In an effort to be more privacy conscious I’ve been looking to transition to having Domain Privacy enabled on all the domains that I own. As it turns out many domain registrars, including my current one, charge an additional fee for this service. In an effort to save some money I did a price comparison at some of the most popular domain registrars and came up with the following list (as of November 22, 2014).
I can’t vouch for the quality of the particular services, only that this is their stated price for renewing a .com domain through their service. I opted to only focus on the cost of renewing the domain as often-times registrars will have a much-lower cost during the first year of registration and then later increase the price (as with any privacy services). Hope this can be useful to others who are researching the price of private domain registration!
Update: After compiling this list I found this master list on Registrarowl.com, which includes many more registrars (along with privacy price information).
Patrick Sullivan (November 22, 2014 at 8:06 pm)
Nice list, thanks for putting it together.
MV (November 22, 2014 at 8:14 pm)
One thing to note about internet.bs: they don’t truly have an “auto-renewal.” You have to be sure there are funds in your account first, before the domain is renewed. I lost a domain due to this and I don’t think I’ll go back to them because their support was horrendous. I think they got back to me like 2 months later (no joke).
John Resig (November 22, 2014 at 8:17 pm)
@MV: Oh wow, that’s good to know! I hadn’t heard of them before doing my research, so I definitely appreciate the additional insight.
Varun Khona (November 22, 2014 at 8:29 pm)
This is extremely helpful. Thanks for putting it together.
Siva (November 22, 2014 at 9:06 pm)
I have a couple of domains on Name.com and I always used the code PRIVACYPLEASE to get private whois service for free.
Rufo (November 22, 2014 at 9:31 pm)
@MV: You’re right about needing credit in your internet.bs account for auto-renew to work, but fwiw they send you an email every day warning you your domains are expiring, starting 42 days in advance.
My experience with their customer support has actually been really good. Their response to my emails has always been prompt – sometimes as soon as 10 minutes later, and only more than a day when I had a unusual question for their legal department.
Importantly, they actually know what they’re talking about and don’t simply farm their support out to offshore workers who can’t deviate from their script – unlike e.g. NameCheap – which can be very frustrating.
Ron Turner (November 22, 2014 at 9:52 pm)
I’ve been with NameSilo for almost 3 years. Great company, great support and great prices. Not surprised to see them growing so fast on the RegistrarOwl web site.
Jared Mellentine (November 22, 2014 at 11:39 pm)
I love NameSilo. I switched to them from GoDaddy years ago and never looked back. Both companies are local to me, so that’s a great benefit too.
Fabian Kessler (November 23, 2014 at 12:36 am)
I have domains at several different registrars, and have seen them “adapting” in time (increasing renewal fees, adding privacy fees, takeover by larger registrar, …). About 2 years ago I’ve found NameSilo and chose them for their transparent “no bullshit” business model see by blog post http://www.flowstopper.org/2013/02/where-do-you-register-your-domains.html after all I don’t want to move my domains every other year just to save a dollar. NameSilo feels like a good long term choice. All fine so far. And it’s nice to see that they are successful and can offer constantly low prices.
XH (November 23, 2014 at 7:42 pm)
Definitely check-out https://www.domcomp.com. It looks like exactly what you’re looking for – they have up to date prices for almost all the registrars that you list here, but for all the TLDs, not just .com.
One thing they don’t have is WHOIS info – perhaps you could request that to the owners.
Brian (November 24, 2014 at 11:16 am)
I’ve been using gandi for years, and they have great service, and their motto of No Bullish*t is particular refreshing compared to any o the big ones.
domcomp.com (November 25, 2014 at 7:14 am)
Hi! Found this via your tweet. We’re the creators of domcomp.com and WHOIS privacy is something we’re considering adding. It’s not so trivial as we’re wanting to add it for *all* TLDs, not just .com. Then you run into issues like some TLDs have privacy restrictions etc etc.
However, it looks like this is something that’s of interest to you/your commentators and definitely another incentive for us to build this feature.
(Thanks to XH, above, for recommending us as well :D)
Renkai (November 26, 2014 at 1:48 pm)
Considering a switch to Namesilo, this is very useful list thanks John!
Alan (November 30, 2014 at 5:01 pm)
Gandi (https://gandi.net) masks e-mail addresses in WHOIS entries by default (i.e. for free), though I’m not sure whether they offer full anonymisation of all contact details (it may be available for individuals, but I’m using a business account). They do let you freely edit almost every entry, though.
Valtido (December 3, 2014 at 9:52 am)
I agree, shouldn’t privacy be offered by default as a safety concern as oppose to a premium service?
About time Registrars, changed this attitude.