Domain Registrar (probably with Email Forwarding)

Hi Everyone, not been on TB for years and it seems very quiet.

Have a few domains that were registered with DomainMonster, but 123-reg have mostly absorbed them now and jacked the prices up and the service down. Took them months to move the registrations even when they said they would, and I'm not convinced they've actually moved the services.

Anyway - who do we like that's reliable/cheap?

I'd quite like to move the domains before the overpriced renewals in cotober.

Currently the domains are using email forwarding to route the emails to other services.
My quick search of the market has
1) good people that really want to supply & charge for email hosting
2) well known outfits who are getting Borged by the big guys like DM were,
3) who??

For reliability my minimum measure is that DomainMonster used to have the forwarding completely stall about once every two years - often for a week, and usually over xmas. I've always assumed that the person that manually prodded the mail forwarder took a week off.

Read that a lot of suppliers are spam filtering at the domain/forward level, but I've got that at the various destinations. Not convinced I want it invisibly enroute.

Thoughts?

Ionos include one mailbox with domain registration, which I prefer to forwarding. Very happy with it.

I've been using TSOHost for some years without major problems - occasionally they have issues where emails stop forwarding due to some sort of fault but generally they get on it quickly to fix it (think I have seen it twice in the last year).

I've been using Mythic Beasts for some time. They're a small Cambridge company with an excellent technical and customer service reputation. They're ideal for techies who know what they're doing and appreciate a flexible set of features while being quite useable by those who want a simple email forwarding service. The service has never failed while I've been using them. (Sorry if this sounds like an advert - I've just been very impressed with them.)

Edited by ashdown (Thu 16-Sep-21 22:06:46)

i have just moved my last domain from 123-reg due to the price,

Where did you move them too? Happy with them?

To be honest it was only inertia that kept me on the DomainMonster setup. Plus "it just worked" for 51/52 weeks a year. 123 finally eating them has been very drawn out - and I'm not 100% clear they've even done all of it as none of my settings are visible in the 123 web front end although for now they still work.

When I registered DM was also one of very few that even accepted my "perfectly valid but unusual url". Most registrars had the validation wrong!

However none of that is worth the lower customer service that 123 are notorious for AND paying double for the privilege. Was £5.99+vat, now £11.99+vat = £14.39 That adds up.

Heck, even some of those that don't provide nohost forwarding can do a small shared host AND the domains at the same price as 123 registering 4 domains.

Ooo, had a look and all seems very sensible and clear. Unusual in itself. Shortlisted.

Though I see that you do pay £1/pm extra to get email level forwarding if you don't take actual email or full hosting.

But you only pay it once so its still break even with two domains vs 123's pricing. And as you're actually paying something they might manage and support it better than the included free offerings which are rarer these days anyway.

Interesting. Shortlisted

I know RobertoS used to rate them highly.

Looked at them the other day, and they're one of few with cheap registration and nohost forwarding.

.

Yeah, good info.

I've seen a few registrars with a free mailbox, but we really need multiple mailboxes at the end of the domain and I'm trying not to pay for additional hosting I don't really need.

The domain market generally seems geared to up-selling hosting - even more so than in the past.

That seems contrary the "pro advice" years ago which was to keep the registration on a different provider simply so you had a fast re-routing option if you had issues with the hosting (or domain) supplier. You didn't have all your eggs trapped in the one basket. Whereas the market is pushing the "one stop shop" - although that push was there even years ago.

I've been using Gandi for quite a few years now. Service seems to always work, simple to setup and the costs don't really increase much year on year.