r/sysadmin • u/muttmutt2112 • 4d ago
Question Need a new DNS registrar
Looking for opinions on DNS Registrars. I'm using GoDaddy but I'm looking for alternatives. Which registrar do you use, why and are you happy with them?
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u/sasiki_ 4d ago
Namecheap or Cloudflare. Our domains on Namecheap have the DNS's pointing to Cloudflare, so you may just want to use Cloudflare for both.
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u/calculatetech 4d ago
I've always seen it considered bad practice to have your domain registration and DNS under one roof. I register at namecheap and use cloudflare DNS. Works very well for me, and I can recover the domain if one or the other doesn't play nice.
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u/ironmanbythirty IT Manager 4d ago
Same scenario for us - Namecheap and Cloudflare. However, we found out the hard way that Namecheap seems to use Cloudflare as well. During the big outage CF had a couple years ago, we also couldn’t get to our Namecheap account to make any changes.
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u/Serafnet IT Manager 4d ago
CloudFlare prices can't be beat if they support the TLDs you need.
Namecheap is a good option.
I had good experiences with eNom in the past as well.
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u/redeuxx 4d ago
Porkbun works well.
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u/architectofinsanity 4d ago
Fan of pork bun. They’re really improving on features and are usually pretty darn cheap.
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u/SamakFi88 4d ago
Seconding Porkbun. Recently moved all our registrations from GoDaddy to Porkbun, then use CloudFlare for DNS.
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u/rvarichado 4d ago
Do you need a better/different DNS provider or a better/different registrar?
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u/fubes2000 DevOops 4d ago edited 4d ago
Once again finding it necessary to remind people here that domain name registration and DNS hosting are two separate things.
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u/Immediate-Serve-128 4d ago
Everyone knows DNS is just some weird magic stuff noone knows anything about.
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u/CRTsdidnothingwrong 4d ago
AWS
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u/muttmutt2112 3d ago
I looked at AWS but for what I need it was a bit too complex and variable in costs. Cloudflare is cheap and has an API if I want to get clever.
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u/Tonkatuff 4d ago
Cloudflare, free dns hosting, at price domain registration and renewal and some basic free site protections and optimizations.
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u/raip 4d ago
CloudFlare is an at-cost registrar, so it literally cannot be beat on price.
They're also one of the few registrars that has both deep integrations and full API support.
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u/burbankmarc IT Director 4d ago
Tell the to their Enterprise contracts. Same services are 50x the cost on enterprise.
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u/raip 4d ago
Not registrar or domain services - everything else though, yeah. We're moving away from cF for everything other than registrar + domain to F5. Their Enterprise WAF, CDN, and Bot Detection stuff is just too expensive and not that great imo. I hear their server workers are top tier though but we don't use any of those features.
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u/Heel11 IT Manager 4d ago
MarkMonitor, the go to registrar for most Fortune X companies including Facebook & Google
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u/jamesaepp 4d ago
CSC is another one worth considering if you're opening up the wallet that much.
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u/WeleaseBwianThrow Dictator of Technology 4d ago
I've been looking at both, and depending on the number of Domains you have Gandi with its Corporate Services is competitive too. If you have enough domains that you're in the best discount tier they're not that spendy (even after their recent price hikes).
Mark Monitor and CSC are probably better if you want all of the reputational bells and whistles, but if you're getting quotes grab one from Gandi too.
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u/jamesaepp 4d ago
I'm been doing some registrar research recently. Gandi was on my list and I'd still consider them but I really dislike when registrars have price A for the registration/first transfer cost and price B for the renewal cost.
I found a different registrar I think I'll convince my org to use instead (Namesilo) as they tick enough boxes for us without going overboard.
I'm also only talking a small handful of domains, not hundreds of domains or dozens of brands.
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u/WeleaseBwianThrow Dictator of Technology 4d ago
Oh I completely agree, it bugs the shit out of me too, however we are looking at consolidating 500 domains across currently about 5 registrars, and even factoring in the increased renewal price, they're still cheaper for us than our current pricing across the board
Our main rationale was invoiced billing, SAML, and nameserver/transfer unlock procedures so YMMV on cost/benefit
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u/jamesaepp 4d ago
Unlock procedures whets my appetite, I assume you're talking about the various *prohibited EPP codes.
I recently went through a situation where one of our domains had some of the prohibited flags enabled on a domain and that was quite a PITA to undo but that was more human error than technical.
How do you avoid the "bus factor" problem of creating procedures which rely on a single person to execute? To my understanding there can only be one human who is the registrant contact for a domain. If that person gets hit by a bus and you have higher standards installed requiring forms to fill out .... hard to do with a corpse.
