Where to Register a Domain

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Welcome to Syntax. In this Monday, hasty treat, we're gonna be talking about domain registrars.

A lot of people just had the Rogue pulled out from under them with the announcing of Google Domains closing. So if you are just hearing this for the 1st time and you have domains on Google Domains. Well, they have been acquired by Squarespace and that means over the next x amount of months, you are going to be, becoming a Squarespace customer unless you move your domains off of Google Domains. So we figured what a perfect time to do an episode on domain registrars.

We're gonna be talking about some UX stuff. We're gonna be talking about some DNS based features.

We're gonna be talking about some privacy features and Pricing is important on top of all of that, and a lot of this will be our experiences and some research in general. So we have a number of options here we're going to be getting into. My name is Scott Tolinski. I'm a developer from Denver. And with me, as always, is Wes, boss.

Hey. Yeah.

We've we've talked about Where to register domain names in the past. And it's actually doing some research for this episode, I think since the last time we've talked about it, a lot has changed. A lot of prices have kind of come down. So we're going to be getting into what do you need to look for in a registrar? What's important? What's not important? How much should you be spending? Are they going to bait and switch on you? And I just rattled through a list of some of the more popular ones, but hopefully you'll walk away from this quick episode with Pretty pretty ready to to make a decision. So the first thing we have here is, just it's important to understand the difference between Domain name registration and DNS, meaning that domain name registration is where who you actually pay money to to get your .com or .io or whatever. And then the DNS, often, that is the same company, but it doesn't have to be. So when you have a a domain name, You set your name servers on your domain name. And, basically, when a website needs to look up or not necessarily a website, when anything needs to figure out What a domain name goes to or where email should go to. Those are MX records or If something is verified or whatnot, it needs to know what server I should ask for all the data, and that's that's a name server. So If you register your domain at a specific registrar, you don't necessarily have to use their DNS for actually implementing it. And I recommend putting all of your DNS in one spot so that anytime you're making changes, At least, you know, there's 1 spot where you can go and log in

and it's gonna see everything in one spot. Yeah. And that makes sense. I, you know, I I tend to not do that, but It's like I I do it on a per case basis, but you're right. You should just probably have all all your DNS in the same spot. That makes way more sense. Yeah. I you You can't get away with only doing 1 registrar because a lot of these registrars don't offer

specific types of domain names. I think I'm with 3 or 4 After trying to consolidate them, I was on like 7 or 8 over the years, and I have finally moved them all over to as few as I possibly could, and I was very happy about that. But you can't always get them into just one because of the TLD offerings.

Other things to think about is do they support domain name flattening? Some registrars don't allow maybe this isn't a registrar. This is a DNS thing is if you want to use a top level domain like West. Io is one that I have.

Sometimes if you want to use a service with that, you know, when you sign up for a service, you want to put a custom domain on it.

Sometimes registrars don't allow you to do what's called the top level CNAME.

It's called domain name flattening. So Cloudflare specifically does a lot of them do now, but unfortunately, some of them say, oh, you have to use, like, Screenshot.west.

Io. And I was like, no, I want to use straight up west. Io.

Yeah. There's there's like some it is funny. The one thing that you'll find When dealing with DNS in any of these systems is that, like, everybody's found just a slightly different way to do it. And I who knows why? Why is that a thing? Like, why why don't you just copy everybody copy 1 central way of doing it? But we'll often see slight variations in exactly how this all works.

Yeah.

Other things is, does it come with domain name privacy? That's pretty standard these days. I don't think I've ever seen They used to charge you to hide your home address on a domain name, but it's pretty standard now that it comes with free Privacy. I wouldn't even Think twice about a registrar that doesn't offer free domain name privacy.

Totally. Yeah.

Another thing to think about is if they will proxy Register a domain name for you. So a lot of TLDs are country based, meaning that you may only register them if you have a business in that country.

