LJ Braintrust: Domain registrar?

[gement]

Godaddy makes my skin crawl. Can anyone suggest a less slimy company that allows you to redirect/choose your own nameservers? Dreamhost has been recommended to me, but they lock you into using their nameservers (or at least did almost two years ago when I last investigated this.)

My server-fu is weak. Please advise.

Edited to add: I've gone with Dynadot, but if anyone else is looking for similar information, DirectNIC and BareMetal (a small Canadian independent) were also recommended.

Comments

[tithonium.livejournal.com]

I've switched everything but the .at domains to dynadot. They're not the absolute cheapest, but they're pretty cheap, have a decent management interface - unlike gd's massively over-engineered unusable mess - and stay out of the way.

[gement.livejournal.com]

We have a winner. There's a refer-a-friend field on my signup sheet. Do you have an identifier I should put in there?

[gement.livejournal.com]

[The rest of this thread has been screened for confidentiality.]

[gement.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[zanfur.livejournal.com]

Same. Also, when hurricane Katrina hit, they didn't go down, even though the rest of the city did. Went so far as to fly in diesel at absurd prices to fuel their backup generator. Never raised prices.

[nindar.livejournal.com]

I run my own nameserver. Assuming you aren't talking millions of hits (it just runs on my DSL) and don't need 99.999% uptime, I can do it for free (plus $14/year for the new name register and $10/year after that)

[gement.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much. For now I'm going to stick with a large stable company, but I really appreciate the offer.

[nindar.livejournal.com]

No worries, just figured I'd offer!

[cow.livejournal.com]

Looks like you've already made a choice, but in the event this comes up for anyone else: I use BareMetal, who are based in Victoria; small, local-owned, friendly, and they donate 50c of your registration to charity (you get a choice from a dropdown). (And they do .ca names, which a lot of places don't. Which is less relevant to a lot of other people, but hey.)

[gement.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

This is useful. I'm registered at GoDaddy, but am looking at moving my hosting to Laughing Squid at some point for the exact same reason. I may try and shift registrar at some point, too. Might be something LS can do for me...

[gement.livejournal.com]

It looks like Laughing Squid isn't a registrar, but all the registrars listed above will happily point to Laughing Squid for your hosting.