I am asked every week who is the best domain registrar? My answer is always it depends on your specific needs and interests.
For me it’s Epik, GoDaddy, Name.com.
Epik.com for the pricing, all the tools provided such as escrow, free privacy, marketplace, payment plans, etc…
GoDaddy for their reach, their auction platform and that for a lot of people outside of domaining, GoDaddy = Domain Names. Many a time when telling someone I am a domain investor/trader, they say “Oh GoDaddy.”
Name.com I have purchased many domain names through their expired platform, I like their back end for managing domain names.
So who is the best registrar to you and why?
Data from RegistrarOwl.com, last updated 10/2018
| GoDaddy | 59,977,854 |
| Tucows | 10,068,597 |
| NameCheap | 9,339,744 |
| HiChina | 7,760,915 |
| Network Solutions | 7,186,121 |
| Enom | 6,377,477 |
| 1&1 Internet | 5,223,628 |
| PublicDomainRegistry | 5,108,937 |
| Onamae | 4,779,422 |
| Alibaba | 4,304,967 |
| XinNet | 3,078,907 |
| Wild West Domains | 2,921,994 |
| Chengdu | 2,811,699 |
| 2,640,681 | |
| Fast Domain | 2,391,424 |
I say Namesilo.com has the best pricing structure out there. Plus the support they offer is the fastest out of many registrar I dealt with.
I can vouch for NameSilo too.
I like everything about NameSilo BUT their support. It’s the one thing they could really improve on
I ask them questions pretty much every week and have found their support team to be pretty good. Only thing is the fact that they don’t offer phone support but email support responds daily and live chat (esp with the new chat on homepage) responds even quicker.
Agreed
Thanks Raymond.
Epik.com did not set out to be the biggest but we did set out to be the best. We appreciate the kind endorsement. Leasing and financing for domains are areas where we have been a leader for some time, but the core is a very solid registrar.
With the recent addition of BitMitigate.com, we also have something very compelling capability to offer domain investors and hosting customers:
1. For those who are parking domains, you can have a custom SSL-secured parking lander running on a DDoS-resistant network for all your parked domains. These fast-loading SSL-secured landers are better suited to SEO. Example: https://insure.domains/
2. For hosting customers, SSL and DDoS-resistant will now be standard for hosting packages. This means no more CloudFlare or Akamai. Distributed DNS, Content Delivery Network and DDoS protection are now combined.
3. The Anonymize.com privacy service has been expanded to include a Virtual Private Network. This t means that end-clients can have domain registrar, DNS, host, Content Delivery and VPN, all single-vendor with end to end encryption.
More clever things on the way.
I’ve been moving all my domains to DomainCostClub, their service is great for anyone with new gTLD portfolios or 250+ .com’s in their portfolio. Which probably covers 95% of the people that visit thedomains;-)
Their pricing, support and admin are top notch.
I love namesilo.com for their cheap reg fees, cheap renewals, ease of use and they are supportive of the afternic fast transfer service.
I haven’t noticed before that Enom is this popular, as I’ve thought they were 10x smaller than Namecheap but they are on the list with six million doman names .
I vote for Epik.
I moved our portfolio there few weeks ago. There was a little learning curve for bulk tools but it was expected but support was always there when needed. Many times Rob himself replied so overall very happy.
Now who will come out eventual winner among domain industry leading companies:
1. Of course we all want competitive pricing and it’s already there so not a big issue
2. Whoever comes up with either developing domains automatically using AI/machine learning that’s where the game will be won. Both the registrar and registrants can share the revenue and if the site sells the registrar takes a commission or fee.
3. A company that comes up with optimized parking/development page for earning revenue that also provides buy now, make offer, leasing and a domain Joint Venture development option on the landers. Of course, registrar will get their cut or fees but every one can make much more from a successful joint venture. You can not develop properly all your domains but other companies or developers can. The stakes holders in any JV can be domain owner, registrar and party developing the domain. Developing party pays minimum fees while JV is active for using the domain like $20/year additional. If venture fails, domain registrant still owns the domain 100%. It’s my understanding at least one player in the industry is working to do this on their landers using professionally developed standardized legal agreement. Let’s see, interesting times ahead.
Thanks Domain Boss.
On the next-generation parking topic (your #3), due to the acquisition of BitMitigate.com, we can now add SSL certificates, DDoS protection, and Content Delivery Network for free on domains registered at Epik even if they are parked elsewhere. For folks parking a lot of domains, this could be big news. We are now actively looking to partner with parking providers to bring these capabilities to their customers.
More on that development soon.
Looking forward to development Rob!
I’ve had most of my domains with godaddy for 10 years now and haven’t had much of an issue over the years. Dynadot is a good one too.
What about Uniregistry? No mention of them, thought they are pretty good.
i like GoDaddy because of trust.
they are the largest and the best.
Epik.
The only thing that has changed since my endorsement in the “The good, the bad and the ugly – Epik” thread of Feb. 2017 is that Epik has gotten better. They have also showed they are champions of due process, client and customer rights, free speech, and principles like that.