And sometimes you want that TLD because it makes sense for your business. And a lot of registrars will operate businesses in those countries and act as a proxy to hold it. So I have a Af domain name, Which you can you can no longer register a dotaf domain name anywhere on the Internet. I get people that message me, like, once a month about it, which is crazy. But because I registered boss dotaf before that got implemented, I get to keep I get to keep it. And Gandhi, the registrar I have, operates some sort of proxy agreement either by themselves Or through something else through Afghanistan where they, like, hold it for you and then give you access to it, which is kind of sketchy because They could they could pull that out from under you. I probably wouldn't put your business on one of those, but if it's a kind of a fun domain, maybe go for it. Yeah.

You also have to be aware of, like, bait and switch pricing, which, you know, this used to be a bigger problem because it used to be less Places to get a a domain name, and they used to be all sleazier.

I mean, I remember GoDaddy being obviously the sleaziest of the sleazy in terms of Both still are. But also, like, you have to click no thanks to 8 8 different offers. It's like, would you like a back scratch with this $10,010,000? Like, no thanks. I don't want that. You just have to keep clicking no until you get to the thing. That that's what I always told people when you're registering a domain. Alright. You're gonna do it here, but just say no to absolutely everything that it tries to sell you on until you get to the real, you know, real checkout.

Yeah. A lot of the ones I looked into are not a lot of them, but they will say, oh, it's $20 to register this domain name. And then there's like a tiny little asterisk that says renews at 3 times the price. So some of them are like A couple of bucks more it will renew at instead of you pay 7 and then it renews that 8.50, which is not a big deal, but Specifically GoDaddy, their .coms were like, oh, register it for $4, Which is by far the cheapest you can get a .com for anywhere.

And then it says renews at $22 a year, and they count on people just being like, alright, well, I'll A little bit when I'm ready. And then and then the the renewal comes around, you're like, pay the man, and I don't wanna deal with this right now. That's exactly what they do.

I I actually was, like, really interested about this because I always see any time domain stuff comes up on Twitter, people are like, well, I saw somebody saying, this is the biggest rip off ever. You're buying something that doesn't even exist, before you buy it. And I I was like, well, I I wonder how That whole process works of how do you become a storefront selling domains? Right? How does that even how does that even happen? And turns out It's actually I I don't know.

Theoretically, it's not that intense. So you basically just have to have You have to meet the accreditation requirements. You have to become a, you you have to basically show that you have the technical expertise and financial stability To be able to become a domain registrar, and then you have to give them $3,500 and then is the Internet corporation for assigned names and numbers, the ICAN.

You have to give the ICANN $3,500 and they get to just say, alright. Yeah. You you can be a registrar or not. And then you get to then work on your actual technical back end for that service. But for the most part, you're applying to be able to sell these domains and you have to prove to them that you are, able to meet that accreditation before moving on. And I can if you ever heard of I can, you'll see I can all over these domains, websites or anything like that. In case, ICANN is, the company that's in charge of basically the entire DNS system and ensuring that, like, domain names are unique. Yeah. But also, like, which TLDs get added, which top level domains even exist, and who gets access to them. So ICANN is the The big boss here. A couple of years ago, whenever they opened up the ability, like, you know how we have anything

anymore.

So there are companies that own dot. The big one is Donut Media or Donut Registration or whatever. So they own House, and I'm just going to pick random ones right here.

Restaurant and studio.

And the reason why sometimes these registrars don't offer all the TLDs is because they couldn't reach an agreement with whoever owns that. Like. Tech is another one.

Tech was a sponsor of ours for a long time. Big fan of the tech domain names. They have control over tech. Right. And anybody who wants to sell a tech, they have to have a meeting

and shake hands with those people and It'd be approved as, like, a reseller for those specific domain names. Yeah. And some of them, like, I think it was I don't know if it's One of one of them recently that I really wanted was, like, owned by Dish Network. Like, some of them are just owned by

random ass companies. Yeah. Like, Google owned dot Zip.

