NameSilo Review: Clear Pricing, Simple Interface, and Easy Domain Management

I've been using a new domain name registrar, NameSilo, for awhile now so I thought I would write up a NameSilo Review if anyone is considering buying or transferring domains to them.  This NameSilo Review is going to be as complete and detailed as possibly and you won't find any better review than what you are about to read, I guarantee it! 🙂

Just as a disclaimer I have included affiliate links in this review.  This means I get a commission if you click through to one of these links and buy or transfer a domain with NameSilo.  However nobody can “buy” my opinion on this blog and this review reflects my honest opinions about NameSilo and their service as a domain name registrar.  

NameSilo Review

namesilo

NameSilo is a relatively new domain name registrar that has been in business since 2009.  This small, but fast growing registrar, has gained a lot of new customers mainly by word-of-mouth via online forums and by not using pleasant tactics other domain registrars use.  What does that mean?  Hard upsells, a confusing checkout process, different prices on domain registration and renewals, selling web hosting, charging for Whois privacy, etc.  NameSilo's mission is to make domain registration and management as easy as possible and they do good job.

NameSilo User Interface

NameSilo has one of the easiest domain management and user interfaces of any domain registrar I have used or seen.  Changing nameservers, renewing and paying for names, transferring domains to NameSIlo, transferring out, turning privacy on or off, etc. is all easy and painless thanks to the intuitive user interface.  Buttons are big, clearly marked, and easy-to-understand.  Check out my awesome screenshot!

namesiloLike any UI it will take some getting used to but I think most people should be able to navigate NameSilo's Domain Manager dashboard quickly.

I see a lot of people say NameSilo has the best user interface of any domain registrar out there, but I'm unsure.  I definitely prefer it over NameCheap‘s UI which I always have found confusing and I think the text is too small.  (GoDaddy… don't even ask as most people will tell you they hate it, including me.)

Overall it's hard to beat NameSilo's easy-to-use UI and the way they clearly present everything in their backend.

namesilo review

Domain Search and Registering

domain searchSearching and registering domain names with NameSilo is a straightforward and easy process.  Like I said above, the user interface is simple and easy-to-understand.  NameSilo makes purchasing domain names as hassle free as can be.

namesilo shopping cart I do have some complaints about searching and registering domains with NameSilo though.  When searching for domains it automatically selects .CO as well as .COM for some reason.  I understand they want to make more money on .CO registrations (since they charge $22.49 for per year) but who really needs a .CO if you can get the .COM?  Honestly I would prefer a .NET or .ORG but that is my personal preference and opinion.  I know the tech community and startups love .CO domains and .IO domains these days, but really?  (NameSilo doesn't support .IO in case you were wondering.  Probably a good thing as .IO domains lost me money.)

In addition NameSilo's shopping cart defaults to a 2-year registration period for domains instead of 1 year.  This is something that you usually see from other registrars and I honestly don't like it.

UPDATE: NameSilo seems to have changed the registration process for domains.  It no longer automatically selects .CO domains and the default is to only have the .COM selected.  I imagine other NameSilo customers had similar complaints, and they might have read this review, which is why they changed the domain search defaults.

bulk domain searchNameSilo's bulk domain search is straightforward as well.  One nice thing is that you can upload a TXT file of domains names that you want to search availability on.  Useful if you are looking for a large list of domains.  You can search up to 500 domain names at a time using NameSilo's bulk search.  The domain bulk search works fine but it can be a bit cubersome and clunky to use.  It benefit from having a separate landing page and larger menu and input field to work with.

NameSilo also offers the ability to buy premium domain names (domains owned by someone else) through them if you wish.  I doubt many people are interested in that though since most probably flock to NameSilo due to their low pricing.

NameSilo Domain Transfers

Domain transfers in and out of NameSilo are pretty straightforward and easy.  I've only had trouble transferring domains in from 1and1 (which is a domain registrar you shouldn't use.)  Just make sure you have the correct EPP or authorization code and have unlocked the domain name from the losing registrar if you are going to be transferring to NameSilo.

A great feature that NameSilo offers for transferring domain name to an outgoing registrar is that you can approve a transfer in their backend without waiting.  Typically it can take 5-10 days for a domain transfer to go through.  This means with NameSilo you just need to retrieve the authorization code via email and once that is approved by NameSilo, you can go to the “Transfer Manager” in your account and approve the transfer immediately.  The only other domain name registrar I have seen offer outbound domain transfer approvals in their backend is GoDaddy.

