My domain registrar (which was largely without problems for ...

My domain registrar (which was largely without problems for 10+ years) changed who is managing the domain to web.com, which is embarrassingly awful:

1) They screwed up the migration, so my MX records stopped resolving. If by some chance you've tried emailing me at gray.org in the last 6 hours (or in the next day for all I know), try one of my other addresses.
2) When I called their tech support, they had me verbally verify my password over the phone. Their tech support guy could see my password on his screen. I can't believe companies still do this.
3) Their customer support website goes down for half an hour every week at midnight on Saturday (now). Seriously.

So, um, who should I switch to once the immediate lack of DNS is resolved?

RJ Skerry-Ryan - 2011-07-17 00:40:45-0400

I use xname.org for managing my DNS records so I don't have to deal with GoDaddy. It's not 5 9s of uptime but its free and gives you full control.

Jim Connolly - 2011-07-17 04:19:59-0400

How can those guys run a business like that and still be in business?

Crazy.

Jonathan Butler - 2011-07-17 07:35:22-0400

Inertia, I think. For most people, migrating your registrar is more trouble than it's worth.

Rachel Grey - 2011-07-17 07:45:03-0400

I've been happy with GoDaddy. Their website gets worse every year but their tech support, should you have to call it, is unfailingly great.

Liz Fong-Jones - 2011-07-17 08:18:40-0400

I've been using zoneedit, but am in the process of switching to self-hosting my DNS.

Mike Oltmans - 2011-07-17 11:15:00-0400

I've been happy with Gandi.net for years. Admittedly I have had very simple needs and never needed to talk to their support (maybe that's a good thing?).

Thomas Bushnell, BSG - 2011-07-17 14:23:04-0400

I use xela. You need yo run your own DNS server.

Erik Nygren - 2011-07-17 22:11:34-0400

Since I run my own DNS server and have some friends who have servers to act as secondaries, I just became an OpenSRS reseller and then just use it for all of my domains. (I haven't actually "resold" to anyone yet.) It seems to work fine for my purposes. I've not tried to transfer in any domains from outside, yet.

RJ Skerry-Ryan - 2011-07-18 11:11:24-0400

Running your own DNS is bad if you can't guarantee your machine will be up 24/7. If your DNS server goes down, your sites aren't just down, they won't even resolve. I can't imagine that works well for you in search rankings.

Liz Fong-Jones - 2011-07-18 11:15:06-0400

Yeah, but you can use more than one machine to host your DNS.

Thomas Bushnell, BSG - 2011-07-19 10:19:13-0400

+RJ Ryan that's what secondary servers are for....

Thomas Bushnell, BSG - 2011-07-19 10:40:04-0400

+Josh Chaitin-Pollak Sure, but then I'm stuck not knowing what crap gets into the zone file. I very much like that I control that, and it takes no extra work for me once the DNS is up. As long as I'm going to have a server in a colo, which I do for other reasons, the marginal hassle of DNS is trivial.