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I have used numerous domain name registrars including some of the most popular ones 1&1, Gandi.net, Google Domains (🪦), hover, name.com, and namecheap.com. My all-time favorite was name.com. I started using name.com in June of 2010 when I setup adamdjbrett.com and stephanieywatt.net. Back in 2011 name.com was still a young Denver based startup with incredible customer service, engaging social media, and most importantly was 1) affordable 2) high quality and 3) easy to use. I appreciated their stance against as being anti-SOPA, pro-net neutrality, and how the ceased DNS wildcarding. Now name.com is part of Identity Digital. The biggest change I have seen from 2011 to today has been the rise in prices, and fewer customer first initiatives, the fun is gone. I miss the bearglecorn mascot.
I am leaving name.com behind because of the rising renewal costs. I had several domains up for renewal at $125.89 which was quite steep. Part of that cost was I was being charged $4.99 per domain for whoisprivacy. I began to shop around and see what some other options and I were decided to go with namecheap because domain privacy was included, and the renewal fee is $76.52.
Namecheap is a private company and they support the Electronic Freedom Foundation and the Fight For The Future.
What I like about namecheap thus far has been the price and the privacy. The features I lost from name.com have not yet to me justified the price difference. While Namecheap's interface is not as user friendly for me as name.com, it is still easy to navigate and moving the domains over was a rather painless process.
Comparison & Contrast #
| Service Element | Name.com | Namecheap |
|---|---|---|
| WHOIS Privacy | $4.99 | Free |
| DNS | Free | Free & Premium |
| DNSSEC | NO | Premium |
| SSL | Paid Add-On | Paid Add-on |
| Titan Email | Private Email | |
| Email Forwarding | Yes | Yes |
| User Interface | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | ⭐️⭐️⭐️ |
| Customer Support | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ |
Name.com had wonderfully fast DNS and offered ALIAS records for an included price. Namecheap charges extra for premium DNS which has features I don't need for each domain name. Now I use Cloudflare for DNS, so I don't have to use namecheap DNS. Additionally, instead of using namecheap or name.com email redirects as I found both so limited I use IMPROVMX, a service which I highly recommend.
Conclusion #
I think I am going to transfer most of my domain names away from name.com towards namecheap. I much prefer domain + Google Workspace integrated billing of name.com so I am going to keep at least one domain and project on name.com. Plus I can hope that name.com may lower their domain prices and start offering included privacy protection.
My tech stacks #
For those who might be interested here are my present tech stacks.
| Elements | #NoCode or Low Code | Static Site Generators (SSG/Jamstack) | WordPress |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domain Name | Namecheap or Name.com | Namecheap or Name.com | Namecheap or Name.com |
| DNS | Namecheap or Name.com | Cloudflare | Cloudflare |
| Email Forwarding | ImprovMX | ImprovMX | ImprovMX |
| Site Builder | Carrd.co | Eleventy or Jekyll | WordPress |
| Hosting | Carrd.co | Cloudlfare Pages | Digital Ocean |
| Github Pages | Vultr | ||
| Netlify | Linode | ||
| Advanced Additions | |||
| Hosted Email | Google Workspace | Google Workspace | Google Workspace |
Afiliate links #
Using these links I may earn a comission.
More codes: #
Conclusion #
If you have any domain name reigstrar recomemndations for me or other elements I should consider about name.com and namecheap please drop me a line.