[BBLISA] best registrar for unclaimed domain name?

[Tom Metro]

Paul Beltrani wrote:
> I also have several domains registered with godaddy and have been
> happy with their service.  The website is terrible but they're cheap
> and get the job done. 

I have a half-dozen or so domains at GoDaddy, and am in the process of 
migrating them elsewhere because...


> The site is up-sell hell...

You can say that again. The noise from all the promotions is annoying, 
but that's not the part that bothers me the most. The more troublesome 
aspect is the price differentials between new registrations and 
renewals. For example, it's fairly easy to register a domain there for 
$2 or about $10 with privacy, but it'll typically cost you twice as much 
for renewals, and that's the price you have to live with over the long 
term. You'll see various discount offers at their site and elsewhere, 
but they're never applicable to renewals.

Compare that to some of their competitors that include the privacy 
feature into the base price, and charge a consistent (low) price, 
whether it is a new registration, or a renewal.

I've looked at 1&1 Internet (http://www.1and1.com/) as a possibility, 
but lacking first hand information about them, I went with Dreamhost 
(http://www.dreamhost.com/), who I had prior experience with and knew 
what their DNS interface could do. They don't promote it much, but they 
offer domain registrations with privacy for about $10/year, whether you 
host there or not.


> The ability to have full control over DNS records is a nice plus.

The DNS capability at GoDaddy is decent, but not comprehensive. I've ran 
across a few situations where their UI didn't support the record type I 
needed. Other providers avoid this limitation by offering an "advanced" 
mode where you can enter arbitrary record types.


> While I don't blame this on godaddy, whatever email address you
> register with will most likely be harvested by a spammer.  You may
> want to set up a separate email account for this.

Yeah, I wouldn't blame the registrar for this, but I do think a private 
registration is pretty much a must these days. For a few dollars you can 
offload spam filtering to someone else, as well as gaining some privacy. 
I'd still have it forward to a purpose-specific address or address 
extension.

  -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/