Sure I use a handful of other registrars as doubtless most of us do, and like the (supposedly) subsidized $6.99 .com specials as much as anyone, but Epik is #1, the mother ship, the preferred destination. Especially for transferring in.
How in the world is Epik not high on that list, but especially on the occasionally published monthly lists, by the way? Are people simply nuts? Seriously… Sometimes I have wondered if the name has more to do with it that even we all know (is that even possible for us?), and if a simple name change would propel them into the stratosphere where they so certainly belong.
The morals, ethos and principles of an organization flow from the top down. That is not just true in my own experience, which has included some very rocky adventures in darkness, but is also “common knowledge.” So personally I dread the day if Rob ever sells his interest in Epik or leaves his position, and I hope that he will simply outlive me and remain at the helm well into old age. 🙂
Thanks John. Appreciate the kind words.
The growth engine at Epik is starting to kick in for real. We are building an organization of quality people who have embraced the cultural norm to do the right thing when nobody is looking.
As for my role as CEO at Epik, I am not planning on going anywhere anytime soon. We have worked to keep the company ownership comprised mainly of folks who support civil liberty and free enterprise.
I’m now up to 1,900 domains at Uniregistry, my favourite.
Made a sale yesterday. Because most of my names are regged there, they qualify for instant transfer.
That means they can be placed in the registration path so buyers can pay and acquire the name almost instantly into their Uni account.
While I think you can still self broker via the Market for no commission, I choose the option of letting Uni look after the payments and transfer, in which case the commission is only 10 percent.
I also have my account set up for broker assistance when necessary. This means that if a buyer enquires and wants some sort of help or wants to negotiate on price (all my names are set to BIN) then an expert broker steps in. In that case, the commission rises to 15 percent. Again, very reasonable.
Back in November, Frank Schilling tweeted: “…we are launching the greatest piece of sales infrastructure ever launched to sell a domain name.” So no doubt the development team are hard at work at the Uniplex to achieve that.
The schedule indicates a launch date around August.
And with the acquisition a few weeks ago of the name DomainNames dot com (and with Jeff Gabriel’s predictions last year of very significant growth) 2019 looks like being a stellar year for Uni.
I think Uni needs to work on customer service a bit, few times the reps have been like there is nobody here that can help you with this right now. Sometimes emails aren’t even answered for a long time.
Also I would like them to pick the business they want to be in, I don’t like competing against companies I am supporting on a daily basis, especially if they are outbidding me, and costing me more money.
1 think I hate about EPIK is 15 days grace renewal, make it 25 days because sometimes life happens.
Good luck to all in the space, good conversation.
We generally waive redemption fees until day 39. Ask around. The reason we have this is because our prices are already very cheap and some domainers routinely abuse the grace period. We are looking for sustainable win-win, and are reasonably compassionate with regards to the “life happens” stuff.
I’ve always received excellent customer support at Uni. And because the brokers (and platform) are also great, I’m constantly moving more inventory in.
Last year I sold $79,000 in domains at Uni, my best year so far.
For quite a few years, I had wished that I could access DomainNameSales dot com which seemed to have astonishing sales results. So when Frank Schilling finally decided to open up his highly sophisticated sales platform to other investors, I actually felt quite grateful.
I think it is fine that Uni is involved in multiple aspects of the industry including bidding on auctions. They seem to want to cover all angles. It’s good for the industry for Godaddy to have some serious competition.
So I’m looking forward to the launch of Uni’s new “infrastructure” and I’m placing some trust with Mr Schilling who says “Nobody innovates like Uni”. Let’s hope.
Dave how does the process work at uni, it seems that they start even the lowest quality domains at super high numbers and work down to prices that would sell for anywhere else ,is this the sellers request or just standard. I once saw a deal that happened there for the domain vacation.rentals where one guy was too anxious and paid over half and million for it,when they surely would have taken a fraction of that.
Ben, suppose you have inventory regged at Uni and you decide to place 100 on their Market. So you add them to the Market, then you will have a new Market page where your 100 names are listed.
This is just like your management page in Sedo or Afternic, only it’s integrated within your Uniregistry account. Lots of columns and options.
Just like Sedo or Afternic, you have options for “BIN” or “Make Offer” etc. You set the list price and minimum offer for each domain. All are hidden from buyers except list price if you choose BIN. But your broker can see them.
The owner sets the price, not Uni. If you see a super high price, then it’s probably someone like Frank Schilling who can afford to wait for a top buyer to wander along. You the seller have total control over your prices.
– – – – – – – –
As for Vacation.rentals, I remember that story so it was easy to find on DomainNameWire. Yes, it was brokered by Brooke Hernandez of Uniregistry.
The buyer Mike Kugler had been trying to obtain Vacation.rentals for almost three years. He seemed to be worried that his competitor HomeAway might grab it first as a defensive move. So it was imperative to acquire this exact match category defining name. Mike commented:
“To say I have been chasing this single URL to the point of being a stalker would be an understatement.
