Hey All - My Google Domains started getting moved over to Squarespace this past week, and it's been a less than stellar experience. Not only do I not to control what account these domains end up in, managing domains in Squarespace is not what I'd call straight forward.

As a result, I went to the Interwebs and Reddit to see what was recommended. The same 3 kept getting recommended: Cloudflare, Porkbun, Namecheap

The trend on Namecheap - which I used a decade ago - is that it is no longer actually cheap, with constant price hikes & advertisements, so I ruled them out and decided to split my domains between Cloudflare & Porkbun, to see how the experience was. Worst case, I move the domains again in 60 days, if one is really horrible (yes, I would need to pay the cost to extend one more year).

Since there have been a few threads on this topic, I figured I'd share where I fell out - with details, in case it helps you make your decision:

• Cloudflare

  • Pros

    • Has every enterprise level feature & customization you could want, within policy (see below), although many of these are upsells

    • The transfer process is done in a way where it's very hard to screw up the DNS settings post-transfer (e.g. you need to move the NS over before you can initiate transfer)

    • Cheapest domains out there

    • Been around for a very long time, and relies on other revenue, so not likely to go out of business

  • Cons

    • The interface is very "heavy"; It's clearly built for Enterprises, not prosumers, and so it can take a bit of searching to find the thing you want

    • It feels like Cloudflare takes positions on the "right" way to do things, and for those things, there is no workaround. Examples include:

    • Not all ccTLDs supported yet (but the ~200 they cover were all I needed)

• Porkbun

  • Pros

    • Simple & straightforward, albeit quirky, interface

    • You can pretty much do whatever you want, including domain masking & email forwarding without pre-approval (this could also be abused)

    • Probably the 2nd cheapest domains

    • Other redditors have commented that their customer service is fast & friendly

    • I didn't count but their supported domain list seems much longer than CloudFlare's

  • Cons

    • Been around as long as Google Domains, so unclear if this business model is sustainable

    • UI is not the prettiest, or the best laid out, but it's so simple that's it's pretty easy to figure out

    • Because you can do anything you want, you could transfer your domain and lose all your previous settings, which would mean you would need to figure out what those records would need to be/reverify your domain

A good example of the experience between these two is SSL.

• Cloudflare: Since you had to have CF NS in order to transfer, CF automatically enables SSL (great!). To find that they did this, you would go to your domain, click on the SSL section, and see in the Overview that you have "Flexible" SSL on by default vs Full vs Full (strict) ... or off. Now they use diagrams to explain what each of these is, but you need to dig to understand what the difference is here vs a standard LetsEncrypt cert on a server. It turns out LE certs are equivalent to "full" (to my best understanding) and that "flexible" means just the connection between browser and CF is encrypted. So you can go and switch it to full ... for every domain you have.

• Porkbun: They have a simple listing of your domains, where you click details. One section is "SSL". If you click the small edit button, it will tell you that they can only generate SSL for you if you use their NameServers, and they give you a single click button to make the switch. You push the button, they update, and tell you that a cert is being generated using LetsEncrypt. You need to check back to see status switch from "Nothing yet" to "Have certificate" in green. This takes 10-20 minutes. You could do this rapidly for all domains, as they are all listed in a flat list. If you switched to their NameServers during transfer, this step is automatically done.

For me, while Porkbun is a bit fast and loose (and doesn't have as many options as Cloudflare), it's been a more enjoyable experience. I also didn't like that Cloudflare prohibits me from masking, and I'm worried about what else they will prevent me from doing in the future. While I understand some of these settings can be abused, they also can allow me to provide a more pleasant experience for simple things, like not showing an "ugly" URL.

If I was running an enterprise site, where I needed to tweak the hell out of everything to ensure optimal load times, while fending off DOS attacks, and needed workers to handle different end points with different situations, Cloudflare would be a great fit. I'm not doing that though.

I'll probably let these domains sit on both of these registrars for another 6 months to see if anything really breaks (I still have to see how the Sites redirects land). If something major pops up, I'll update the post.

I hope someone finds this helpful. :)

UPDATE (2024.07): I'm all in on Porkbun. Cloudflare made basic changes complicated and Porkbun support is absolutely phenomenal.

I've been struggling to decide between namecheap, porkbun and hover as a domain registrar. I'm setting up a shopify store for e-commerce. There are so many pros and cons, hundreds of YouTube videos, most of which are repeating the identical script they probably found from chat GPT. And my head is genuinely tarting to physically hurt. I'm so overwhelmed.

Which one should I go for. I don't know much about web development at all. But from what I've heard this is what I need.

