How to Find the Best Domain Provider for You in 2021
Domain providers provide and manage your domain name, such as xyz.com. You need a domain provider in order to start a website. To make your website a success, you want to find the best domain provider. The problem is when you search for the domain providers; you will find hundreds of providers and it can be confusing to find the best suit for you. To make it easier, I have researched, and here I am presenting a list of the best domain providers in 2021, along with their pros and cons. This will help in selecting the domain provider based on your needs.
Best Domain Provider for Your Needs
Choosing a domain provider is a very important decision. I understand that it can be difficult to select the best fit for you. In this article, I cover some of the best domain providers and explain why you should or shouldn’t use them.
Namecheap
Richard Kirkendall founded Namecheap back in 2000. It gained popularity for being a budget hosting provider. The domain hosts over 10 million customers today and is often regarded as the best domain provider.
Pros of Using Namecheap
Budget friendly
It is Google approved means you don’t have to worry about its licence. Also, it is one of the cheapest domains among all. The prices start from $8.87 per year for “.com” and provide you with unlimited domain hostings.
Uptime
One of the most significant characteristics to look for in a host is uptime. Namecheap provides a stellar uptime of 99.9%. This is amongst the highest uptime provided by domain registrars.
SSL Certificates
The best part is that you get an SSL certificate for the first-year plan. However, this SSL certificate is not available for shared hosting. The SSL certificate provides you authentication and communicates with your users that you are an authentic owner of this website. This certificate is a must for e-commerce websites.
Money-back guarantee
Namecheap offers you a money-back guarantee for 30 days. They have shared hosting plans with 100% uptime on the shared plans.
Reselling options
If you no longer need your domain name and don’t want to renew it, you have the option to resell it in the Namecheap Marketplace before your contract expires.
DNS hosting
If you’re new to websites, you may not know about DNS hosting. This hosting translates your domain name into a unique IP address.
Namecheap already offers DNS hosting for any domain you purchase from them. In case you have purchased a domain from another source that is already registered but does not have DNS, then Namecheap also offers DNS hosting for such domains.
Access to other softwares
Softaculous is a software that automates the installation of open source web applications on a website. Namecheap provides access to Softaculous, which will enable you to easily install software to enhance your website’s features and functionality.
Namecheap also provides free WhoisGuard. This protects your personal information and ensures that it cannot be accessed by spammers.
Cons of Using Namecheap
Customer Support
While Namecheap’s customer support is available 24/7/365, you can’t call them. The only way to contact them is via email or live customer chat. This does create concerns about the effectiveness of the support service. Experiments in the past have shown that while the customer service representatives respond quickly, they are not able to answer questions satisfactorily.
Load time and response speed
Namecheap has a response time of 417ms. While this is decent, it surely isn’t the best as per industry standards.
Should You Use Namecheap?
To sum up, Namecheap is an amazing domain provider and provides fantastic features for the price they are offering. As the name suggest, Namecheap has branded itself as a cheap domain provider. This is the best option for domains when you are starting a small business and first time website owners. It is also a great option to try building a website because you can always claim your money back if Namecheap fails to deliver. However, if you are a larger company with bigger budget and more experience, you should consider the domain providers discussed below.
GoDaddy
Surely you have heard about this fantastic domain provider. GoDaddy is a really old and famous domain provider. I came across GoDaddy years ago when a client insisted on working with it. Trust me, I regret not knowing about it earlier and haven’t looked back ever since.
I have had a great experience working with GoDaddy. Don’t just take my word for it but look at some stats. As I mentioned earlier, it is one of the oldest domain providers and is known worldwide for its exceptional services. As of now, it is overseeing more than 77 million domains for 18 million clients all around the globe. It also has low feature costs. .co domains are accessible for $11.99/ year. .com and .org are also clearly modest, starting at $12.17 and $10.17 respectively. If you cost is a concern then GoDaddy is surely a pretty good one to start with. Now let’s look at some specifics.
Pros of Using GoDaddy
Incredible Services vis-à-vis Cost
While GoDaddy is not the cheapest domain provider, its cost can be justified vis-à-vis services provided by it. GoDaddy gives pocket-accommodating and reasonable arrangements to its clients. You can get GoDaddy facilitated with limitless data transfer capacity on the GRID stage. GoDaddy provides a large storage limit and does not limit your site traffic. Also, it is approved by Google.
