Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

["Alan MacHett" <machett AT ibiblio.org>]

...was doing some research and reviewing.  I think I have an idea for the
second article for our new hope-to-be directory.  It would fall into the
"Reviews & Opinions" category.  Articles of this nature should be
revisited each year to maintain the accuracy of the content.  Another
subject for this category (article #3 anyone?) would be Triangle Hosting
Companies (but those of us with a vested interest would have to bow out).

I'm looking for a new registrar and I'm wondering what all the
professional opinions are of the various and multitudinous companies. 
This discussion occurred about a year ago on INW, but the companies and
thus the opinions might have changed.  Old opinions, in no particular
order, are below:

-Alan

<OPINIONS>

Christopher Witter:
PAIRNIC.com: cheap (not the cheapest) great
management interface only down fall is they don't have
a phone number that I could find to call when I forgot
my password and username, they respond very well to
email and are pretty quick to come back with the
response.

Steve Champeon:
NSI: evil monopolist, despite "competition"
REGISTER.com: I switched to register from NSI and for a week, they had
excellent customer service, which they promptly outsourced to a firm that
knows nothing and has no access to the systems you're calling to complain
about. [also] has no way of modifying a contact handle - if I have fifty
domains registered to 'hostmaster at hesketh.net' (and I do) and I need to
change the contact mailing address, I have to do it on /all fifty/, one at
a time. Feh.
JOKER.com: heard good things. cheap.
GODADDY.com: silly name. heard good things.
DOTSTER: it's not spam if you're a customer, even if they send it once a
day for a year.

Serena Fenton:
GANDI.net [France] is reaaly cheap $10.00 per year - the support is almost
non-existant.  The spam is very light (one peice every few weeks) and
tends to be in French or Spanish.

Calvin Powers:
At the risk of being chastised by the geek crowd, I have decided to do all
my future domain registration via Yahoo Web Services. They are more
expensive than some ($35 per year as i recall) but you get one free e-mail
account (pop,smtp, and web) with the account and unlimited e-mail
forwarding. They can host sites on your domain too with several packages
starting at $8.95 a month.

Brandon Brown:
ENOM.com: They are excellent and inexpensive. As a matter of fact you can
control all your own parameters automatically with your login/password
combination and they happen very quickly after you make the change.
I'd stay away from every registrar with the possible exceptions of
REGISTER.com and JOKER.DE.  I've had nothing but trouble with TOTALNIC
(they suck) and NSI (pure evil posing as ignorance) and haven't used
OpenSRS but hear good things.

Thomas C. Meggs:
JOKER.com: I've had very good experiences with
their support, despite the fact it's pretty much email only and often
includes broken English (actually in the last year or two they've been a
lot better about that). Their web interface for administering your
domains is very nice, and very well developed. They were one of the
first registrars to let you modify all of your settings on your account
through the web. They are also rather inexpensive, it is around
$11.64/yr. Also they'll run your DNS for you and do URL forwarding for
free, which you can administrate from your "Service Zone" on their web page.

Dave Matusiak:
NETWORKSOLUTIONS - expensive monolith that does not care about you.
$35/year for each registration??  WHY?
DOTSTER - a little better, heck, at least cheaper (~$14/yr last time i
checked). but like Steve said, they will email you every week (you may be
able to opt-out of those know -- i dunno).
GODADDY -- $8.95/year, fairly decent interface (you can change all domain
info at once *OR* do them individually), phone and web support (they were
nice, but firm when i forgot my passwd - perfect). you can do hosting (or
just email) with them, too.

Scott Morris:
OPENSRS registers for $10/yr. easy to use and has been very reliable since
i've been using it (2+years)

</OPINIONS>