I’ve got a few domains. I use Porkbun as registrar. They’re awesome, and the domains were pretty cheap. Under $10 a year each.

I’ve been on Namecheap for years.

The “hard no” list is GoDaddy, Network Solutions, and anything owned by EIG. They are literally the worst. Probably Ionos (formerly 1&1) too.

Beyond just the registrar you pick, try not to pick some vanity TLDs. The ubiquitous ones (e.g. .com and .net) are fine. For example .xyz has a bad reputation (due to its initial low price to register, it became used for many spammers) and might be blocked in unexpected places. Others might lure you in with a cheap first year but charge much higher for subsequent years.

In addition to that, ccTLDs (country code) can be a wildcard, especially if you don’t live in the region served by it. Although rare, the country registry can seize your domain. Most commonly though, many, including .us, do not allow you to mask your personal information (WHOIS privacy). I’ve had a .me for a long time and even though they haven’t been much of a problem, they are also raising the price for renewal faster than an equivalent .com, and so I’ve been thinking of letting that domain go.

If you trust your country’s ccTLD registry and they’re reputable, that’s less of an issue, however.

I use two: Namecheap and omg.lol.

Admittedly omg.lol isn’t a traditional registrar, but they do give you a domain name and other stuff (I don’t use most of it), but it’s $20/yr

Namecheap varies, but last I checked it was a bit cheaper. Not by much, maybe $15/yr for my .monster domain?

My namecheap domain (.net) is around 15 USD annually, with basic privacy protection included

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.

Porkbun is pretty solid

I Just transfered over to porkbun after namecheap decided to raise renewal cost again, wish id done it sooner.

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.

Hover.com is my favorite. Good prices and no shenanigans.

I paid $12 (USD) for a .in and $32 for a .nu with Namecheap, $20 (AUD) for a .au and $59 for a .email with VentraIP.

I can’t really recommend Namecheap though because you can’t count on getting support if you need it. A couple of years back I needed to change my account email with them due to Google being an arse and locking me out of my primary gmail account (namecheap required an email code to log in to the domain dashboard but I couldn’t view the email), put a support ticket in while logged into the same account in their support portal and they ignored me for close on a month. At that point I managed to get back into the gmail account so didn’t need their help anymore, I sent Namecheap back a message saying I was unhappy with their lack of help. About six months later they sent their one and only reply to my ticket, basically saying they were sorry I was unhappy but they didn’t see a problem with the time they took.

I must admit I still have domains with Namecheap because sometimes it’s just hard to get around to changing things, but I was reminded of their lack of competence literally this morning. They sent me an email saying I needed to update my domain contact info so I logged in and went to change it only to find their contact update form is broken and won’t submit…

VentraIP hasn’t given me any issues so far with either their domain or email hosting but I haven’t had to rely on their support so I can’t say how good they are with that.

My name registration with porkbun is cheap enough that I don’t remember exactly. Had no issues with them.

Cloudflare has been excellent for me since I switched away from (puke) GoDaddy years ago. They don’t 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 have entirely too many domains at namesilo.com. Privacy is included for free in the majority of circumstances – not for .org. .com renewals for me are down to $8.85 year because of the aforemented “too many.” I also have some .social and other newer TLDs and those are stupidly expensive.

I use nothing else from namesilo. For domains I use I don’t even use their nameservers. But for what I need, their UI is sometimes awful, but it does what I need.

I generally get stuff from porkbun.com since I’ve 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 can’t really do anything about them.