Advice on buying a domain reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- fredflintstone88 · 2023-12-15 03:17 I am finally at a point where I am hosting a few services that I would like to be accessible from outside of my home network. And potentially even have a couple of family members have access to it. In addition, I would like to move away from using Duckdns for having https access for my Home Assistant install (so that I can leverage Google Assistant) With that said, time to buy a domain. But I have very little background in how this is supposed to work. Most domains I looked at would cost almost nothing for the 1st year and then crazy renewal fees from year 2 onwards. What are some of my options that won't break the bank and give me a domain that I can host a few of my services on (using subdomains - am I understanding that right?) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jusepal · 2023-12-15 03:25 https://tld-list.com, sort by cheapest renewal. Dirt cheap for buying new but raises prices for renewal is common tactic from registrars, don't get caught off guard so renewal fee is what you're looking for. Something like .in .uk .de .be should be cheap enough just $5-8/year. Hell if you don't mid the looks of the domain, random 6 letters .xyz is just 99c/year https://gen.xyz/1111b ---------------------------------------------------------------------- thekrautboy · 2023-12-15 03:29 Yes thats how many companies do it. Offer a very low price for the 1st or 1st+2nd year to get you in, but once that offer period runs out it gets expensive to stay with them. Of course you could then transfer to someone else but that would also cost you a fee probably etc. Look for a reliable provider that maybe offers you 3 years for one fixed price, or maybe even 5 or even 10 years. Pay that once and youre done for a long time. And dont look at the price too much, over many years it doesnt make too much of a difference if you paid $11/yr or $12/yr. What matters more is that they are reliable and that they offer all the features you need and might need in the future. Look at cloudflare, porkbun, maybe namecheap. Plenty of disucssions about domain providers in this sub, use the search. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- fredflintstone88 · 2023-12-15 03:59 What are the typical features to look for self hosting? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- weischin · 2023-12-15 04:19 Get a .com/.net from Cloudflare at around $10/yr. Surprising .uk is under $5/yr which imo is a great price. No price shock since you get the same renewal price every year. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chrishch · 2023-12-15 04:29 There are also these Class 1.111B domains that end with .xyz you can register for US$0.99/yr, every year. They can have between six & nine digits before the top level domain ".xyz". However, many have reported there could be issues with having emails not being delivered for these domains. So, please do your research. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Simon-RedditAccount · 2023-12-15 11:31 Second this. Also, use Cloudflare Registrar wherever possible due to fair pricing (if you don't mind having Cloudflare for your NS, which is *mandatory* for CF Registrar). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RedditSlayer2020 · 2023-12-15 12:35 buy from a provider with whois protectiom ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DIBSSB · 2023-12-15 13:42 Any other such offers I have 2x cyz number domain ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2023-12-15 15:13 [removed] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chrishch · 2023-12-15 19:25 That's the cheapest I can find. Freenom used to offer some domains free of charge, but Meta sued them and Freenom stopped offering domain registrations. Other than that, I know Cloudflare offers domain registrations at cost, but you need to use them for DNS and there are some TLDs they don't register. Yes. People have lost the ability to remember a string of numbers since the invention of smart phones. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CranberryLegal6919 · 2023-12-15 21:47 >emails not being delivered To be fair, that is a problem regardless of the tld ---------------------------------------------------------------------- kee02041 · 2023-12-15 22:43 .xyz, $1 to buy and $1/year to renew, but people have to remember a six to 9 digit number,may be use your phone number if you are comfortable. .com, about $10/year to renew, and you can have a easy to remember domain. and many other tld price in between $1 and $10 per year. Most likely, domain name fee is the lowest cost here compare to your other cost/fee. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- housepanther2000 · 2023-12-16 00:57 I have a .xyz domain, tested it for email, and it's a no go. Everything I sent ended up in spam, even with proper DMARC, DKIM, and SPF records in place. I'm not going to renew the domain, just gonna let it expire. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- fredflintstone88 · 2023-12-16 05:24 Can you explain what you mean by other costs? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- kee02041 · 2023-12-16 06:24 You machine, racks, routers, switches, hdd, or, the electric/energy cost, or even your Internet plan, or use external vps plan? .com just about $10 a year, or about $1 a month. So, basically, do you want to spend $1 s year for a .xyz url or, $1 a month for a .com url? I would suggest start with 1 year .xyz plan to try out and get familiar with the whole setup flow, then later in that year decide if you or your family are okay with that 123456.xyz url, or you really hate it and must use somewords.com url. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- kee02041 · 2023-12-16 06:30 Cloudflare should have everything you need. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DIBSSB · 2023-12-16 08:44 I didn’t but friends dont remember it who i share my selfhosted apps with ---------------------------------------------------------------------- fredflintstone88 · 2023-12-17 23:22 But that's what bookmarks are for :)