If not Godaddy, then who?

[nancylebov]

My domains are up for renewal. Is there a consensus about a better place to put them?

Comments

[brewsternorth]

Dreamhost is the name that's come up oftenest on my Twitter timeline, for what it's worth.

[firecat]

I have used pairnic.com for many domains for years, and I've never had a problem with them.

[sgsguru]

I'll second pairnic. I have several domains registered with them, and have never had any problems.

[mneme]

FWIW, not necessarily for all your domains, but dreamhost hosting accounts come with a free domain reg (given that you're hosting at least one site with them anyway).

[nancylebov]

I thought that having domain registration and hosting from the same provider was bad practice.

[mneme]

It depends.

There are some serious advantages from having them from different providers, in that it means that you can move away from a provider by changing over DNS. The provider you're relying upon isn't the one receiving most of your business, so doesn't have a financial incentive to behave unethically.

OTOH, if you believe the provider to be ethical, it doesn't present serious difficulties. Dreamhost gives you full control over DNS hosted with them -- so even if you choose to transition away from them, you can point DNS somewhere else without having to talk to a human being anywhere in the process (and therefore not have to risk the kind of pettiness you can sometimes receive from a real human being when attempting to get their help in moving your business somewhere else.

My experiences with Dreamhost imply that they'd be pretty safe to do DNS with as well as hosting.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

I'm moving to Namecheap.com on Dec. 29. They will give a discount and donate a $ to EFF if you use the discount code SOPASUCKS.

Mind, I'd prefer they give a $ to us at PK, but EFF is worthy as well.

[lordlnyc.livejournal.com]

I use 1and1.com

Six years ago when I needed to get a new host for myself and Queens PFLAG, I looked at number of places including godaddy and 1and1 and found that at the time that 1and1 was the best deal for what I was paying. Over the years they have included many more stuff to the account. I now have a few dot org sites all on my account.

[olifhar.livejournal.com]

Y-Combinator had some recommendations a while back:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=339823

And so did Lifehacker:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=339823

I had a client hosted/registered at 1&1 and found their management interface horrible to work with.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thanks, but both of your links are the same.

[olifhar.livejournal.com]

Whoops. I was rushing off to go eat. Here's the LH one:

http://lifehacker.com/5683682/five-best-domain-name-registrars

[bemused-leftist.livejournal.com]

I've been with Directnic for years and think they have a good interface and good service. Dunno how they stand politically.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I've gotten great service from Dreamhost for a few years now. I do hosting with them as well as DNS, but they do DNS alone.

Honestly, the price difference between places isn't that significant to be worth sacrificing good customer service. Every time I've had a problem (almost always my fault for tinkering with settings) they've had it resolved in minutes-to-hours, complete with a sliding scale of hand-holding depending on how tech-savvy I was feeling that day.

[doomspark.livejournal.com]

I've used bluehost.com for years.

1. They have tech support via chat. Their tech support people are competent and HELPFUL. They handled the transfer of my existing domains from Ipower with no muss, no fuss.

2. They have unlimited add-on domains, sub-domains, and domain parking.

3. I've only had one unplanned outage on any of the sites I manage in the last five years, and it lasted an entire ten minutes.

Bluehost is not, perhaps, the cheapest option out there, but they've been good to me.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Other than the consensus being 'anywhere but GoDaddy' they're probably all similar. I have one domain with Dreamhost and found their customer service not entirely helpful - when I asked how to map the domain to the site, I was told 'oh, you can just forward it, it'l look the same' which, err, NO.

I've got an account with fatcow.com - no idea about their politics, but they are affordable, offer unlimited subdomains/WP installations, and I've had good experiences with their customer service. Only thing that annoyed me was that I got the best offer after I'd clicked 'cancel' on the ordering process, which is a bit sneaky and underhand.