I transferred a batch of domains from GoDaddy to NameSilo, and price was only part of the reason. NameSilo was noticeably cheaper at the time, but what actually pushed me to leave GoDaddy was a much rougher experience. A couple of my domains got taken away from me there, and getting them back meant paying extra just to regain control of something that was already mine. That’s not a small thing when a domain is tied to a live project.
The other piece was payment. I wanted a registrar that accepted Bitcoin properly, not as an afterthought bolted on somewhere in the checkout flow. NameSilo fit both needs, so I moved everything over and have been using it since. This NameSilo review is built on that experience, not just a read-through of the pricing page.
Quick Verdict
NameSilo is a Phoenix-based registrar that’s been around since 2010, and it’s quietly grown into one of the ten largest in the world by volume. It keeps pricing simple and throws in privacy protection, DNS management, and a few other things most registrars charge extra for.
It’s a strong pick if you want predictable renewal costs and don’t need much hand-holding. If you’re someone who wants a big brand name behind you, or a phone number to call at two in the morning, it’s worth knowing upfront that support here runs through chat and email only.
What Is NameSilo?
NameSilo was founded in 2010 by Michael Goldfarb and Michael McCallister in Phoenix, Arizona. You’ll sometimes see 1993 listed as the founding year elsewhere, but that actually refers to an old, unrelated company called Netco Energy. The registrar people use today started in 2010, full stop.
In 2018, a Canadian investment firm called Brisio Innovations acquired NameSilo, and that firm later became NameSilo Technologies Corp. That parent company trades publicly on the Canadian Securities Exchange, which is a fairly unusual setup for a domain registrar and worth knowing if you care about who’s actually behind the company holding your domains.
By early 2026, NameSilo had crossed 6 million domains under management across roughly 160 countries. That puts it in the top 1% of the more than 3,000 ICANN-accredited registrars currently operating.
NameSilo Pricing
Pricing is usually the first question anyone has, so let’s get into it.
NameSilo .com Pricing
- New registration: around $16.29/year
- Renewal: $17.29/year, the same whether it’s your first renewal or your tenth
- Transfer in: around $9.80
- WHOIS privacy: included free, no separate charge
- Discount Program: fund your account with at least $50 and .com pricing drops to $11.05/year
That renewal number matters more than it looks at first glance. Plenty of registrars hook you with a cheap first-year price, then quietly bump renewals up past $20. NameSilo does more or less the opposite. Registration and renewal sit close together, so what you pay this year is roughly what you’ll be paying next year too.
The Discount Program is where things get genuinely cheaper. Put fifty dollars into your account balance and every .com you register drops to $11.05. There’s no ongoing fee for this, and no minimum balance requirement once that first deposit is in. If you’re managing more than a handful of domains, say a small portfolio of ten or fifteen names, that difference adds up fast.
For bigger portfolios, the discount scales even further. Registering 100 or more domains brings the price down to around $8.75 each, and portfolios past 5,000 domains can land closer to $7.75. A hundred-domain portfolio at that rate runs somewhere around $875 a year, which is a real gap compared to what the same volume would cost at most larger registrars.
What Comes Free
A lot of what other registrars sell as add-ons just comes standard here.
- WHOIS privacy, hiding your personal contact details from public domain records
- DNS management, full control over your domain’s DNS records at no extra cost
- Domain Defender, protection against unauthorised domain transfers
- Email forwarding, routing a custom domain email to an inbox you already use
- Custom WHOIS records, letting you set specific contact info per domain if needed
None of this is flashy, but it’s the kind of thing that quietly saves money once you’re managing more than one or two domains. Paying five dollars a year for privacy on each of twenty domains adds up over time. Here, that cost just never shows up.
The Bitcoin Story
This is the part that gets skipped almost everywhere, and it’s genuinely interesting if you’re paying attention to how mainstream businesses have adopted crypto.
NameSilo started accepting Bitcoin back in 2014, making it the second domain registrar to do so, right behind Namecheap. That’s not some recent marketing move tacked on to catch a trend. It’s over a decade of actual history.
There’s also a detail that almost never comes up. NameSilo’s CEO has confirmed the company held Bitcoin it collected from customer payments and, at times, converted portions of it back to cash as part of normal treasury management. That’s a small but real example of a company actually holding onto the crypto it accepted, rather than converting every payment to dollars the second it landed.
Paying with Bitcoin at NameSilo works a bit differently than at some other registrars, though. You can’t just pick Bitcoin at checkout and pay for a single domain directly. Instead, you fund your NameSilo account balance using Bitcoin first, then pay for domains, hosting, or anything else out of that balance. It’s an extra step compared to a one-click crypto checkout, but it’s simple enough once you’ve done it.
What matters more, in my experience, is who’s handling that Bitcoin payment. NameSilo runs its own payment gateway for it, rather than routing crypto through a third-party processor. That sounds like a technical detail until you consider what it actually avoids: no outside payment company sitting between you and the registrar, which means no risk of that third party freezing your funds or holding a transaction for review while your domain sits there unpaid. I’ve used registrars where the crypto payment goes through some external processor, and the extra hop always makes me a little uneasy. Here, it doesn’t exist.
