The Best Domain Registrars of 2021

A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting offers everything you could ask for from a domain registrar.

Their custom nameservers feature allows you to choose how your domain’s information is displayed in WHOIS searches. They also offer free DNS management, which will make your site faster and improve availability. Plus, the domain theft protection feature will prevent your account from being transferred without your permission.

A2 gives you hundreds of top-level domain (TLD) options for your site. For select TLDs, you can add ID protection — this will keep your personal information private, as well as prevent spam from clogging up your inbox. The ID protection add-on costs $9.99 per year.

As you may have been able to tell from their name, A2 offers hosting as well. Their prices start at $2.99 per month for shared hosting, and they offer VPS hosting, reseller hosting, and dedicated hosting plans. Many of these plans include one year of free domain registration.

Pros & Cons of A2 Hosting Domain Registration

While A2 Hosting certainly offers plenty of features, they’re not going to be your most affordable option for domain registration. Plus, they charge extra for privacy protection.

What Customers Are Saying

A2 Hosting’s customer service has received many positive mentions in user reviews. “It’s a solid and reliable data center with a responsive and tech-savvy support team,” wrote one customer. “It’s everything you’ll need to easily manage domains and email and everything in between. It’s like having a top-notch 24/7/365 IT department without the cost.”

Bluehost

Bluehost is notable for their particularly easy-to-use interface. This intuitive control panel allows anyone, even if they have little to no technical experience, to effortlessly manage all aspects of their domains.

They also provide tools for keeping your domains secure. With Bluehost’s Auto Renewal feature, you can ensure that you never accidentally let your domain expire and lose it to someone else (and if you’d prefer, you can switch back to manual renewal at any time). Their free Domain Lock feature stops any unauthorized transfers of your domains from taking place — but if you want privacy protection as well, that would cost you an extra $11.88 per year.

If you’re in need of hosting in addition to domain registration, Bluehost can take care of that for you. Their shared hosting plans start at $2.95 per month. And if you have more traffic than a shared hosting plan can handle, then check out their VPS hosting plans (prices start at $18.99 per month) and dedicated hosting plans (prices start at $79.99 per month).

Pros & Cons of Bluehost Domain Registration

You can find lower rates elsewhere, but the intuitive interface and features such as Auto Renewal and Domain Lock will surely be attractive to many users.

What Customers Are Saying

Customers praise both Bluehost’s domain registration and hosting services, as well as their customer support. “I like that Bluehost offers a full range of domain registration and web hosting services all in one place,” wrote one user. “The performance of most of the services I’ve used with them, particularly hosting and email, has been quite smooth and fast. I haven’t experienced many negative issues, but when I do, the customer support team at Bluehost has been very helpful and easy to reach. I usually don’t wait too long to get someone on the phone.”

Domain.com

Domain.com allows you to choose between the most popular TLDs and over 25 country code TLDs (ccTLDs), such as .us and .uk.

With Domain.com’s email forwarding feature, you can have email messages that are sent to your domain automatically forwarded to any other valid email address. For securing your domains, this provider offers Let’s Encrypt SSL and a transfer lock tool.

Domain.com does offer hosting services, but they appear to be more focused on the domain registration side of their business. Only shared hosting is available, so if you want a more powerful option (VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, etc.), you’ll need to pair your domain from Domain.com with hosting from another provider.

Pros & Cons of Domain.com Domain Registration

Domain.com is one of your more affordable domain registration options. But if you were hoping to get a two-for-one package for domain registration and hosting rather than having to juggle multiple providers, this might not work out for you.

What Customers Are Saying

This user found Domain.com to be better than any of the registrars they’ve used before: “I have dealt with many domain registrars in the past few years, but I found none of them to be as reliable as Domain.com. They are quick and will register your domain instantly from the time of billing.”

DreamHost

DreamHost provides you with over 400 TLD options, so you should have no problem finding the right one for your site.

And DreamHost is another provider that offers an exceptionally easy-to-use interface. From a single page in the control panel, you can manage your domains, edit DNS records, set up email forwarding, and much more. DreamHost also offers email spam/phishing protection and privacy protection for all of their domain registration plans at no additional cost.