1. SSL certificates - the thing that makes my website safe and not look sketchy I guess??

2. Custom email hosting - so I can have my own custom email @ which is very professional and very cool.

3. Email forwarding so may all goes to my personal email?? (I guess this is good but I don't really know if I want that. I'd rather just log into my business email every time I want to respond to customers) - this just seems like it would inconvenience me and getting my way.

4. Domain forwarding could be very useful, so even if someone types the wrong domain, they would still end up on my website. (But not a necessity I suppose idk)

5. I barely even know what a sub domain is, but I think I need this. (Yes I will continue researching these things)

6. DNS management - the most important of all I reckon. From what I've learnt this is the thing that ensures that there are no connectivity issues. When people type in my website name they actually end up on my site + with no slow loading time etc)

The lower the price the better, but not if it means I'm going to have a headache running this business. I see the extra prices as a way of delegating the hard work to somebody who isn't me. You're very important for someone running their first business on their own.

I tried asking chat GPT, I did it for hours actually. But it kept giving me false info, I was incredibly biased for some strange reason, telling me the price per month for certain companies but the price per year for other companies. When I calculated the numbers they were all wrong. And even I barely know anything I had to correct it, it would agree and explain again, still getting things wrong. So I'm overwhelmed and coming to Reddit for help.

I won't get it from shopify in case I feel like I need to transfer it later. I'd rather own the domain individually, so shopify won't be an option.

Thank you in advance.

I've heard great things and horror stories from Porkbun and I'm wondering if it's worth biting the bullet. I'm not interested in doing ID verification but that's the main downside I'm seeing. I don't own many domains (I use every domain I own for personal projects) so I would only save ~$10 a year. If anyone could give some advice/suggestions that would be much appreciated. Thanks!

I am not sure if this is the right place to post this. I am looking to get a domain name in usa. A dot com and not a premium but like a regular. I also need the ability to have subdomanins. I also need a company in usa. I won't be hosting my site there but do want to tell it where to go as I be using it for custom domain. Also great phone support or even chat support just not left to figure things out myself would help. So which one namecheap, spacemail, porkbun or any others you recommend. Site will be hosted somewhere else so only domain is what i care about

I read a lot of positives and some negatives on Namecheap and Porkbun. I am curious on real users of both of these provoders experience. I use Hostinger for few Years, its time to move to some other hosting peoviders.

I want to purchase a domain so I can reverse proxy stuff like jellyfin and other services so I can access them remotely without the need for a VPN like tailscale. But i’m a bit torn between these three since i’m a more than average privacy conscious person and therefore is leaning more towards Namecheap or Porkbun since atleast Namecheap (I haven’t researched Porkbun much but has heard they are also a good registrar for privacy) has better privacy protection since their whois protection is more anonymized than Cloudflare (from what I’ve found)

But on the other hand Cloudflare is more widely used and will show up in 99% of guides out there which makes it easier for a noob like me.

What are your thoughts?

I've been struggling to decide between namecheap, porkbun and hover as a domain registrar. I'm setting up a shopify store for e-commerce. There are so many pros and cons, hundreds of YouTube videos, most of which are repeating the identical script they probably found from chat GPT. And my head is genuinely tarting to physically hurt. I'm so overwhelmed.

Which one should I go for.

I don't know much about web development at all. But from what I've heard this is what I need.

1. SSL certificates - the thing that makes my website safe and not look sketchy I guess??

2. Custom email hosting - so I can have my own custom email @ which is very professional and very cool.

3. Email forwarding so may all goes to my personal email?? (I guess this is good but I don't really know if I want that. I'd rather just log into my business email every time I want to respond to customers) - this just seems like it would inconvenience me and getting my way.

4. Domain forwarding could be very useful, so even if someone types the wrong domain, they would still end up on my website. (But not a necessity I suppose idk)

5. I barely even know what a sub domain is, but I think I need this. (Yes I will continue researching these things)

6. DNS management - the most important of all I reckon. From what I've learnt this is the thing that ensures that there are no connectivity issues. When people type in my website name they actually end up on my site + with no slow loading time etc)

The lower the price the better, but not if it means I'm going to have a headache running this business. I see the extra prices as a way of delegating the hard work to somebody who isn't me. You're very important for someone running their first business on their own.

I tried asking chat GPT, I did it for hours actually. But it kept giving me false info, I was incredibly biased for some strange reason, telling me the price per month for certain companies but the price per year for other companies. When I calculated the numbers they were all wrong. And even I barely know anything I had to correct it, it would agree and explain again, still getting things wrong. So I'm overwhelmed and coming to Reddit for help.

I won't get it from shopify in case I feel like I need to transfer it later. I'd rather own the domain individually, so shopify won't be an option.

