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Which non-US domain registrar to use? (startrek.website)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I am running a NAS at home, Minecraft server and some other stuff.

I want to make it all easier to access by getting my own domain, both for myself and friends and family.

Will also use it for my mail address etc.

My main goal is reduce my dependency on US services for very obvious reasons.

What's a good non US dns registrar to use? Found a ton online, but it's my first time doing this and I'm a bit lost unfortunately.

Any help and/or advice is greatly appreciated.

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[–] 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

What's up with everyone in this comment section shilling registrars with abysmal customer reviews? Lol. The only one that even has remotely good reviews is Mythic Beasts.

Anyways, I'd like to recommend IONOS (German). Their service has been flawless so far, and I haven't seen any reports of bad customer either.

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    • [–] 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I can highly recommend Mythic Beasts (UK).

    There is no upsell or variable pricing and they make money by charging a flat rate on top of the cost from their supplier. See this blog post for more info

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    I use them as well, never had any issues.

    They have a useful API I leverage to manage DNS entries with scripts and cron jobs which is probably fairly standard these days but seemed to be a little harder to find when I first moved to them.

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    • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Canuck here. I've been moving all my domains from porkbun over to OVH. I still use desec.io for the DNS since they're based in Germany and like to keep it separate from the registrar.

    If OVH plays its cards right they're going to be getting a lot more business from those looking to dump GCS, AWS, and Azure.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    I found OVH quite confusing. Do they upsell you like crazy (e.g. is WHOIS protection an upsell)? I don't want to create an account on purpose just to find out.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    No upselling. Yes they might have something in the order process. Like when ordering a VPS you can add windows os or some control panel type software. I didn't pay anything extra and my domains all have private whois details when lookups are done. The one thing they did offer in the order process for domain transfer was something to do with anycast DNS, but it was just a box on the page and wasn't in your face or annoying.

    No annoying emails either. I only get emails from them related to services I purchased from them which include changes to whois contacts(also usually get a email from CIRA for my .ca domains), bill PDF being ready for download, or additional IP is available and ready for use etc.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    No upselling.

    Bullshit. Within minutes of registering just to look at some stuff I got spammed with all sorts of bullshit via email. Custom one-off throwaway email alias.

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    • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    OVH no problems for years.

    BUT choose domain that is also maintained by non-US organization.
    Like national TLDs from the EU, or fancy like one., cloud., ...

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Is .dev maintained by the US?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    You can easily check it by WHOIS:

    $ whois dev.
% IANA WHOIS server
% for more information on IANA, visit http://www.iana.org/
% This query returned 1 object

domain:       DEV

organisation: Charleston Road Registry Inc.
address:      1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
address:      Mountain View CA 94043
address:      United States of America (the)

# the rest of output omitted

    And some hints gives Wikipedia: List of Internet top-level domains.

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    • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    ovh is french and has quite the following in Europe

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    [–] 13 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I use https://njal.la/ it's based in Sweden started by the co founder of Pirate Bay

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    Those reviews don't look very inspiring, not gonna lie. Also, their About page says their service is run from Costa Rica?

    Ultimately I don't think these "privacy-first" domain registrars are a great choice, which is a rare thing to say about an internet service.

    But you're dealing with private property here and being ICANN-accredited (which Njalla isn't) is kind of important if you're gonna do something serious with your domain. You want those protections that excessive privacy won't permit having.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Njalla is what you use if you don't want your name plastered all over the domain for various reasons

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Its also what you use if you want to have your domain stolen, apparently.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    People have had bad experiences and the founder of Njalla hasn't helped. There are other Domain registrars with a similar strategy to Njalla if you prefer them instead. One can't deny that not having your name on a domain allows for one to host... err, sensitive stuff

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    • [–] 11 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    Keep an eye on the price. I recently switched my .be domains from Gandi to Dynadot. 36 vs 6.8 euros per year, I had no idea such a difference was possible. Fuck Gandi.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Gandi got sold 2 times

    Basically the company went from “no bullshit” to “just another asset for some capitalist fund who only cares about extracting as much value as possible”

    It would be so good to have a no profit owned or cooperative European domain seller

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    porkbun (USA) generally has the best prices and will give you a massive list of everything as well which most other sites won't. I generally get my sites for 10 years at a time ~ $2 per year (whenever some random TLD is on sale)

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I'm on porkbun for some other domains, very happy with them. Except for them not offering .be domains... :)

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    call them up and ask them why they don't lmao. I actually did have to call them once for a company thing and someone in Oregon picked up.. Unheard of service.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Not a bad idea! I usually let my money do the talking, and just move if a company doesn't offer what I need. But I might make an exception in this case, thanks for the tip!

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Lol yea I figured it was some governmental reason but I see name.com etc has .be so no idea why they wouldn't have it. Some TLDs have specific restrictions and only allow certain sites to resell it

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    • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    I use INWX (based in Germany). Prices are consistently low (not always the cheapest, but fair). The web UI is a bit rusty, but it works perfectly and you can manage everything there.

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    [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Hello!

    I was a 20 years old customer of GANDI. My advice is now to use Bookmyname or OVH.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Hey I just bought a domain for the first time, from Gandi. Could I ask you, what made you take that decision?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Hello, sure you can ask :-)
    GANDI was bought by Strikwerda Investments and then they raised their price. For instance for a .net domain it was around €15 and now it's more than €20 for a new domain name. If you want to keep the domain in GANDI the renew is around €38. I think it will work with GANDI, you still have the choice to change after if you like.

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    • [–] 6 points 1 year ago*

    I moved all my domains over to FullHost.ca from NameCheap and they’ve been pretty good so far. As far as I can tell, they’re just a reseller but their support has been really good.

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    [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    https://www.infomaniak.com/en Swiss based. I'm very happy with mine, never add issue :)

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    [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    inwx.de

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    [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I've been a happy customer with joker.com (Germany) for at least 10 years.

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    [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I just wish more of the non-US ones supported .ca domains. :(

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    • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    I use IONOS.

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    [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandi

    This one is in the top registrars ever to exist and is very old as well. Coincidentally also not in USA. Other rivals of "greatness" are things like porkbun (USA) and namecheap (USA)

    Looks like other users say gandi has gone downhill. Couldn't recommend any over porkbun though so good luck.

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