“They actually asked for more than the 500K. The 500K was my counter cash offer and they accepted it.”
I’m sure the asking price north of $500,000 was set by the former owner, not Uniregistry.
https://domainnamewire.com/2018/04/11/vacation-rentals-domain-name-sells-for-record-500300/
Ben, suppose you have inventory regged at Uni and you decide to place 100 on their Market. So you add them, then you have a new Market page where your 100 names are listed.
This is just like your management page in Sedo or Afternic, only it’s integrated within your Uni account. Lots of columns and options.
You have options for “BIN” or “Make Offer” etc. You set the list price and minimum offer for each domain. All are hidden from buyers except list price if you choose BIN. But your broker can see them.
The owner sets the price, not Uni. If you see a super high price, then it’s probably someone like Frank Schilling who can afford to wait for a top buyer to wander along. You the seller have total control over your prices.
As for Vacation.rentals, I remember that story so it was easy to find on DomainNameWire. The report is called: Vacation.rentals domain name sells for record $500,300
The buyer Mike Kugler had been trying to obtain Vacation.rentals for almost three years. He seemed to be worried that his competitor HomeAway might grab it first as a defensive move. So it was imperative to acquire the exact match category defining name. Mike commented:
“To say I have been chasing this single URL to the point of being a stalker would be an understatement.
“They actually asked for more than the 500K. The 500K was my counter cash offer and they accepted it.”
The asking price north of $500,000 would have been set by the former owner, not Uniregistry.
Right now not many are close to making a dent on the retail level to what Godaddy is doing. Most of the exchanges you see above arw domainer exchanges. First thing buyers do after a purchase is move their domains to godaddy.
Downside to uni is if their brokers can’t make a deal sometimes they offer their own inventory, and your lead is gone elsewhere never to return, which can suck.
I have accounts all over It seems like I should move more over to epik now .I had the bulk at godaddy ,but name silo now. Name silo seems to have it all great prices ,ease of use,free privacy, and may I say again ease of all the tools ,its just so dam simple.Even after 15 years I still have trouble navigating godaddy ,they are the worst when it comes to that. I like directnic.com for their low bait sales ,but they make it easy to transfer out for cheaper registras. MY BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT is in ALPNAMES.com who without notice doubled the renewal price to 15 bucks for .com, if you have any there get the auth code and get them the hell out of there b4 the expiration date.Please let everyone know because they just set me back a couple hundred bucks while I was using the grace period. I also must mention the great little company that many have not heard of porkbun.com The same perks as namesilo.com and also easy to use and tools like redirect url seem to work instantly. id like to thank Ray Hackney for all his hard work. Ben
Based on the data we have on https://dofo.com, the top registrars based on domain count are below:
Godaddy – 66.2 Million
NameCheap – 10.8 Million
Tucows – 10.6 Million
Network Solutions – 7.5 Million
HiChina – 6.8 Million
1 & 1 IONOS – 6.6 Million
Enom – 6.5 Million
Public Domain Registry – 5.2 Million
We are listing the top 200 registrars worldwide on our Registrars Page (https://dofo.com/registrars).
Definitily its Name.com
In my 22 plus years of domaining, the best by far has been Internet.bs. Crappy name but great system and service. Bulk domain management is superb. Their API is fantastic for instant transfers and adding domain data to my backend.
Really surprised not to see NameSilo on this list, I moved all my domains over to them last year and haven’t looked backed since.
Thanks for the mention, Ray. See everyone at the next Namescon!
Dynadot, NameSilo, and NameBright. Pricing and ease of use.
NameSilo is the best registrar for me. Cost effective and solid support team.
Godaddy
Godaddy is a brand anyone knows and trust. Afternic integration is nice. Interface is really buggy on 720p and mobile screens. You need to pay for Discount Club in order to get discounts..
NameSilo prices are okay, afternic + sedo mls is good. Interfaces is outdated and the fact that you need to prepay your account each time you want to bid or register domains (discounted) is annoying..
Dynadot prices are good, no need to prepay your account, just spend or transfer your domains for cheap up to $500 and you have cheap renewals. Easy manage your domains with their user friendly interface and MOBILE app. Afternic and Sedo mls is awesome
None of the big registers impress me at all. After being in the domain business for 10 years now, I have used dozens of registries and I have found over time that IBS and Who is are the better registries for domainers that have more than a few domains. Better user interface, good customer service and fair prices all impress me. On the opposite side of the spectrum 1and1 and Go daddy seem to be the obvious worst.
RegistrarCompare.com
CompareRegistrar.com
GO DADDY IS THE BEST. I HAVE BEEN BUYING & SELLING DOMAINS FOR 21 YEARS NOW. MBA/BSC/BA.
GoDaddy and Enom have gotten ridiculously expensive.
Next time add NameSilo to your list, curious to hear your thoughts on them.
There is no list, just each person’s personal thoughts. I have a NameSilo account, nothing to complain about but not in my top 3.
I’ve had my domains at NameSilo for a while now and haven’t had any issues…nice and low registration/renewal costs.