Oct 28, 2023
In case one didn't know or hasn't logged into Google Domains recently, all of their services were purchased by Squarespace. Additional information on the aquisition can be found here.
Basically any domains registered through Google Domains will in the near future will be controlled by Squarespace. I'm not very trusting of the transistion as I know prices will increase and more than likley will be charged for additional services. So time to hunt for a new home for my domains.
The things that made Google Domains a nice choice was the ease of use, cost, and easy integration with other Google Services. Since the last one might not be so easy anymore with say Firebase or GCP, I went looking for something that would make transferring and purchasing new domains easy and at a low cost.
Behold: Pork Bun. Simple interface, relatively good pricing and good sense of humor.
They have the usual services of domains, web & email hosting and easy single or bulk domain transfers. They also boast about being the number ranked registrar for lowest registration and renewal pricing. Nothing I think will beat the $9.99 per year from Google domains but a .com domain for $10.37 isn't too much more.
I ended up performing a solo transfer of Don't Eat Glue to see how it went and if there were any interruptions with Firebase. It went super smooth on both sides. Simply turned off the transfer protection and got the authorization code from Google Domains, pasted it into the fields on Pork Bun. Accepted the transfers via emails from Google and copied my DNS configuration from Google Domains to Pork Bun. The DNS configuration can be performed before the transfer so that there's not really any noticable down time. Total time for the full transfer was about ten minutes.
Really impressed with this and bulk tranferred my other domains, about eight in total. Same process but with a bulk list instead of a one off. After everything was transferred, I ensured that the WHOIS privacy was enabled, and spot checked the websites, and everything was operational.
I did notice that Pork Bun did offer free email forawarding, but didn't allow for wildcards unlike Google Domains. This was easy as I hadn't given out email addresses for most of the domains and only a few like @admin for others, so the list was small.
The other thing was that I had to pay for an additional year of registration along with the transfer, but this is par for the course with any domain transfer.
I haven't had to contact their support team yet but are reachable via phone, email and chat and look to have a decent knowledge base.
They also have quite a few other tools and easter eggs throughout their website. Just check out the footer.
All things considered I'm going through the rest of their services and looks like this was a great move. If you're looking for a new registar to move to or even start your online presence, definately give them a look.