I was looking into hover, namecheap, and google domains.
This is the first time I’m looking into this so ELI5.
Is any one better than the others?
Would I find issues with different DNS set in my pi-hole?
I’ve been using namecheap for more than ten years now, and I have no complaints. Everything just works, at least as far as my usage goes, and the pricing feels very reasonable.
I use NameCheap and WebSiteSpot as the price of certain TLDs can vary between them.
I’ve used namecheap for years for my personal domain. It was the one I liked best back when I brought the domain.
That was like ten years ago now and cloudflair wasn’t a thing then iirc.
Namecheap is okay but namecheap support has gotten worse as they have grown into the Goliath they are today.
I’ve been using Namecheap for personal domains for around 10 years now. Since a few years back, privacy guard is included in the domain price (at least for .com domains) so your name, address, … won’t appear directly on whois queries.
As it’s just one domain, (longterm) pricewise I don’t think there’ll be a big difference with any of them. 1 or 2 € per year, maybe. It’ll be more important to check longterm price of the domain (.com / .io / …), as you’ll probably find some offer for the first year.
FWIW, namecheap publishes a recurrent offer around 10th October (apart from some random offers every once in a while) If you go with them, you can register for one year and renew the domain for a longer period when you find an offer.
I’ve been using gandi.net since forever, it’s alright. The main selling point these days is the availability of pretty much all TLDs I guess. They have a strong privacy and consumer rights legacy, but that’s been kind of fading as they’ve grown over the years.
I don’t think one is necessarily better than another, though there are some sketchy actors out there with some real shady business practises.
If you go with any of the ones you mention in your OP you’ll be fine though.
I’ve found Cloudflare is cheaper than Google Domains, and allows for more flexibility of setups. A $12 domain on google can be $9 or less on Cloudflare. (this is a per-year price. So the cheaper you get the domain, will exponentially be cheaper over 10+ years)
Cloudflare is also a layer of protection to your pihole. You shouldn’t run in to that many issues by buying a domain but I’m not sure what you’re trying to do. Just buying a domain is like buying a username, it doesn’t do much until you point it somewhere. So if you’re pointing it to your pi-hole to host something then I’d look in to hosting services to save yourself a bit of a security issue.
What is it you’re trying to do?
I know, I’ll deploy some stuff in the VPS I have (including a lemmy instance), that’s why I’m looking to buy a domain.
Ah okay, then yeah for sure I’d say there is really no difference between them besides price and convenience of redirecting your DNS. You can always transfer where it’s registered later as well depending on if they charge fees or not.
at least when using Porkbun, you can use cloudflare dns while having porkbun as your registrar, which Ive found to be really convenient.
If you want good support and free whois privacy porkbun.com is the best I’ve used. Another option ive used is namecheap they’ve gotten big enough their quality has dropped imo.
Use any EU based supplier and because of GDPR, they cant publicly display whois information
I didn’t even think of that! I have a few domains on namecheap and you have to remove whois protection before you move them to another register the moment you do all info gets scrapped and sold for marketing. Last time that happened i got 100s of spam calls, junk mail to my physical address, and an absurd amount of email spam. It was a nightmare.
If anonymity is important to you: https://njal.la/
It’s important to remember with a lot of places like that you don’t own the domain. Ive heard stories where valuable domains are taken over by the owners as well.
Freenom. Gives you a free domain until you have somting valuable running behind it. Then they will charge you.
I’ve always had a good experience with Porkbun.
I also use Porkbun, definitely recommend & they are the cheapest for quite a few tlds.
I’ve been happy with Porkbun as well, I just need to finish moving the rest of my domains over there to keep them all in one place so I don’t forget any.
Porkbun is great! https://porkbun.com/
I use ionos for my domains good price and reasonable renewals
I’ve been using dynadot for about 13 years now. Never had an issue at all, quite stable and gets the job done.
I’ve been using cloudflare for domain and DNS for about 2 years, no complaints so far
I’ve used namecheap for years with 0 problems. They have a good selection and good support. I’ve heard good things about Porkbun too.
I like NameCheap to buy domains but usually use Cloudflare for DNS records