Right? And then I think they just started that Zip. Then that's the dumbest idea ever. It's a I been who who Who is sitting there and being like, yeah, that is it. That makes a lot of sense. Let's do it. Like that to me is such a bad idea. I wonder if it was just them like,

All right, well, we're going to sell this thing. Let's do one last hurrah of trying to like, how much money did they make? Because Zip was controlled by Google. You could never register 1 ever until they opened it up via Google domain names a couple of weeks ago. And, like, how many .zip domain names were registered in, like, 1 week? Probably a hell of a lot.

And I don't know. I don't really think there's a lot of money to be made in domain names because it seems like everybody's not today. Nickel and dime in them. Yeah, But maybe they they just, like, kinda did a little bit of a cash grab before they sold it to Squarespace.

Yeah. Wild stuff. Alright. Let's get into the actual domain, registrar options that we're gonna be talking about in this episode. And I'll be sure to mention which ones I've used and which ones I haven't when we have.

But I thought your little table here that you put together was neat, Wes. Yeah. So we just kinda said, here's the the big ones that people are Commending, I asked on Twitter what people are using, and then I went through and said, like, how much is the .com? How much is the IO? I'm not going to rattle through it because almost always The prices are within a dollar or 2. Not enough that it would ever matter, but it is important for things like do they have to factor auth? Do they have phone support? Do they have a fake chat where you click the chat button? It tries to run you through some sort of stupid knowledge base, give you an AI answer, and then Give you a contact form, which they'll email you back in 3 days. You know? Yeah. Long contact form is really what those are.

Something that I Just run into, which is the syntax domain name, which is like, how do I let Scott edit the DNS of syntax.fm? You know? And, like, Do they offer team client access to that type of stuff? And then notes, Which is just the thing. So the first one, Namecheap. They've been around for a while. No bait and switch on their pricing, which is really nice. I tested out their chat and I had a real human talking to me in 10 seconds. I'm not even lying. So I was very impressed by that. Yeah. And So the the CEO of Namecheap came on Twitter, and he's like, hey. You guys check out spaceship at spaceship.com.

And I don't know why this is a separate business from Namecheap.

But essentially, it's you buy a domain name there. You can get your hosting.

You can get your email. Because I think the way that a lot of these registrars make money is not on the domain name. They make their money on you register the domain name there and then you say, Oh, well, would you like To hook up an email address. Would you like to throw up a quick website? That's why Squarespace wants it. Right? All these people with domain names. Hey. Hey. 1 of us used to make a lot of money on, like, SSL certificates and things like that. When you want a secure site, that's $250 a year for the basic SSL. You know? I forgot about that. Yeah. That was probably a big a big business for them before that sort of thing went away. But so the the spaceship thing here, They are offering you should check it out. Spaceship.com.

They're offering scroll down to their hosting plans.

$20 a year, You get 20 gigs SSD, 5 subdomains or subdomains, Five SSL certs, which who cares anymore about that? Is it a VPS? Is that what it is or what? Yeah. It's a VPS.

300,000 files. Well, that's not enough to npm install anything.

One core, 1 gig of memory, Fifty MySQL databases, and then you go up to their most expensive plan, $38 a year.

You get 2 gigs of memory, unlimited databases, up to 4 cores of CPU.

So, like And I asked him, hey, can you run note on these things? He said, yeah. So that's suspiciously cheap.

You know? Like, if if you think about $38 a year, that's, what, a couple bucks a month? 3 just over $3 a month?

That seems suspiciously cheap. I'd never, never seen this before, that Twitter mentioned before. Yeah. So it's interesting to know if this is something they're gearing up to start, like, really pushing out. But you're right. Why is this a separate product? Is it just to differentiate The hosting bit from their domain product. Because on the back end, it it's probably using the same tech to manage their domains or

They're just putting a fresh coat of paint on it for hosting and making it like a one stop shop kind of deal, maybe. Yeah. That's probably what it is. Because, like, who's going to their domain and register to build a website? You know, not me. Nobody. Yeah. So maybe they're starting their own thing. Spaceship.com is pretty sweet domain name. It's a good domain name. Yeah. If you're a domain holder, the domains are Cheap as hell, too. They're cheaper than Cloudflare, which I was surprised.

