Domain names seem expensive in comparison. The cheaper VPS that I use for playing around is just $10.29/year.
I thought Iād get a domain name from RackNerd as well, but theyāre $24.95/year + I think $4.99 for privacy.
Iāve checked Namecheap, and that seemed great, until I found that renewal prices are often through the roof.
I donāt really care about it being nice. For now, mostly I just want to use the VPS as image host for Lemmy, since Imgur and Catbox are both a bit problematic.
And without a domain name, the images only show as link posts in the default LemmyUI (though it seems to work elsewhere). Plus it makes migration impossible.
Porkbun is pretty solid
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I got a .cc domain at Porkbun for about $35 for 10 years. That was the best deal I could find.
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@gravitas @karpintero ICANN? Or whoever Manges .com is increasing the cost. Did it last year this year and next year I think the plan is.
My name registration with porkbun is cheap enough that I donāt remember exactly. Had no issues with them.
$11.08 for a .com. Source: just renewed.
@Zak @nymnympseudonym buy as much as you can as .com is increasing again this year and next.
Cloudflare has been excellent for me since I switched away from (puke) GoDaddy years ago. They donāt try to upsell you bullshit like most of the other places, either. I have three domains with them.
I do not use any other Cloudflare services. There are no additional costs or services required (beyond the domain fees) to use them as your registrar.
I donāt have a big problem with CloudFlare (and use their service myself for some things). But so much of the internet infrastructure is already consolidated with them. There are so many good options for domain registrars. Letās spread things around a bit.
@lukecyca @CarbonatedPastaSauce problem is I thought I spread stuff around but pork in uses their nameservers.
As far as I know, you can not change the authoritative name server for domains registered with cloudflare (probably not a big issue for most people)
Looks like they allow it, but only if youāre an enterprise customer.
https://developers.cloudflare.com/dns/zone-setups/zone-transfers/cloudflare-as-secondary/
Iāve got a few domains. I use Porkbun as registrar. Theyāre awesome, and the domains were pretty cheap. Under $10 a year each.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that Iāve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters CF CloudFlare DNS Domain Name Service/System IP Internet Protocol NAT Network Address Translation VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)
5 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 8 acronyms.
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Iāve been on Namecheap for years.
The āhard noā list is GoDaddy, Network Solutions, and anything owned by EIG. They are literally the worst. Probably Ionos (formerly 1&1) too.
Namecheap is going downhills recentlyā¦ They were sold to a private equity on September, .com starts at $18.
I recommend transfering to Cloudfare, since they have guaranteed wholesale price (no added fees, and only what the tld owner and ICANN asks), so they should be cheapest (since anything less is selling at a loss for the registrar, at least ifI understand right).
Namecheap has started overcharging me like 20+$ on a renewal compared to CF. So, transfering after a first year (which is where registrars like Namecheap take a loss and give you a discount) is probably the cheapest way how to go about it.
I generally get stuff from porkbun.com since Iāve been there for a while, prices are decent and they have some convenient features. But, I should try namecrane.com since they are run by online buddies of mine. They are sort of a spin-off of the original buyvm.net.
Price comparator: https://tld-list.com/
Yes they separate out renewal prices so make sure to take that into consideration. The high renewal prices are a marketing trick of the TLD holders. The resellers canāt really do anything about them.
A fantastic resource, thanks for posting this!
A .com domain should be under USD $12 a year with WHOIS privacy included. If someone is charging more than that, they are ripping you off. Most web or VPS hosts will charge a significant markup if they sell domains. Make sure you check the renewal price too. Some registrars will give you the first year cheap, then charge significantly more to renew it.
Cloudflare is the cheapest, but they force you to use their DNS servers. Porkbun is a dollar more, but you can use your own DNS if you want to.
