Who is a good registrar these days? [closed]

It's been a long time since I've had to register a new domain.

What registrar is considered geek and sysadmin friendly?

I've heard that godaddy will screw you 10 ways to Sunday, and a lot of the other ones basically only lease you the domain. So if I want to own the domain and not get screwed, who's the best these days, and why?

I've used Namecheap for many years and haven't had any trouble. Good prompt service when a registry somehow deleted a name from existence, they helped me get it working again right away (they did all the dealings with the registry).

Not sure what you've heard about GoDaddy, but I use them for about 200 of my domains and have been really happy. I've registered, transfered in and out, used their DNS, domain parking, etc., and not had any problems.

I've also transfered several domains there for my clients who were having (bad) problems elsewhere, and they've been very happy.

I think the trick is not to use them for ANYTHING except the registration/transfer/dns/pointing related services. All their other services I have tried kind of sucked. Definitely wouldn't do the hosting again, or the email, etc.

When you are checking out, just look carefully for the buttons that say "no crap for me, just proceed to checkout." They are usually tiny, gray, and next to the huge red buttons that say "sell me crap!"

Edit:

About their phone support, I don't use it much, but have had mostly good experiences.

There have been a couple times when I got idiots who knew less than I do about their services, but usually, their people are fairly pleasant and competent. When I get someone like that, I just hang up and call back.

Edit Again:

I also like their 80% revenue parking. I used to get about 3 - 5 cents per click with Sedo, and I now get between .20 cents and a dollar per click with GoDaddy, so their cashparking is pretty good, at least compared to my previous experiences.

Gandi is an awesome registrar !