So even the renewal was Like $0.30 cheaper than Cloudflare, which is who cares? But they're obviously taking a hit somewhere. So that's another thing to think of. Okay, What are they going to do? Are they going to Google Domains Me in 5 years from now? Or is this actually what it is? Sometimes these new companies that are suspiciously cheap, There's a reason why they're suspiciously cheap because they're burning VC money for 3 years. And then when To somebody else and Yeah. Then it gets real expensive.

Yeah. Interesting. One thing to mention is that you use the domain cool with several o's as the dot I o, And I thought that was pretty cool of you. Yeah. I was just trying to find, like,

a one domain name that was available that I could run through All of them? Because sometimes you put in I put a dot I o in, and it was said it was $68 everywhere.

Mhmm. And then cool dot I o was 35 everywhere except for GoDaddy.

It was, like, $6.60.

And, I want my name. It's also $69.

And I want my name. Oh, so that's

with the.coms. A couple of bucks here doesn't matter, but the other ones, Often, you you should shop around for them. Or in my case, I just usually go to Cloudflare and you know that they're not gonna Getcha on that type of thing.

They GoDaddy also has fake chat, so don't go to GoDaddy. Yeah. Number 2 on the list was GoDaddy. And you know what? GoDaddy was a slimy company for most of my career, and they were often really deemed as the The slimiest of the slime balls. But then at some point, they were really trying hard to do some major brand.

I guess you would say brand fixing where Yeah. They were all over Twitter. It'd be like, no. We've changed.

Daddy. But, like, honestly, I don't necessarily feel like they're that different of a company, and I I probably wouldn't even consider them for a second,

Personally, I think they are trying to be like a Squarespace, Wix and Shopify competitor, which they certainly could do. It's kind of scary how big Squarespace Wix.

What's the other big one? What's the one that Google has sold it to? Squarespace.

Squarespace. Yeah. There's another one out there, website creator. Hey. Can you go to godaddy.com? I'm there.

Oh, wow. I'm getting an access denied. I bet it's because of my VPN. That's probably because you're trash talking them.

I Very They're listening.

Yeah.

They got that shit about. GoDaddy has that, like, font.

You know that font that's like go to Godaddy.com and look at the font right now. I can't. It's like the The font that says, like, we're healthy and we're better and we care. Yeah. It's the like, if you bought a granola bar or, like, something like that, green hosting or something like that. You'd have that font on there.

Next one is Gandhi. Gandhi is a very popular option because they offer literally I've never found a dome. Gandhi is usually where you go when you can't find a red star that supports the TLD, and They've been great. They have a really nice back end. They allow you to have a single account and switch between businesses.

So I have, Like, 1 domain name personally registered and then a bunch registered under my business, and I'm able to switch between the 2. Their billing is really good.

Their emails are really good. So I got an email from them saying, hey, we're not offering Af domain names, but yours is still going to be You're allowed to keep your Af domain name, and here's all the details. So I was pretty surprised by them, and their pricing seems to be Decent. The Af domain name is really expensive, but that's not there.

That's not because of them. It's because of whoever they have To pay it to. Have you ever heard of 101domain.com?

It's like the one with, like, the, the the dash lines.

The warning tape kind of many times in my WordPress days, I used 101 domain because they had it. You know, like, it's Your client says, oh, yeah, I registered it here. And I think that's a lot of these companies had TV ads or something where they just like a lot. I think small businesses is their bread and butter. They get somebody in there, they get their email hooked up, And they're in there for life because I don't wanna switch my email. You need a domain. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I know. This is one of those ones that I feel like I've been to the site before just to always check, but I've never bought anything from ever in my entire life. So, yeah, just curious if it was, like, one that you've ever used. One that we saw come up quite a bit in the Twitter Reds was pork bun, which Yes. Again, pork bun is not one that I had heard of before, but the whole Google Domains thing. And, they were very active on Twitter. A lot of people, you know, really praising pork bun, and it it seems nice. Free who is free SSL, Email forwarding, all that stuff.

