- Hey guys, my name is Christian Taylor. Welcome back to Craylor Made. And today, I want to take
another look at Dynadot to see if it's still a good
place to buy domain names. You may notice that it's been a while since I've talked about
Dynadot on my channel. They were last featured in my 2019 domain
registrar comparison video, but in my updated 2021 comparison video I chose not to include Dynadot. Several people have asked me about this, saying, "Hey, do you
still recommend Dynadot?" "What happened? You seem pretty high on them
in your 2019 comparison, but they're not even in
your 2021 comparison." And to be honest, that's mainly because I've
always seen Dynadot and Porkbun as very similar. So I've kind of rotated them
back and forth over the years. But Porkbun is cheaper than Dynadot. And with them filling very
similar spots in the market is it worth paying a small
premium to use Dynadot? I mean, the short answer is yes. Dynadot is an ethical
quality domain registrar that's not going to overcharge
you for stuff you don't need. They have great customer support and overall they're a wonderful
place to buy domain names. Dynadot's specialty is
definitely domain names. They're not somewhere you would go to have everything under one roof. So for example, if you want your domain, web hosting and email
hosting all in one place, Dynadot is not gonna be the place for you. And we're going to talk about
that more later, because yes, I am aware that they do offer
web hosting and email hosting. So we're going to talk more
about my thoughts on that later. But I would say that Dynadot's specialty is definitely domain names. Their claim to fame is
their advanced search tools available on their website. You can use their AI system to kind of get domain suggestions
if your domain is taken or search multiple domain
extensions at once. It's nothing super groundbreaking, a lot of registrars offer some sort of search tool like this. But I do like the tools
that Dynadot has to offer. It's especially useful
for finding a domain name that incorporates your name. Because if you have a name
like Christian Taylor, well, ChristianTaylor.com
is already taken. So, Dynadot has kind of helped
me find alternative options that include my name and are
still a cool domain name, like ItsChristianTaylor.com. I've never thought of that before. Dynadot recommended it. I
think it's kind of cool. Dynadot is very reasonably priced. You can get a .com domain for 8.99 a year and Whois protection is free. That is huge for me. I will not ever recommend
a domain registrar unless Whois protection is free. So, Dynadot checks all the boxes there. Not to mention $9 a year for a .com domain is very reasonable. Namecheap, who I also speak highly of is charging $13 a year for a .com domain. So Dynadot already is saving you four bucks a year over Namecheap. You're going to pay a couple cents or a couple dollars more than Porkbun, depending on the TLD extension you pick. But I would say the Dynadot
panel is definitely cleaner. It's a little bit simpler to manage stuff. Porkbun is a bit overwhelming to me. I've always thought their
panel is like, blurgh, it's just fire hose of information. Dynadot has things laid out a
little bit more intuitively. What's not intuitive though, is the Dynadot checkout process if you choose to pay
with PayPal, Apple Pay, or anything other than actually
keying in your card number on the checkout screen. For whatever reason, the process works where you'll choose PayPal
and then click submit order. And it almost looks like the
order is done and submitted, but you were never taken to PayPal. And you have to actually copy this link and paste it in your browser and then make the PayPal payment. I mean, it's not the end of the world. It is perfectly fine, but
it is definitely quirky. I do really like that at Dynadot you can return a domain name. It's not a guarantee, they do have a certain amount of domains they can return per month or per year but you can actually
see the metrics for this on their return screen. And they'll tell you if
there's a waiting list to return .com domains or .net domains. So if you have a typo or
if you register a domain and the next day you're like,
ah, why did I register that? I think it's kind of
goofy after I slept on it. Dynadot will let you
return that domain name for a small fee. The Dynadot app is clean and simple. Not many domain registrars have an app and Dynadot has done theirs well. You can access chat support, you can buy domains,
you can use Apple Pay. You can also fully manage
domains and change name servers and do anything you could
do online in the app. It's pretty neat. Dynadot also offers 24/7 live chat support and they offer phone support from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Pacific time. So, this is better than Porkbun. Porkbun only offers 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Pacific time support period. Porkbun offers both phone
support and live chat support. But if you are an international user and you're on the other side of the world, how are you supposed to get support? You'd only be able to get it
in the middle of the night. And for that reason, I think
Dynadot is a great option for international users. They are lacking in some TLDs, they don't support .to or .ch, or some of the TLDs that
I wish I could get there, they don't support it. So you will have to go to a
place like Porkbun or Namecheap for some of those TLDs. Also another quirk that bugs me is Dynadot does not support physical two factor authentication keys. They do support Google
authenticator and SMS text messages as a form of two factor
authentication, and this is great. I use Authy and it works
just fine with Dynadot. It's like a Google
authenticator alternative that works with the same standard. That's what I use. It's fine, it works, I
know my account is secure. But I do like the convenience of using a physical security key. And that's something that both Namecheap and Porkbun support, but Dynadot does not. I would really love to
