Domain renawals

Thu Sep 22 03:10:22 UTC 2016

On Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 8:35 PM, John Levine <johnl at iecc.com> wrote:
>>For domain registration I found that joining the GoDaddy Domain Club
>>( $120/year or less if you pay ahead for multiple years [1] ) ...
> There's a lot of registrars with prepay discounts.  Gandi's domains
> are cheaper if you prepay $600, a lot cheaper if you prepay $2000.

Prepayment makes no sense, unless you are planning on maintaining more
than 10 domains,
which warrants much more due dilligence than if registering  one or two domains.

Also,  if you're maintaining one or two domains,  then it is sensible
to pay more
for a registrar that provides better support, or a more intuitive web interface.
For maintaining a larger number of domains: perhaps more powerful management
tools are  more useful,  and  possibly the ease-of-use is a lower priority.

Therefore, it depends on what you are doing with domains.
I know of registrars that are $8.99 per Year and $8.39 per Year for a .COM,
with no prepayment necessary,  for those rates,  and  small discounts
for prepay.

*  They say "cheap, secure, reliable, pick two"   But that's not
really how it is.

it's really  more like "Inexpensive, Good support, Feature-complete",
 pick two.

Because no registrar is "secure" totally; phishing is conceivable with
any registrar.
That includes ne'er do wells  pre-texting you and tricking registrar
support personnel
to change your e-mail address plus password and give it to a cracker.

You can't give up reliability to get security,  so the original 3 don't work.
Every registrar known to offer advanced security mitigations charges a boatload,
or part of a boatload to add them.

If you want security,  then the closest you get is what's called a
Registry lock  with'
a telephone-based confirmation of domain changes,  And two-factor login to the
website.

Last I check,  getting the registry lock service  is Only available on
certain TLDs,
and adds between $500 and $1000  Per domain name to the cost.

Also,  there is a bit of inconvenience,  since you are setting a lock which
your domain registrar is unable to override on their own,  so routine
maintenance
such as updating DNS servers or renewing becomes a potentially
drawn-out process.....

Various registrars offer  Two-Factor website login and  'Max Lock'
features of their own,
providing their own confirmation,   and just a Client/Registrar-Lock
on the domain,

But again......  you can't see the registrar's IT systems,  so blindly
assuming they are secure
would be silly.     Certainly price can't tell you that.

None of the registrars are going to be totally secure.

It's just a question of....  How long have they been around,  how much
business does
the registrar do, and how many times have they been hacked and the hack
was bad enough that the internet community discovered it?

--
-JH