Just pick one from each list and ship.

Three categories, five picks each. English docs, sane pricing, decent support. No fluff — just what's good and what isn't.

① Domain Registrars

1. Namecheap

   What

   The default budget registrar a lot of devs use.

   Good

   Cheap first year and renewal, free WHOIS privacy, decent dashboard.

   Bad

   Upsells everywhere at checkout, support is hit-or-miss.

2. Porkbun

   What

   Indie-favorite registrar with playful UX.

   Good

   Near at-cost pricing, free WHOIS + email forwarding, no upsell games.

   Bad

   Smaller team, support replies are slower on weekends.

3. Cloudflare Registrar

   What

   At-cost domains, zero markup.

   Good

   Cheapest renewals on the market, pairs perfectly with their DNS/CDN.

   Bad

   Transfer-in only — you can't register a brand new domain. Limited TLD list.

4. GoDaddy

   What

   The big mainstream brand, recognized everywhere.

   Good

   Massive TLD selection, real phone support, frequent promos for year one.

   Bad

   Renewals are expensive, default settings push add-ons you don't need.

5. Name.com

   What

   Solid mid-tier registrar owned by Identity Digital.

   Good

   Clean UI, reliable, decent support, good for managing a few dozen domains.

   Bad

   Not the cheapest on renewals.

② Cloud Servers

1. DigitalOcean

   What

   The classic indie/startup cloud.

   Good

   Predictable flat pricing, great docs, one-click app images.

   Bad

   Network egress gets pricey at scale, fewer regions than the giants.

2. Vultr

   What

   Bare-metal-ish VPS with lots of locations.

   Good

   30+ regions, hourly billing, cheap "High Frequency" plans for small APIs.

   Bad

   Support is ticket-only, slower than DO.

3. Hetzner

   What

   German provider with absurdly cheap, beefy machines.

   Good

   Best $/core/RAM in the industry, dedicated servers for VPS prices.

   Bad

   EU/US locations only, stricter signup checks, no shiny managed services.

4. AWS EC2 / Lightsail

   What

   The 800-pound gorilla. Lightsail is the simplified VPS slice.

   Good

   Every region, every service, every integration you'll ever need.

   Bad

   Bill anxiety is real — egress and "small" services add up fast.

5. Linode (Akamai Connected Cloud)

   What

   Veteran VPS, now backed by Akamai's network.

   Good

   Flat pricing, generous transfer, strong community guides.

   Bad

   Newer managed services still maturing post-acquisition.

③ CDN

1. Cloudflare

   What

   The default CDN/WAF for most of the web.

   Good

   Free tier covers most indie projects, Workers + R2 unlock serverless edge.

   Bad

   Pro/Business jumps in price, support on free is community-only.

2. Bunny.net

   What

   Cheap, fast, no-nonsense CDN + edge storage.

   Good

   Pay-as-you-go from $0.005/GB, excellent video delivery, simple dashboard.

   Bad

   No fancy WAF rules, smaller PoP footprint vs Cloudflare.

3. Fastly

   What

   Developer-grade CDN with VCL/Compute@Edge.

   Good

   Instant purge, fine-grained rules, used by GitHub/Shopify/NYT.

   Bad

   Pricing assumes you have traffic; overkill for a portfolio site.

4. AWS CloudFront

   What

   AWS's global CDN, deeply tied to S3/Lambda@Edge.

   Good

   Generous free tier (1 TB/month), works seamlessly with S3 buckets.

   Bad

   Config has a learning curve, billing tied to your AWS account.

5. KeyCDN

   What

   Swiss boutique CDN, pay-as-you-go.

   Good

   Honest per-GB pricing, instant purge, free SSL.

   Bad

   Smaller scale, fewer PoPs in APAC/LATAM.