I’m looking for the least expensive place/company to have and “park” domain names (with privacy).
I think I’ve been doing it wrong all along(!). Most of the providers include hosting plans (even super basic ones).
EDIT: Clicked through old shows and found the sponsor I was looking for (Hover).
What are your favorite, and least expensive ways to save your “brilliant-idea-dot-com” URLs for later use?
And, how do you prevent the millions of spam calls/emails if you don’t include some form of privacy protection?
It’s frustrating. Almost went into business for myself (as a domain host); but minimal research uncovered an article saying I’d need to pay ICANN $4,000/year as a licensing fee (I don’t think that was the name, “accreditation” fee, may have been it) and other hoops were involved.
Hover (part of the Tucows empire with sister registrars enom and epag) isn’t bad, just very corporate now it’s collectively the #2 registrar in the world. Namecheap’s not bad.
For almost 20 years I’ve used French register Gandi.net, which offers 700 TLD domain extensions, includes private registration at no additional charge, and offers webmail with 2 emails per domain (3Gb storage each), and unlimited email forwarding and aliases.
I bought and sold domain names in the late 90s/ early 00s, including some desirable 3- and 4-letter dotcom names. Never had a problem using Gandi, which I originally learned about in an old Slashdot thread in the late 90s about which registrars provided the greatest protections to registrants. At the time, as a French company, they specified protections that American registrars like (the execrable) GoDaddy didn’t.
My domain is registered with GoDaddy (but I don’t use any of their hosting options). I understand that I would have to “upgrade” in order to get domain privacy. I’ve been running my domain for over 15 years now. Is there any point in adding domain privacy at this point?
And prob. not much of a bonus for me either – Trying to cut down on the spam (calls and email) I get; but I’ve had plenty of “unmasked” domains parked with the same data as my “masked” ones.
You make a good point. I may just do privacy for the only one I make active to cut down on sales calls (as soon as I start making “business noises,” everyone and their brother will want to sell me, pens, internet services, better SEO, better mouse traps, you name it!).
Privacy may cut down on some spam, but without a valid email address (that could be attacked or used with social engineering) would definitely make it harder to snatch a valuable domain.
I would port from GoDaddy just because they’re a terrible company, have been for years, and have with lots of competition that’s better.
I will say their website has gotten better, and not using any of their hosting eliminates a lot of the pain points, but yeah, I’ll probably transfer when my renewal comes up again.
You don’t want to wait too long - you should always have a few week’s cushion when transferring in case of problems with your old registrar (eg getting the EPP transfer code in time, removing any Registrar lock).
Also, you don’t need to wait; many registrars will spot you up to a year left of carryover time (or at least offer it as a promotion) - I know it’s part of namecheap’s transfer policy. Typically, transfers include a one-year renewal, so you keep the remaining time already registered for that domain and add a year to that.