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Tag: domains

Google Domains closing – current .com domain name prices

I’ve spent a while migrating all of our non-.uk domain names to Google Domains – only for Google to announce that as of September 7th 2023 they are stopping all new domain registrations and moving the public domain registrations over to Squarespace (Google domains managed 9 years before being killed by Google).

We were paying £10/year for .com (and .net and .dev) domain name purchases/renewals with Google – but what are the “current market prices”?

(I was starting to migrate domains over to WordPress (mainly for the free year of renewal), but finding out that they don’t support DNSSEC and that there isn’t an ETA for its implementation means I might have to look elsewhere.)

Domain provider.com price (one year)NotesThanks to
Cloudflare£7.47Price converted from $9.15 USD.
Does support DNSEC.
Domains must use Cloudflare’s authoritative DNS provider.
WordPress£10.00Currently offering free transfer+1 year renewal for domains currently with Google Domains.
Does not support DNSSEC.
ResellerClub£10.44Price converted from $12.79.
Available to resellers only.
Amazon Route 53£10.63Price converted from $13.00
ClouDNS£10.93Price converted from $13.39 USD.
Does support DNSSEC.
Dynadot£10.99
OpenSRS£11.23Price converted from $13.75 USD.
Available to resellers only.
Namecheap£11.40New customer pricing of £4.87. Neil Turner via Mastodon
DNSimple£11.86Price converted from $14.50 USD.
Requires a free subscription.
Does support DNSSEC.
Shopify£12.28Price converted from $15.00 USD.
Might be limited to using Shopify’s platform.
20i£12.49Does support DNSSEC.
Reseller pricing £10.49 (reseller package costs £47.99/month)
OpenProvider£12.76Price converted from $15.58 USD.
Members pricing £8.00 (membership costs $49.99/year)
OVHCloud£12.95First year registration: £10.19
Does support DNSSEC
Hetzner£13.55Price converted from €15.60 EUR.
Hover£14.73Price converted from $17.99 USD
First year registration £13.10.
EasyDNS£15.51Price converted from $19.00 USD.
Squarespace£16.00New provider for Google Domains customers.
First year registration £9.60
Hostgator£16.37Price converted from $19.99 USD
First year registration £10.61.
Joker£16.62
HeartInternet£16.78Advertised prices exclude VAT.
First year registration £11.98
Mythic Beasts£17.40Advertised prices exclude VAT.
Does support DNSSEC.
Jonathan Matthews via Mastodon
Bluehost£18.00Price converted from $21.99.
First year registration £10.91
Ionos£18.00First year registration £1.20.Howard Cheng via Mastodon
Domain.com£18.00Price converted from $21.99.
Network Solutions£20.48Price converted from $25.
I brought my first domain from them in 1998 – NS has been sold 4 times since!
Easily£20.89Advertised prices exclude VAT
123-Reg£20.38Advertised prices exclude VAT.
First year registration £5.99
GoDaddy£21.56Advertised prices exclude VAT.
First year registration £10.78.
Glauca£22.65
Namesco£23.98Advertised prices exclude VAT.
First year registration £11.98
Gandi£23.99First year registration £16.54.Philip John via Mastodon

Disclaimer:

Prices shown in £ GBP/Pound Sterling and are based on publicly available “single year renewal” prices at the date I added them to the table (with any different registration pricing noted).

Where possible, all prices include UK VAT/Tax and have been converted from any other currencies to GBP using Xe.com where the site itself did not provide currency conversion.

I can’t be held responsible for any errors, omissions, out of date information etc etc – I did my best! 😀

Edited 25th September 2023:

  • Add “Thanks” to people who reminded me of certain registries
  • Added Ionos, Mythic Beasts, DNSimple, Amazon Route 53, Easily, Hetzner, Network Solutions, Shopfiy, Domain.com, OVHCloud, Glauca, Joker, Hostgator, OpenProvider, Dynadot and Hover.
  • Added note of DNSSec support and reseller pricing to 20i
  • Corrected ordering placement of Heartinternet
  • Clarified Disclaimer.

Avoid US Domain Registrars – A Response

My darling other half has just made another interesting blog post – this time about avoiding US domain registrars due to eNom (the second largest domain name registrar according to Webhosting.info) disabling domain names belonging to a British National (based in Spain) selling holidays/vacations in Cuba to European citizens (Nytimes article).

Sounds good in theory – but in practice, it’s a bit more difficult.

Why? Well, I mainly use a registrar called DirectI/ResellerClub (as I have a lot of domain names – over 60) who are based in India – but (ignoring the fact they now have a US office) I could, in theory, still have my domain names disabled by the US courts: because DirectI get their domain names (like all other .com/.net/.cc or .tv domain name providers) from a company called Verisign GRS who are the “root provider” (also known as the “authoritative directory provider”) of all those domains. And they are based in the USA and hence the US courts could just ask Verisign to suspend the domain names at their level.

“Ah ha!”, I hear you cry – what about my nice safe .co.uk or .eu domain name that I brought for a UK company such as Heart Internet? Well, again, there’s a catch. All .uk domain names are via Nominet (a UK based company) and all .eu domain names are from Eurid (a Belgium based company) – so on the “registrar” level they are safe (apart from the inter-country co-operation agreements). But ALL domain names (.com/.net/.uk and .eu) are ultimately allocated by an organisation called the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) which is part of Internet Corporation For Assigned Names And Numbers (ICANN) which, whilst being a “private-public partnership” is a US organisation currently under the control of the US Department of Commerce (at least it’s a change – ICANN and IANA used to be run by the US Department of Defense).

So there you go – all your domain names are belong to the US Government!

Free Domain Names

Are you looking at starting a new project but can’t afford the domain name? Well, my other half may well be able to help you free of charge. She’s got around 20 domain names (some registered and paid for until August 2009) available free of charge – with names ranging from aubrey-maturin.co.uk (for fans of the Patrick O’Brian Aubrey/Maturin novels), through the “Microserf”eque Chixor.co.uk, through to me strange ones such as Retronerd.org , WhipTang.co.uk and TheWebMonkey.info .

Check out her list of domain names and drop her an email (or comment) if you are interested!