As for hosting, DreamHost’s shared plans start at $2.59 per month, and they offer VPS hosting and dedicated hosting plans.

Pros & Cons of DreamHost Domain Registration

Unlike many domain registrars, DreamHost isn’t going to nickel-and-dime you by charging extra for privacy protection. Also, their TLD rates are quite affordable. You’ll need to consider, though, that their support availability is limited.

What Customers Are Saying

Many customers are fond of DreamHost’s user interface and management tools. “DreamHost is easy to set up, easy to register a domain, easy to navigate, and provides great support,” wrote one customer. “Lots of security features. Great domain management tools.”

Gandi

Gandi offers an especially impressive set of features with their domain registration plans. All users get a free SSL certificate, two free mailboxes with 3 GB of storage, and a LiveDNS tool that allows instant record changes.

And with over 700 TLD options, even the most obscure domain extensions will be available to you with Gandi.

Gandi also offers their domain registration users 50% off their first purchase of web hosting services. With that discount, you can get hosting with dedicated resources from Gandi for as low as $3.75 per month.

Pros & Cons of Gandi Domain Registration

Gandi’s prices are rather high, and they don’t offer much in the way of support. But their plans do come with a nice set of features and a big discount on hosting, which might be enough to win you over.

What Customers Are Saying

According to the customer reviews, Gandi is an especially good option if you’re managing domains on behalf of other people. “We have been working with Gandi for 10 years and we have always recommended it to our clients,” wrote one user. “We can provide our clients with full ownership of their domains but still be able to fully manage the domains as ‘technical contacts’. You can manage everything cleanly and transparently with Gandi: you have full control over all aspects of your domains.”

GoDaddy

With over 20 million customers and 80 million domains under management, GoDaddy is the biggest domain registrar in the world.

When you look at all the features that GoDaddy has to offer, it’s clear why they’re so popular. First of all, the intuitive interface and simple setup tools allow anyone to quickly get their sites up and running. They also have built-in Business Protection, which keeps your personal details hidden and blocks both accidental and malicious transfers of your domains.

However, the malware scans, security monitoring, and other features that come with their Full Domain Privacy & Protection and Ultimate Domain Protection & Security add-ons would cost you an extra $9.99 per year or $14.99 per year, respectively.

And there’s a wide selection of hosting plans available, including shared hosting, VPS hosting, reseller hosting, and dedicated hosting — prices start at $5.99 per month.

Pros & Cons of GoDaddy Domain Registration

In addition to name recognition, GoDaddy stands out with their user-friendly interface and security features, though the advanced tools don’t come included for free.

What Customers Are Saying

Many long-time users have found no need to leave GoDaddy for any of their other domain registrar options. “I’ve been using GoDaddy as my default web hosting and domain name registration partner since 2012,” wrote one customer. “They are reliable and cost-effective in terms of domain registration and other services offered by them. I found them able to fulfill all of my business needs.”

HostGator

With HostGator, you get all the features you need for domain registration, including domain locking, auto renewal, and a simple control panel that allows you to manage everything about your domains from a single dashboard.

HostGator also has a privacy protection tool for hiding your personal information from public WHOIS searches, but this will cost you an extra $14.95 per year.

For hosting, they offer shared plans (prices start at $2.75 per month), VPS plans (prices start at $19.95 per month), reseller plans (prices start at $19.95 per month), and dedicated plans (prices start at $89.98 per month).

Pros & Cons of HostGator Domain Registration

HostGator offers excellent features, and you should be able to find a hosting plan from them that works for your needs as well. They’re a little on the pricey side, though — especially when you consider the $14.95 charge for privacy protection.

What Customers Are Saying

Indeed, it’s convenient when you can find a domain registration solution and a hosting solution from the same provider. “I like that HostGator has both domain registration and web hosting packages,” wrote one customer. “We don’t have to go to two different places to get those products.”

Hostinger

If you’re looking to save as much money as you can on a domain-plus-hosting package, look no further. While Hostinger’s domain registration rates are pretty standard, hosting is available for as little as $0.99 per month. You won’t find a better deal than that anywhere else.