Free Website Builder
One of the best things about using GoDaddy is that it provides free website designers in their hosting plans. GoDaddy web designer gives professional look to your website. You will get a numerous free layouts which you can use to make your site appealing. All of this at no extra cost.
Simple Setups of Blogs and Discussions
By using simple online instruments, you can add a free WordPress blog and functional discussions to your sites without a lot of work. You don’t need any technical knowledge for doing it. Through GoDaddy facilitating login, you get all the free assistance you need to make a great blog.
Online Marketing and SEO
GoDaddy invests heavily in marketing and advertising. This makes the process of reaching your clients much easier. Using GoDaddy, you can give your clients the path to discover your quality merchandise and enterprises. GoDaddy uses all the marketing and SEO tools necessary to get your customers on your website and make sure they keep returning.
Cons of Using GoDaddy
Customer Support
Customer service at GoDaddy isn’t always helpful in resolving issues. GoDaddy does not offer live chat support. When you file an issue ticket, you may have to wait up to 48 hours for a response. Each follow-up response might take up to 48 hours, therefore troubleshooting an issue might take weeks unless the solution can be found with just one response.
Restoration Fees
The majority of domain providers will restore your website at no cost to you. However, the restoration fees at GoDaddy might reach $300 in some cases. This creates a lot of pressure on you to make sure you don’t make any mistakes and that your website looks exactly how you want it to.
Slow Internal Speed
GoDaddy is the biggest domain provider and this has overcrowded their servers. The domain provider has also enforced CPU limits on shared hosting because of the crowding. Exceeding these limits will only result in a slower website. However, there are several methods that you can use to improve the speed of the website.
Should You Use GoDaddy?
In short, GoDaddy is a great domain provider. I speak from personal experience when I say that you are missing out by not using their services. I would say that GoDaddy is the ideal for big businesses, particularly because of its low storage limit and unlimited traffic allowance. However, it is a bit expensive and charges extra for various add-ons. You should consider other options if you are looking for a cheaper and more hands-on domain provider.
Bluehost
I have come to love and trust Bluehost based on years of experience with the provider. While researching on the best domain providers for someone I knew dearly, I came across Bluehost. It was the first time I heard about it, and I was quite sceptical. However, I decided to give it a shot in the hope that it will deliver what it promises. To my utter surprise, this is exactly what happened! With an easy user interface and 24/7 available technical support, I was able to make full use out of it.
Pros of Using Bluehost
Budget friendly
Bluehost is perhaps the ideal decision out there if you’re searching for a legitimate domain registrar at cheap prices. Bluehost sells .com, and .org domains are at $12.99 each year. Those purchasing a shared hosting plan from Bluehost would get a free domain throw in (in addition to web designers). The shared plans start at $2.95 per month and renews at $8.99 per month.
Basically, Bluehost allows you to start by paying $2.95 per month and get a free domain name alongside the first year.
User-friendly
When picking a web host, you need to ensure the hosting supplier is easy to use. Bluehost makes constructing your webpage a speedy and simple interaction regardless of whether you are an amateur to building sites.
Bluehost offers a simple-to-utilise search framework that would represent your choices. You can also add domain security and insurance with your purchase, which means your own subtleties and profile are kept hidden and aren’t freely noticeable (through Whois). Hence, a win-win situation!
Bluehost also gives you the alternative of auto-renewal, which saves you from the difficulty of physically re-establishing your site domain(s) over and over again and likewise guarantees that no incidental lapses occur. Hence, if you are searching for web hosting together with trustable domain providers, Bluehost is the best decision for you.
In the Bluehost cPanel, you can easily alter your documents, information bases, accounts, domains, and so on. One thing that is marvellous about Bluehost’s cPanel is that it incorporates SimpleScripts too, isn’t that amazing? Let’s see how it’s panel looks.
Quick Response and Load Time
While picking a domain provider, it is important to ensure that it has fast loading speed. High load and response time increases the accessibility of content for your audience. Bluehost is known to be quick in this regard, with the average load time 1.48 ms and average response time of 1.26 ms. Bluehost gives the Cloudflare CDN administration, which permits their clients to accelerate their respective websites and overall productivity without any problem.