I did not try their chat, but, again, the price is, the same or Less is $34 for cool.

Io. So, you know, same as everybody else here, a little bit less. Yeah. Porkbans seems like

a developer Friendly company, you know, like, I've heard of people using them for years. So it's not Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Like, I've known about them. I've never used them, but I've heard of them for many years. And it's always like, oh, yeah, I use Porkbun, and it's usually somebody who's like, I use Linux. You know, it's one of those cool people.

Oh, okay. I trust you. Yeah.

But kind of on the same idea is another one is hover, and I have used hover for For many years, I'm a big fan of it. Hover is from 2Cows.

What was 2Cows or what is 2Cows? I don't know. I've never heard of Tucows until making the Internet better since 1993. So I learned to code on Tucows.

They're a Canadian based company.

Okay. That makes sense. They also own

a, like, mobile

data company. What's it called? Oh, it's spelled t u c o w s. Yeah. I was looking for, like, the number 2 cows. Ting.

So, Tucows owns Ting, which is like a, I guess, like a a cheap cell phone carrier in the States. It's not here in Canada. It's hilarious. It's a Canadian company, but they don't offer in Canada. And I've always been a big fan. Hover is the only company on this list that will pick up the phone, which is amazing.

I had some we had the syntax.fm domain name on Hover. And when we joined Century, part of that was we had to give Century the syntax out of him domain name, And there was some issue with transferring it. Like, it was locked even though I unlocked it. So I picked up the phone and the people were, like, very technical, You know, like, they understood what was going on. I was I was really happy about that. And they actually, like, you know, like, with support, when you email back, you get, like, a Totally random person every time that has no idea what is going on. I actually got to email the same person back, and then, like, 2 days later, they followed up and Had all the data, so I was like, okay, their support was fantastic, and their prices are, like, super good, like, not a not significantly cheaper than the other ones, but the the prices are always just as good as the rest of them. Yeah. And and this, it seems like as long as the prices aren't bad, They're usually

like in there's a good tier and then there's a medium tier and then there's a bad tier. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't used hover before, but it's one that I've heard as being a good option.

One of them that I have used for quite a bit was named .com, and I I still have quite a bit on namedot because that was my, like, primary, domain registrar for a little while. And I've since basically been moving everything to Cloudflare. We can talk about Cloudflare next, But name .com is one of those ones. They're they're like a Colorado based company. You know, they had a nice UI in 2011, and I was like, oh, yeah.

Yeah. Nice UI for 2011. And I'm I'm not necessarily feeling that same way anymore, given that it has not like, it got a a slight product coat of paint on it. But they were one where Grey sucks. It it everything about it sucks now. And, like, you know, it was fine at the time, whatever, but they put a Fresh coat of paint on it. And and sometimes there's, like, really bad UI things going on. But other times, like, you know, the process of Buying a SSL certificate, which is something I've had to do through them before.

It felt very 1990 in terms of everything.

And then I debugged their jQuery, UI progress bar on their site and was on their chat with them and being like, hey, your your Process is failing because of a a error in your JavaScript code. I'm seeing the error. It's a jQuery error, and here's the error. And they were just like, And turn off your hand blocker. It's like I know more than you. Please stop.

So I I'm in the process of moving my stuff off of there. And the only reason why I have domains there at all. It's because I had too many to start with there, and I just haven't taken the moving a domain is obnoxious. It's an obnoxious process. Yeah. I a couple of years ago. So I just went on Name .com and logged in. In

2011, I bought West. Io there because they were one of the first registers to offer IO domain names.

And it looks like I had bought a bunch of SSL certificates over the years as well.

Looks like in 2014, I bought a SSL certificate from them. But So, like, a couple of years ago, I moved. I was like, alright, I have domain names of probably 7 or 8 different registrars.

