Bye bye Namecheap, hello Porkbun
A few days ago I received an email that .me domains are going up in price. Unfortunate, not happy about it, and .me is already quite more expensive than .com, net, .org. But it is what it is.
Embarrassingly, I only just learned that .me is not as in ME the individual, but ME as in Montenegro and is also used by business in the state of Maine. Oops! But better late than never.
After receiving the email I wasn't too bothered in the grand scheme of things (ah yea another thing that's more expensive now, sigh), until I noticed that Namecheap will charge me $22.98 on renewal. So a registration of a new domain was going up by $1, while renewal was going up by $2. I decided to look around and understand how that price aligns and what Reddit has to say about this and stumbled on Porkbun.
I've heard about Porkbun before but haven't considered it seriously as I didn't have a reason to move my domains. After finding this Upcoming Price Increases page I was sold by transparency, but also what appears less of a markup. Not only that, but it appears that Namecheap was already more expensive, charging me about $19 for renewals, while Porkbun is $2 cheaper even before the price hike.
At this point, and without further thinking, I moved 3 of my main domains to Porkbun, and renewed them all for 8 more years. This will be my registrar of choice going forward!