How to choose a domain registrar in India

We deliberately quote no competitor prices here. They change monthly, a wrong figure would be unfair to them and misleading to you, and you can check anybody’s current pricing yourself in two minutes. What follows is structural, and structure changes far more slowly than price.

1. Is the renewal price visible before you buy?

The single most useful test. Open any registrar’s .com page and try to find the renewal price without adding anything to a cart. If you cannot find it in thirty seconds, that is somebody’s deliberate choice, and it tells you what to expect in year two. Work out the two-year cost for everybody on your shortlist.

2. What is charged as an extra?

Check WHOIS privacy, DNS management, email forwarding and transfer lock. These cost a registrar almost nothing. Charging ₹199–₹499 each is a way of advertising one price and collecting another, and it can double the real cost of a cheap domain.

3. Can you reach a human, and in which language?

You will need support perhaps twice in ten years and both times it will be urgent. Test it before you buy: call the number and see what happens.

4. Do you get a proper GST invoice?

For a GST-registered business, an invoice carrying your GSTIN is worth 18% of the price. Foreign registrars generally cannot issue a clean Indian tax invoice — a real cost the headline hides. See GST on domain registration.

5. How hard is it to leave?

Look up the transfer-out policy before you buy. Is the auth code in the control panel, or must you email and wait? Is there a fee for releasing your own domain? A registrar that makes leaving difficult is telling you something about its confidence in keeping you.

6. Whose name goes on the registrant record?

If a provider registers domains in their own name and “manages” them for you, walk away. This matters more than price, support or anything else here — it is the difference between owning your address and renting it from somebody who can change their mind.

7. Will they still be there in ten years?

A domain is a decade-long relationship. A registrar with a long trading history and a physical address you could visit is a different proposition from one that appeared last year with aggressive pricing.

Applying the checklist to us

Since we are asking you to run it, here is where we land — including where we lose.

The two-minute version

Open two registrar sites. For each, find the .com renewal price, the WHOIS privacy price, the support number and the transfer-out policy. Whichever lets you find all four fastest is probably the one that will treat you best in year three — and that, not the first-year price, is the decision you are actually making.