I had to keep logging in and updating my credit card. And, like, You had to, like, be like, oh, is this a good is this a good price or not? Or are they just, like, going to renew it at a ridiculous amount versus when I registered with it, and it is really frustrating. So I was like, you know what? I'm gonna move everything to Cloudflare because Cloudflare Opened up as a registrar.

Not that where you could register domain names from them, but you could move them. Now you can register domain names.

But Cloudflare is saying we're going to do domains at cost, which is pretty awesome because they have so many other products that will There's so many other products that you pay for, so they're like, okay, well, we're going to eat money on this And then, allow you to, hopefully, some of you guys upgrade to other ones. So that was pretty cool that they did that. And also having your domains, At least having your DNS on Cloudflare is really nice if you're doing any of the DDoS protection stuff. I know a lot of people don't like Cloudflare Because there's this massive force behind the Internet, which is like, I guess you got guess you got to be careful with big companies like that that control a good chunk of the actual Internet.

But they've Never wronged me, at least not yet. And I'm a big fan of all Cloudflare services.

I use quite a few myself, big fan of all their workers and whatnot, so I was happy to move most of my domain names over there. I still have a bunch on Hover, and those are just TLDs that they don't offer at all. What is in general the process This is for you for migrating 1. Is it just doing

the the slog?

It's very, very simple to move over. And I think the thing to know is that moving a domain name, you do not need to wait until it renews.

You can move a domain name at any time. You usually have to pay for 1 year, but that 1 year just gets tacked on to whatever you have. So if you have 9 months left at a different registrar and you move to a new one, You're going to be at a year 9 months on top of there, so don't don't wait. And, also, some like, I know a lot of people take advantage of these, like, You could just register it with them and then immediately move it to or you don't it's not immediate. You often have to wait, like, 60 or 90 days. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

It's kind of good because there's some sketchy stuff that could happen. Like, if you get hacked and somebody moves your domain name, You know, then it's very hard to get that back. So you could make use case of that. But the way it works is you unlock your domain name. So by default, Your domain name will be locked from being transferred. So if you unlock it, you get what's called a move code. And basically, just go to your next registrar and say, I want to move this domain name.

You register it with them, and they're going to ask you for that code. You paste that code in the box, And then there's some backroom negotiation that goes on and your domain name gets moved over.

The kind of important thing to note is If you want no downtime is baby. Don't switch your DNS just yet because Moving DNS is where you could possibly have downtime. Or the other thing you do is you get the whole domain name in your new registrar.

You mirror the entire DNS to your old one.

And then when you're ready to cut over, you switch your name servers, and you hope and pray that you have both of those exactly the same. And when you do a cutover, you have zero downtime. With the syntax domain name, I I said, hey. Like, we're going to give you the domain name, but don't change the name servers. Like, let us, me and Scott, still control the The DNS for syntax. So that way we don't have to go through some, like, process to add a add a subdomain every time we want it. Yeah. Subdomain. Yeah.

Yeah. Which we do. Yeah. Have you ever so there's also I want my name, which you have listed as like a finder, but they also do registry there. And then, DNS simple is kind of like an oddball one because DNS simple, their whole thing is that we give you A lot of DNS, like fancy and more complex DNS features and, like, stuff before that you couldn't do elsewhere. And they were like the first ones for me that did Automatic SSLs and, like, weird alias, DNS records, stuff that you couldn't do anywhere else. Like, for instance, I I ran into a situation where I am are because of the way our redirects and SSL had worked with Apex Domains, it was impossible for me to move to A redirect from I think it was like level up tod's h t t p s to ww.leveluptutorials h t t p s. There was like a weird thing. And they were the only ones that did it for some weird reason. So, we had to use DNS simple for a little while until, that don't that whatever that, I don't know, caching that happens for Yeah. Permanent redirects went away. So I I moved off them since then. The reason that's kind of weird is because you're they're like a subscription based service, so you can't even go and hunt to see how much their domains I would imagine their standard prices. I've never purchased a domain out out through them.

