Comment by math-dev

5 years ago

Buy for 10 years (assuming .com)

Beware: if your registrar of choice goes bust within those 10 years, you probably lose your money.

  • This is unlikely. When a registrar goes bust, the registry can take over, assign a replacement registrar by buyout or alternate agreement. See “Registerfly” case as an example.

    • In some cases though, the registrar only pays the registry for 1 year at a time, making the money their customers pre-pay effectively a low-interest loan for the registrar. If that registrar goes bust, you'll be able to transfer your domain to a different registrar, but you'll lose the money you paid (i.e. loaned) to the original registrar.

      There's also another risk: if you decide after 2 years you're not happy with your registrar, tough luck, you've already paid for 10 years.

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