I have my domain with Cloudflare too, and at this point, Iām not aware of these DNS servers. Can someone explain it a bit? I know what DNS is, but I donāt understand whatās the use case for having them elsewhere. Iām not to argue, just didnāt know where to register a domain, so I went with them. Iām concerned with the future of the domain either, but donāt understand the issues at this early point.
The DNS authoratative servers are what hold all of the records for your domain. With Cloudflare, you are stuck with theirs. As for why you want to use a different one, maybe you need more than the 200 records Cloudflare limits you to. Maybe you donāt like the way their API works for automating updates. Maybe you donāt want to set up all of your records all over again if you transfer your domain to another registrar. Maybe you just donāt like Cloudflare.
Thanks! Itās a bit more clear now.
To contribute to the discussion, I remembered that with Squarespace (my previous registrar), I had unlimited redirects, which I used heavily. I am not really sure about the unlimited part, perhaps that was hidden somewhere in the interface, and they have limits, and I just never saw them. But I remember Cloudflare communicated I have like 10, so I decided to not use it for nice-to-have but not really needed things. E.g. I used a subdomain for a blog, and created redirects for typical misprints in my name. Was handy, but not really needed. I should have document this, but I was too busy at the time, and now, almost a year later, I donāt really remember. There were differences with Cloudflare and Squarespace.
Here is a somewhat simplified explanation
When you are registering a domain you are essentially just creating a NS record:
mydomain.com NS <nameserver ip or name>
Then when a resolver is asked a question like what is the A record for myserver.com it goes and asks the tld server (.com) what is the NS record for mydomain.com. the tld then responds with the nameserver ip. Then the resolver will query the nameserver directly for the A record of mydomain.com
In practice there is a ton of caching going on here, but thatās the broad strokes
Thanks! I havenāt thought of com as being the real TLD, actually!
I Just transfered over to porkbun after namecheap decided to raise renewal cost again, wish id done it sooner.
Porkbun is goated
Find the best prices for domain names here, from registration to renewal an transfer: https://tld-list.com/
Privacy should be free and by default.
Thanks a lot :)
I have two domains through Cloudflare. They donāt mark up to price at all, so theyāre basically the lowest price youāll find that isnāt a gimmick.
I pay $6.50 for one and $10.46 for the other. Privacy is free and by default.
No harm in getting your domain from them. Just beware that when you create a DNS entry, they default to proxying the incoming connections. It is super easy to turn that āfeatureā off, you just have to remember to do it whenever you create a new record.
This is my strategy as well. Except, I will find the domain on sale elsewhere then transfer it over to CloudFlare.
Free dns and everything itās been great. Cheap domains and even the 404 page is cute
+1 for Porkbun. They even offer $2/yr
<6ā9 digit>.xyzdomains if you just want a domain for basically free and donāt care about having a nice and pretty one. 01384629.xyz or whatever for $2/yr to give their service a try is well worth it imo. I have one of these as well as a ārealā domain I like thatās like $20 or $25/yr. I have no complaints with Porkbun.They are good for dynamic ips too
I canāt believe oicu812.xyz is available.
Good Marketing and branding always gets me more interested. Porkbun is awesome
Cloudflare offers at-cost domain names. Thereās a lot of issues with using them though. Since theyāre so big, they have a culture of giving governments/oligarchs whatever they want.
There is Njalla, owned by someone involved with The Pirate Bay. It supposedly allows users to buy domain names privately, although Iām not sure at what cost. Iāve read users saying that Njalla will revoke domain names if pressured by outside forces, so they donāt seem like a good option similar to cloudflare.
The DNS is a tool of surveillance and control and we should move away from it as quickly as possible.
Iāve been using Njalla for a year using Monero and havenāt had any issues with them. Although I havenāt got anything up worth putting down.
The people complaining couldāve been putting very bad stuff on their sites. Or not, and Njalla just bend to DMCA!
Donāt use namecheap.
Super happy with PorkBun
Came here to find this comment. Happy with pork bun for a couple of years
Iām paying about $22 on Porkbun, theyāre pretty good