Sorry about my recent obsession with domain names. I guess it all came down to greed over “assets”, especially relatively affordable assets that give you a sense of ownership. There has been a nice comparison chart for .au domain registrars, but probably due to my lacking goolging skill, I cannot seem to find anything similar for the popular .com/.net/.org TLD domains. Most comparison charts are heavily biased as they were hosted by their sponsoring registrars.

However, I did find a somewhat independent review (sorry I haven’t done the background check). Daniel Hendricks wrote in his Domain Registrar Comparison, he said:

Recommendations

Choose the statement that best matches your needs:

1. “I’m looking for a registrar that is full-featured and offers WHOIS protection.”
   Recommendations: Namecheap.com
2. “I’m looking for a cheap registrar for a small project or to park a domain. Price is more important than features.”
   Recommendations: 1&1 Internet
3. “I’m new to this and am looking for a registrar with good customer service.”
   Recommendation: GoDaddy
4. “I don’t care about those extra features, I’m hosting my own DNS and do my own SPAM protection!”
   Recommendation: In this case, it doesn’t really matter which registrar you choose. 1&1 Internet will be the cheapest, GoDaddy will likely offer better support.
5. “I need advanced DNS features like backup mail servers and round robin.”
   Recommendation: Network Solutions

Note: If you are located in Europe, you might consider trying GANDI.

I also happened to come across NameCheap last week, and their USD$8.88/year is indeed a tad cheaper than GoDaddy, my current everything-except-dot-au registrar, and there is no tiny asterisk pointing to a hidden 25 cent “ICANN fee”! However, as someone who wants completely no-frills, 1&1’s USD$5.99 seems to be a good price to me (except maybe when Yahoo! goes crazy and gives away domains for $1.99 each).

Note 1 — just realise that 1&1, while being a Germany company, only accepts US and Canada customers, when I went and tried to register a domain. Therefore it will not be an option for non-North America residents.

Note 2 — I also found that using a reseller might be cheaper than the wholeseller. iNoun is a reseller of GoDaddy, but sells its domains at a few cents lower ($7.85* for .COM verses $8.95*).