There are literally thousands of domain registrars all vying for business.
Having bought, transferred and sold domain names for over 20+ years, I can tell you that there some shady domain registrars that you want to avoid.
Also, with the explosion of gTLD flavors (.life, .baby, etc.), it was expected that prices for “older” gTLDs (.com, .net, .org) would go down but that proved to be false.
“Best” is defined as:
- Should be ICANN-accredited for gTLDs and ccTLDs
- Reputable, Financially Stable
- Low prices (initial and renewal)
Best registrars as of November 2022
- Porkbun
- Pros: low initial price, renewal price
- Cons: relatively new
- Reviews
- https://www.quora.com/Is-the-Porkbun-domain-registrar-reliable
- Namecheap
- Pros: rock solid; have been around for a long time
- Cons: renewal prices are too high
- Dynadot
- Pros: solid web interface
- Cons: prices are going up
I also use GoDaddy but their renewal prices are way too expensive.
Although I like Namecheap, they have been steadily increasing their prices too so I will probably move bulk of my domain names to Porkbun
Reference Links
- List of ICANN Accredited Registrars
- https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/registries/registries-en
- Registry operators: https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_registrar