Best way to purchase a domain name?

One quick point of clarification — I am assuming that you want to register an available domain name, vs. acquiring a domain that is already owned by another party. One tip I use for checking whether a domain is available is just appending it to the website whois.sc. So if you want to see if JamieFigler.com is available, you can punch in whois.sc/jamiefigler.com where you'll see that it's available for registration. If it were taken (by another person), you'd have to negotiate with the owner to purchase it.

In terms of registration website ("registrars"), I think that all of the options in this thread are probably good (Hover, Namcheap, Google Domains, etc). Each will offer slightly different pricing, ability to enable 2FA, associated add-ons and services, etc — but you're fundamentally getting the same thing.

I would recommend against buying your domain name "bundled" alongside any other service. For instance, website builders like Squarespace or Wix will sometimes offer a "free" domain along their other services, which can be annoying if you decide you want to leave their platform.

Good luck and have fun!

Namecheap for sure and once you get your account setup, ensure to enable Two Factor Authentication (2FA) for your account.

I use Google Domains.

Their interface is clean and I figured Google owns enough of me already... 😂

I've been a customer of Gandi for quite some years. They are a France based registrar which has been offering "no bullshit since 1999". They are not the cheapest, but included in a registration is whois privacy, and DNS. Gandi is a proper domain registrar, and not a reseller. I am quite happy with their service offering, and how they operate as a business. No shady or down right horrible shit going on there like with the likes of GoDaddy.
They also support a lot of FLOSS projects and similar projects, they give back to the community.

Amazon even depends on Gandi as primary registrar for their Route 53 service. Amazon Registrar is only a registrar for .com, .net, and .org. For the rest they resell via Gandi.

I've really liked using Hover for my first few because their interface is intuitive and easy to follow.

Recently made my first purchase on Google Domains for better Gmail & Firebase integration (even though I still haven't setup the email 🙃).

I've used both with Netlify and highly recommend!

Hey Jamie,

Great question! I've been using Google Domains for a while now, I'd used Namecheap in the past, but got really turned off by all their marketing emails. I'm not sure there's a lot to get really excited about in the domain registration arena, but I'm really liking Cloudflare's registration offering for some future use.

If you're looking for cheap, tld-list.com/ then pick a reasonably reputable one... Porkbun, 1&1, as well as the others already mentioned here.

The website also lists the cheapest renewals so for maximum savings you can purchase just the first year at one registrar then immediately transfer to one that's cheaper to renew.

First off, you probably want to register a name, not purchase one. The two are technically different things. Registering a domain means you are acquiring rights to a currently unregistered domain name. Purchasing implies you are purchasing rights to an already registered name from the current registrant. In both cases, you will almost certainly have to pay recurring registration fees to maintain the registration (the exact cost and billing period depends on both the specific top-level domain and the registrar you use).

Second, you probably also will need DNS hosting to go with it, or at least the infrastructure and know-how to set up your own self-hosted DNS for the domain. Fortunately, most good registrars also provide an option for DNS hosting (sometimes free, sometimes as an add-on).

Most big cloud providers offer both domain registrar services and DNS hosting, they're probably your best bet short of a dedicated registrar option. I personally use Amazon Web Services, but I already had an account with them for other things and happen to like the flexibility that Route 53 (their DNS hosting service) provides. I've heard that Google Cloud Platform and CloudFlare are both good for this too, though I've not used either. I've heard essentially nothing about it, but I believe Microsoft Azure also offers domain registrar and DNS hosting services.

As has been mentioned elsewhere, avoid registering/purchasing the name bundled with other services. That bundling largely exists to foster vendor lock in, not to benefit the consumer. Note that I'm not talking about a case like AWS or GCP where you can buy individual services and have them billed all together on a single invoice, but stuff like website builders who offer a domain name for 'free' alongside the rest of their services.

I use Namecheap and have had a good experience. There are a lot of big names in the space ex. Google and Go Daddy, just choose one and there are endless tutorials to help you get started with whatever it is you want to do.

I personally prefer 1&1 IONOS, they have inexpensive domains, along with an easy to use interface.

PS: For custom email extensions (i.e. jake@jakesburgers.com) use ZOHO. Their email service is completely free to use, I already use it for two different domains and it has proved to be very good.