Cloudflare Registrar is a beloved domain registrar among techies and developers, and many of them love the .io domain extension.
Cloudflare sells .io domains at $45 per year.
But there are some drawbacks that aren’t usually pointed out to newbies who then learn about them the hard way.
This is a summary of the main pros and cons of buying .io domains from Cloudflare Registrar.
Pros:
- Wholesale prices: You pay what Cloudflare pays the registry + ICANN fee for generic TLDs.
- Lowest renewal rates: Because there is no markup, renewal rates are the lowest you’ll find.
- No upselling: Only need a domain name? No problem – they don’t try to upsell you 10 different add-ons or free trials you don’t want.
- Powerful DNS service: Cloudflare has a secure and reliable DNS service with advanced features like email and URL forwarding with custom rules.
Cons:
- No first-year discount: Although Cloudflare has the lowest renewal price for .io, some other registrars offer an introductory discount and have a lower first-year price for this TLD.
- Can’t change nameservers: You must use Cloudflare’s nameservers and DNS. You can’t change the nameservers of your domain, which may be required by some web hosts or other third-party services.
- WHOIS redaction: WHOIS data is redacted but not fully private. Your country and state may be displayed in the WHOIS/RDAP database.
- No support service: You don’t get support on the free plan. Even Pro and Business users report slow support service.
So think about all of these before you buy a .io domain from Cloudflare. I recommend using Spaceship instead because they have a lower registration price, and the renewal price is very close to Cloudflare’s.
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