The .com purist advice is sound but you're not getting four-letter domain names that way, and in some ccTLD zones you can still.

I was price-gouged out of owning a single, rare .icu domain when renewal fee for it went from 20 usd to 220 usd overnight, just for this one domain... I'm pretty sure it's not Gandi, but the TLD opetator, because other .icu domains I've had were fine. I decided to eventually abandon them all anyway. Moved away from Gandi later when they started doing gouging of their own, too.

What is HN's opinion on Dynadot?