But you you pay like $30 a month and then you get a whole bunch of Extra features. And, you know, at the time when I use them, which was, you know, 10 years ago or so, they did things that nobody else was doing. Now I have no idea what that Looks like today, but I found them to be like a really interesting service. Yeah. This does look really nice. So they have an API. Like,

One of the big things they have an API that you can use to manage your domain name. So if you're running like a multi tenant app, something like Vercel. And you have like, whatever Vercel. App, you could use that to be adding your values into it. Or, like, if you wanted people to register domain names via an app, don't ever do that. That's that's a weird thing where, like, you sign up for, like, Some service, and they're like, woah, we can add a domain name for you, but then your domain name is in some weird app. And, like, What are the chances that they have, like, full DNS? Exactly.

I know Shopify does that. Like, I wonder how big of

a registrar Shopify is. Probably massive. Same with Ioan, like, Squarespace and all those, right? Yeah. He's out there. Imagine

That's big stuff.

So finding domain names.

I've been using I Want My Name quite a bit lately. I used to always use this one called domainer,

d o n. I pretty much always domainer.

Yeah. But my that's the only one I use.

I used to really love it, but I find that they they're going hard on, like, trying to sell you something. I think they probably make a lot of their money off of affiliates, I think. Yeah, I think they make a massive amount of money on it. Which is funny because I want my name also is a registrar, but I find their search really good. Like, I can search For TypeScript.

And then there's a button that says hide unavailable domain names, and they will you wait a couple of seconds, but they'll populate TypeScript dot gay is available and TypeScript dot Africa and TypeScript dot church, you know, and you can just, like, rip through All of the possible options. Whereas a lot of the other ones will, like, do you it's not taken, but do you want Max typescript.com, or do you want, Like, you know, they'll try to suggest funny ones to you that are never very good. So I've been a big fan of I want my name in their search.

Yeah. You're right. Because I even just on domainer right now, it gives you, like, 6 options.

One of them is $27,000. It's like, no. Yeah.

They show you the ones that are for sale and the ones that are taken. I don't care. I just want to see what's available to me. Interesting. Like, let's see. What's Scott? Let's have a fun. Oh, you got Such a good domain name recently. What? Tolinski?

Yeah. And and luckily, let me just say, that was suggested to me by a syntax listener who graciously suggested it without acquiring it. So thank you for that because

there are people on the Internet who just acquire that domain and be like, LOL, I got it. Yeah. I got I got sniped on 1 recently, and I'm I'm a little bit upset about it. Yeah. So thank you for that. But I didn't think to to grab it. That's That's the other thing is, like, you might think, oh, it's not a big deal, but, like, I probably have how many domain names do you have? Should I count?

I probably have 40. Let's see here. I that I have mine spread out amongst, like, 5 different services. So

I have 53 on Cloudflare And probably another 6 on Gandhi and hover, probably 60 domain names in total. So it's it's not cheap, you know? And it's kind of a bummer because, like, a lot of them are just similar things to to what I've done before.

And then I have all my kids names. And I told that story once. Right? Let me make sure I still own it before.

Yeah. I own HitBoss.com, which is the name of 1 of my son. One of my son. My son.

And That was the only one that was not available when we decided to name our kid that name.

And when he was born, I literally messaged it was like a woman from Denmark or something.

And I was like, hey. Like, you're not using this domain name. She was it's just being redirected.

Can I buy it off of you? And she's like, my son takes your courses. Oh, my gosh.

And I was like, oh, man. So, like, we worked out. I paid her good money for it. And then Also, I gave her son free courses for life, and now I was able to get it. And, like, it's kind of funny because It's that domain name is no good to anybody unless your name is Kit Kit Boss. Yeah.

So I was really happy that we could snag that because I have all of my kids .coms. But, like, I don't know. Like, is the .com gonna be Important.

Like, desirable when they're older, or is it gonna be like, Why didn't you get me your TikTok name? You know? Yeah. Why didn't you register dot TikTok?

