@Christian Taylor
I prefer Dynadot still, at least for the moment. (In the past there didn't exist aftermarketauction, and I found that better, but now it exists). And the view of their site is quite readable. And that can't be said of lot's of registrars. Some recent changes made it again a bit more difficult.
AND I agree for
Porkbun, (they have as surplus for giving also free SSL!!! - none of the others do !!!), and
Dynadot.and Namecheap are for some extentions very cheap. (their promotions I mean). All 3.
Why is
Namesilo interesting : Something else then cheap only : If you have 1 hour left before transferring away, because your domain goes in redemption in an hour or whatever, you can TRANSFER TO Namesilo VERY QUICKLY !!! It all can be done in 1 hour (you have to approve of course the transfer-emails) !!!
Positive thing for Dynadot and Namecheap and Porkbun : you have a lot of promotions. (certainly subscribe to their newsletter !).
Negative thing about Namesilo : after expiration you can't transfer out a domain, you have to renew there and can't transfer away then. They may be cheap, but 1 thing : you can only use a coupon once. No matter hat coupon I try I never get discounts anymore.
1 less positive thing about Dynadot : They change rules sometimes (especially about auctions and transferring out after expiration without informing the customer before.) => now you have to send again a special request to them to ask in email if they want to put some domains in a status that they can be transferred out) (their renewalpossibility after exiration : They changed suddenly, regardless if your domain is bidded on or not : from day 30 on you have to pay 10 USD extra renewal fee.(till day 39 after expiration).
Ended auctions without bidder at the end (day 37 after expiration or so) : In the past you could ask them per email to place still a bid and put enough on your balance so they could pay with your money for such a domain. This is not the case anymore. (and for a while some months go when that was possible, you had to pay auctionpricing + 5 extra USD ; well not anymore as they don't allow any requests for domains that didn't got bids anymore).
And for a long time there was the fact that selling a domain, gives only money on your balance and not payed to your Paypal or so. But as far as I've read somewhere this last thing would have changed.(not sure though I have not investigate all the info that's published about it).
Other positive thing for Dynadot : There are a lot, (the interface ; lists you can see, etc..) but I'm glad to see they also since 2 months give in the sales for some domains discount on renewals (not very much extentions though)..
Negative point for
all 3 of them :
They didn't find a good solution to the GDPR in Europe. You can take printscreens with your address per domainname, if you are clever.
But anybody who looks to whois only sees mostly country and state or province. Not even an emailadddresss is mentioned in the whois. (except If it's an organisation where you can give info about organisation in whois I presume). (dot-tv seems the exception).
They don't send messages or emails through to your email to you from interested parties, if somebody asks for instance to send the (hidden) owner from a specific name with a shady whois from a European citizen, an email or a message and ask to forward that to the owner, this doesn' happen. (
If this would be possible this would be very ineresting for endusers but also domainers : now these don't know why they don't see information -emailaddress and phonenumber and address of the European owner of a domainname, and also they don't send through messages if you choose privacy, so you also can't send via a link a mail that's forwarded to an owner who has privacy "abled", ).
Godaddy partiallly has found a solution to that but you have to know the trick (and very very few know about that already) : If you search the owner of a domain in Godaddy that's registerred at Godaddy : You can use
their OWN whois.godaddy.com-search and when you see the result with only country and only state or province,
you scroll DOWN and you find a link, called "send message to the owner". If you click on that you can send a message that arrives in the owners' emailaddress.
But of course : you have to know that : I know because I especially asked if they had a solution for the GDPR. (I would prefer that they simply send through all emails to the owner, with hidden whois due to GDPR (or if you've chosen 'privacy') whatever the question is. And I would prefer that in every whois-search there would come a link (on TOP of the domains, at all whoissearches no mattter where (what registrar) you consult the whois from.
With
godaddy overall): sometimes interesting, because
they're the biggest and sometimes if you buy a domain from someone, you only have the possibility to work with them.
A lot has changed over the years. And
recently there were or are the problems with FREE PUSHES to another account.
As to pricing : Also sometimes have interesting promotions (not always anounced : look in the section on the forum with couponcodes). For renewals: no couponcodes work anymore => You have to pay membership to GDD-discountclub. But there exists a code to get the pricing of this membership down. For esp. renewals (and also some registrations) GDD-DISCOUNTCLUB, otherwise you pay too much and high pricing.
END-NOTE
The above is only some things positive and negative about the mentioned registrars.
But to tell everything, would lead too far.
(For instance there is also the possibility or non possibility of grace-deletions, and if they aks money for it or not).
the second one told me one thing than when I told them what the previous one said, they changed their answer to something else entirely...
