Selfhosted

Wait here are you getting a $10/year VPS?

https://www.loopia.com/ - ~10 euro/year for only DNS and ~100 euro/year for DNS, e-mail and web hosting.

Formerly Google domains, now owned by squarespace. It costs $13 a year for a .rocks domain.

I bought a class 1.111B domain from the .xyz registrar: 6 to 9 digits followed by .xyz, so you can use your phone number. They sell them for $1/year, and $1/year for whois privacy. So I paid $20 to have my domain for the next decade :)

Cloudflare. They sell and renew at cost ($12 iirc)

I hear Porkbun does/did as well but I haven't looked in a long time.

Cloudflare sells domains at wholesale prices. Domains are not their business model, they want people to be exposed to their services so you might pay for something they do make money on.

I did buy a 10 letter(not random) .cc domain on Namecheap 30€ for the next decade.

Don't use namecheap.

Super happy with PorkBun

I tried many only to settle on cloudflare. The other services were poor or in some cases weird (like infomaniak wanting me to upload my ID). Cloudflare had good prices and the service is stable, no surprises + whois privacy included.

Namecheap has random number only xyz domains for like a dollar so I have one of those.

I have two domains through Cloudflare. They don't mark up to price at all, so they're basically the lowest price you'll find that isn't a gimmick.

I pay $6.50 for one and $10.46 for the other. Privacy is free and by default.

No harm in getting your domain from them. Just beware that when you create a DNS entry, they default to proxying the incoming connections. It is super easy to turn that "feature" off, you just have to remember to do it whenever you create a new record.

Porkbun is pretty solid

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

[Thread #1017 for this comm, first seen 24th Jan 2026, 08:55] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

Find the best prices for domain names here, from registration to renewal an transfer: https://tld-list.com/

Privacy should be free and by default.

My name registration with porkbun is cheap enough that I don't remember exactly. Had no issues with them.

I've got a few domains. I use Porkbun as registrar. They're awesome, and the domains were pretty cheap. Under $10 a year each.

Cloudflare offers at-cost domain names. There's a lot of issues with using them though. Since they're so big, they have a culture of giving governments/oligarchs whatever they want.

There is Njalla, owned by someone involved with The Pirate Bay. It supposedly allows users to buy domain names privately, although I'm not sure at what cost. I've read users saying that Njalla will revoke domain names if pressured by outside forces, so they don't seem like a good option similar to cloudflare.

The DNS is a tool of surveillance and control and we should move away from it as quickly as possible.

I've been on Namecheap for years.

The "hard no" list is GoDaddy, Network Solutions, and anything owned by EIG. They are literally the worst. Probably Ionos (formerly 1&1) too.

I am not renting a VPS from them (only domain registration, an e-mailadres and whois privacy), but have you looked into the offerings from Infomaniak? Mind you, things like the TLD influence the price a lot (reg and/or renewal), and hosting related services can increase costs as well.

Cloudflare has been excellent for me since I switched away from (puke) GoDaddy years ago. They don't try to upsell you bullshit like most of the other places, either. I have three domains with them.

I do not use any other Cloudflare services. There are no additional costs or services required (beyond the domain fees) to use them as your registrar.

I'm paying about $22 on Porkbun, they're pretty good

I Just transfered over to porkbun after namecheap decided to raise renewal cost again, wish id done it sooner.

I will make a prediction. Once you get the domain and set it up, the images will still not work. Are you using an external proxy? I was battling this for days, Lemmy backend refused to create thumbs for my local images, federated content worked great. IF you get this issue, send me a message, I found a workaround.

@user224 Porkbun paid about 10 dollars. Prices are going up though as the price for .com is increasing.

I generally get stuff from porkbun.com since I've been there for a while, prices are decent and they have some convenient features. But, I should try namecrane.com since they are run by online buddies of mine. They are sort of a spin-off of the original buyvm.net.

Price comparator: https://tld-list.com/

Yes they separate out renewal prices so make sure to take that into consideration. The high renewal prices are a marketing trick of the TLD holders. The resellers can't really do anything about them.

A .com domain should be under USD $12 a year with WHOIS privacy included. If someone is charging more than that, they are ripping you off. Most web or VPS hosts will charge a significant markup if they sell domains. Make sure you check the renewal price too. Some registrars will give you the first year cheap, then charge significantly more to renew it.

Cloudflare is the cheapest, but they force you to use their DNS servers. Porkbun is a dollar more, but you can use your own DNS if you want to.

I'm using ovh for my domains, it's €13.5 I think for a .com renewal and that include whois privacy, a 15Go mail address and a 100mo website hosting.

As far as I know, Cloudfare is the only registrar that offers you wholesale price, as in the price asked by the tld owners. So, you a registrar can't go lower, because that's what they pay for it.

But, a lot of registrars will give you first year at a heavy discount (so, at a loss), just so they can ramp up the price to wholesale + a lot extra. I got my domain for like 5$, and they then asked for 40$ for renewal, while wholesale is around 25$.

So, I just transfered to Cloudfare for the renewal. Tbh I don't remember if it was the first or second year, and what are the transfer rules, but I think it should be possible to just buy a first year at heavy discount with i.e Namecheap or something, and immediately transfer to Cloudfare for the first renewal at wholesale price.

I paid $10.44 USD to cloudflare last year in May for a year of my .com domain. I have no complaints.

My first registrar was Google domains. As always, they killed the business. And sold it to Squarespace. I’ve been their customer for a year or two, nothing bad I can say, except the price was about 1.5 or even 2x of that from Cloudflare for com domain, so I migrated there. I have no deep understanding of the nuances, so I cannot say whether Cloudflare is a bad actor. At least I trust them to not elevate the price, as it’s not their primary business, sell domains.

If you’re at all into credit card churning Amex business gold has a new $150 square space credit that can be used for domains. You can prepay for up to 10 years. Their rates are high ($20 for .com) but it’s fake money.

Nearly Free Speech https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/services/domains

I use two: Namecheap and omg.lol.

Admittedly omg.lol isn't a traditional registrar, but they do give you a domain name and other stuff (I don't use most of it), but it's $20/yr

Namecheap varies, but last I checked it was a bit cheaper. Not by much, maybe $15/yr for my .monster domain?