And if you need to transfer your domain from another registrar to Hostinger, they have a tool that allows you to do so in just a few simple steps.

Hostinger also offers WHOIS privacy protection. Unfortunately, they don’t include it for free, but at just $5 per year it’s not much of an expense.

Pros & Cons of Hostinger Domain Registration

You can get a great deal by purchasing your domain registration and hosting through Hostinger. But if all you need is domain registration, there’s nothing here that you can’t find with another provider.

What Customers Are Saying

Customers frequently leave positive feedback about Hostinger’s control panel. “The best ever website hosting software that I have used,” wrote one user. “It contains an interface that is super friendly. Plus the management of domains has been made easy through it.”

HostPapa

HostPapa does offer some useful domain management features, but they don’t come cheap.

The Domain Privacy add-on, which shields your personal information from unauthorized access, costs $9.99 per year. For the Protection Power Website Security add-on, which includes proactive monitoring, real-time threat alerts, and advanced CDN, you’ll need to pay $29.95 per year.

HostPapa’s shared hosting plans start at $3.95 per month, and they offer VPS hosting and reseller hosting plans.

Pros & Cons of HostPapa Domain Registration

If you have the budget for it, HostPapa’s advanced features make them a strong domain registration option. The cost of their add-ons on top of their already relatively high base rates will price out many potential users, though.

What Customers Are Saying

Non-technical users are particularly drawn to HostPapa. “I needed a simple and cost-effective website, but I had little experience in pulling a website together,” wrote one customer. “I selected HostPapa as it had all the tools I needed — flexible templates, hosting, ability to obtain a unique domain, and the ability to include an email linked to the domain.”

InMotion Hosting

InMotion Hosting’s domain registration plans come with a full set of features, including secure transfer locking, automatic renewal, and an easy-to-use control panel.

But, as is the case with many other providers, you don’t get privacy protection for free. That’ll cost you another $12.99 per year.

It’s also worth noting that one year of free domain registration is included with any of InMotion’s shared hosting plans (prices start at $5.99 per month) and VPS hosting plans (prices start at $29.99 per month).

Pros & Cons of InMotion Hosting Domain Registration

While InMotion Hosting’s price tag for domain registration is significant, you could defer it for a year by purchasing a hosting plan along with your domain.

What Customers Are Saying

WordPress users should take an extra close look at InMotion Hosting. “We have been working with InMotion Hosting for five years now,” wrote one customer. “The domain, hosting, and WordPress solutions they offer are stellar! As a business, it is important for us to have all the above services in one place.”

InterServer

InterServer’s domain registration plans come with domain locking and automatic renewal features. For an extra $5 per year, you can get WHOIS privacy protection as well.

They also offer one of the best values when it comes to shared hosting. At $5 per month, the starting price is a little more expensive than many of your other options — but for that price, you get unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email accounts, weekly backups, a free SSL certificate, free CloudFlare CDN, advanced security tools, and a drag-n-drop website builder. With most providers, a set of features like that would cost you an upgrade or two.

If you have too much traffic for shared hosting, you should check out InterServer’s cloud VPS and dedicated hosting plans.

Pros & Cons of InterServer Domain Registration

Users who need both domain registration and hosting can find a lot of value here. But if all you need is domain registration, you may be better off looking elsewhere.

What Customers Are Saying

Whenever you’re having trouble with your domain or hosting, it’s important to be able to solve the problem quickly. According to this customer, that’s exactly what InterServer provides: “One great feature of InterServer is the availability of 24/7 live chat support, the live chat is always on and they will instantly reply to your queries.”

Namecheap

Namecheap really lives up to their name, as they offer not just low base rates, but also a free email address with all their plans and no extra charge for WHOIS privacy protection.

One feature that sets Namecheap apart from your other options is their VIP Rewards Club. There are five tiers to this discount program, with each tier offering a bigger discount than the next. You qualify for the first tier once you purchase 50 domains from them, the second once you purchase 100, the third once you purchase 300, etc.

And Namecheap’s hosting services are no exception to their commitment to affordable prices. You can purchase shared hosting for as low as $1.44 per month. VPS hosting plans (start at $8.88 per month), reseller hosting plans (start at $18.88 per month), and dedicated hosting plans (start at $49.88 per month) are also available.

