Since we recently “upgraded” to a .COM domain name, I thoguht it would be interesting to revisit this post from the past, which is still quite accurate. Our .COM domain name is registered under GoDaddy, and was purchased (with coupon code FAN3 ) for ~$7.45 + ICANN tax. Why GoDaddy? It is still the easiest and one of the cheapest domain providers available. I don’t like their advertising, but I can deal with it to get a domain for cheap. Their reputation is stable now, with the exception of their ads.
I also want to note that GoDaddy recently re-designed their DNS manager, and it is easy as heck to use now. Their DNS manager was shifty a while ago, those problems are now resolved. (Though, I still use CloudFlare for most of my DNS management, GoDaddy manages DNS for the old domain to handle redirects)
Let us visit the past, 2009:
What is the best place to get a cheap .com domain name?
This is (like most of the other questions I answer) a very common question. It seems that there are two major domain sellers which you have probably already read about — to great misfortune, there isn’t really anything much cheaper.
GoDaddy.com — Around $10.69 per domain. From what I hear, GoDaddy is reliable, but support seems to be somewhat lacking. (Their support reputation, according to a few people I have talked to, is declining. This may change in the future as the problem is probably becoming more prevalent to the company itself)
Yahoo Small Business Domains — Around $9.95 per domain. Yahoo, being such a large company, probably does not offer any better support. I have heard complaints in the past about Yahoo Domain reliability, however I do not know if they have improved or not. 
Yahoo and GoDaddy are the two largest and most popular domain companies that I know of at this time.
DreamHost — Around $9.95 per domain. DreamHost was recommended by www.ChristianPF.com due over GoDaddy due to the 
controversial advertising campaigns on the GoDaddy website. I read about this particular service on this host here, under “Pick a Host for Your Blog” There is a coupon code on this blog post, you may want to read it.
As the blog linked right above states, there literally are thousands of domain hosts. You can look as much as you want, but without buying bulk domains or getting an expensive hosting package you probably will not find anything cheaper than what is listed above.
First posted on December 7, 2009 at 1:18pm.
