Best registrar for DNS experience?

Question
1

Hello,

Our current registrar has no DNS plug-in capability for DNS verification, and has no plans to make themselves able to do so. I have asked a number of times. I don’t want to move, because we have been with them 20 years. But they won’t budge to modernize, so I feel I have no choice. The http method won’t suit our needs in the next steps we have in mind (internal certs for DCs in a Windows AD setting). We also frequently have problems with http failing entirely due to geo-ip blocking that we have to manually shut off for it to go through.

I’m looking for your suggestions on Registrars who you feel have made it work easily, and are very reliable, for working with the Lets Encrypt / Certify the web DNS method of automated validation.

Thanks in advance for your time and shared experience.

2

Note that your domain registrar doesn’t need to be your DNS provider (you can point your domain to different nameservers hosted elsewhere). I quite like Cloudflare for ease of use (and extra features like caching etc, cheap domain renewals). Other options would be things like AWS Route 53, Google Cloud DNS.

3

What do people think of GoDaddy as a Registrar and for being able to use CertifyTheWeb with them for DNS method to validate a certificate?

4

I’ve tried it and from memory it was pretty easy, the instructions are here: GoDaddy DNS | Certify The Web Docs

I can’t comment on how they are as a registrar (or hosting), I haven’t used them for much, but I know they are popular.

5

Uh, they’re okay as a registrar. “Private” whois records are useful if you want that sort of thing for additional cost. They only email me when my domain is going to expire or someone emails the “private” whois address. Are they better than another one? No idea.

Never used them for DNS or hosting.

6

I should have replied a while ago but hey. If money is not an issue the BEST DNS I have used is dnsmadeeasy. But given that I need failovers, and I want DNSSEC my price would have ended up being around $250 a month. But updated are nearly instant (ignoring the TTL time of course). Instead I am currently using cloudns where with 35 checks etc I am paying about $21/month. I have not had a problem and support is actually pretty good when I have needed them.

Cloudflare is obviously often a good choice given that free is good. BUT if you need failover etc move on to somebody who focuses on DNS.

I am sure others will have something else they like but that is my current poison. But it definitely depends on the features you want/need etc.

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