As noted in a previous article, Google Domains is selling its domain name registration and web site hosting business to SquareSpace, aka Verisign.
Having had a few weeks to check out SqaureSpace, we determined it wasn’t a good fit for us and our carrier / enterprise clients.
Why?
First, SquareSpace is specifically targeted to the “brochure web site” market segment, like Google Domains was. We didn’t use Google Domains for hosting, but only for its slick, easy to use, and full-featured DNS services.
But the difference is that Google Domains management tool let users fully control DNS, including all DNS features, controls and knobs.
SquareSpace DNS does not let you control the TTL – time-to-live – setting on DNS records, making it unsuitable for sophisticated users that may have reasons to finely control TTL lifetime – such as when doing migrations or network changes.
Also, SquareSpace technical support was found to be less than exemplary.
So our research brought us to CloudFlare – the company that protects web sites from the biggest to small from DDoS attacks, hackers, and accelerates web sites using a network of hundreds of caching and proxy nodes all over the world.
Besides this, CloudFlare offers domain name registration – at their cost – and offers free DNS hosting with it. When we say “at their cost”, we mean: whatever fees they pay to the Registry operators that own .com, .net, .io, etc. that’s what you pay. They pass through their wholesale cost to you.
While a typical domain registration might be $20 a year, the cost of a couple Big Mac value meals, this seems a smart way for them to get their advanced fee-based services in front of a much wider audience.
Their DNS management is full featured as we expect, as was Google’s – and so we can wholeheartedly recommend CloudFlare as a domain name registrar and DNS host.