Pros & Cons of Namecheap Domain Registration

Namecheap’s low prices will surely attract many users, especially those who use enough domains to qualify for their VIP Rewards Club.

What Customers Are Saying

This customer liked just about every aspect of Namecheap’s service: “We love using this software because it offers many economic domains and also has the best VPS and hosting services that we can find anywhere. The system uses a complete payment platform whereby they even accept Bitcoin as a mode of payment. We also love the protection and speed offered by the system servers against various attacks. Additionally, the attention offered by the technical support team is the best, as they are efficient and fast.”

OVH

With OVH, all domain registration plans come with a domain locking feature as well as an easy redirect tool for linking a social media account to your URL.

And for just $1.09 per year, you can add the DNS Anycast feature, which replicates your DNS records in their worldwide DNS servers. This results in faster load times for the people who visit your sites.

For hosting, OVH offers shared, VPS, and dedicated plans, with prices starting at $3.99 per month.

Pros & Cons of OVH Domain Registration

OVH offers a nice balance between features and price, although it is concerning that they don’t have any support options that are available 24/7.

What Customers Are Saying

It’s encouraging to see that when something goes wrong, OVH does what they need to do to make up for it. “We have been working with OVH since 2011, and the benefits we have achieved have really been great,” wrote one user. “They are quite responsible for the contract, if something happens that is outside the contract they apply the SLA and they compensate you for the damages caused.”

Register.com

If all you want is cheap domain registration, you’ll need to use one of your other options. Register.com’s rates are roughly twice as much as what most other providers charge. And their advanced features cost extra, too. WHOIS privacy protection will run you another $11 per year, while domain expiration protection is an additional $10 per year.

But for a good deal, you can purchase one of Register.com’s hosting plans that come with a free domain. Hosting plans start at $8.33 per month, which sounds much better for your pocket book. These plans also include a free SSL certificate and SiteLock malware scanning.

Pros & Cons of Register.com Domain Registration

The high domain registration prices are jarring at first, but this option makes much more financial sense if you select one of their hosting plans that includes a free domain.

What Customers Are Saying

Customers acknowledge that Register.com is rather expensive, but many of them also praise this provider for their performance and intuitive interface. “Register.com, while not being the cheapest registrar out there, provides a solid and reliable domain registration service while also providing other beneficial services including web hosting, web design, and search engine optimization,” wrote one user. “The interface to the site is nice and clean, easy to follow, and managing a domain’s DNS settings is easy to navigate.”

SiteGround

With prices starting at $15.95 per year, SiteGround is another one of the more expensive domain registration options. Plus, privacy protection costs an extra $12 per year. They also offer a site scanner add-on that checks your site daily and notifies you if it’s been hacked, which costs $19.80 per year.

It must be noted that SiteGround does not offer standalone domain registration — you’ll need to purchase it together with one of their hosting plans. Their hosting plans start at $6.99 per month.

That $6.99 per month hosting plan does provide you with some powerful features, though. It includes unmetered traffic, unlimited email accounts, a free SSL certificate, free CDN, daily backups, and a 100% renewable energy match.

Pros & Cons of SiteGround Domain Registration

If you’re willing to pay extra for high-quality hosting and feature-rich domain registration, SiteGround allows you to get both from the same place.

What Customers Are Saying

The cPanel-based site management is another feature that users particularly like. “I also liked that they’ve used cPanel, which is an easy way to manage my websites,” wrote one customer. “I can easily add new domains, subdomains, redirects, CRON jobs, emails, and the one-click installer is a great way to save time and money in installing websites.”

How Does Domain Name Hosting Work?

Every website is hosted on a computer (server) somewhere in the world, connected to the internet. Every computer has a unique IP address which no other computer has. In order to find a website (or any other web-facing resource), your computer needs to know the full IP address of the computer the site or resource is sitting on.

But it would create a terrible user experience if you had to type in the arbitrary and very long string of numbers of an IP address. No one can remember that.

So the Domain Name System (DNS) acts as a kind of address book, matching domain names with IP addresses. What you actually get when you register a domain name is an entry in this global address book associating the domain name you selected with the IP address of your web hosting server.

