Domain names seem expensive in comparison. The cheaper VPS that I use for playing around is just $10.29/year.
I thought I’d get a domain name from RackNerd as well, but they’re $24.95/year + I think $4.99 for privacy.
I’ve checked Namecheap, and that seemed great, until I found that renewal prices are often through the roof.
I don’t 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.
On CloudFlare, user224.com renews annually at less than $11
That’s where I got my domain (I was using them at the time, but it doesn’t matter), for that price, and that includes whois privacy.
It’s worth noting that if Cloudflare is your Registrar, you must also use them as your authoritative DNS provider. It’s not bad necessarily, it’s just a little unusual.