I was looking into hover, namecheap, and google domains.
This is the first time I’m looking into this so ELI5.
Is any one better than the others?
Would I find issues with different DNS set in my pi-hole?
I’ve been using namecheap for more than ten years now, and I have no complaints. Everything just works, at least as far as my usage goes, and the pricing feels very reasonable.
I use NameCheap and WebSiteSpot as the price of certain TLDs can vary between them.
I’ve been using Namecheap for personal domains for around 10 years now. Since a few years back, privacy guard is included in the domain price (at least for .com domains) so your name, address, … won’t appear directly on whois queries.
As it’s just one domain, (longterm) pricewise I don’t think there’ll be a big difference with any of them. 1 or 2 € per year, maybe. It’ll be more important to check longterm price of the domain (.com / .io / …), as you’ll probably find some offer for the first year.
FWIW, namecheap publishes a recurrent offer around 10th October (apart from some random offers every once in a while) If you go with them, you can register for one year and renew the domain for a longer period when you find an offer.
I’ve used namecheap for years with 0 problems. They have a good selection and good support. I’ve heard good things about Porkbun too.
I like NameCheap to buy domains but usually use Cloudflare for DNS records
I’ve found Cloudflare is cheaper than Google Domains, and allows for more flexibility of setups. A $12 domain on google can be $9 or less on Cloudflare. (this is a per-year price. So the cheaper you get the domain, will exponentially be cheaper over 10+ years)
Cloudflare is also a layer of protection to your pihole. You shouldn’t run in to that many issues by buying a domain but I’m not sure what you’re trying to do. Just buying a domain is like buying a username, it doesn’t do much until you point it somewhere. So if you’re pointing it to your pi-hole to host something then I’d look in to hosting services to save yourself a bit of a security issue.
What is it you’re trying to do?
I’ve used namecheap for years for my personal domain. It was the one I liked best back when I brought the domain.
That was like ten years ago now and cloudflair wasn’t a thing then iirc.
Porkbun is great! https://porkbun.com/