I have had good luck with Hover. I don’t think it’s a problem of no good ones. It’s just a problem of the community hasn’t rallied around a de-facto “good” registrar, like they have with SSL certs.
So there it’s a bit more nebulous which leaves room for bad actors.
Not that I am arguing for a de-facto one, there are two sides to the coin, putting all our eggs in let’s encrypt might not be the wisest choice in the long run, although so far it seems ok, but does have its drawbacks.
i gotta speak highly of nearlyfreespeech.net here.
i don't need much registrar service; and they provide all i need. no fuss, no trouble, for 16 years and running.
I first registered domains before they cost money. I think the sleaze began to accumulate at NetSol about a year before they were allowed to charge
The dream of charging everybody on earth, periodically, for a database entry. the ultimate rent seeker's money printing machine. AT&T ever realizes they're now in the same business I expect them to jump in too.
Unless you're a big player, then yes, you are a reseller.
The margins are thin, and you're often competing with the whole world for some of the higher level, non-country domains.
I've had good experience with Porkbun. I like it more than Hover, which I had previously. But both of these have been far better than most of the "big" alternatives.
I rather like namecheap.
Cloudflare.com doesn't charge more than what the top level registrar charges them.
NameSilo.com includes quite a few features (Privacy and email forwarding) that the sleazy registrars try to upsell.