So, I had a frustrating experience with Namecheap. They simply tripled the renewal price of my .com domain. I thought about transferring the domain and buying another one I need at Porkbun, but do they also have this kind of trick? Will they suddenly raise the price 3, 4, or 10 times? In my case, the price tripled in 1 year. Or is it better to just go with Cloudflare?

If anyone has experience with these domain registration sites, please clear this doubt for me.

Any thoughts / opinions on the best domain registrar between these three, and why?

Hello, I would like your help.

I am thinking about buying a domain. Is there any advantage between Namecheap, Porkbun and Cloudflare?

Or can I buy from either one and be fine?

Where do you buy your domains?

I've never heard of Porkbun until recently, their .io renewal is a bit cheaper atm compared to Namecheap - $34.29 vs $40.90.

I do like the fact that with Namecheap you can sell domains - in case I don't want it after a few years

EDIT: Namecheap's The 10 best domain registrars of 2022 even even points to Porkbun as the better option

Still deciding where to buy domain from, Namecheap or Porkbun? Any advice? Pro(s) & con(s) from experience?

So I want to buy a domain for just personal project to share with my team for all I care it could be named "sadsadfdsgds.in or .com " or whatever. Is there any place that provides these domains cause I went on to GoDaddy I asked for a domain for 10 years and the price was high considering the name i put out there. I there any provider who provides these at cheaper prices less than 25$.

EDIT: Not looking for .com specifically anything would work

EDIT:2: I just used cloudflare to buy seven digit .xyz domain that costed me less than a dollar for a year and the same for the renewal.

Thankyou everybody for helping me to come to this decision.
Special thanks to u/davchana

Hey guys just wanted to get the communities consensus on Porkbun vs Cloudflare?

EDIT: Afer reading the stories from user billhartzer of Cloudflare domains getting hacked (see comments below), I'll be sticking with Porkbun for the time being.

I've been using Porkbun them for the past 5 years and have only had good experiences with them but am interested to hear your experience vs Cloudflare?

It looks like Cloudflare has really good domain rates as .com renewals are $10.45/yr at the time of writing this. Porkbun renewal rates for .com domains are currently $11.06/yr.

In total I've been purchasing my domains with Porkbun then for web hosting I've been using Cloudways along with WordPress to build my websites as I believe it's the best web hosting provider.

If you're looking to do this same this tutorial will walk you through the process.

Anyways, in the past I used to use Namecheap but ever since they've increased their prices I've stayed away from them as they've significantly increased their domain rates and most definitely NOT cheap.

Overall across the board, it appears domain registrars have increased their pricing, even just a few years ago you could get a .com domain with Porkbun for ~$9/yr but that has since changed to ~11/yr.

This still wildly beats GoDaddy and Namecheap, their .com renewal rates are $22/yr and Namecheaps are $17/yr.

I always tell people to stay away from GoDaddy. Namecheap isn't bad but they're just more expensive. Most people haven't heard of Porkbun and find the brand amusing (I love it tbh). Cloudflare on the other hand is more well known especially amongst the tech literate crowd. I'm interested to hear your guys' thoughts on Cloudflare since I haven't used them in particular.

Thoughts?

I'm hoping to start hosting my projects under my own domain name, starting with my portfolio. Being new, I find myself a little overwhelmed with some threads discussing the topic. I hope it could be simplified for me a little.

I want to be able to use subdomains, like "example.______.com" which I understand is available under all registrars? I'm worried as I'm new that I will mess something unintended up so at this point I think the more abstraction the better but I am not opposed to learning if failure isn't destructive.

My overall hope is for the lowest cost spread out over 5 years as as I plan to keep this domain as long as possible. If these options could be explained it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi guys. I'm planning to buy a domain, totally new into this. I'm looking for a cheap domain and found one. It was a .uk domain, though I'm not from uk, but it was cheap, 5 usd/year on cloudflare and 6 usd/year on porkbun. I've seen many good things about porkbun on reddit and according to terms and conditions of cloudflare, we can't use any other DNS service other than Cloudflare and that's what made me confused.

Any suggestions will be really helpful.

For those of you who have experience with these companies, which has better customer service, thanks

Can anyone recommend? I’m looking for a new registrar that ensures you are the owner of the domain, has email, all the domain and whois protection services, etc. I have been using gandi.net for about 30 years but the prices have gotten unreasonable at almost $40 a year renewal for a dot com. Both these registrars were highly recommended to me.

I really appreciate the advice and apologies if this question is out of place for this subReddit. Cheers!

looking to register a few TLDs, each for at least a few years for personal use. i’ve been using godaddy for a while and feel like i can get better deals on domain names elsewhere.