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.

Cloudflare has a nice feature matrix to see what the free and pay tiers offer. I cannot find the same with Porkbun. It's difficult to make a comparison. However, Porkbun says it uses CF as its DNS.

How does Porkbun compare with Cloudflare on features? If Porkbun is my registrar, should I use Porkbun for DNS since it's using CF?

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've heard good things about both. I read reviews online but want to hear from unbiased sources.

Here's what's important to me, in order of priority

1. Privacy

2. Ease of use

3. Cost

Thanks!!!

I’m planning to buy a domain soon and I’m comparing Cloudflare and Porkbun. I’ve heard good things about both, but I’d love to hear your opinions.

Mainly, I’m looking for:

A clean and easy-to-use interface (UI)

Simple DNS management

Good customer support

No hidden fees or surprises

Overall smooth experience for someone managing a small site or project

So which one would you recommend?

Is Porkbun better for beginners?

Is Cloudflare better if I plan to use their DNS and security features?

How do their UIs compare?

Would really appreciate your thoughts or personal experiences before I decide.