After giving me access to the ownership change confirmation e-mails sent to their address, I was able to regain control of my domain.
I think it really says a lot about a company when their service to help you leave is just as good as the service in helping you make the initial purchase. As a result of their good service, I am making a number of posts like this on my own blog, forums, etc. Thank you to MONIKER.COM for the great support!
Thanks for sharing your story, Curtis.
oh yeah my favourite also moniker!
Nothing but great info here. Thanks.