Recommendations for domain name registrar with API-support

Question

I'm building a web application that needs to register domain names programmatically.

What domain name registrars with API support fulfill the following requirements:

• Supports .COM
• Ideally cheap
• Reliable, trustworthy and should been so over an extended period of time

What API-supporting domain name registrars have you used? What are your recommendations and why?

Answer 1

Do you have an objection of becoming a domain reseller? Personally I have never used their service, but I have heard good things about eNom, their domain registration service has a pretty solid API.

Naturally, they support .com domains.

Answer 2

I have used the API of TransIP. That's a Dutch company that takes care of domainregistrations. They have a very extensive API, and it's quite easy to use. I used it with PHP, just download their files, include them and use the SOAP methods to do request. You can do things like check availability and registration, but also change DNS settings and more stuff like that.

On the downside; I'm not sure how they support international clients, as far as I know only they only serve Dutch clients (their website is in Dutch only, so).. (Edit; the documentation to the API is in English if I remember correctly)

Answer 3

Gandi.net is a very good domain registrar, and I'll recommend it for several reasons:

• serious registrar, well known french company
• documentation is clear, written in french and english
• cheap (and they do special offers from time to time)
• you can basically do whatever you want with your domains (wildcards, sub-domains, TTL...)
• you can edit your domain configuration in "easy mode" or "DNS geek mode" (edit your DNS files and enjoy their versioning system)
• their XML-RPC API is awesome and well documented.
• this is the "no bullshit(tm)" company!

The only condition, you have to be a reseller and get a prepaid account with 120€ on it (minimum). That's it.

Answer 4

I'm pretty sure with Godaddy you can become a reseller and then at that point you handle everything through API and you even get commission. Your best bet would be to call them and ask them about the specifics.

Answer 5

Dynadot.com is an excellent registrar. Their API lets you check availability of up to 100 domain names at a time, and you can register and delete domains through the API also. You need to have an account balance to register domains.

http://www.dynadot.com/domain/api.html

You need to be a bulk customer to access the API, which involves a yearly spend of $500 or more. Depositing $500 in your Dynadot account gives you immediate access to the bulk pricing. Bulk is $7.50 per .com domain and $5.99 per .net domain.

http://www.dynadot.com/company/prices_bulk.html

I have used the API several times before for digging through available domains and it is reasonably fast.

Answer 6

I suggest to use from Dynadot.com because it's cheap and supports .com

and also TransIP.nl is a good alternative.

(I know that some body introduced these services, but I wanted to share my experience)

Answer 7

You could try http://opensrs.com/ they have an API that they can provide examples in a number of languages. I have used them for years.

I believe the latest API can be found here http://opensrs.com/integration/api

Answer 8

We also ended up using Dynadot after checking out several other registrars. I also wrote this blog post on why we chose them and a quick example of how to register a domain in Ruby.

http://www.easybroker.com/blog/2010-10-domain-name-registration-api/