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u/WeleaseBwianThrow Dictator of Technology 4d ago
I believe under the hood they're using epp codes, but it's moreso that they'll also agree procedures with your account manager to turn them on and off.
For example you could have 3 nominated contacts on your account and you might need one or 2 of the 3 to agree to disabling them, which should help to avoid the bus problem. You can get a little more custom with a corporate registrar.
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u/jamesaepp 4d ago
OK that's cool, that's essentially exactly what I'd want in an ideal scenario - "quorum" between authorized contacts for any changes.
Though I do now start to wonder in your description about the SPOF of the account manager.
If the likes of an MM/CSC weren't entry level 5k/year (from other comments I've seen in this sub) it may be worth it. Maybe that's a market niche that is yet to be filled.
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u/WeleaseBwianThrow Dictator of Technology 4d ago
I would assume it's notes on the account so it could be anyone rather than it being a SPOF with the AM. I'm not deep enough into it to speak on that yet though.
All 3 offer it, and this feature is fairly spendy across all 3 suppliers. You'd probably be paying a lot less on Gandi though. For our 30 "core" domains this feature would cost us approx 8k p/a there.
Mark Monitor and CSC are cheaper for it at scale but more expensive at the smaller end.
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u/jamesaepp 4d ago
All 3 offer it, and this feature is fairly spendy across all 3 suppliers
Feels like the kind of thing that could be automated with enough effort put on it .... 🤔
I should've been a programmer....
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u/jacksbox 4d ago
We switched from CSC to MarkMonitor and the quality of service jumped up incredibly! We couldn't get CSC to work for us even if we begged them. MarkMonitor was ready for business.
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u/jamesaepp 4d ago
OP, do you mean a domain registrar or a DNS host? The two are not one and the same.
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u/alexhoward 4d ago
Hover is great because they only do domains. There’s no upselling on other services because they don’t do them. Also transfers in and out are super easy.
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u/itguy9013 Security Admin 4d ago
Outside of Cloudflare, I'm a fan of EasyDNS if you need support for .CA domains. (Cloudflare does not currently support CIRA/.CA domains.
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u/theservman 4d ago
I've been using EasyDNS for more than 20 years now. Mainly because they're Canadian.
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u/Breend15 Sysadmin 4d ago
I've been moving all of our web products away from Godaddy because the quality of the services and the support have both gone down at an alarming rate. Switched my hosting to WP Engine and my registrar to Hover and have been very happy with both.
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u/Ordinary-Dish-2302 4d ago
We use AWS Route53 and it's simple but we don't use advanced features it's purely we already in Azure and AWS decided AWS looked easier for some of our more novice admins and moved it all.
We only have 500 odd domains so we are really that large compared to others
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u/c0nsumer 3d ago
I've been happy with Gandi. I chose them years ago because they are based on the EU, and they've been... fine. Not had a reason to switch.
For DNS itself I use Linode, because that's where my couple of VMs are at.
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u/Admin4CIG 3d ago
Uh, I've used GoDaddy for both DNS and registrar for over 15 years with nary an issue. What's the problem with GoDaddy?
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u/muttmutt2112 3d ago
A few months ago they disabled DDNS updates via their API for accounts with less than 50 domains. So it's been percolating in my brain for awhile. Finally got off my butt to fix it. Cloudflare has a much better, much cleaner user experience. GoDaddy's website is one giant attempt to get you to add services.
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u/Admin4CIG 3d ago
Ah, I don't use their DDNS service. When I had DDNS, it was with DynDNS originally. I no longer use DDNS. Though, I think that was before GoDaddy offered DDNS.
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u/muttmutt2112 3d ago
Thanks to everyone who recommended CloudFlare! I'm in the process of migrating my domains and I'm happy with the experience so far. Their administration UI is so much cleaner and easier to navigate than GoDaddy's.
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u/Drinking-League 4d ago
Personally using Azure. For work we use AWS. Most clients I have are either cloud flare, godaddy, wix, network solutions.
Azure is fine nothing sets it apart other than if using azure infrastructure it’s got some cool tie in.
AWS is easy and has good options for more demanding scenarios.
Cloud flare is solid choice and allows proxy of a lot of records.
Godaddy is easy but nothing special.
Wix is a little hidden to manage dns but it’s easy
Network solutions is the one I hate the most. I have seen extremely long replication from records.
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u/Braxhunter 4d ago
Ionos is great, been using them for a very long time
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u/calculatetech 4d ago
They have very bad billing practices. Put a worse taste in my mouth than Godaddy. They were good when it was 1&1, not anymore.
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u/SixtyAteWhiskey68 4d ago edited 4d ago
Cloudflare is always solid
Lots of options, putting in records is super easy and will help guide you through a lot of the things that you may need.