Edit, Solved in comments 👌
I want to buy a domain name for personal usage (reverse proxy, selfhosting serivces). I’ll probably go with a general purpose .net or my country specifc one. I am based in Northern Europe.
- Does it matter based on where I am located where the domain is registered?
- Any recommendations for domain registrars in that regard?
Thanks
Just as an FYI, you can switch registrars down the line if you don’t like one, after a 60-day delay, so you aren’t committed for all time. Probably some minor fee associated with that at the destination registrar, like might require a renewal or something, dunno.
Some registrars historically provided more or less information about you to whois; used to be that they required real names to be visibly-attached to domains to have a contact for abuse. I think that current registrars may not do that any more, but might be worth checking up on that if it matters to you.
Price may differ.
Some registrars may provide bundled services. Webhosting is common. I get mail service for a domain I have from my registrar, since I expect the registrar to be around for quite some time and there’s a remarkable paucity of mail service providers out there today. I also get (no-additional-cost) DNS service; I’d guess that most-if-not-all registrars provide an option for that, just to simplify setup of the domain; not sure if that is of interest to you. You may or may not (this is the selfhosted community) want any services.
Porkbun! There are many to pick from but from my experience Porkbun includes everything you need out of the box at no additional cost. Namecheap has very good first year deals, but after that it almost doubles in price.
Which registrar you pick initially doesn’t matter too much. I started with Namecheap then moved to Porkbun after a year with them (Completely free to move, but you’ll have to buy an extra year if you move tho)
Don’t use GoDaddy though. I was searching for a domain on that site and after a few minutes it was taken.
My two issues with porkbun:
They don’t seem to support wildcard/catch all email forwarding
Dynamic DNS is done with an API key that has access to the entire account(!!!)
Though, I might move to them anyway (just moved a domain to namecheap which I used years ago and wow their ux sucks, and they don’t support dane or sshfp, Google domains was really good rip)
Maybe you could use a provider that isn’t your domain registrar? I personally use Cloudflare.
I’m pretty sure you can setup Dynamic DNS with Cloudflare. I don’t personally use that feature, but they have a ton of DNS configurations for you to choose. My domain’s email is also managed by Cloudflare. And it’s completely free!
Don’t use GoDaddy though. I was searching for a domain on that site and after a few minutes it was taken.
There are reasons to avoid GoDaddy, but what you experienced isn’t really a GoDaddy-specific problem. If a domain gets registered on one provider, it will be unavailable on all providers. Unless you are accusing them of falsely saying they were taken but are available for purchase at a premium. I don’t think I’ve heard of them doing that, but who knows what kind of greedy tactics corporations will try these days.
It was initially available. I checked multiple websites to compare prices/services. And when I entered it into GoDaddy.com, the domain was bought. I checked the WHOIS out of curiosity and coincidentally it’s owned by a GoDaddy subsidiary.
In my opinion it really comes down to support, price (first year and renewal) and ethics.
For the ethics piece, if you think Google is an evil company then avoid Google Domains, as an example.
Apparently google doesn’t even offer new registrations anymore
Didn’t even know
I would also include support for Dynamic DNS and API access as well. Those both can come in handy depending on what your doing. I know this wasn’t as common years back but maybe it is more supported now.
I used Namecheap and I think they required that I have like $50 credit on my account before the API access would open up. Maybe that has changed, like I said this was years ago last time I need to look.
Most self-hosters are probably using dns services through their registrar, but you don’t have to. A registrar with poor api support might still be a good choice, if that was the only negative.
Fair point. I failed to mentioned features in my previous comment. Things like WHOIS Privacy are essential to me and I imagine it is for most of us (self hosters)
Any registrar worth their salt will offer whois privacy and local representative services nowadays. I would not use a registrar that wasn’t capable of them — even if my domain didn’t require either, I would take it as a sign their services are limited and sub par.
Absolutely agree! Just pointing it out in case OP runs into a registrar that doesn’t offer this
Yeah that is definitely something that is important to me.
Don’t use godaddy. If you search a domain they will buy it in the background so you only can get it though them
GoDaddy is the worst fucking web host, too. WHEN they fuck your website up, you wait two HOURS on hold to get them to fix it, if your lucky. If your unlucky, you wait over three hours, and they don’t fix it.
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OP is talking about a domain registrar, I can’t imagine location makes a bit of difference since no traffic is going through them.
Hey, ping matters when you’re trying to buy a domain before someone snipes it from you
Interesting, I was hesitating about this. So if I register a domain and use it for reverse proxy with ssl and all. At no point does it traffic to the registrar or other part?
I am really not familiar with how domains work behind the scene, so apologies if its a dumb question.
No, the registrar just registers the domain for you (duh). You can then change the DNS recods for this domain and these records will propagate to other DNS servers all around the world. Your clients will use some of these DNS servers to lookup the IP address of your server and then connect to this IP.
The traffic between your clients and server has nothing to do with your domain registrar.
Ahhhh i see know, thanks for the explanation!
You don’t “use” the domain for reverse proxy but a server. Where the server is located at matters. While you can get a domain and a server from the same hoster both still are different things.
Think of a telephone number (domain) and a phone (server).
Thanks for the analogy 👌
Okay thanks for the swift response :)
Use Njalla
thanks for the recommendation, they seem like a good service but quite pricy compared to Porkbun.
I use them for privacy reasons. They will register the domain name under their company name, you don’t have to give out any data about yourself whatsoever. You can pay anonymously with crypto currencies like Monero. Njalla was actually founded by one of the guys who also founded The Pirate Bay.
Pretty nice that actually
If you’re not particularly set on getting a .net consider getting an EU domain name. They tend to have much better registry privacy included out of the box. With .net/.com/.org you will have to also purchase whois privacy service on top of the domain cost to keep your personal details private.
I can recommend netim.com (France) and inwx.de (Germany) as reliable providers. You can also look for a registrar in your country is you get your country’s domain.
This list may also help. Shop around, see who has better prices and more features. Pay attention to the renewal price too not just the initial registration price.
Ah was not aware of this thanks for the heads up :=)
