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Free domain (ie. dot.tk) is it reliable?
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Free domain (ie. dot.tk) is it reliable?

My friend wants to register a domain for his hobby website, he can get free hosting from me, he doesn't want to use subdomains like subdomain.mydomain.com, he wants a domain name.

I also use dot.tk, it's just I'm not sure if it's reliable. I have heard of a lot of horrible stories, like once your .tk gets popular, they will suspend / delete your .tk and replace your website with ads etc.

I know he can get a real $0.99 domain for the first year, but what about the second year? a lot of registrars offer $0.99 domain registration, but normal price for domain transfer.

Any help is appreciated

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Comments

  • ehabehab Member
    edited September 2017

    time to get a proper domain. you can get renewals between 3-15$ per year for example ovh, or those pw, win, bid etc ...
    every man needs a domain.

  • JSCLJSCL Member, Host Rep

    A lot of people use co.nr too - plenty of 'free' extensions. It used to be that .info was really cheap each year, but seems that's not so often the case now either.

  • @JSCL is co.nr reliable?
    @ehab $5 renewal is fine, anything more than $7 will be too much.

  • check out
    https://porkbun.com/
    https://www.ovh.com/fr/domaines/
    others may join and suggest.

  • They close your accounts or dekete your domains. Also the sane with freenom.

    Get a paid one, it's cheap, like a few coffee cups nowadays.

  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    @redjersey said:
    @JSCL is co.nr reliable?
    @ehab $5 renewal is fine, anything more than $7 will be too much.

    Seriously?

    .tk is legit but there have been stories of popular .tks been seized once they're popular. May just be forum legends.

  • Just tried biz.nl -- free co.nf subdomains (you need to get their free hosting though...)

  • nyvpsusernyvpsuser Member
    edited September 2017

    He might consider getting a .win for $0.66 from namecheap:
    https://www.namecheap.com/promos/cheapest-tld-business-finance-domain-name-48cents.aspx
    ($0.48+$0.18 ICANN fee).

    Is Whois privacy important to him?

    For domain pricing check: https://tld-list.com/

  • @redjersey said:
    I know he can get a real $0.99 domain for the first year, but what about the second year? a lot of registrars offer $0.99 domain registration, but normal price for domain transfer.

    You can get these domains for $0.66 for the first year or around $6 for 5 year registration.

    .xyz
    .win
    .men
    .bid
    .party
    .webcam
    .date
    .download
    .review
    .racing
    .trade
    .stream

  • first year is not important, a lot of registrars offer $3 or less for the first year, but most of them charge $10 for renewel / transfer.

    he prefers .com as it's the most common tld.

    will definitely check out tld-list.com. Thanks :)

  • jvnadrjvnadr Member
    edited September 2017

    Don't use .tk or their domain. They are horrible and can ban your domain or whole account without even answer why did they do that!

    raindog308 said: .tk is legit but there have been stories of popular .tks been seized once they're popular. May just be forum legends.

    No. They are real. Also, when populating lot of their domains (.tk, .ml, .cf etc.) they ban your account from creating new domains and they maybe close some of your existing, enforce you to buy them to continue using them (for +8$ per year!).

    redjersey said: I'm not sure if it's reliable

    If you want some free domains for testing purposes or to resolve some non-public services/sites, you can use a second level domain. I use for over 3 1/2 years .cc.cu . Extremely reliable, with just one issue: it does not work with cloudflare. Of course, they are working alone just fine with name servers or A records, or use freedns as cloudflare dns replacement.

  • I'd set him up with a free subdomain on Afraid, and if he decides he needs real DNS, he can easily register and set it up there.

  • nyvpsusernyvpsuser Member
    edited September 2017

    @redjersey said:

    first year is not important, a lot of registrars offer $3 or less for the first year, but most of them charge $10 for renewel / transfer.

    he prefers .com as it's the most common tld.

    If he want's a .com he's just going to have to pay about $9 to extend it each year unless
    he's really frugal and transfers it to the registrar with a promo price for transfers every year.

  • @raindog308 said:

    @redjersey said:
    @JSCL is co.nr reliable?
    @ehab $5 renewal is fine, anything more than $7 will be too much.

    Seriously?

    .tk is legit but there have been stories of popular .tks been seized once they're popular. May just be forum legends.

    It's not a rumour. They seized one of my domains a couple of years ago for no good reason. Not high traffic but a 'premium' domain.

    Thanked by 1raindog308
  • @redjersey said: $5 renewal is fine, anything more than $7 will be too much.

    If the budget is that tight, then having one's own domain may be too optimistic. Choose a free subdomain instead: see, for example, @WSS's suggestion above.

