Best domain registrars in 2024

Porkbun’s flat-rate fees let businesses avoid the sticker shock that can occur when they see the price increases for domain renewals that other registrars charge. Porkbun’s registration, transfer and renewal rates are among the lowest in the industry.

The cost of registering .com and .net domains is set at $10.37 and $11.48 for the first year and all subsequent years. Introductory discounts are given for several popular TLDs, including .xyz and .info, but their annual renewal rates are reasonable at $10.79 and $16.97, respectively.

All Porkbun domain registrations include the company’s WHOIS privacy service, Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates (supported domains only), URL forwarding and as many as 20 email forwards. Support is available from Porkbun’s knowledge base, by email or chat and by telephone from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. PT Monday to Friday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends.

Other services available from Porkbun include web hosting, email hosting and domain transfers. You can access the Weebly website builder from the service’s domain management console, which also connects to email hosting tools, auto-renew settings, domain locking and unlocking and your WHOIS privacy settings.

Dynadot’s domain registration services include internationalized domain names (IDN) in more than a dozen languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Swedish, Hebrew, Afrikaans and several European languages.

The company accepts 10 different currencies and nine payment methods. Its prices for domain registrations are lower than the average for the industry of $10 to $20.

Dynadot provides a free website builder tool that includes web hosting, site and page templates, a drag-and-drop page builder, SEO, lead capture and 500 MB of storage.

The service’s Pro plan costs $20 a year. It removes Dynadot ads and comes with unlimited storage, advanced site statistics, video backdrops and e-commerce features with no Dynadot transaction fees.

Namecheap does indeed offer low prices for its domain registration services by offering steep discounts on popular TLDs for your initial contract. Domain renewals usually cost more than the renewal prices of competing domain registrars, so over time the cost benefits of the introductory offer dissipate.

However, domains can be bought for up to 10 years, and Namecheap delivers value in other areas, such as lifetime WHOIS privacy protection, simple domain setup and management and a free domain with the company’s web hosting plans.

In addition to domain registrations and transfers, Namecheap sells several web, email and WordPress hosting plans, as well as business formation services, SSL certificates and SiteLock web security services.

The company also offers handshake domains, which use blockchain-based peer-to-peer networks that bypass the standard internet registries and other organizations. Handshake domains are said to provide firms with more control over their site.

NameSilo supports software developers by providing a reference guide to its Domain API that covers domain operations, transfer operations, NameServer operations and DNS operations.

The API is included with all of NameSilo’s web hosting packages, which also come with Titan-hosted email, multiple email accounts and external email forwarding.

Some of NameSilo’s domain registrations are offered at promotional discounts of 10% to more than 80%. Discounts are also applied to a handful of domain renewals, although at much lower rates. In addition to domain registrations and web hosting, NameSilo sells SSL certificates and Titan and G Suite email hosting. It also operates a domain reseller network.

IONOS combines domain registration with a full set of online services for small and midsize businesses, including a web builder, web design service, web hosting, email marketing, an online store builder and dedicated servers. The company’s domain registrations start at $1 for the first year of .com and .info domain, and $3 for the initial year of .org registrations.

The yearly renewal prices increase to $17 for .com, $25 for .info and $20 for .org. All registrations include an SSL certificate, WHOIS privacy and an email account with 2 GB of storage.

IONOS’s Starter, Plus and Ultimate web hosting packages come with one year of domain registration at prices that start at $8 a month for Starter and $16 a month for Ultimate. The company provides 24/7 telephone support in 14 countries, in addition to live chat and extensive self-help resources.

IONOS also sells enterprise cloud computing services that include Managed Kubernetes, database as a service, Compute Engine (vCPU servers and dedicated cores) and S3 Object Storage.

Hostinger’s domain registration services include an AI-based domain name search tool that devises potential names based on a short text description of your business or site. You can also search for a domain the old-fashioned way by entering your choices in the site’s search box. The company steps you through the registration process and makes it easy to manage your DNS records and other aspects of your domain.

A year of free domain registration is included when you purchase one of Hostinger’s four web hosting packages, which are priced from $1.99 a month to $8.99 a month for the initial term, and $9.99 a month to $24.99 a month for annual renewals.

The Premium and Business plans support up to 100 sites and the high-end Cloud Startup package allows up to 300 sites. The plans include an easy-to-use website builder that lets you accept payments and add other e-commerce features to your site.

GoDaddy bills itself as the largest services platform for entrepreneurs in the world. It also offers web building and hosting, e-commerce, digital marketing, SEO, web security and email services.

The company’s domain name bundles combine domain registration with a website builder, professional email, email marketing, appointment scheduling, SEO, online stores and links to online marketplaces.

Prices for the domain name bundles range from $8.66 per month for the first year for the Starter plan to $14.50 per month for the first year for the highest plan, Ecommerce. In between these two packages is GoDaddy’s Essentials bundle, which costs $24.65 per month for the first year. It’s very likely that steep promotional deals will be available, so your cost could potentially be much lower, but pay attention to renewal pricing.

DreamHost is one of several domain registrars that include WHOIS privacy with the price of their registrations, but the company goes further by offering the mod_security web application firewall (WAF) that blocks malicious HTTP requests and is enabled by default.

DreamHost sells the DreamShield malware remover and supports multifactor authentication for enhanced access control. Registrations include free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates. The company supports DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC), which add signatures to DNS to confirm the source of data; however, its nameservers aren’t compatible with DNSSEC. You can purchase, transfer and renew any of hundreds of TLDs from DreamHost at prices that are frequently on sale.

Other services available from DreamHost include WordPress hosting, several other types of website hosting, three website building packages, web design services, email hosting, Google Workspace and professional marketing, management and training services.

Some people might call Network Solutions the grandfather of domain registrars because the company was the only registrar in town in the early days of the web. Its service offerings have expanded through the years to include website and online store builders, web hosting, WordPress hosting, SSL certificates and other security products, professional email, Google Workspace and IT services.

The company also sells two do-it-yourself marketing tools and three marketing services:

• Simple SEO guides businesses through the process of devising and implementing an SEO strategy, including a keyword ranking tool. The service costs $33.25 a month for a one-year term.
• Business listings with review management tracks online reviews of your company and its products. The service costs $9.95 a month.
• SEO services offer complete SEO optimization of existing web pages, keyword research and new site content.
• Pro business directories ensure the accuracy of the information about your company that’s found in multiple online business directories.
• Pay-per-click advertising provides a custom PPC strategy for your company, including one-on-one consultations with Google Ads-certified experts.

Domain-related problems can knock a company’s website offline for extended periods. Bluehost’s customer support has garnered a reputation among reviewers for being responsive to support requests, albeit with some upselling attempts by support agents.

The company’s self-help tools include a knowledge base, FAQs and a WordPress academy. Bluehost provides events and webinars for its customers, as well as free consultations for businesses shopping for web hosting services.

Bluehost’s domain registration prices are higher than most of the other vendors we looked at, especially for domain renewals, which can be purchased for up to nine years, but without any multi-year discounts. The company includes one year of free domain registration for selected TLDs when you purchase one of its four web hosting plans.

The TLDs available with this offer include several popular ones, including .com, .net., .org, .biz and .info. However, WHOIS privacy and several domain privacy features are offered only in the Domain Privacy Protection add-on, which costs $15 a year.