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  • Picking a registrar - a comparison of Amazon AWS Route 53, GoDaddy, Google


  • See our findings about what our experience was choosing a registrar. We talk about the pricing, options and flexibility.


  • Introduction

    There are several factors that need to be taken into consideration when picking a registrar and DNS service provider. The things to take into consideration is:

    regisrar cost and contract terms

    Some allow monthly billing. Some allow yearly. There are sometimes multi year discounts.

    bulk registrations and maintainace

    For organizations that anticipate managing a lot of domains on behalf of their clients, going with an organization that offers bulk discounts might be a better option. Maintainance (pointing the domains to load balancers, SSL management, etc.) at bulk should also be a consideration. Some providers such as AWS allow programmatic access to the maintainance process which can be quite helpful.

    Privacy Service

    When registerting a domain it isrequired by The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to submit contact information including name, address, phone number and email. This information will be made publicly availble through the whois directory. There are:

    • registrant contact
    • admin contact
    • billing contact
    • tech contact

    This information can be controlled and almost all registrars provide the privacy services.

    Report

    We looked at several registrars and here is our findings for .COM domains.

    Godaddy

    • IANA ID:
    • Pricing scheme yearly
    • $15/Year
    • Privacy Service: It is marketed as Private Domain Registration and costs $10/Year
    • DNS offered

    AWS Route 53

    • IANA ID: 468
    • Pricing scheme monthly
    • $0.50/month, $12 Year. See [Amazon Route 53 Pricing]
    • Privacy Service is free and will pointing to WHOISPRIVACYSERVICE.ORG which has Registrant as Amazon and the Registrar as Gandi SAS. See Route 53 Policies

    They also show this message when registering through them:

    Terms and Conditions

    Amazon Route 53 enables you to register and transfer domain names using your AWS account. However, AWS is not a domain name registrar, so we use registrar associates to perform registration and transfer services. When you purchase domain names through AWS, you are registering your domain with one of our registrar associates. The registrar for your domain will periodically contact the registrant contact that you specified to verify the contact details and renew registration.
    Sample Clients
    www.medium.com
    Registrant Contact

    Name: On behalf of medium.com owner

    Organization: Whois Privacy Service

    Mailing Address: P.O. Box 81226, Seattle WA 98108-1226 US

    Phone: +1.2065771368

    Ext:

    Fax:

    Fax Ext:

    Email:owner-637230@medium.com.whoisprivacyservice.org

    Registrar

    WHOIS Server: whois.registrar.amazon.com

    URL: https://registrar.amazon.com

    Registrar: Amazon Registrar, Inc.

    IANA ID: 468

    Abuse Contact Email:registrar-abuse@amazon.com

    Abuse Contact Phone: +1.2067406200

    CSC Digital Brand Services

    • IANA ID: 292
    Sample clients
    www.quora.com

    Registrant Contact

    Name: Legal Team

    Organization: Quora, Inc

    Mailing Address: 650 Castro Street Suite 450, Mountain View CA 94041 US

    Phone: +1.6504852464

    Ext:

    Fax: +1.6504852464

    Fax Ext:

    Email:QuoraDomainTeam@winston.com

    Registrar

    WHOIS Server: whois.corporatedomains.com

    URL: www.cscprotectsbrands.com

    Registrar: CSC CORPORATE DOMAINS, INC.

    IANA ID: 299

    Abuse Contact Email:domainabuse@cscglobal.com

    Abuse Contact Phone: +1.8887802723

    MarkMonitor Inc.

    • IANA ID: 292
    Sample clients
    amazon.com

    Registrant Contact

    Name: Hostmaster, Amazon Legal Dept.

    Organization: Amazon Technologies, Inc.

    Mailing Address: P.O. Box 8102, Reno NV 89507 US

    Phone: +1.2062664064

    Ext:

    Fax: +1.2062667010

    Fax Ext:

    Email:hostmaster@amazon.com

    Registrar

    WHOIS Server: whois.markmonitor.com

    URL: http://www.markmonitor.com

    Registrar: MarkMonitor, Inc.

    IANA ID: 292

    Abuse Contact Email:abusecomplaints@markmonitor.com

    Abuse Contact Phone: +1.2083895740

    www.airbnb.com

    Registrant Contact

    Name: Domain Administrator

    Organization: Airbnb, Inc.

    Mailing Address: 888 Brannan Street, 4th Floor, San Francisco CA 94103 US

    Phone: +1.4157280000

    Ext:

    Fax: +1.4157280000

    Fax Ext:

    Email:domain@airbnb.com

    Registrar

    WHOIS Server: whois.markmonitor.com

    URL: http://www.markmonitor.com

    Registrar: MarkMonitor, Inc.

    IANA ID: 292

    Abuse Contact Email:abusecomplaints@markmonitor.com

    Abuse Contact Phone: +1.2083895740

    Google

    • IANA ID: 895
    • Pricing scheme yearly
    • $12/Year
    • Whois privacy is free google domain pricing
    • Name Servers
    • Domain forwarding and subdomain forwarding
    • Email forwarding (forwarding of email aliases @)
    Sample clients
    www.taskrabbit.com

    Registrant Contact

    Name: Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 1241718083

    Organization: Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 1241718083

    Mailing Address: 96 Mowat Ave, Toronto ON M4K 3K1 CA

    Phone: +1.4165385487

    Registrar

    WHOIS Server: whois.google.com

    URL: https://domains.google.com

    Registrar: Google Inc.

    IANA ID: 895

    Abuse Contact Email:registrar-abuse@google.com

    Abuse Contact Phone: +1.8772376466

    NameCheap

    • $11/Year

    Gandi SAS

    Sample clients
    whoisprivacyservice.org

    Contact Information

    Registrant Contact

    Name: Amazon Hostmaster

    Organization: Amazon Web Services

    Mailing Address: P.O. Box 81226, Seattle WA 98108-1226 US

    Phone: +1.2062661000

    Ext:

    Fax:

    Fax Ext:

    Email:hostmaster@amazon.com

    Registrar

    WHOIS Server: whois.gandi.net

    URL: http://www.gandi.net

    Registrar: Gandi SAS

    IANA ID: 81

    Abuse Contact Email:abuse@support.gandi.net

    Abuse Contact Phone: +33.170377661

    Final Thoughts

    We eventually decided to go with AWS. Even though they warned that that it might take up to 4 days, the whole process took less than 1 hour.

    Registrant Contact

    Name: On behalf of izyware.com owner

    Organization: Whois Privacy Service

    Mailing Address: P.O. Box 81226, Seattle WA 98108-1226 US

    Phone: +1.2065771368

    Ext:

    Fax:

    Fax Ext:

    Email:owner-5724267@izyware.com.whoisprivacyservice.org

    Registrar

    WHOIS Server: whois.registrar.amazon.com

    URL: https://registrar.amazon.com

    Registrar: Amazon Registrar, Inc.

    IANA ID: 468

    Abuse Contact Email:registrar-abuse@amazon.com

    Abuse Contact Phone: +1.2067406200

    google domain pricing: https://support.google.com/domains/answer/6010092

    IANAID: https://www.iana.org/assignments/registrar-ids/registrar-ids.xhtml

    whois: http://whois.icann.org/

    Route 53 Policies: https://aws.amazon.com/route53/amazon-registrar-policies/

  • Izyware Blog
    Izyware Blog