I’ve been using Namecheap for years and have been happy with it. Why do you prefer Cloudflare? Is it for easier integration with Cloudflare services? How’s the pricing compared to Namecheap?
Cloudflare sells domains at cost. So yes, cheaper than any other registrar (including NameCheap and Porkbun), except maybe those who sell domains at a loss as a promo to rope you in and then kill you on the renewals.
Integration into their stack is a nice side effect, but really inconsequential. You can have your domains registered with any registrar and have your DNS hosted by any DNS hosting provider. Heck, you can run your own DNS servers if you want to.
Cloudflare could be the cheapest (without cross-financing) because they advertise their pricing as they don’t add any additional fees to the ICANN fees. I never actually fact checked this though.
One benefit of using Cloudflare DNS is that you can place a CDN on the domain apex. So if you’d like to have https://domain.com instead of https://www.domain.com then they can make that happen.
I really want to use porkbun but I don’t want to write scripts to integrate a custom name server api into ddclient. (I know some people have written their own wrappers but they’ve yet to make it upstream.) Namecheap it is then.
Cloudflare will do DNS for domain suffixes that they don’t support. I’ve never used Porkbun but as long as you can set custom nameservers then you can point it at CF and use all the tools they support.
I just don’t like the idea of supporting a company as large as Cloudflare. That and their pricing system doesn’t make a lot of sense. I have to wonder where they are making their margin back.
Yeah I’ve wrestled with that too - I justify it to myself that they are so much smaller than Amazon or Microsoft but they are certainly not a small operation.
I also appreciate their participation in WinterCG and the dream of having interoperable runtime environments for serverless platforms. While I don’t think it’s quite there yet, I think it’s a force for good to have a medium-sized player trying to push the interoperability that Amazon obviously isn’t big on.
Huh? You mean you can’t separate the domain registrar from your DNS service provider?
I have my .ca domains on Porkbun, but DNS is hosted through Cloudflare. Porkbun supports DNSSEC records as well, so that’s not really an issue, just a few extra steps.
I was actually confused about your response to grahamsz@kbin.social… it seems like they have at least a basic understanding of how registrars vs. DNS hosts work.
Technically they won’t. They won’t host OpenNIC TLDs, for example. However, you can have your domain registered with any registrar, and as long as you specify Cloudflare’s assigned DNS servers for your domain (DNSSEC records can be set too), you should be OK.
WHOIS privacy? Porkbun does that for free for all TLDs that support it.
I don’t think I fully understand how what they offer isn’t “ownership by proxy”. I suppose they promise not to release your info if police ask for it? On the other hand, they technically own the domains you register through them, so if they get repossessed (e.g. through legal bankruptcy proceedings), whoever their new owner is, will presumably also own your domains…
I’m probably not seeing something here, but this all sounds sketchy to me.
My order of preference for domain registrars is:
I’ve been using Namecheap for years and have been happy with it. Why do you prefer Cloudflare? Is it for easier integration with Cloudflare services? How’s the pricing compared to Namecheap?
Sorry for the interrogation lol
Cloudflare sells domains at cost. So yes, cheaper than any other registrar (including NameCheap and Porkbun), except maybe those who sell domains at a loss as a promo to rope you in and then kill you on the renewals.
Integration into their stack is a nice side effect, but really inconsequential. You can have your domains registered with any registrar and have your DNS hosted by any DNS hosting provider. Heck, you can run your own DNS servers if you want to.
Cloudflare could be the cheapest (without cross-financing) because they advertise their pricing as they don’t add any additional fees to the ICANN fees. I never actually fact checked this though.
One benefit of using Cloudflare DNS is that you can place a CDN on the domain apex. So if you’d like to have https://domain.com instead of https://www.domain.com then they can make that happen.
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I really want to use porkbun but I don’t want to write scripts to integrate a custom name server api into ddclient. (I know some people have written their own wrappers but they’ve yet to make it upstream.) Namecheap it is then.
Cloudflare will do DNS for domain suffixes that they don’t support. I’ve never used Porkbun but as long as you can set custom nameservers then you can point it at CF and use all the tools they support.
I just don’t like the idea of supporting a company as large as Cloudflare. That and their pricing system doesn’t make a lot of sense. I have to wonder where they are making their margin back.
Yeah I’ve wrestled with that too - I justify it to myself that they are so much smaller than Amazon or Microsoft but they are certainly not a small operation.
I also appreciate their participation in WinterCG and the dream of having interoperable runtime environments for serverless platforms. While I don’t think it’s quite there yet, I think it’s a force for good to have a medium-sized player trying to push the interoperability that Amazon obviously isn’t big on.
deleted by creator
Huh? You mean you can’t separate the domain registrar from your DNS service provider?
I have my .ca domains on Porkbun, but DNS is hosted through Cloudflare. Porkbun supports DNSSEC records as well, so that’s not really an issue, just a few extra steps.
deleted by creator
I was actually confused about your response to grahamsz@kbin.social… it seems like they have at least a basic understanding of how registrars vs. DNS hosts work.
Technically they won’t. They won’t host OpenNIC TLDs, for example. However, you can have your domain registered with any registrar, and as long as you specify Cloudflare’s assigned DNS servers for your domain (DNSSEC records can be set too), you should be OK.
Njalla is mine. I like the privacy protections they offer.
WHOIS privacy? Porkbun does that for free for all TLDs that support it.
I don’t think I fully understand how what they offer isn’t “ownership by proxy”. I suppose they promise not to release your info if police ask for it? On the other hand, they technically own the domains you register through them, so if they get repossessed (e.g. through legal bankruptcy proceedings), whoever their new owner is, will presumably also own your domains…
I’m probably not seeing something here, but this all sounds sketchy to me.