When comparing Porkbun vs Cloudflare Registrar, the Slant community recommends Porkbun for most people. In the question“What are the best domain name registrars/providers?” Porkbun is ranked 1st while Cloudflare Registrar is ranked 17th. The most important reason people chose Porkbun is:
All the top-level domains available at Porkbun (319 of the 1,562 currently in existence) are offered for $1 above the wholesale price, plus the processing fee for your credit card. No gimmicks or bait-and-switch pricing, no surprises. That's the price for renewal and inbound transfers too, so you know exactly how much you'll be spending every year you own the domain.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Transparent, everyday pricing for all domains and services
All the top-level domains available at Porkbun (319 of the 1,562 currently in existence) are offered for $1 above the wholesale price, plus the processing fee for your credit card. No gimmicks or bait-and-switch pricing, no surprises. That's the price for renewal and inbound transfers too, so you know exactly how much you'll be spending every year you own the domain.
Pro Free WHOIS Privacy (for top-level domains that allow it)
All domains receive free WHOIS privacy, which masks your personal information from the public registry and saves you from the deluge of e-mail spam and telemarketers which typically accompanies purchasing a domain name today. Some top-level domains, like .us, require that you publish your contact info publicly, and they'll tell you that before you place the order.
Pro FAST Payments - honest pricing - integrity
No more topping up a reseller account with credits that cost a commission to buy or getting caught at renewal with a higher price unless you find a coupon somewhere... It's integrity all the way and a VERY fast payment portal!
Pro Porkbun accounts can be secured with two-factor authentication
Don't let the next big hack allow some internet pirate to steal your domain, just turn on 2FA in the control panel and all logins will require a TOTP code in addition to your e-mail address and password.
Pro Best Service
No hidden renewal charges and free privacy on all domains.
Pro Live support during support hours
During support hours a real human can be reached via phone or email. Emails are generally responded quickly and always within 24 hours.
Pro Not spamming you with useless offers
They are sincere, they do not spam your inbox with "offers" and services you are never going to use and then, if you make the mistake to accept, pay inflated prices when you renew. They communicate with you only for serious and legitimate reasons. Excellent services!
Pro Just the best
Nothing wrong to say about them, this company should stay as they are.
Pro Free SSL Certificates
Every domain is issued SSL certificates for the root domain and any ten subdomains of your choice via the Let's Encrypt service. The certificates expire every 90 days but Porkbun automatically renews them for you prior to each expiration, for as long as you own the domain. These certificates don't offer any identity verification, but they do allow all the traffic to and from your domain to be encrypted at industry-standard levels at no cost. They can be acquired at will through the interface without any contact with support staff and the certificates are available for download as soon as they are created.
Pro Free DNS hosting
Registering the domain is only half the battle, the other half is announcing to the world the IP address of the server hosting your site. Porkbun includes this service with all domain registrations and makes it easy to manage by using the GoDaddy DomainConnect standard for service auto-discovery. This means you don't need to get your hands dirty, just pick the web host you want to connect the domain to from the drop-down menu and click OK. Or you can manage all the settings yourself from the control panel without restriction or interference. You can have as many A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, NS and TXT resource records as your heart desires (or ARIN allows).
Pro Free e-mail forwarding and reasonable e-mail hosting
All domains come with 10 free e-mail forwards which allow you to use your new domain to create aliases for existing e-mail accounts elsewhere. If you need hosted e-mail instead, that's only $24/year per mailbox, and it includes 10GB of storage, external POP3 and IMAP gateways and a modern webmail portal from which you can send and receive e-mails.
Pro DNSSEC support for all top-level domains
Worried about falling victim to one of the many security risks on the internet? Then take a moment to generate DS records for your domain and Porkbun will propagate them to the root zone for free. Doing this ensures that even if the nameserver for your site goes down, no hackers can impersonate it and steal your visitors' personal or financial information.
Pro Sincere, personal touch to all interactions
The support team is very pleasant to deal with and small enough that personal relationships can easily be formed. The promise of responses to support requests in under an hour is almost universally observed and even their site has some fun (who doesn't like pictures of playful piglets while their SSL certificates are generated?) instilled in it.
Pro Accepts Bitcoin
They accept Bitcoin as a form of payment for all services.
Pro Free website builder and hosting at Weebly
All domains at Porkbun can take advantage of Weebly's very popular website builder, complete with hosting for unlimited content pages and an e-commerce shop for five items. Of course many features are locked out until you pay for a hosting package, but you can very easily host a simple but professional looking portfolio or blog with minimal effort and greater than 99% uptime.
Pro Zero-margin fees for any registrations
Cloudflare only charges the ICANN registration fees for the domain and does not add any own margin.
Pro Registration fee is topped up on existing paid fees
You do not loose any paid fees from other registrars because the ICANN fees you pay to Cloudflare are put on top of existing balances. This means you can move your domain at any time without losing any pre-paid fees.
Pro Automatic SSL for your website
Even if you do not have SSL on your web server, Cloudflare automatically provides a free SSL certificate if enabled.
Pro Deep integration into Cloudflare ecosystem
The registration is deeply integrated into the existing Cloudflare ecosystem. You basically do not have to leave Cloudflare's website to manage any part of your domain.
Pro Zero-margin fees for any registrations
Cloudflare only charges the ICANN registration fees for the domain and does not add any own margin.
Pro Zero-margin fees for any registrations
Cloudflare only charges the ICANN registration fees for the domain and does not add any own margin.
Cons
Con No wildcard/catch all email forwarding
Con Unable to set custom name servers
By using CloudFlare as Registrar, you are forced to use their nameservers.
Con Bad support
Only email support available for free user. If something happens to your account or domain, you can send an email and have to wait 1-2 weeks to get an answer from a person.
Con Limited TLDs available
Due to the service being in early access the available TLDs are limited but may be extended later.
Con Existing domains only at the moment
It seems that you cannot register new domains trough the registrar but only move existing domains to the service.