There’s also no KYC requirement to register or pay with NameSilo. Combined with free WHOIS privacy and a working Bitcoin gateway, that makes it a genuinely useful setup for anyone running a legitimate project who’d rather not have their name and address sitting in a public database, or tied to a registrar that wants a copy of your ID before you can buy a domain. Worth being upfront about one thing though: staying off NameSilo’s own KYC list doesn’t mean a domain is untouchable. ICANN can still request proof of ownership from a registrant if a dispute or abuse complaint comes up, regardless of which registrar you’re with.
Hosting, Email, and SSL
Domains are the main event here, but NameSilo has built a few things around them too.
Other Services
- Hosting starts around $3.85/month and includes cPanel, a WordPress installer, a free website builder, and Lite email
- SSL certificates start around $9.59/year
- Email runs through Titan or Google Workspace, with a limited free tier and paid plans above that
None of this is trying to compete with dedicated hosting companies, and it doesn’t need to. It’s more of a “keep it in one place if you’d rather” option, which works fine for a smaller site but isn’t really the reason to pick NameSilo in the first place.
For Domain Investors
If you’re managing a real portfolio rather than a single domain, two things are worth knowing about.
The NameSilo Marketplace lets you list domains for sale directly through the platform, useful if you’re holding names you plan to flip down the road. There’s also a reseller program with API access, aimed at businesses or developers who want to register domains programmatically or build domain sales into their own product.
Neither of these is going to be the deciding factor for a casual buyer registering one domain. But for someone running a portfolio of crypto-branded names, or managing domains at real scale, both are genuinely useful pieces that a lot of smaller registrars just don’t bother offering.
Support
Support runs through 24/7 live chat and email, and it’s handled in-house rather than outsourced, according to the company. There’s no phone line.
For most day-to-day issues, that’s plenty. Transfer questions, DNS changes, billing problems, all of it gets handled fine through chat. I’ve reached out a handful of times myself, and the responses were genuinely helpful rather than scripted. One time a payment on my end didn’t go through in time before a renewal deadline, and instead of letting the domain lapse, support extended it on trust while I sorted the payment out. That’s a small thing, but it’s the kind of small thing that tells you more about a company than a features page ever will.
It’s really only an issue if you specifically want to talk to a human on the phone, in which case, this probably isn’t the registrar for you.
NameSilo vs. Namecheap
Since both registrars have a long Bitcoin history and get compared constantly anyway, it’s worth putting them side by side.
| NameSilo | Namecheap | |
|---|---|---|
| .com registration | ~$16.29, or $11.05 with the Discount Program | From $9.58, often lower with a promo |
| .com renewal | $17.29, consistent | ~$13.98 to $14.78 |
| WHOIS privacy | Free | Free |
| Bitcoin accepted | Yes, since 2014 | Yes, since 2013 |
| Phone support | No | No |
| Founded | 2010 | 2000 |
Namecheap tends to win on first-year promo pricing, but NameSilo’s renewal barely moves year over year, and the Discount Program brings its effective registration cost close to Namecheap’s standard rate anyway. Which one actually costs less depends a lot on whether you’re chasing a one-time discount or planning to hold the domain for years.
Pros & Cons
Who Should Use NameSilo?
If you’ve been burned before by a cheap first-year deal that ballooned at renewal, this solves that problem directly. The price you see going in is close to the price you’ll keep paying.
If you’re managing a real portfolio, whether that’s ten domains or a thousand, the Discount Program and bulk tools make a genuine difference to your yearly costs.
And if you’re running a crypto project and like the idea of paying with Bitcoin at a registrar that’s actually been doing it since 2014, rather than one that bolted crypto payments on last year to chase a trend, NameSilo has more history here than most alternatives.
FAQ
Is NameSilo a legitimate registrar?
Yes. It’s ICANN-accredited, has been operating since 2010, and manages over 6 million domains for customers in roughly 160 countries. Its parent company is also publicly traded on the Canadian Securities Exchange.
When was NameSilo actually founded?
2010, by Michael Goldfarb and Michael McCallister. The 1993 date some sites list refers to an unrelated earlier company, not the registrar itself.
Can I pay for a NameSilo domain with Bitcoin?
Yes. You’ll need to fund your NameSilo account balance with Bitcoin first, then pay for domains or other services from that balance rather than choosing Bitcoin at checkout directly.
Does NameSilo really include free WHOIS privacy?
Yes, on all domains, with no separate charge or upsell attached.
How does the NameSilo Discount Program work?
Fund your account with at least $50 and .com registration drops to $11.05/year, with larger discounts kicking in for bulk portfolios of 100 or more domains.
Does NameSilo offer phone support?
No. Support runs through live chat and email, both described by the company as handled in-house rather than outsourced.
