[conspire] (forw) I might need to change registrars?

[Michael Paoli]

On 2023-02-06 17:33, Rick Moen wrote:
> Alex, Rev Anon, and Sy:  I appreciate your thoughts, the hitch being
> that Michael P. is the only commenter I am _certain_ knows what I'm
> looking for.

Well, hopefully more know :-) ... but whether or not they chime in,
or have something (particularly) useful (and non-redundant) to add
however ...

> I notice, Alex & Rev Anon -- and this is not a deal-breaker, just a
> slight warning sign -- that your recommendation is not just a
> registrar-full-stop.  Yours offers "domains, DNS, Web hosting, e-mail
> hosting, SSL certs, and easyBackup Cloud Storage.  And probably other
> things.
> 
> I look for a _registrar_.  A registrar does registration of domains.
<SNIP>

Yeah, there are pros and cons with a company/organization/entity that's
a registrar and /also/ provides other services.  How many other
services, of what type, how closely related, how trivial and/or complex
is their also handling (all) that other other stuff, does it, e.g.
degrade or conflict with them offering better / more competent registrar
service - e.g what are their priorities, what do they mainly do, and
how (un)important is it to them to operate and maintain top-notch, or
at least quite darn good solid registrar services?

And, what, if any, other services does one want or care about?  E.g.
does one only care about the registrar services ... or does one actually
want/use those other (types of) services, and, e.g. does one want
a single provider or integration they offer - maybe that convenience is
more important than best of breed registrar services?  Well, depends
upon one's use case.

E.g., both AWS.amazon.com* and cloud.google.com are /also/ registrars -
though that's /not/ what they're mostly known for or do.  And as
/registrars/, I'd rate both of them as at least "competent" ... but
probably not best of breed nor top notch for registrar - though they
certainly beat out many.  And of course if one is looking for ease of
integration with AWS or GCP, and that's the top priority, then those
choices respectively are a no-brainer.

There are also matters such as does one want all one's eggs in one
basket?  Well, sometimes that's quite convenient ... and if one is
sufficiently selective regarding basket quality, might not be all that
bad - and yes, again, does also depend upon use case scenario, and,
e.g. risk tollerance, and (in)tollerance regarding vendor lock-in, etc.

And Gandi.net - yes they do also offer/sell some services besides just
being a registrar - but primarily they're a registrar.  Why do they even
also have that "other stuff"?  I'm not sure - I'd guess they also have
many customers that want or expect that.  E.g. there are lots of,
typically smaller customers, that want not only registrar services ...
but they often typically also want the at least relatively bare
essentials to set up a web site (and possibly basic email for domain) -
so some bit of virtual hosting type services - be it VMs or just some
services and ways to configure that (and possibly also email) - and
some SSL cert(s), bit of storage, way to manage some at least
relatively simple DNS - and that's about it.  Many, especially smaller,
customers tend to want/expect/"demand" that of a "registrar" - probably
mostly out of ignorance as to what a registrar is - and/or just wanting
the convenience of one stop shopping for some simple basic web (+
managed email) set up needs - where the customer otherwise doesn't have
(or want to bother with) anything of their own infrastructure-wise,
other than some computer(s) with Internet access (at least
intermittently), reasonable browser, and email - typically from their
ISP or some free email service.  And they expect anything else needed
will be relatively trivial software they install or someone else will
host and provide it - even if they don't explicitly realize that's what
they're looking for.  So, sure, Gandi.net has some 'o that basic goop
available too, but not tons of it, and certainly not what they
particularly push, but it's there if someone wants it.  Gandi.net is
also a high volume reseller - they've got very capable API, and have,
for example, had (and may still have) AWS as one of their large
customers.  Likewise direct customers - they have quite attractive
volume discounts - so if one has lots of domains, the prices become even
much more attractive - and of course they have API for ease of dealing
with lots of domains, automation, etc.

Anyway, not everyone wants the same thing and/or has the same use case
scenario ... and that's okay too.

*AWS.amazon.com used to do (all?) their registrar services via Gandi.net
as a reseller - though that wasn't obvious to the customer (but was
visible if one looked carefully at the whois data).  AWS has since
become a full fledged registrar themselves.  Not sure if they still 
(also)
have any bits they maintain and/or resell (e.g. perhaps some specific
domains?) via Gandi.net.