That needs to be a name. Is the domain name as important as it was Once before, I don't think it is. It's important as it used to be. The handle what's important. Good point. Although, you know, we we did talk about, like, blue sky and some of these new, yeah. Alternatives where, like, your domain could very well end up becoming your passport here. Your handle I I like that. That's The best. Me too because I have a nice domain now, so I'd like to use that.

If you're registering a domain in today, what would you pick, Scott? I personally

am going to be Picking Cloudflare.

I like Cloudflare's UI.

I really like their management features.

I like just the general flow of it, and I use their product for everything.

So all of my most important and most beloved Domains have been already living on cloud for there already anyways.

But now I do have to migrate the rest of them there. So, yeah, I I think that's really what it's gonna be for me is moving them to to Cloudflare. I you know, I could be convinced of other ones as well as well. But Since I already have so many at Cloudflare, it's like, well, I might as well move them to the spot where I have the most of them and a service that I like. Yeah. Big fan of Cloudflare. That's where I go. By default, I go to Cloudflare.

If it's not available, I'll go to Hover, although it sounds like Porkbun is probably another very good option Yeah. For that type of thing. And then also, I know Cloudflare doesn't have .dev domain names.

So, but they did say on Twitter the other day that they will support it by the end of the summer. Okay.

That, seems like that, you know, that that will be a big thing for a lot of people because I know that's, like, the big reason why a lot of people went to Google Domains in the first Besides it being a great little interface and all that stuff, but, having the dot dev domains was like a big reason why I Have Estelinski .dev there. I have Scott with three t's .dev.

All my domains over there are .dev really is what it comes down to. So

Yeah. I don't know if I own any dev.dev domain names. They're expensive. Yeah. That's that's a problem with some of these. It's just like, oh, It's fine to spend $10 a year on a .net or something like that. But Net. The dotaf domain name is not as funny when you're shelling out $200 a year. Yeah. LOL. Af.

That's fun.

But on the flip side, some of them are dirt cheap. Like I was on spaceship spaceship.com and their price.

Let's search for Scott.

Some of them were like a dollar. And I'm curious, What do they renew at? Yeah, you're right. Yeah. Dot online. Oh, yeah. See, so this is a Thumbs down for part of spaceship.

Online register at a buck 53 per year. Renew 25.80.

So you're getting hit. Come on. But yeah. Don't don't fall for that. Unless they make it, like, very obvious that it's like, here's the, you know, Here's the the one time the one time savings that you get. Because I I do I I don't mind a sale on the 1st year if you make it obvious that it's, You know, multiple it's gonna be just a onetime sale or, like, a onetime sale price. And then what does hold on. Let's let's search for

dot online on hover. Because, like, could you just take the take the dollar and then move it move it over to hover?

Right. So let's search for it. Can you take the dollar and then move it immediately?

So Hover is offering online for 4.99 k. Which is usually 35.

Does Hover say what the renewal cost is? Oh, yeah. If you if you increase it to 2 years, it goes up from 4 to $40.

So whoever is behind .online domains, they're probably They're probably, like, offering it at a cheaper rate

Mhmm.

To all of these registrars.

So can you renew a domain name for $4? Probably not. It's probably that initial registration that's only cheap. Be careful for those $1 domain names. They are not a dollar in the long run.

Alright. Well, that should be it for domains here. Yeah. I I thought this was really eye opening. You know, it was it was interesting to me that there is not, like, there's not some, like, magic carpet, answer out there. There's not like something that we've never heard of that somehow better than everything else that, you know, just towers above the competition.

If you're on Cloudflare or Hover or Porkbun or whatever, you know, the Namecheap, those are all probably gonna be fine for you. If you're on, Name .com, I would probably migrate. I'm gonna migrate some of mine.

Nothing that gives Name .com. I just I just you know, I got I got charged for privacy. Who is Stefan there? In the you know, it's 2023. I don't need that in my life right now. So Mhmm.

Alright. That's it. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. Catch you later.

Peace.

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