Free subdomain?

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Hello all,

Is there a place that provides a free subdomain that works as a paid top level domain - and has been operating for many years, so you know they will stick around for a long time without issues?

Have you ever used them? Have experience to share?

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I haven’t used them in a few years myself, but NoIP are really good for this

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I think afraid.org is pretty legit. Been around for years, full DNS like you’d have on a “real” domain and it’s free.

Here’s a list of domains you can use, which include quite a few LL.LL domains:

Generally, you’d be better just getting a proper domain, but I think the above is as a close as you’ll get without having to pay anything.

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4

Some free stuff I had (~10 years ago) used were:
*.co.nr → https://www.freedomain.pro/
*.co.cc → appearently shut down in 2012
*.co.vu → https://codotvu.co/
*.tk → http://www.dot.tk/
*.eu.org → https://nic.eu.org/ for european individuals and non profit organisations

Edit:
Versio is currently registering .nl domain names for €0.49 for a whole year.

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5

And that €0.49 includes a complimentary ‘.online’ registration too, if you don’t like the idea of a geographic domain. Again only for 12 months.

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6

Good for DDNS, but you have to keep renewing.

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eu.org is not just for Europeans! They are old-school quirky, I’ve just signed up.

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8

Glad it worked out for you! And you’re right, “This site has no relation with the European Union, despite its name.”.
It’s the .eu domains who are reserved for EU residents/companies. nic.eu.org seems to be free for all.

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9

.ORG being sold to a private fund is so weird…
.ORG and country specific TLDs should be managed by a state org.

In Portugal, we gave away the .PT to a private entity, and all it got was more expensive, and now they are pushing for everyone to buy through resellers.

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10

Pay attention to .tk once I lost one for no apparent reason .

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11

gw.to is a good choice

wip.la is also good

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13

Thanks everyone for the input.

I ended up going with eu.org as they give full access including nameservers, something that Afraid.org and No-IP did not provide.

Also I found out:

  • .co.nr is dead, apparently .NR domain registrar asked them to shut down
  • .tk: Freenom is no longer registering domain names, apparently they have some ongoing lawsuit with Meta and others
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14

Why not buy a domain name for $12

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For production use of course a real top level domain is the way to go.

But for personal use and testing use, where it will literally just be seen by me or a few others (and not intended to be shared publicly).

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*.eu.org is a good choice. Get one free on nic.eu.org.

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18

For this, I use subdomains on one of the domains that I own

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Another fun option of subdomains on “wip.la” and “cluster.ws” through GitHub - Olivr/free-domain: Get a cluster.ws & wip.la domain for free and instantly
Requires you to use the DNS on DO/Linode/Vultr/CouDNS/FreeDNS/Hetzner/AWS/Google and then add your subdomain on their document – fully CI-automated.