[Someone1234]

Everything you said is correct.

But really all registrars boil down to two "types" the sub-$20/year ones (which are like 90% of the market) and then the $1K+/year ones which bundle in all kinds of brand protection products and domain protection stuff (e.g. Mark Monitor).

Neither Google or Name Cheap are different enough for price to be a deciding factor, but NameCheap has a better track record than Google in this specific space. GoDaddy is someone I wouldn't touch even if they were cheaper, I hate their bullshit (e.g. upsell, misleading checkout, misleading prices, etc).

If you could pay $5 extra a year and get better service, if it was a business website I'd definitely consider it, but for personal shit I wouldn't, and in general there is no way to spend just $5 or similar more a year and get any marked improvement.

The only thing which might be an upgrade is $12/year for the registrar and then $6~7 for Route53 on top. That's a nice improvement for an extra few bucks.

[zippergz]

Not to derail too much, but I have worked with MarkMonitor, and their price is FAR less than $1k/yr per domain. Much closer to the $20 end, though I'm sure it depends on the specific deal, and I'd guess they probably have some minimum number of domains they'd want to manage for it to be worth it to them.