NameSilo DNS Propagation & Management

NameSilo's DNS propagation is pretty snappy.  The usual amount of time I've waited for nameservers to update and see it on my end is 10-20 minutes.  NameSilo says nameserver updates on their end are updated immediately, of course that doesn't matter unless the update gets to you quickly.  Keep in mind DNS updates around the world can take up to 48 hours to propagate.  Today I had to wait a few hours for a domains nameservers to change.

In addition managing DNS with NameSilo is quite easy and they don't cut corners when it comes to DNS management.  This registrar offers a full range of DNS services which allows you to change CNAME, MX, and A records.

manage dnsAlso NameSilo makes it easy to apply templates with domains for using different services such as Blogger, Google Apps, Squarespace, Weebly, Yola, Zenfolio, Tumblr, and SmugMug.  This is a nice feature if you are someone who is buying a domain name to use with an 3rd party web hosting service.  (Of course I don't recommend doing this and tell people it's better to buy web hosting with a company like Site5.)  If you are not comfortable with making DNS changes to your domain, this should help you set it up somewhat easily.

dns templates

NameSilo Pricing

NameSilo's claims to have “The Cheapest Domains on the Internet” as well as the “Cheapest Everyday Prices on the Web.”  While this sounds like a lofty claim and marketing ploy, as far as I can tell this seems to be accurate.  If you exclude coupons that other larger domain registrars offer, like NameCheap or GoDaddy, the everyday pricing is extremely competitive and the price you see is the price you pay.

NameSilo does not charge the $18 cent Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) fee on domains and they do not charge for Whois privacy. That is included in the price when purchase domains.  NameCheap, Godaddy and a lot of other registrars tack on these fees when you are checking out.

Here are all the domains that NameSilo currently supports and their pricing.  Prices are for registration and renewal.

  • COM – $8.99
  • NET – $8.09
  • ORG – $9.19
  • INFO – $9.59
  • BIZ – $9.99
  • CO – $22.49
  • MOBI – $7.89
  • ME – $16.99

These prices are for regular NameSilo pricing if you are ordering under 49 domain names.  (Sounds like a lot but some people own thousands of domains.)  They have bulk discounts as well as the NameSilo Discount Program.  This allows you to save 10 cents off per domain name if your prefund your NameSilo account and pay that way.  I am not sure what the advantage is for NameSilo but I assume they make money on holding money, like a bank.  If you don't want to prefund your NameSilo account you can pay with a credit card with Visa, MasterCard, AmericanExpress, and Discover.  Online payment solutions include PayPal, Skrill (formerly MoneyBookers), and Payza if you prefer.

UPDATE: NameSilo now accepts Google Wallet, Bitcoin, and Dwolla for payment.

Transfer pricing is reasonable too;

  • COM – $8.39
  • NET – $7.89
  • ORG – $8.99
  • INFO – $9.19
  • BIZ – $9.79
  • CO – $22.49
  • MOBI – $13.99
  • ME – $15.99

If you want to save $1 off on registration or transfers use the coupon codes – NAMESILO27 or SAVEDOLLAR1.  (FYI these are my codes.)

Only comparable pricing that matches NameSilo from what I've seen is Internet.bs (no, not that BS but .BS is the country code top level domain name for the Bahamas.) which has free Whois privacy and doesn't charge an ICANN fee as well.  There is also Resell.biz but you would need to setup to be a domain reseller with them.  Still with Resell.biz's pricing structure you would only need to spend $500 over the lifetime of your account to get their bulk pricing which is extremely competitive.  A lot of people use them since it's easy to spend over $500 on renewing domains.  In addition DynaDot's bulk pricing is on par with NameSilo's bulk pricing, but DynaDot at the time of this writing does not offer free Whois privacy.  I heard DynaDot was considering changing this though.

No matter how you cut it NameSilo pricing is hard to beat and they seem to be picking up a lot of business because of it.

*All pricing was accurate at the time this post was written.  

NameSilo Support

NameSilo support is decent and fast to respond mostly any time during the day.  Response time on weekends is even pretty good.  NameSilo support is usually pretty helpful about answering questions but sometimes I have found that support is a bit snobbish since often they just link to their knowledgeable base without a clear explanation.

NameSilo offers email and chat support, but there is no phone support.  With domain names I don't anticipate that you will need tons of support or have a lots of questions, unlike web hosting, but you never know.

Final Thoughts about NameSilo

In addition to what I've already mentioned I have had a few issues with NameSilo.  They advertise “Free Domain Parking” which you use with Google Adsense.  I am unsure if it is allowed to use a Google Adsense account on parked domains though.  Google shutdown their domain parking program a few years, even though the company makes money with agreements with domain parking companies.

