I had to help out a client this week because this migration broke their website. Turns out that Squarespace’s omain forwarding feature drops query params. This brokes thousands of links. Fun times.
With your recommendation and that of the others below it, I might give them a shot. I’ve been using Cloudflare in the meantime but don’t really need their other services anymore.
Edit: Hoping they support DNSSEC. I just woke up so I’m too lazy to look that up but I’ll get there.
The registrar doesn’t have anything to do with TLS. I use LetsEncrypt on my domains through NameCheap, no problems whatsoever. I get my hosting elsewhere (previously Vultr, currently Hetzner).
I care if they have poor privacy policies or something in features I don’t use as that can indicate future impact on features I do use, but I don’t care if they have limited product offerings generally. So to me, it’s completely irrelevant.
You should probably separate your hosting from your registrar anyway so you can switch one without impacting the other. I did just that when I bailed on Vultr due to their unprofessional (IMO) handling of a TOS update (blocked access to my account, so I couldn’t close my account w/o accepting the terms), but I didn’t have to change my registrar and all that, I just spun up an instance at another host and redirected DNS entries. I also separated my DNS mappings from my domain registrar (they’re combined now @ cloudflare, which is a little unfortunate).
They ticked off a lot of customers by eliminating included email. Their email product was however fantastic and can be worth the price; while I’ve switched to Proton one thing I miss is the very accurate Gandi spam headers and the ease of writing mail filters.
So far the new owner hasn’t worsened things (from my view) but my experience is that whenever one company buys another, the purchased company’s products go to hell pretty fast.
They are not primarily a domain registrar, they are a website builder SaaS. So they will probably try to sell you on that product when you renew, but many registrars will try to upsell you, so that’s not uncommon. If you are planning to transfer away, I can certainly recommend Namecheap, I’ve used them for many years without issue
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I had to help out a client this week because this migration broke their website. Turns out that Squarespace’s omain forwarding feature drops query params. This brokes thousands of links. Fun times.
Oh yikes. I would’ve recommended Gandi but they were bought out too. Seems like no one wants to play the registrar game anymore.
I’ve heard lots of recommendations for Porkbun. Personally, I have mine with Cloudflare because they’re cheap.
Moved to porkbun because they added DDNS support to OPNsense for porkbun
With your recommendation and that of the others below it, I might give them a shot. I’ve been using Cloudflare in the meantime but don’t really need their other services anymore.
Edit: Hoping they support DNSSEC. I just woke up so I’m too lazy to look that up but I’ll get there.
For total clarity, I’ve never used Porkbun so I can’t vouch. But I like what I see on their website.
I moved to porkbun after Google domains shut down, very happy with the service so far.
Namecheap and clouflare are decent, though you have to use cloudflare’s DNS hosting if you go with them.
Last I used Namecheap they still didn’t support Let’s Encrypt and were charging for DV TLS certs. Noped right back out.
The registrar doesn’t have anything to do with TLS. I use LetsEncrypt on my domains through NameCheap, no problems whatsoever. I get my hosting elsewhere (previously Vultr, currently Hetzner).
A company’s business practices are relevant regardless of which of their services you’re subscribing to.
I care if they have poor privacy policies or something in features I don’t use as that can indicate future impact on features I do use, but I don’t care if they have limited product offerings generally. So to me, it’s completely irrelevant.
You should probably separate your hosting from your registrar anyway so you can switch one without impacting the other. I did just that when I bailed on Vultr due to their unprofessional (IMO) handling of a TOS update (blocked access to my account, so I couldn’t close my account w/o accepting the terms), but I didn’t have to change my registrar and all that, I just spun up an instance at another host and redirected DNS entries. I also separated my DNS mappings from my domain registrar (they’re combined now @ cloudflare, which is a little unfortunate).
What happened to Gandi?
https://domainnamewire.com/2023/03/02/total-web-solutions-acquires-domain-registrar-gandi-forming-new-entity/
They ticked off a lot of customers by eliminating included email. Their email product was however fantastic and can be worth the price; while I’ve switched to Proton one thing I miss is the very accurate Gandi spam headers and the ease of writing mail filters.
So far the new owner hasn’t worsened things (from my view) but my experience is that whenever one company buys another, the purchased company’s products go to hell pretty fast.
Yeah I’m in the same boat. I haven’t used squarespace and I have no idea if I should stay with them.
They are not primarily a domain registrar, they are a website builder SaaS. So they will probably try to sell you on that product when you renew, but many registrars will try to upsell you, so that’s not uncommon. If you are planning to transfer away, I can certainly recommend Namecheap, I’ve used them for many years without issue