Best Domain Registrar

darude · 2 Oct 2012 at 23:49

I know this question's been asked over and over...but its 2012 and things may have changed.

I been with Daily.co.uk for years, they have a fantastic ad-free control panel but one huge problem they have is e-mail routing.

If I set all my MX records to point to a different server e.g. Google, I still find e-mails go through their own mail system. You can only fix this by sending an e-mail (sometimes two or three e-mails) to their support guys to manually delete some domain record from their mail server.

Basically when an e-mail originates from their mail server (e.g. another customer using Daily.co.uk), their mail server could ignore your custom MX settings - absolutely shocking.

Anyway, so I'm looking to move...I'm not going back to 123-reg, I don't like their control panel.

Here's a summary of my research:

Namecheap.com - looks like a great control panel, set up URL forwarding
godaddy.com - they claim world's #1, forum members say, stay away!
enom.com - apparently good, but site contains no info
vidahost.com - the most highly rated hosting provider on this forum
domainmonster.com - lots of adverts but offer free whois guard
register1.net - apparently good control panel, free whois guard

Question, does a UK nameserver/registrar help with UK search rankings?

Which domain registrar do you guys recommend?

Whois guard, good value, full DNS, e-mail forwarding are basically what I need. If you guys could send a screenshot of your registrar's control panel. That would be handy.

Beansprout · 3 Oct 2012 at 09:35

One item - Domainmonster.com is owned by Hosteurope which is entirely separate from Daily.co.uk as far as I know. Daily.co.uk is a Plc.

Daily.co.uk however is partially owned by a founder / ex-employee of Hosteurope!

A UK registrar doesn't help with SEO, but in theory UK nameservers could help as visitors will obtain faster DNS resolution.

Confused · 3 Oct 2012 at 09:54

I've got all my domains registered with Namecheap, and have done since ~2004. All the DNS settings are then pointed at my Vidahost account for hosting.

Can't say I've ever had an issue with either. I may be able to find somewhere slightly cheaper than Namecheap, but it's always worked for me, so I'm happy to stay with them for the moment.

yhack · 3 Oct 2012 at 12:48

From all the ones I've used, Namecheap are the best and Godaddy the worst.

darude · 3 Oct 2012 at 14:07

Beansprout said:
One item - Domainmonster.com is owned by Hosteurope which is entirely separate from Daily.co.uk as far as I know. Daily.co.uk is a Plc.

Daily.co.uk however is partially owned by a founder / ex-employee of Hosteurope!

Noted, my mistake, I thought Daily.co.uk was part of MeshDigital, but they're just one of the registrar's that Daily uses. Edited and removed from original post.

ristac · 4 Oct 2012 at 14:29

Namecheap all my .coms and orgs and 123-reg.co.uk for my UK domains. Stay away from Godaddy at all costs. If you reach 50 I think it is apply for the golddeal discount code to be added.

Longbow · 5 Oct 2012 at 07:53

I'm also on NameCheap, switched from GoDaddy who I slate at every opportunity now.

NameCheap offer free whois guard as well by the way.

Cromulent · 5 Oct 2012 at 11:25

I use Namecheap as well. I transferred all my domains from GoDaddy in 2010 (or 2009) and have never looked back.

Namecheap do decent prices for domains and they sell very nicely priced SSL certificates as well (their EV SSL certificates are an absolute steal compared to people like Verisign). Also if you want whois guard you get a free year when you register a domain (I have about 10 sitting unused in my account at the moment - if I ever need them at least I'll know I won't have to pay anything to protect a domain).

Xelene · 10 Oct 2012 at 18:23

I currently use Fasthosts as a registrar, not really had any trouble with them ever. They seem to resell Tucows.

My DNS is hosted currently by Cloudflare, but have backup NS servers with Zoneedit.

My sites are on a VM that Vidahost look after. I don't mind paying them a bit a month for the very good personal service.

GhostlyPea · 10 Oct 2012 at 19:19

Personally I use vidahost and their support is amazing /plug (no i don't get royalties

). Through work we use eurodns - in all honesty their website is actually very very very very good. I would recommend it purely on that alone (I think it's actually better than Vidahost), however their support is dodgy. For one off domains go vidahost, for several hundred or for multiple clients needing segregation I prefer eurodns

- GP