If you are going to use their domain parking option with Google Adsense it might be a good idea to setup an LLC.

Another thing which bothered me was I recommended a family member move some domains from another registrar to NameSilo. He used my affiliate link to make the transfer but I didn't use my coupon code, but a bulk transfer code they were offering at the time.  I noticed I didn't get an affiliate commission, which made me feel jibbed.  I asked about it and they said it was because it was a bulk transfer and he didn't use one my my coupon codes.  I won't cry about it but it was annoying.

For those of you interested in an easy-to-use straightforward domain pricing and free Whois privacy, NameSilo is definitely a good option.  They have a lot of great features and don't cut corners even with their low pricing.

I am personally hesitant to keep my important and key domains with them as they are a new domain registrar though.   I will use them for keeping domains I have development plans for, but don't want to spend too much money renewing ever year.  That's why NameSilo is a good name I guess.

NameSilo also doesn't fill all my domain needs as I own a handful of .US domains.  At this time NameSilo does not support ccTLDs (country code top level domains) except for .ME and .CO currently.  I imagine this isn't a big deal for most people though.

It's kind of hard for me to believe that NameSilo can continue with their pricing strategy without moving into other markets or jacking up prices.  A lot of domain registrars slowly have price increases and start charging for Whois privacy and taking on ICANN fees as they grow larger.

NameSilo did introduce domain auctions for expiring domains a few months ago.  According to RegistrarOwl, which is run by NameSilo, they have about 108,000 domains under management.  That means that on any given day there are not going to be too many deleting domain gems dropping under their control.  As they grow, this will likely change and I assume bring in more revenue for NameSilo.

Some might not remember this but GoDaddy got big by undercutting the competition in price back when they were first getting started.  Now their coupon pricing might be good, but their service isn't all that great.  Since NameSilo is using the same strategy, despite my reservations, I really have no doubt in my mind that in a few years NameSilo could become a major player in the domain industry.  That is if… they are not bought out and stick to their original business goals.

It is quite possible that NameSilo could get gobbled up by a big domain registrar in the domain industry since I am pretty sure execs at GoDaddy, Demand Media, Name Media, etc. will see this little domain registrar slowly increasing their market share as threat.  They could very well buy them out at some point.

My hope though is that NameSilo sticks to their original mission of providing no-headaches and ho-hassles when it comes to domain registration and management.  No web hosting, SEO products, etc. which I won't buy from a domain registrar anyway.

Bottom line is that NameSilo is good if you have 1 or 1000's of domain names.

If you use NameSilo and think I've missed something in this NameSilo Review please leave a comment below.  If you have any questions about NameSilo let me know below and I will answer them to the best of my knowledge.

Just as a reminder you can save $1 off on registration or transfers with these NameSilo coupon codes – NAMESILO27 or SAVEDOLLAR1.  These NameSilo coupon codes will work for most domain registrations and domain transfers with NameSilo.  Each code can be redeemed once per person per account.

Again I've included affiliate links in this review but that does not change my opinion.  If you received value and insight from this NameSilo review I appreciate any help so that I can continue to write informative and honest reviews on this blog. 

HostGator Parks Domain Names to Make Money off Your Websites

I discovered something pretty sneaky about HostGator web hosting.  Hostgator parks domain names which are using their DNS (domain name system) if you are not using your domains.

What happened the other day was I was trying to create a subdomain for this blog and Singing Dogs to use on Tumblr.  I recently deleted my Facebook account since I want to focus on other social networks, like Tumblr.  The nice thing about Tumblr is that sharing is very quick, fluid, and part of the ecosystem and links are DoFollow.  (Unlike Facecrook run by Mark Fuckerberg.)  To get the maximum SEO (search engine optimization) benefit out of using a Tumblr blog it's best to setup a subdomain.  Lots of startups nowadays host company blogs on subdomains on Tumblr for the SEO benefits and due to the fact content is much more likely to get shared readily.

As I was trying to add a CNAME record to create the subdomain at my domain name registrar, something must have went wrong.  I checked the main domain, AdamYamada.com, and saw this website was being parked.

adam yamada hanff“WTF? HostGator!” is all I could think to myself.  I then thought, “Well, maybe this is just a fluke or something.” Then I checked Singing Dogs and HostGator was parking that domain too!

singing dogs adam yamada hanff

For those that don't know what domain parking is, it is essentially displaying ads on a domain name instead of putting up a blog, forum, or website with content.  The domain owner hopes visitors will click on displayed ads, earning them revenue.  Domain parking is a big industry and something that earns a lot of people good money, but a hosting company shouldn't be doing this in my opinion.  If you are going to route DNS anywhere it should be to at least advertise your web hosting offerings.   Even if you have domain names you are not doing anything with I think domain parking sucks.

