New Domain Registrar

While I was just settling down this morning to finish "The Google Story", I received a mail from my current domain registrar "Mitsu.in" reminding me reg. the renewal of my domain "amaram.name". And as always, I ended up spending a few hours reviewing the current domains and choosing what I felt was the best :).

One problem which I had with my current registrar "Mitsu.in" was that I was unable to assign different nameservers (NX entires) for a specific sub-domain. I was told that I could change the nameservers for the entire domain "amaram.name" but not for any particular sub-domain. A second issue was that anything other than the basic services, would cost me extra. So for example if the basic domain registration cost Rs.350, email forwarding would cost me extra Rs.40, domain forwarding Rs.40, managed dns Rs. 40 and an email account Rs.25. As such it is not a bad domain registrar, but I felt there might be better choices out there.

And so here are my findings:

Top Rated domain registrars

Non-Indian (but may support .in domains):
http://www.namecheap.com (not ICANN-accredited registrar but has a lot of positive reviews)
http://www.domainsite.com (ICANN-accredited registrar)
http://www.dynadot.com (ICANN-accredited registrar)
http://www.godaddy.com (ICANN-accredited registrar and as of today has the largest number of domains registered but is highly controversial reg. its business practices)

Indian:
http://www.answerable.com (ICANN-accredited)
http://www.mitsu.in (.in accredited registrar)

Note that answerable.com and mitsu.in do not support "Private Whois" for .CO.IN, .NET.IN, .ORG.IN, .GEN.IN, .FIRM.IN, .IND.IN, .IN and some other domains

References

http://www.namebays.com/
http://www.namepros.com/registerindex.php
http://www.consumersearch.com/www/internet/domain-registration/review.html
http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.html

After considering all factors (accredited or not, features, pricing and reviews), I decided to transfer my domain "amaram.name" to http://www.domainsite.com. It is definitely worth checking out (especially for its free Google services).

See also my previous posts reg. domain registration - Domain Name Changed Again And ... and Update.