If you are a budget domain owner, go ahead and keep doing that. As I getting deeper into the fact behind domain registration, I start to realized that there is different between them. And now I will compare the features and then the price.

Domain name that is selling cheap usually are using single domain nameserver. Even they are giving you two nameserver for the domain. The primary nameserver and the secondary nameserver. And the two server are probably located in the same datacenter, and that's it. Selling few hundreds domain name, and everyone is pointed to these two servers. Could you imagine the load when you are having 500,000 domain names on them?

When quality become the main concern, you will need to look for domain registration with multiple dns at different location. Yes, there is such solution. For example hostgator domain name is selling at $15 per year, and they are using multiple DNS servers group and redundantly located in few locations. http://www.hostgatorreview.org/hostgator/hostgator-domain/ . Its like having remote backup for your domain name as well.

When you are having redundant backup facilities like this one, your downtime will become minimum. And easily goes beyond industry standard. Now, think again when you look for $1 domain name.