So lemmiverse, my https://pxtl.ca domain has officially been booted off of Google Domains (welcome to the Google graveyard, Google Domains) and now has been moved into Squarespace, which is expensive.
Anybody recommend a good cheap .ca TLD domain host? One with a decent API for dynamic DNS so I can keep my home subdomain? I have a couple of pi4 servers in the house that could be tasked with pinging an API endpoint to notify the domain host of my IP.
thanks in advance.
edit: in the end I went with CanSpace as registrar, and I’m using CloudFlare to actually run the nameservers.
The transfer was kind of a PITA because since the domain transferred from Google to Squarespace to Canspace to then being hosted on CF’s nameservers (but still on Canspace) the DNSSEC meant that CF couldn’t actually get it connected until like 48 hours later. Was quite worried that I’d screwed up somewhere.
As others have pointed out, CloudFlare doesn’t sell .ca domain names due to the ownership restrictions applied by CIRA. I’ve personally used Web Hosting Canada (WHC.ca) for many years, including their hosting for a while. I also have a couple of domains with Register.ca.
I then use DuckDNS for dynamic updates and the free tier of CloudFlare for security certificates and some simple access rules.
Back to webnames for you.
Cloudflare is by far the cheapest registrar & host I’ve used. I’m on their free plan, which can handle almost any load (thousands of requests a week for me personally). The domains are sold at cost, so around $10 for my dot-coms. So $10/yr covers it.
Unfortunately Cloudflare does not do .ca domains. I imagine this is because there are restrictions on who can own one, so it’s probably not worth the trouble for them.
yep, my most heavily-trafficked site is https://bongo.to which Cloudflare doesn’t support for registration. so i have the domain registered with Namecheap but hosted still via Cloudflare. Nowadays I’d check out Porkbun also, I’ve heard good things.
Some (probably most) domain registrars allow to use different nameservers. So for example i use namecheap, since its cheap as domain registrar but cloudflare for DNS, since the API is free and widly supported.