  • If someone can't afford less than one cent a day, perhaps they have bigger issues at hand than DNS- heck, I remember when a .com cost you $35/yr.

    Afraid has over 70,000 free/public domains available for use. You're not going to find much better for free.

  • @ehab said:
    time to get a proper domain. you can get renewals between 3-15$ per year for example ovh, or those pw, win, bid etc ...
    every man needs a domain.

    or 20...

  • @WSS said:
    If someone can't afford less than one cent a day, perhaps they have bigger issues at hand than DNS- heck, I remember when a .com cost you $35/yr.

    I remember when it was $100 for 2 years - %!@#ing Network Solutions.

  • @nyvpsuser said:

    @WSS said:
    If someone can't afford less than one cent a day, perhaps they have bigger issues at hand than DNS- heck, I remember when a .com cost you $35/yr.

    I remember when it was $100 for 2 years - %!@#ing Network Solutions.

    Yep. Remember when they decided to start advertising for unregistered zones and basically broke the internet for a week?

  • They've worked just fine for me so far.

  • .xyz

  • CamCam Member, Patron Provider
    edited September 2017

    NameCheap is doing a promo, $0.48/year or $5.58/5 years

    .bid
    .trade
    .webcam
    .party
    .science
    .cricket
    .faith
    .date
    .review
    .accountant
    .download
    .racing
    .loan
    .win
    .men
    .stream

    https://namecheap.com/promos/cheapest-tld-business-finance-domain-name-48cents.aspx

  • MikePTMikePT Moderator, Patron Provider, Veteran

    @Saragoldfarb said:

    @raindog308 said:

    @redjersey said:
    @JSCL is co.nr reliable?
    @ehab $5 renewal is fine, anything more than $7 will be too much.

    Seriously?

    .tk is legit but there have been stories of popular .tks been seized once they're popular. May just be forum legends.

    It's not a rumour. They seized one of my domains a couple of years ago for no good reason. Not high traffic but a 'premium' domain.

    Did they give you any option to pay for it or something like that?

  • You don't pay, which means you don't have the ownership rights for the domain.

    I've been using them for few years and they are good.

    Complaints are from people that wants free things but doesn't wants to pay or read the ToS/T&C and start complaining.

  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    Secured said: Complaints are from people that wants free things but doesn't wants to pay or read the ToS/T&C and start complaining.

    There's nothing in the T&C about domains being seized if they become popular:

    http://www.dot.tk/en/index.html?lang=en

    Yet, we have reports of that happening - just google.

    So what is your point.

    BTW, .tk has numerous content limitations as well - see that link for details. An important one is that their "content verification system" has to be able to crawl your site, so putting up something with a login is all the pretext they need.

    .tk is just shady.

  • I had a .tk years ago, and it was phonetically close to a certain man we've all seen on .tk before. It was seized without any reason- I created a personal YTMND type site for myself and my friends, but evidently having nothing rude or copyright material- it was still more than enough to take away, just because.

  • @MikePT said:

    @Saragoldfarb said:

    @raindog308 said:

    @redjersey said:
    @JSCL is co.nr reliable?
    @ehab $5 renewal is fine, anything more than $7 will be too much.

    Seriously?

    .tk is legit but there have been stories of popular .tks been seized once they're popular. May just be forum legends.

    It's not a rumour. They seized one of my domains a couple of years ago for no good reason. Not high traffic but a 'premium' domain.

    Did they give you any option to pay for it or something like that?

    No it just all of a sudden disappeared from my panel. Sent them en email but never heard back from them. It's not a big deal as with a free service you know in advance this can happen. I'm still using them when I need a temporary domain or something for development though.

    Thanked by 1MikePT
  • so far I have no complain with freenom. I still have the domain I used for my personal blog that has an average of 80 unique visitors per day and email for almost two years now. I heard about the company being untrusted so I decided to get a new paid gtld and decided to just redirect all traffic from my dot.cf domain to my new gtld. Freenom is good for testing stuff but not for production.

  • vietnetvietnet Member
    edited September 2017

    You need to buy an .com .net domain internationally for long-term use
    check in: https://spam-spam-spam-spam.com
    http://spam-spam-spam-spam.com
    http://spam-spam-spam-spam.com

    Thanked by 2Aidan MasonR
  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    vietnet said: You need to buy an .com .net domain internationally for long-term use check in: https://spam-spam-spam-spam.com http://spam-spam-spam-spam.com http://spam-spam-spam-spam.com

    Best moderation ever.

    Thanked by 2MasonR Aidan
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