Posted by Vince Wadhwani on Jun 07, 2006

I have been using Network Solutions to do my domain registration since they were the only game in town. Sometime after I blinked the entire game was opened up to a slew of registrars such as register.com, godaddy.com, and others. At first I was apprehensive about using one of the other services. Let's face it, you register a domain and invest a lot of time and energy into it. The last thing you want is for something really bad to happen. In this way, Network Solutions plays the role of the IBM PC. Safe. Financially secure. Historically reliable.

Unfortunately, the reality is that the price that they charge (about $35 per year) is so expensive compared to their competitors that I can no longer seriously consider them for future business. There is a premium I am willing to pay for having good tools available to me for DNS and mail server settings, but that premium is nowhere near the $27 per domain per year that they are asking.

Is GoDaddy the way to go? Possibly. I have one domain registered there and it hasn't caused me any grief yet. Instead I decided to go with Yahoo to register my next domain. It was easy, just as cheap as godaddy, and it comes with some of the same financial security that Network Solutions has. (As of this writing, Yahoo is a $43 billion company.)

Despite being a VIP Gold over at Network Solutions, I've never gotten a coupon code or price break. I guess I am special in name alone.

To all those out there using Network Solutions to manage your domain.. just stop. They must either selfish or bloated to try to command the prices that they do for the simple act of registering a domain. Move your business elsewhere and put the money you save into something else!