I was also with a provider that didn’t offer API access for the longest time. When they then increased prices, I switched, now paying a third of their asking price per year at a very good provider.
I guess migrating is difficult if the provider doesn’t offer a mechanism to either dump the DNS to a file or perform a zone transfer (the later being part of the standard).
Can only recommend INWX for domains, though my personal requirements aren’t the highest.
I worked in software certification under Common Criteria, and while I do know that it creates a lot of work, there were cases where security has been improved measurably - in the hardware department, it even happened that a developer / manufacturer had a breach that affected almost the whole company really badly (design files etc stolen by a probably state sponsored attacker), but not the CC certified part because the attackers used a vector of attack that was caught there and rectified.
It seemingly was not fixed everywhere for whatever reason… but it’s not that CC certification is just some academic exercise that gives you nothing but a lot of work.
Is it the right approach for every product? Probably not because of the huge overhead power certified version. But for important pillars of a security model, it makes sense in my opinion.
Though it needs to be said that the scheme under which I certified is very thorough and strict, so YMMV.