Gandi was acquired by Total Webhosting Solutions, then flipped to a private equity firm. Their "no bullshit" marketing is from before that. I don't know if the privacy policy changed post-acquisition, but I don't trust private equity with personal data.
I moved to iwantmyname. New Zealand based, privacy included, small enough that an acquisition would be news.
I made a spreadsheet.
Registrar | Privacy | Base .com | Notes
Cloudflare | Included | At-cost (~$9) | DNS lock-in
Porkbun | Included | ~$10 | US based
Gandi | Included | ~$15 | Acquired, policy unclear
OVH | Included | ~$8 | Loss leader, panel pain
Namecheap | Included | ~$11 | Was paid, now free, why?
Iwantmyname | Included | ~$15 | NZ based, small
None of them have third-party privacy audits that I could find. If someone knows one, tell me.
Is the Cloudflare have server in EU? I want GDPR. The OVHcloud is good price but I hear the support is bad. How much cost the iwantmyname for .com? Is the transfer easy?
Member
Cloudflare Registrar is just domains. Their CDN has EU nodes but that's separate. For GDPR on the registrar itself, you want EU-based or UK-based with adequacy.
I used to use 123 Reg. Privacy was upsold. Moved away. The "free privacy" providers that were always free are different from the ones that flipped.
Member
This is the real problem. We're all doing policy analysis by vibes. "Always free" versus "flipped to free" versus "loss leader." No registrar publishes privacy impact assessments for their WHOIS handling.
I self-host my blog on a Contabo VPS in Nuremberg. For domain I use Njalla. They technically own the domain, you get usage rights. Extreme, but no WHOIS data to leak because it's not yours in the registry.
This is the correct answer for actual threat model, not the question asked. Njalla is a different legal structure, not a registrar in conventional sense. If your concern is registrar breach or NSL, separating legal ownership works.
For everyone else: the original question was about registrars with included privacy. Not about restructuring ownership. We should answer the question asked or say it's unanswerable.
Following this thread. Currently on Namecheap with "free" privacy and now concerned.
It's unanswerable without audits. The closest to verifiable is Cloudflare at-cost, because their margin is zero on the domain so the data isn't the product, and they're large enough that a breach or policy change would be news. Still US-based, still NSL risk.
For EU option with included privacy and no acquisition drama, maybe Hetzner? They do domains, privacy included, German company, known for straight dealing on servers.
