On Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 8:35 PM, John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
For domain registration I found that joining the GoDaddy Domain Club ( $120/year or less if you pay ahead for multiple years [1] ) ... There's a lot of registrars with prepay discounts. Gandi's domains are cheaper if you prepay $600, a lot cheaper if you prepay $2000.
Prepayment makes no sense, unless you are planning on maintaining more than 10 domains, which warrants much more due dilligence than if registering one or two domains. Also, if you're maintaining one or two domains, then it is sensible to pay more for a registrar that provides better support, or a more intuitive web interface. For maintaining a larger number of domains: perhaps more powerful management tools are more useful, and possibly the ease-of-use is a lower priority. Therefore, it depends on what you are doing with domains. I know of registrars that are $8.99 per Year and $8.39 per Year for a .COM, with no prepayment necessary, for those rates, and small discounts for prepay. * They say "cheap, secure, reliable, pick two" But that's not really how it is. it's really more like "Inexpensive, Good support, Feature-complete", pick two. Because no registrar is "secure" totally; phishing is conceivable with any registrar. That includes ne'er do wells pre-texting you and tricking registrar support personnel to change your e-mail address plus password and give it to a cracker. You can't give up reliability to get security, so the original 3 don't work. Every registrar known to offer advanced security mitigations charges a boatload, or part of a boatload to add them. If you want security, then the closest you get is what's called a Registry lock with' a telephone-based confirmation of domain changes, And two-factor login to the website. Last I check, getting the registry lock service is Only available on certain TLDs, and adds between $500 and $1000 Per domain name to the cost. Also, there is a bit of inconvenience, since you are setting a lock which your domain registrar is unable to override on their own, so routine maintenance such as updating DNS servers or renewing becomes a potentially drawn-out process..... Various registrars offer Two-Factor website login and 'Max Lock' features of their own, providing their own confirmation, and just a Client/Registrar-Lock on the domain, But again...... you can't see the registrar's IT systems, so blindly assuming they are secure would be silly. Certainly price can't tell you that. None of the registrars are going to be totally secure. It's just a question of.... How long have they been around, how much business does the registrar do, and how many times have they been hacked and the hack was bad enough that the internet community discovered it? -- -JH