If you land on a subdomain that doesn't exsist or you haven't setup, HostGator will display a 404 error page advertising their hosting.  It's just weird they do it on a main domain name since most other hosting companies would at least display an error page to let you know something went wrong, instead of trying to earn money. hostgator park domainsWhat's fucked up about this is the fact that HostGator shouldn't be making money off customer's domains parking them.  When I got on the phone with HostGator support today I was going to tell the service representative off, but it wasn't worth my time.

I am seriously inclined to move backed to Site5 after this domain parking incident.  I've also been having error issues which HostGator blamed on caching but I know that isn't the issue.

Let's not forget the major outage at the Provo, Utah datacenter which took out customer's websites with BlueHost, JustHost, HostMonster, and HostGator.  All companies are owned by Endurance International Group (EIG) which is sort of infamous for buying hosting companies… and then ruining them.  HostGator is starting to become like the all other EIG web hosts, crap!

Twitter will stop support of TweetDeck Mobile Apps

tweetdeckA few days ago on TweetDeck's official blog on Posterous, Twitter surprised the Social Media universe or more specifically the “Twitterverse.”  Twitter announced that they will be ending support for TweetDeck mobile apps for Android smartphones and the iPhone.  Also Twitter will not be supporting the desktop version of the Twitter application anymore known as TweetDeck AIR (it runs on the Adobe AIR platform.)

Here is what Twitter said on the Posterous blog post that was posted on March 4th, 2013.

TweetDeck is the most powerful Twitter tool for tracking real-time conversations. Its flexibility and customizable layout let you keep up with what’s happening on Twitter, across multiple topics and accounts, in real time. To continue to offer a great product that addresses your unique needs, we’re going to focus our development efforts on our modern, web-based versions of TweetDeck. To that end, we are discontinuing support for our older apps: TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone. They will be removed from their respective app stores in early May and will stop functioning shortly thereafter. We’ll also discontinue support for our Facebook integration.

TweetDeck mobile apps makes it easy and convenient for people with multiple Twitter accounts to control them all from the same application   I have been using TweetDeck on my Android smartphone to handle my personal Twitter account @AdamYamada and the one for Cody and Sierra, my two singing dogs, @DogsSing.  Even a couple of other Twitter accounts are on there and I used it often to send Tweets to Facebook pages or just update Facebook pages.

I am bit annoyed that Twitter has decided to pull the plug on TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone.  It has over 1 million downloads which is a pretty sizable user-base in my opinion.  The reason Twitter probably decided to pull the plug on TweetDeck for smartphones is that the majority of people are using Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android apps instead.  Unlike me they do not have a need have multiple accounts they need or want to control from the same app.

I am also annoyed Twitter will not support Facebook integration but I understand since that is technically their biggest competitor in the Social Media world.  I guess Twitter has made a calculated move to try to push more people to stay on their platform.

Ending support for the desktop version does make sense though.  Over the past couple of months I have migrated to using the TweetDeck Chrome app which is convenient, fast, and easy to use.  I bet from a developer standpoint it is easier to run TweetDeck in the cloud.  From the blog post it seems like Twitter's data probably reflects that.

In many ways, doubling down on the TweetDeck web experience and discontinuing our app support is a reflection of where our TweetDeck power-users are going.

What does not make sense is that Twitter decided to post the news on a Posterous blog.  Why?  Twitter acquired Posterous awhile ago and will be shutting down Posterous on April 30th, 2013.  You can read Sachin Agarwal's, the Founder and CEO of Posterous, blog post about it.  (If you have a Posterous blog you should go backup your data immediately if you want it.  You can transfer it to WordPress or Tumblr blog.)  Twitter it seems want all the focus to be on developing Twitter and the buyout was probably what is known as an “acquihire.”  These acquihires by big tech companies are usually just to get the talent from the company they are buying out and not necessarily for the technology itself.

If anyone would like to suggest a good TweetDeck replacement, please leave a comment and suggest one.  I most likely will be trying out different Twitter apps that can handle multiple accounts over the next month or two.  I will keep people updated with what I do and don't like.

If you are a TweetDeck user and as unhappy as I am, let me know how you feel.  I would be interested to hear from others.

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