[kwlug-disc] Domain Registrar

[Chris Irwin]

What is everybody using for a .ca domain registrar these days.

I switched to Gandi a few years ago. I remember reading an article about 
them, either about their open-source support or governance that appealed 
to me.

However, I've just received a renewal notice for a .ca for $53/year! Up 
from $33 last year, and $15 in 2018.

I reached out and got this response:

> Please allow us to further explain the reasons for these changes to 
> our pricing:
>
> (i) Firstly, we have invested in the security and resilience of our 
>infrastructure with the ambition of establishing Gandi's LiveDNS as one 
>of the 5 best Anycasted DNS networks in the world.
>
>(ii) Secondly, we are obliged to respond to the new European security 
>directive (NIS2) which classifies all DNS services as essential 
>entities. This has required Gandi to obtain certification against 
>industry standards such as ISO27001 and to adopt new security measures 
>to comply with these regulations.
>
>(iii) we have also had to adjust our prices due to increases in costs 
>from the registries that supply Gandi so that we do not have to 
>compromise on the reliability and security of our services.
>
>(iv) our support team is in-house, based in Paris, the USA, and Taiwan, 
>with real industry expertise and an average experience of over 10 
>years. Moreover, we have introduced phone support for our customers to 
>respond to requests more quickly.

So I get it, they're doing a lot behind the scenes. On the one hand, I'm 
not opposed to paying more for a quality service. On the other hand, I 
don't even use most of their features (including their LiveDNS, since I 
use Cloudflare DNS). On the gripping hand, I could save $200-250/year by 
transferring the six domains to Namecheap or Cloudflare.

-- 
Chris Irwin

email:   chris at chrisirwin.ca
  xmpp:   chris at chrisirwin.ca
   web: https://chrisirwin.ca