A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don’t control.
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I’ve been with Namecheap so so many years. Highly recommended.
I used Dreamhost for years but their prices keep creeping upward. I am now slowly migrating to Porkbun and am happy with the much better pricing and transparency.
Namecheap is cheap and has low cost (free?) Privacyguard. Nearlyfreespeech.net is a principles-first web hosting company that is committed to free speech and also offers domain hosting and registration.
I use both, NFS for domain and hosting for my personal website and namecheap for everything else. NFS has no BS and I’ve had zero problems with them. Namecheap’s interface and tools are more sophisticated.
If you’re in the US and care about domain privacy, don’t get a .us domain. .us domains are specifically forbidden from using domain privacy.
To be fair, you could just add bogus information .
If you do you can have your domain taken away if they care enough to investigate. Agreed on the no privacy, it’s annoying.
Cloudflare provides at-cost domain name registration. It won’t be as private as njal.la, but if you end up using them for your site, then it would be one less entity to trust if you have your registration and DNS with them.
Njal.la is where I have all of my domains. You don’t have to give any info, you can access it through tor through a .onion domain, and you can pay with monero.
But why? What are you using your domains for?
I use them for email aliases via adyy, and self hosting things like jellyfin and nextcloud. I don’t really “need” the privacy, but I still like to have it if I can.
I feel like they are way too expensive, otherwise they are nice.
I also kind of feel like domains shouldn’t necessarily be private.
They are a little pricey, I’ll give you that. Just out of curiosity why shouldn’t domains be private?
Cloudflare is my go to registrar today, nothing but good experiences so far.
Same here, I moved my domains from Namecheap to Cloudflare and Cloudflare has been rock solid (no shocker there though).
Good to know. When the 60 day waiting period on transfers expires, I may move my domains to Cloudflare.
Nearlyfreespeech.net has a privacy option.
Edit: free not feee.
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they, don’t even exist anymore
… they sold it off to squarespace
Anything but GoDaddy, honestly
I would like to add domain.com to the hard no-no list.
https://njal.la is good in my experience
Literally like the only choice for maximum anonymity
They steal people’s domain names, there have been many reports over the past couple of years. If anyone has a domain with them it’s recommended to transfer away. They used to be good, but I assume anyone still recommending them isn’t up to date on their behavior.
Do you have more details? And some sources so I can read up on that?
all I could Google were random forum threads with and trust pilot reviews with no proof to back their claims. dbzer0 uses njalla just fine
Define maximum for us?
I use Namecheap and like their services. They have domain privacy aka it’s registered with their information instead of yours. If you just want to hide your name from people Googling or using a domain whois lookup, that’ll do the trick. If you’re trying to hide from people, you might need something more specific.
I switched from Google Domains to Namecheap and found that they have a non-standard requirement for A records (they require an “@” A record) that messed up the transfer. Godaddy, dyndns, and Google Domains use regular zone transfer tables and I thought those entries were all I needed. Nope. I finally emailed support and they told me what was wrong within 24 hours. But meanwhile, my site was down for that time.
I suppose if you worked with one of the companies they partner with and use the automated templates to generate a new entry, it would work out fine. But I was transferring an existing domain. I know better now. But I put this out to warn others.
That’s pretty weird, there’s no reason to require any DNS record beyond those they have to provide (SOA and NS). You shouldn’t have to add an A record if you don’t need one.
Was this just a snafu during transfer or is the A record a permanent requirement?
Namecheap with 20% off coupon
Nice, all my domains are there. Would you mind sharing the coupon?
They also add domain privacy for all the purchases with 0 cost.
I used [large american registrar], but switched to a small one in my country because I wanted to pay a local business. I found it from somebody’s compilation of companies that offer a TLD for my country, and I just picked the recommended one in that post. It was the one that charged the least.
Keep in mind that with a smaller registrar you won’t be able to get a TLS cert using the “do some shit with my domain records” method - you’ll have to always install the nginx/Apache etc. plugin for Let’s Encrypt
You don’t have to use the registrar’s DNS system.
I use LuaDNS. They even offer a fully functional free tier that might be enough for your needs.
They have an API that can be used with certbot, and you can manage your zones with git.
Ah right, sorry, switched things up. Indeed, I also use my registrar’s DNS system, but if I switched to something that has an API supported by certbot (e.g. dns zones that cost 0.5 eur in large cloud providers) it would work.
I use cloudns for nameserving. It’s free
I use Porkbun.com. It has modern interface.
I’ve had good luck with Namecheap.
I’ve used Namecheap for several years, no problems experienced with it.
I don’t think you get anonymity with namecheap
Good luck with Namecheap
epik
offers lifetime plans for some domain namesand is a Swiss company.It looks like they no longer offer this? Can’t find any trace of it on their website and all the old links referencing them are dead.
I guess they do not offer lifetime plans anymore. I remember a few years ago getting a domain under a lifetime plan.
This EPIK? https://www.epik.com/about/ It says nowhere they’re swiss and the contact address points to an US location.
I thought they were based in Switzerland.