Ask HN: Where would you send your mother to register a domain name?

4 points by sirjonathan 13 years ago | 6 comments

While many of us, I imagine, would just do it for her, what if she wanted to register a domain herself? Where would you tell her to go?

polyfractal 13 years ago |

http://badger.com is pretty awesome. Has a lot of pre-configured one-click "apps" which can be tremendously helpful. For example, click the "Tumblr" button and it automatically takes care of all the DNS re-arrangements required to serve up your tumblr on your domain.

Very slick and easy to use interface. I've had a lot of good experiences with their customer support too.

balac 13 years ago |

http://hover.com is very straightforward, simple, and doesn't upsell you.

NameMage 13 years ago |

NameCheap.com - It's much more reliable than GoDaddy and doesn't try to upsell as much. Plus, the signup process is rather straight forward. I can help your grandma register a name if you'd like. Just have her email me at support(at)namemage.com and I'll be glad to help answer any questions she has when registering.

kevinconroy 13 years ago | |

I second NameCheap. The sign up process is fairly straightforward and free of un-needed upsells, but may be confusing to people unfamiliar with basic internet jargon/terms. However, I wonder how "easy" sign up needs to be if the hypothetical mother in question is savvy enough to know that she wants to purchase a domain name, rather than say, register her vanity URL on Facebook and call it a day.

sirjonathan 13 years ago | |

Thanks for the tip, I'll definitely keep it in mind. The upsells are a bit troubling to me, though. Mom doesn't need SSL and certainly no website creation tools or hosting (WordPress all the way). I'd like to recommend a registrar that really just focuses on domains.

AznHisoka 13 years ago |

I'd send my mom to a web hosting service that'd register it for me. Otherwise she'll get confused and wonder why she can't do anything with it afterwards.