see them add support for physical security keys in the future. Now, let's talk more about
having everything under one roof. Should you consider buying
VPS hosting, email hosting, or the website builder from Dynadot? Well, to cut to the chase,
it's a no on all three. Let's start with the VPS hosting. Dynadot is charging $10 a
month for a one gigabyte VPS. Already off the bat, this is a hard sell. When you can get a one gigabyte VPS from DigitalOcean or Vultr, or some of the top indie
data centers out there for $5 a month for one gigabyte, Dynadot is already double the price. Now this is not the end of the world. Sometimes being double
the price is justified. In the case of Cloudways, they are charging $10 a month
for a one gigabyte server but you're getting it through
DigitalOcean and Vultr. And on top of that they're adding their
proprietary management panel to help you backup your
WordPress site with one click or have staging environments on WordPress. This is Cloudways we're talking about. Now, Dynadot doesn't do any of that. They charge $10 a month
for a one gigabyte VPS which by the way, you
cannot scale up or down. A one gigabyte RAM VPS is all you're ever
going to have at Dynadot unless they add more options later. And they use Sentora, which is a free open
source management panel that I'm not a fan of. It feels like cPanel and WHM, but really watered down or
like the beta version of it. I don't know. I just don't
think it's very smooth. Does it get the job done? Yes. But is it acceptable to
just get the job done at that $10 a month price point? No. I mean, I expect a really
smooth management panel, a really clean experience and I'm not seeing that with Dynadot. If they wanted to go for the budget market and charge three to $4 a
month for a one gigabyte VPS, all right, I could get behind that. But at where they have
it priced in the market I just can't recommend their VPS hosting. Dynadot also doesn't offer shared hosting which I think is a little strange. The majority of users
are going to be happy with shared hosting to go
with their domain name, just something they can use to
run their WordPress website. And if Dynadot offered
some decent shared hosting, plus email hosting, plus a domain, they would be a force to be reckoned with. Now, moving on to Dynadot's email hosting, it is just quirky. It starts at $16 a year and only gives you 30
megabytes of disk space. And that's honestly not a great value. It's like this weird hybrid of web hosting and email hosting. It's like, is it shared
hosting or is it email hosting? When you go to the panel, it
has an edit website button. And when you click that, it's telling you, hey, you can upload some basic files and host a static website. So is it web hosting or is it
email hosting or is it both? And that's not all. Their online email client looks
like it's from the stone age and Dynadot email hosting
does not support IMAP. That's right, you're going
to have to use SMTP and POP3 if you want to link it to an
email client or email app. Which is honestly unacceptable. I would not recommend
Dynadot's email hosting in its current form. I do believe the Dynadot team is working on revamping the email hosting, so it'll be really exciting
to see what they come up with. But in its current state, I would not recommend
Dynadot email hosting. Stick to Namecheap Private Email hosting, Google Workspace or Fastmail. I've got an entire video comparing that that you can watch over here. Now, the Dynadot website
builder, should you use it? Well, I got to say, this is their most
solid product they offer besides domain names. It's not bad. It's not amazing, but it's not bad. And at the 10 to $30 a year price point it might be worth using if
you're just really a Dynadot fan and you're itching to try it out. I will say you can get a solid
looking website out of it and it's pretty intuitive. I personally think that you should stick with the mainstream website builders. This would be Wix,
Squarespace or WordPress, because there's so much
support and help available for these website builders. But if you're on a really tight budget and you really like Dynadot you could give their
website builder a try. It's not for me. I generally wouldn't recommend
any indie website builder. But again, it kind of gives an
experience similar to Carrd. You can make a basic landing page with it and it's very reasonably
priced for what you get. So at the end of the day do I still recommend Dynadot? For domains? Absolutely. Dynadot offers competitive pricing, a clean and simple
experience and 24/7 support. I also really like their app. It's not something that I use often but I can see they put a lot of work and attention to detail into it. And I'm really glad that they
offer it for mobile users who want to quickly grab
a domain name on the go. As for holding everything under one roof, I can't recommend Dynadot for that but I'm really optimistic at what the future holds for them. I just love the ethics and
the culture at Dynadot. And I think that they've got
a bright future ahead of them if they kick it into high gear and start catching up some
of their other products, like their web hosting
and their email hosting. Spice it up a bit, make
it more competitive, and wow, Dynadot is going to
be a seriously tempting choice to keep everything under one roof. I am actually including tutorials for how to set up your WordPress website using a Dynadot domain
in my online course. I'm including Namecheap, Porkbun and Dynadot in
that course to start. So, Dynadot is definitely one of my three top preferred domain registrars and definitely still worth considering. If you're curious about my online course, I'll have more information for that linked in the description below. But what do you think of Dynadot? Would you use them for your domain names? I'd love to know your thoughts
in the comments down below. And if you liked this video, do be sure to hit that subscribe
button and click the bell so you don't miss when
I release new videos. With that said, I'll
catch you guys next time.
