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Why I consider Cloudflare is the best domain registrar

I’ve been with my old domain registrar since 2012. It’s been seven years. There’s no problem with their service. But, when you found a better one, why don’t you switch? After making it as my new domain registrar, here are why I consider Cloudflare as the best domain registrar for me.

I never know that Cloudflare also offers a service as a domain registrar. One of the Redditors told me somewhere on Reddit. Based on that information, I dig for more information on Google. 

It turns out his information is right. Now I can transfer my domain to Cloudflare so it will act as a domain registrar. However, I can’t find any of the Cloudflare page to register a new domain.

No-markup pricing

The old domain registrar I use charged me $7 in 2012. The last time I renewed the domain, it’s $10. I thought it’s normal for a price to hike until I read that some registrars markup the renewal price.

I confirmed it when I see that Cloudflare only charged me $8.03 to renew the domain. That already includes the ICANN fee for $0.18.

I know other domain registrars offer a much lower price. But it’s only the first year price. Once you need to pay for the second year, the price hikes up. People call it  bait-and-switch.

Cloudflare doesn’t do this.

You can learn more about this on their  blog post.

No endless upsell

I hate to see any upsell as much as I hate ads. Such practice is even worse when it’s something I can get for free on another provider. 

For example, I have experience with one of the popular domain registrar that’s going to charge me for WhoIs protection years ago.

Cloudflare doesn’t do this either. I hope they adhere to this practice in the future.

Security best practice

They promise they’ll follow the best possible security practices. Here are the details from their blog post:

  • We promise we’ll allow you to enable two-factor authentication.

  • We’ll lock your domain registration by default.

  • Automatically enable best-practice security services like DNSSEC.

Personal data redaction on WHOIS

Instead of replacing the WHOIS information with proxy contact information, Cloudflare Redaction will remove it. You can read more details on their blog post  here.

I think this kind of WHOIS Redaction is much better than the WHOIS privacy service. This because anyone will still be able to contact the proxy information provided by the service, and for some occasions, that proxy will pass it to the domain’s owner e-mail.

But, what if a domain owner abused their domain in the future? How can we contact him? There is no need to worry. Cloudflare provides this  abuse form to contact the domain owner.

This is the most important factor before I decided to transfer my domain from the old registrar to Cloudflare. I need to make sure Cloudflare has a best practice to provide my privacy.

Fair policy

I don’t know about the other registrar. However, when I transferred my domain to Cloudflare, I lose no time I’ve purchased on my old registrar. Not only that, but the fee I pay to them ($8.09) extends the registration by one year. Fair enough, right?

Verdict

Its price is not the cheapest one. However, Cloudflare doesn’t do a markup either. So, it’s a fair and honest domain registrar.

At the time I write this, it doesn’t provide service to register a new domain. Therefore, if you want to register a new domain, you need to register it through other registrars first. 

I would recommend  Namecheap so you’ll get the best and cheapest price for the first year. Before you renew in the second year, you can transfer the domain to Cloudflare so you don’t have to pay a ridiculously expensive renewal price.

Based on my experience, it takes about five days to complete the transfer. But if you have problems or disputes with your old registrar, you  must  settle it with them first before proceeding with the transfer.

Even if I compare it to Google domains, Cloudflare price is still fairer and cheaper . Google domains starts from $12 for most of domain I looked there.

So there is only one thing that disappointed me: Cloudflare registrar is not available to register a completely new domain by the time I posted this.


Categories: Internet  

Tags: cloudflare   domain registrar