For those unaware, Njalla is an anonymous domain registrar though I’m hoping many of you already know.
What are your thoughts on Njalla? I’ve got a domain with them already and renewal is coming up this August, but I’m kinda feeling doubt with their Trustpilot reviews.
- Is Trustpilot even accurate?
- Who are all those one-star reviewers?
- Is Njalla a scam? Has anyone here had good experiences with them?
The website there is just my personal website. There’s not much “shady” stuff on it (lemuria.ph).
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I’m on PorkBun now, but I’ve used Njalla for a few years and had no issues with them. The reason I switched was simply because I wanted to own the domain, because with Njalla the domain isn’t actually yours, it’s registered to Njalla. Note that this is by design, in the sense that when someone looks up the domain, they won’t get your info, but Njalla’s instead. After a while, I’ve gotten less comfortable with the idea of someone else owning the domain I paid for, so I switched.
But you never truly “own” a domain anyway, you just rent it via the registrars. The registrars and registries can take it away from you at any moment anyway.
Ugh. Then I guess it’s time to reconsider my registrar again.
Why, PorkBun is great?
Actually, you need to go build a time travel machine and recreate the Internet and all its infastructure from scratch if you want to have true ownership of your domain. Or you know, just reinvent the Internet in a premodern society or something, idk.
I used them for a domain and everything was great until it wasn’t. Without warning I couldn’t access my account. Correct login info and was kicked back as incorrect. Support wasn’t responsive, and I recall reading similar stories at the time. I ended up not able to renew my domain and I lost it.
Did Njalla keep the domain forever or did they not renew it such that you could simply go straight to the registrar to take it back?
Additionally, what did you do exactly with the domain that may have motivated Njalla to just… do such a thing?
I used the domain for my job as a teacher, mostly for redirecting complicated links into simple ones my students could remember. It was easier for my elementary students at the time to memorize my redirect than trying to navigate to the links section on our online classroom.
I never did anything that would be against any TOS, but when I went to login about a month before renewal I was locked out. Support never responded, and I gave up after reading that many people had the problem and were unsuccessful in regaining access to their domain. I didn’t try to take it back because shortly after it expired I changed grade levels and the domain would no longer make sense in my new position.
I get the impression they are ok though expensive. I’ve never used them. You could ask on a hosting forum like lowendspirit.com.
Not many results for Njalla there, just someone saying they have a few of them through Njalla but offering no thoughts of the service
Try posting a question there. I think new accounts have to be manually approved so it may take a day or so before you can post, but it’s a good forum if you’re into self hosting.
Techlore recommends Njalla. However, it is expensive. I use NameCheap and EU.ORG, with deSEC as my website DNS in both cases.
Yeah, I’m on the .ph top-level domain, one of the more expensive ones. I blame the price on the registrar, not Njalla.
I’ve heard nothing but good things about it. The only issue I’ve ever seen people call out is that by the very nature of the business, you don’t actually own the domain you register on Njalla. You’re basically renting it from them.
Is it any different from the others i.e Namecheap or Porkbun?
getting a domain means renting it, you have to constantly renew it, you can’t outright buy a domain. although njalla takes it a step further and rent it on your behalf, you’re still the custodian of said domain but they can take actions on your domain without your input.
I have a few personal domains registered with Njalla and have for years with no issues. They’re not hosting anything shadier than a Jellyfin login (on a non-Njalla server) - and so I’m not worried about getting denied access. And I like not having my real details in the WHOIS.
As far as I know, Njalla is a great service. However, when you buy a domain from them, they retain ownership of the domain and submit their own information instead of yours. In contrast, if you purchase a domain from Namecheap or another registrar, you own the domain, but it’s not anonymous, even if you use WHOIS protection.
I had one through them. I had an issue where the registry (not registrar, this was gen.xyz that did it) took the domain because abuse (I have no clue what). Njalla’s support was completely unhelpful, so I moved to porkbun, and I must say, porkbun was indeed an oddly satisfying experience.
As for your questions, I don’t know one or two, but I can tell you njalla wasn’t a scam as of a month or two ago when I used it.
Were you able to take back your domain using Porkbun, or did you have to use a completely different one?
Different one. Luckily nothing truly public facing.
Splendid experience. Favorite feature: manage DNS records via API.
I’ve been using a njalla domain for my personal website and selfhosted stuff like git, gist etc. and it just works so far.
They have a pretty clear stance publically afaik - if you do something illegal, they kick you out without explanations. I have no opinion on that. But it seems that lots of people who tried to host something illegal there play innocent on social media and cry about how njalla took their domain. So as a result the service seems unreliable.
I had a domain with them but at the time auto-pay was “auto-pay-from-acct-balance” as opposed to “auto-pay-with-the-credit-card-we-have on-file”
So i missed the renewal date, paid more to renew within grace period, and then transferred to a registrar with actual auto pay.
Otherwise they were great for that first year and i had no issues
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https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/issues/1150#issuecomment-1890855255
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if you care about “free speech” and talk about controversial stuff, whey won’t do business with you.
And I don’t check my email every single day. Scary.
Nitter ended up getting their domain back though.. However, the good ending doesn’t always happen.
Thankfully I don’t have anything “controversial” on my website.
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