hi,

im about to transfer my registrar out of doteasy. im looking for a new registrar that must first and foremost have very good customer service that respond in a timely fashion. price is secondary.

what is good and best out there?

i also need a registrar who wont kick up a fuss if i should want to transfer out later. some registrar are now changing the admin contact to their own to take control of things.

have you guys heard of 000domains, domaininvestigator, are these any good and reliable?

thanks all

GoDaddy has good support and at a cheap price. The only thing bad about it is that they spam you through e-mail.. not that much but they still do it.

I've heard of 000domains and heard nothing but good things about them. You may want to try and search for it for other opinions.

Though I am a reseller of their services and obviously biased, I believe that OpenSRS is among the most honest of the registrars out there right now.

They expect their resellers to uphold high business morals, and are not afraid to intervene on the behalf of a customer should it appear a reseller is straying from the straight and narrow.

I looked long and hard at reselling opportunities before choosing OpenSRS, and ultimately it was not price that led me to them - it was a synergy with their business model and moral fibre that made me comfortable.

You can certainly get a large variation in service levels from OpenSRS resellers, so you still need to do your homework, but ultimately you have full control over your domains via the OpenSRS Domain Manager at their website, so if your reseller tanks, you don't lose any control.

Good luck.

-t

I've always had good experiences with stargate.com.

What do you think of buydomains.com?

directNIC is the best
Namecheap is also very good and much cheaper

namecheap is a reseller not a registrar. big difference.

Originally posted by TheOp
namecheap is a reseller not a registrar. big difference.

Really? Oo, pretty successful reseller.

Successful reseller who claims to be a ICANN registrar but cannot be found on ICANN.org?!?!

NameCheap is a registrar with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ("ICANN") for Top Level Domain Names (TLDs), currently .com, .net and .org

http://www.namecheap.com/agreement.asp

Still, successful or not, a reseller....

I also like NameCheap a LOT :)

i have one registered at directnic too but im worried about putting all my eggs in one basket.


ok instead of telling me whats good - tell me those to steer clear for or what should i look out for and ask what questions before i transfer or get a name?

Thank you all for your replies

Originally posted by TheOp
namecheap is a reseller not a registrar. big difference. Big difference? What does it matter?

And in any case, they're an enom reseller which in somes ways is an advantage. Plus their price is great and their service is great? What else do I need?

Originally posted by pchai
ok instead of telling me whats good - tell me those to steer clear for or what should i look out for and ask what questions before i transfer or get a name?Well, this story is a bit old, and it no longer applies, but it's a good example of getting screwed...

A few years ago I bought my first domain name. I took a look at the market and what did I find? Register.com at $70 for 2 years and Namesecure at $35 for 2 years. No-brainer, right? Wrong!

I bought my domain.com at Namesecure for $35 for two years and was really happy with my bargain. Then I discovered that in order to change the DNS settings I had to purchase the optional DNS service!! All I could do was park the domain! No other services were available. Man! Talk about slime balls.

So what did I do? I left my domain.com sit idle and went to register.com to buy my domain.org at $70 for two years. Although I really preferred .com, .org was a good fit for my purpose so this wasn't so bad. Register.com proved to have everything I needed and their service was OK. As I recall, they charged extra for URL forwarding (at least back then), but I didn't need this so it didn't matter.

Later on I discovered directNIC. What a difference! $15 a year and included everything - URL/email forwarding, and EVEN DNS settings :-) So, I bought my domain.net and eventually transferred my domain.com from Namesecure to directNIC. I'm still a big fan of directNIC.

But, what a difference in the market today. DirectNIC is as good as ever. They switched from being an SRS registrar to an ICANN accredited registrar. I also use Namecheap at $8.88 per year with all services included. I wouldn't touch Namesecure with a stick, I don't care what they offer. Their past shady business practice of the past soured me on them forever.

There are now MANY good, even great, registrars out there today. Are there still registrars that play unfair like Namesecure did at one time? Hard to believe. The competition is too fierce.

It's still a good idea to check things out first however. Asking the denizens of WHT is probably the best way to find out about a firm. You can (should?) read the registrar's TOS, but I personally can never understand one word of these silly documents.

Anyhow, sorry for the long post. Hopefully I didn't bore you. Just thought it was a story worth telling.

Originally posted by pchai
i have one registered at directnic too but im worried about putting all my eggs in one basket.
Then do what I'm doing...

I use directNIC for my "critical" domain names. IMHO directNIC is the best.

I also use Namecheap for a lot of domain names. Great price, good service, and not all of my eggs in one basket.

I also have some domains with Stargate and with RegistryDomains.com. I'm happy with both.

<< Umm, sorry about having 3 posts in succession. I was too lazy to consolidate all the "originally posted bys" into one post. >>

so far i have no problems with directnic and i like their url forwarding feature.

im really tempted to go with 000domains as their customer service is superb. im not even their customer yet but they have help me answered all my questions that I sent them - and they replied me whithin hours sometimes. they are not the cheapest but i got to give it to them for excellent customer service. I think their registrar is Tucows - any problem with them?

after reading all your recommendations, namecheap looks real good too. cheap enough with the features of directnic but their FAQ is kinda limited.

what should i do? my own host can register/transfer my domain for $5 per year too but they are really into hosting - i mean you must host with them to get that price - again i would be putting all my eggs into one basket if i go with my host.

*sigh*

Originally posted by pchai
their registrar is Tucows - any problem with them?Tucows is the same as SRS. SRS is VERY good. You still have to check out the particular reseller, but 000domains consistently gets high marks in these forums.

what should i do? my own host can register/transfer my domain for $5 per year too but they are really into hosting - i mean you must host with them to get that price - again i would be putting all my eggs into one basket if i go with my host.Do not, I repeat, DO NOT, let your host handle your domain. Very dangerous - lots of horror stories about this type of thing. For about $9 you can handle your own and you're not subject to the whims and quirks (and sometimes downright nastiness) of your host.

Abu Mami, Thanks!

I think you just help me made up my decision.

Originally posted by pchai
Abu Mami, Thanks!

I think you just help me made up my decision. Wow, great! That means I actually did something today. Now I can go home :-)

Stargate is very good. I use them 95% of the time with GoDaddy for the rest.

I also recommend Name Cheap (http://www.namecheap.com) -- as I have registered multiple domain names there... and have had NO problems whatsoever. Their service is great, and they have all of the options I need.

DiscountDomainRegistry (http://www.discountdomainregistry.com) isn't half bad either...

I started out paying full price ($35) for a domain name last year through Register.com. Since then, I've done research (yeah, yeah, hindsight and all that rot!) and have gone through various places to register domain names: web hosts, GoDaddy.com, Reg2c.com, and finally found one I could trust and rely on: namecheap.com. They're great! Simple, quick, and all the tools you need are right there and easy to use - you DO NOT have to be a rocket scientist to use them. You can do URL forwarding, email forwarding, and lots of other stuff FREE. Most other places will charge for those services. I now have 9 names with them. Plus they are pleasant to work with... a Bonus in my book! And, you don't have to worry about your host or someone else "owning" your domain name... if you want to go to another host, just change nameservers in your Account Manager. Very simple. At $8.88 per domain, you really can't go wrong.

Good Luck!