99.9% Uptime
Uptime refers to the percentage of time for which a system has been successfully operational. Bluehost ensures a 99.98% uptime. This means that Bluehost will face about one hour and forty-five minutes of downtime in a year. This makes Bluehost one of the best domain registrar in terms of its uptime.
24/7 Technical Support
Bluehost offers 24/7 specialised help through telephone, live chat, and email. When a Bluehost client has difficulty, they can visit the help group, send a help ticket through email, or call them at (888) 401–4678. Hence, Bluehost ensures that you would never get stuck while using it and provides timely help in the event you do.
Cons of Using Bluehost
Renewal Price
While you can get started at Bluehost for cheap prices, the renewal price increases substantially. While this is not a unique policy of Bluehost, it is worth noting as you will be using your website for several years.
Site Migration Fees
While many domain providers do not charge for site migration, this is not the case with Bluehost. Bluehost requires fees for migrating your site over to Bluehost. At present, Bluehost charges $149.99 for migrating up to five websites and twenty email accounts.
Should You Use Bluehost?
There are numerous helpful services Bluehost provides. It provides a lot of services for the cost. Also, unlike other domain providers like GoDaddy, Bluehost provides great customer service. Bluehost is great for big businesses who are willing to pay a higher price and cannot sacrifice on uptime, response and lot time.
InMotion Hosting
This is a novel domain provider driven by more than 300 representatives with an unwavering aim: to watch your business succeed and develop beyond any boundaries. It offers a total setup of adaptable interconnected, open-source digital items and framework advancements, such as , cloud computing and website hosting, to enhance your overall experience. InMotion hosting is used by numerous business clients and is situated in over 175 nations across the globe.
Pros of Using InMotion Hosting
Money Back Gurantee
The industry standard for guaranteed return in web hosting is 30 days. I’ve even come across a few companies that provide a 45-day or 60-day money-back guarantee. InMotion, on the other hand, offers a 90-day money-back guarantee. The money-back guarantee only applies to the business, VPS, and reseller plans, so keep that in mind. In addition, you must join up for at least six months to receive this advantage. Every month-to-month package and dedicated server comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Customer Support
One of the most crucial aspects of a good web host is customer assistance. So, if you ever have a query, a problem, or want assistance, InMotion’s 24/7 customer support can help you out. InMotion provides live chat, phone, and email assistance. You shouldn’t have to wait more than a few minutes to speak with an agent, in my experience. InMotion also offers online lessons and a discussion forum.
High Security
Most web providers provide some kind of security protection for their customers, but InMotion’s plans go above and beyond. InMotion’s plans assist in avoiding DDoS and brute force attacks on your website by working with third-party security organisations. As a result, you may not need to instal additional levels of protection and save you money in the long run.
Free Tools
InMotion Hosting provides a range of free tools and services. This includes free SSD drives, data back-ups, free 1-click installer, etc. Further, the VPS plan provides a free site trasfer which typically costs a hundred dollars.
Cons of Using InMotion Hosting
Expensive Renewals
While you can start using their services by just paying $5.99 a month, renewals are quite expensive. The renewal price is over $13 a month. However, it is worth noting that this isn’t unique to InMotion but rather a common strategy employed by domain providers.
Plan Restrictions
You’ll have certain limitations if you choose a shared hosting plan. While InMotion promises free backups, they are only available for websites with a storage capacity of less than 10 GB. In addition, file restoration is limited to once every four months. You need to upgrade your plan to remove these limitations.
Should You Use InMotion Hosting?
InMotion Hosting is most suitable for small businesses, particularly those who are looking for VPS hosting. InMotion is regarded as one of the greatest web hosting companies in the business due to its excellent customer support and dependability.
Conclusion
All in all, I have compiled a list of the best domain providers that will help you purchase a domain according to your needs. I personally use GoDaddy and find their features amazing to run my website smoothly. However, I have also tried Namecheap, it has similar features to GoDaddy, but they are best for small businesses. I would also highly recommend Bluehost due to the range of features provided by it.