Subdomains

Sometimes it is desirable to divide a domain name into multiple subdomains, for example:

• mail.example.com
• apps.example.com
• admin.example.com

With most hosting accounts, subdomains are easily configurable from the web hosting control panel. Subdomains can each point to a different IP address, so they can be used to set up completely different web properties under the same branded umbrella.

Notice that www is a subdomain: www.example.com.

This comes from a practice early in the history of the internet when server administrators would put the files they wanted to make public into a directory labeled www, an abbreviation for “World Wide Web.”

For the most part people do not use servers the same way today, and it is not at all necessary to use www at the beginning of internet URLs.

Most web hosting companies give you the option of automatically converting back and forth between the www and non-www versions of any URL.

Top Level Domain Options

Some Top Level domains are restricted: only the U.S. Government can use .gov, and only accredited schools can use .edu. But there are a wide variety of TLDs to choose from:

• Generic TLDs. Examples:
  • .com
  • .org
  • .net
  • .biz
  • .info
• Country Specific TLDs. Examples:
  • .uk
  • .ru
  • .tv
• Extended (“New”) TLDs. Examples:
  • .shop
  • .ninja

Some Country Specific TLDs are used as if they were extended generic TLDs. The best example of this is .tv, which is the Country Specific TLD for Tuvalo, an island nation in the Pacific Ocean, but which gets used as a generic TLD for video content.

Because of the way many Country Specific TLDs are used, some people collectively refer to everything other than the original set of Generic TLDs as “Exotic” TLDs.

Here are a few tips for choosing the right Top Level Domain name:

• Whenever possible, commercial endeavors should use a .com domain and non-profit endeavors .org.
• Avoid “off brand” TLDs such as .net, .biz, and .info. These are widely seen as amateurish and/or spammy.
• Exotic TLDs, such as .io, .ly, or .tv are excellent if they make good branding sense — they are not a good substitute for an unavailable .com domain.
• If you get a domain name with an exotic TLD, register the .com version as well. Also, if you plan to use .com or .org, get the other one as well. At some point someone will mistype your address and enter the more common suffix. You want them to arrive in the same place.

Domain Names — Branding and SEO

From a branding perspective, you want a domain name that is easy to spell, easy to remember, and unique. Puns don’t work well, exotic spellings don’t work well, and punctuation is usually a bad idea.

If your brand name is not available as a .com domain, you might want to add a word that makes it clear what type of business you are. For example, if you are a pizza restaurant named “Acme,” and you can’t get acme.com, you might try acmepizza.com.

It usually a bad idea to separate words in a domain name if you are trying to maximize brand recognition. Anyone can remember acmepizza.com. You have to stop and explain acme-pizza.com or acme_pizza.com. Imagine a radio commercial.

Think about whether people are likely to find your site via word of mouth and traditional advertising, or via a search engine.

Domain Names and Hosting

Most hosting plans come with a free domain name. If you only plan to use one single domain forever, this is fine. However, if you have multiple domain names, most hosting companies overcharge for domain name registration and (especially) for renewal.

If you think you might register many domain names over time, you’ll save money if you register them with a discount name registrar like NameCheap, NameSilo, or GoDaddy. Then, use a non-meaningful domain name to identify your hosting account (the “free” domain you get when you sign up).

You can easily associate domain names from the cheap name registrar to the hosting company, and you don’t have to worry later about transferring domain registration if you decide to switch hosts.

Can I permanently buy a domain name?

No, it is not possible to buy a domain name in perpetuity. Typically, domain name registration must be renewed on a yearly basis, to ensure that it is still active. If a domain name’s registration is not renewed, that domain name once again becomes available to other users.

Some domain name registrars allow users to renew their domain names for longer periods of time, although 10 years is typically the maximum for domain name registration. Most domain registrars will either allow you to renew your registration automatically, or send a reminder when it’s time to renew.

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About WhoIsHostingThis Team

Our writing team comes from all over the world with diverse backgrounds in the arts and sciences. But what links them is their passion for the internet. All together they represent many decades of experience working in all facets of it – from programming and hardware creation to website design and marketing.

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