Which domain registrar should I purchase a domain name from?

Many people ask me this question often. My answer is, get it from your local registrar or ISP.

For newbies, it’s good to know the terms I used here:

  • Domain – it’s your unique address on the internet, for example Facebook.com
  • Registrar – an entity that offer domain registration service such as your local internet service provider(ISP) or third parties like Namecheap
  • DNS – a service that resolves your domain name to an ipv4 address;

If your business is in a specific country you need to have the dot country code. For example, my country is Solomon Islands and we have .SB provided by our local ISP.

Some people also ask me, is it necessary to get .SB or others such as .COM, .NET, .ORG, etc?

Well like I said, it depends on your usecase, budget etc.

I noticed that getting domains from local registrar is few bucks extra.

Here is my take on this whole domain registration thing:

  • Get a domain from your local registrar if you want specific country code offered – it makes the world know you operate in that country
  • If you don’t care about the above, get your domain registration done with Namecheap
  • Look for a DNS provider, in my case I opt for Cloudflare to manage all my DNS records. You will thank me later if you do the same, I promise

CloudFlare is offering a free plan and to be honest that is suffice for the task. I won’t go in to specific goodies they offer, maybe in a separate post but hey, I love their services and I’m sure if you tried it, you will also share the same view.

Namecheap is awesome for Domain Registration. They offer other services as well such as hosting. Their name said it all, especially about domain names – Cheap! What about hosting? Well, I have been using their service both shared and Quassar VPS for quiet sometime time, but then moving on to other hosting. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, No, it is just my usecase is different; I need something a little better for my case.

To tie everything I said here together, I would say get a domain from your preferred registrar; move it to a DNS provider such as CloudFlare. It is good to manage all your domains in one place so does your DNS records.

I hope this blog post sheds some light.