Which registrar do you feel safest with?

Forget favorite or best overall, which registrar would be your pick from a safety standpoint.

Things like

Their security
Financial position
Free speech and how they work with government agencies
Have true privacy protection that they won't easily allowed penetrated
Redemption periods
Getting paid or refunds

etc...

 

very good question.....deserves some good constructive answers (better than what I have written below!)

Security - had no personal issues with Dynadot, Godaddy, Epik or Porkbun
Free Speech - does not concern me to much, but as Rob at Epik is so outspoken on this will go for them
Privacy protection - been satisfied with all of them, not had any personal issues with this.
Redemption Periods - none of them, I do not sail that close to the wind
Refunds - Godaddy have been the best for me

 

I think only Dynadot, Epik and Namesilo have their own separate privacy agent entities without charging extra and thus won't give your personal name away if your domain name is hit with UDRP.

 

Did not know this, thanks..

 

Epik.

Leadership position i love their direction
Financial position Privately held, debt-free
Free speech best out of all of them.

and they never lost a domain!

Samer

 

Privacy/Proxy services, if provided by registrars, are also regulated by ICANN:

https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/approved-with-specs-2013-09-17-en#privacy-proxy

As such, even though they still may operate differently in various aspects in general and after European GDRP laws in particular, imho it is not a critical safety criteria. Anybody can have his own privacy service by using P.O.Box and/or voip autoresponding phone. And, if the registrant is doing bad things - then a registrar-based privacy service would not help anyway...

 

moniker....just check those top companies...where their domain sitting? I guess there is a reason.

 

Unfortunately, at least 2 of the registrars suggested in this poll do have (or, at some point of time and recently, had) major security issues. And, reporting the issues to them (and/or having it fixed in timely fashion) was not an easy task. I would not post registrar names or technical details - obviously. Such info is not for a public forum, especially since they might not yet really fix the stuff. I'm posting this just to remind - please always perform an own research before selecting this or that registrar for critical or valuable domains, and even to decide whether to save lets say credit card details in their systems...

My votes: as a non-U.S. based registrant, I would feel much more safe with non-U.S. based registrars. The reasons were discussed in various threads earlier, and going that deep may be offtopic for poll-related comments. So, from non-U.S. based registrars listed in this poll I voted for Hover(Tucows) /Canada/ and Gandi /France/. It does not mean that they are oriented to serve specific domainers needs (in fact, these 2 are not). But, the poll is about safety. A great idea, thank you @equity78 !

 

NameSil “Partnered“ with PrivacyGuardian.org

Epik owns their Privacy Anonymize.com

dont know about Dynadot (doesnt name theirs)

i feel safer registrar owns their Privacy service

 

My own... wait ... that's not an option

One of my votes goes to Porkbun. Not a big user but I like what I see security wise.

 

It is a great idea for a poll and discussion, @equity78 . Thank you.

My main concerns about safety would be the following...

1. Is the registrar financially stable? ICANN have procedures for when registrars go out of business, and they seem to have worked even for fairly large registrars, but it does cause stress and uncertainty and delay in some aspects of access for a period.
2. Does the registrar honour due process and transparency? I don't handle, I think, controversial names or hope I do not, nor super valuable names, but the idea of names being taken out of accounts without prompt and clear explanation, or chance to respond, bothers me a lot.
3. Is the system seemingly solid? Some interfaces just give you more confidence that details are being handled securely and without mistakes.
4. Is customer service good? If something does go wrong, it is good if you can rely on prompt, clear, and true responses in a helpful manner.

I do worry a little bit about country specific concerns that @tonyk2000 mentions resonate with me as well (although I have not really acted on them, the majority of my domains are with US based registrars).

Many will probably not agree, but one advantage of using many registrars, is that if any one goes away or does something outrageous, all of my domains at other registrars are intact. I like that personally and plan to keep using about 10 registrars, mainly for other reasons, but partly for that. My late mother was a child in the depression years, and part of the experience of tough times and seeing things fail stuck with her throughout life. When I used to drive her from bank to bank to do her business it seemed needlessly extra time, but I have gradually come to appreciate that having valuable things in different places is not a bad idea at all.

Thanks again for starting the thread, and to all who have contributed.

Bob

 

Interesting that the poll allows multiple votes. Hope that the staff members of various registrars would use this functionality. You cannot say that there is only 1 safe registrar (yours)

 

I mean if you got the funds you could buy an accredited registrar or apply for ICANN accreditation yourself.

For those if us for whom that's not financially feasible... I'd say first choice is Epik free privacy, protects free speech even if its unpopular and I can always reach Rob if I need to, not many companies you can say that about. Certainly not any other registrar who's CEO is so accessible.

Number 2 I'd say Cloudflare also with the privacy they protect free speech with some limits (the kicked 8chan off their network) and they have the security pedigree to back it all up. Though that said their registrar capabilities still leave alot to be desired, but this pills not about that its about Security and that's one check they do get in my book.

 

Sorry Ryan first disagree maybe ever NP, but disagree Cloudflare; they dont allow change NS.

Also they are a publicly traded company, again i dont feel safe; trying to squeeze profit.

 

That's a fair criticism of the cap limits as a registrar along with the other like not actually being able to make a new reg with them. But since this is about security that's one thing I thing they got down.

I could even try to claim that's a plus for security because nobody can change the name servers to their own. Also forgot to mention but I do like their automatic DNSSEC

 

I've never looked into using Cloudflare, but is it really right you can't change nameservers? I don't know how anyone could operate that way.

Re not trusting a public company, I don't feel the same @Samer. I do see that private companies can be more nimble and responsive, but public companies must follow rigorous rules in disclosing their financials so I would think the argument could be made that public companies might be safer. Although not many registrars are public companies, a few obviously.

Bob

 

GoDaddy. They have a long history that many other registrars do not.

They have solid security with 2 stage authentication and DTVS available (Domain Transfer Validation Service).

They are also a publicly traded company, which tend to have more accountability than smaller, privately held companies.

Brad

 

I prefer a balance sheet of a publicly traded company.
That is a verifiable, public record. That is something you don't get out of a privately held company.

Brad

 

A long history...of treating customers poorly (unless ur a whale).

Domain transfer validation...more like a nightmare when you want to transfer your own domain name.

 

I dont feel safe with GD.

 

Fair point but IMO not strictly necessary if the private owner(s) are trustworthy.

 

Uniregistry

 

Have been forced to moved several times due to Icann closing registrars doing wrong thing. Godaddy is the most solid.

 

Another point here, worth investigation by someone who has the time and interest to look into it and write it up: How secure your domain is from cancellation by the registrar?

A few years back someone did that comparison and the registrar whose ToS gave the least scope for cancelling your domain was... yes... Moniker. Security lapses and changes of ownership there since then may have changed that.

Godaddy ToS give a very broad scope for cancelling your domain.

If you are looking at Whois privacy, again you have the question, under what circumstances will the registrar lift that? Are there known cases of them doing that?

 

If I don't go backrupt during this pandemic I'm definitely going to look into becoming an ICANN accredited registrar . I'm only accredited for some ccTLDs as of now which is very cost effective when you scale things up. Way cheaper than ICANN accreditation and I don't have enough gTLD volume to justify it yet. But you know... a man can always dream