best .ca registrar (2.Viewing)

I've been with Baremetal forever for .CA. IMO they're the best for .CA, great bulk tools, great price, great personal service and you never have to beg for an auth code, its always accessible. Another thing I like is its pure html, not a bunch of javascript bs. I hated the WHC interface because it was all javascript generated, and it was horrible for managing domains in bulk. I had thousands of domains there and it was torture managing them. Anyways, Baremetal's website may look old school, but that's what I love about it. Simple, straight forward, easy to use, no lagginess from javascript loading thousands of domains, etc...

Baremetal's default .ca price is 12.99. I believe they automatically drop your price to $11.40 after you have 100 domains, or, 100 years of cumulative renewals, so 20 domains renewed for 5 years, etc... So that's still not the cheapest out there, but I like knowing my .CA's are where I know the owner and I personally trust them. BTW, if you do need to transfer in a bunch of domains, just send the list to support, they'll take care of it for you.

I do have a special bulk deal there so my pricing is very good. I've had registrars offer to match it, but no one has ever offered to beat it. At one time I owned 1% of all .CA domains (over 10K)... That kinda helps negotiating. I sold a very large chunk of .CAs for a few $M a while back, so I'm well back into the 4 digit range now.

I think the problem with domainers is they're almost more pain-in-the-ass than is worthwhile. Most registrars make the majority of their money on everything but domains. So when a domainer never buys hosting or other services, yet expects free DNS, email & customer support, registrars aren't always too excited about dropping prices so low...

As for other TLD's I basically have one primary registrar for each TLD I invest in - as I've never found one registrar that gives the best deal across the board.

DomainTrader said:

$13 is too much. No one should have to pay $13 when you can get the same thing for $11

Think about this

The difference between paying 11 and 13 is 15%
That is huge money Nafti
If you could make 15% return on your money at the moment would that be good?
Saving 15% would be huge

I am going to work on getting everyone here a better price on their domain names. No one should be paying 13
I already have some great relationships in the registrar community and i am going to attempt to leverage them to get dn ca members some decent pricing

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I agree. An extra $2 per domain is quite significant on a lot of domains but I have less than 50 there.

Looking forward to cheaper prices. Are you able to list the registrar?

So funnily enough [notify]Nafti[/notify] one of the guys I am going to reach out to is Rob Monster who you may already know as the founder of Epik. Rob is in the process of partnering with some Canadian guys and together they plan to launch a new register at ALL dot ca

Things are still in build process at the moment but Rob is a progressive guy and someone who I know will be open to assisting domainers mover their businesses forward. I am guessing you may not be getting his lowest tiered price at the moment which maybe based on your volume?

Anyways my hope it to create a group co-op price and if it doesn't work out there I have some working relationships with other registrars who I plan to reach out to as well

The problem with Epik right now is they do not have Canadian pricing that is one of the reasons I am not with them and they also charge quite a bit for the .ca

I would like to see them with a Canadian presence for .ca and .com where we could pay in CAD because the credit card companies hammer us with another 2% on top of the us conversion.

You might want to give rob a link to this post so he can answer himself.

Since ALL.ca will be domiciled in Canada their prices will be in CAD

I have spoken with Rob a few times [notify]DomainTrader[/notify]. He’s a class act in my opinion. I was also aware of all dot ca. The current owner of all is/was very active in the .ca TBR’s and also great to talk to. We exchanged emails a few times early on in the year.

I am probably not getting the lower tiered prices, you’re right. As I mentioned, I only have less than 50 domains at Epik so I didn’t ask for a lower price.

[notify]MapleDots[/notify] They do indeed charge in US funds. Maybe they can make the switch to CDN at some point. I pay $9.90 US for a new .ca registration.

Nafti said:

I have spoken with Rob a few times @DomainTrader. He’s a class act in my opinion. I was also aware of all dot ca. The current owner of all is/was very active in the .ca TBR’s and also great to talk to. We exchanged emails a few times early on in the year.

I am probably not getting the lower tiered prices, you’re right. As I mentioned, I only have less than 50 domains at Epik so I didn’t ask for a lower price.

@MapleDots They do indeed charge in US funds. Maybe they can make the switch to CDN at some point. I pay $9.90 US for a new .ca registration.

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$10.95 at Canspace regardless of new or renew!

Best deal is to register at WHC because they have new and transfer in at 9.95
Their renewal is much larger so after a year you move to canspace.

Gives you the cheapest all around but sucks when you have hundreds of domains to constantly move around.

A few cents over $11 @ Namespro. We've dealt with them for 12 years, and I highly recommend their support. I swear the answers show up before I've sent the question.

A couple of years ago, I got an offer around 8 PM on New Year's Eve. We'd been discussing it for a couple of weeks. I suspected the guy had been drinking and decided to do it. I didn't want buyers regret the next morning.

I wrote Namespro for the EPP code and had it back twenty minutes later. The cash was already in Paypal, so the deal was done, and the domain was transferred in no time. How many companies do you know that would respond to a support request on New Year's Eve almost instantly?

I have a great price from them, and that kind of support means more to me than a few cents one way or the other.

Hey Gord

Nice to see you again!

In addition to what I said earlier in the thread, I heartily agree [notify]DropWizard[/notify] regarding NamesPro. I have been with them since 2004 and that is where all of my .ca end up. Although I only have about 120 these days, they were really helpful when I had many more and when , as many of us will recall, the transfer process was MUCH more convoluted, they still managed to excel in service and support and make sales/ purchases much less difficult than they could have been.

MapleDots said:

If it involves .ca it is ok to say, in fact I would encourage you to share.

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I just got tipped off as well, I was inviting them to the forum....

Last time I saw Rob was at NamesCon a few years ago. I talked with him for a while, tried to convince him he needed to be a real CA registrar - without it, I couldn't even begin to consider using Epik as my registrar. I suggest he consider just buying out, or partnering with, an existing registar. Looks like he finally decided to do it.

Ben is an intriguing guy, is he ever on any of the forums? I don't think I've ever had a conversation with him that I can remember. I've talked to nearly every other major .ca domainer that I'm aware of, at some point or another. Hopefully he shows up here.

Thanks for the recommendations, guys! Our goal at CanSpace is to be the lowest priced registrar in Canada, and as mentioned earlier in this thread we do offer this price to all customers with no special conditions, and no increases at renewal.

We like to think our support is the best in the industry, but I obviously cannot be objective about that

If anyone has any questions about us at all I'd be happy to address them!

And you have pretty darn good Canadian based hosting services as well.
[notify]CanSpace[/notify]