Where to Buy Your Domain & Domain Tips

When purchasing a domain for your business (or for personal use), there are many options out there. A lot of places offer a free domain if you also have your website with them. While that can be enticing, there are good reasons to keep your domain and website hosting (the place where you build your website) separate.

Control…. (to get what you want)

The main reason is control. Most web hosts don’t offer you direct control of your domain. So, if you want to set up your email with Google Apps or use subdomains to redirect parts of your site, you have to rely on them to make these changes to your domain settings for you. Plus, if you ever want to switch web hosts, it can get a bit complicated if they also have your domain.

In my experience, Namecheap (affiliate link) is the best place to register domains. I actually started out buying my domains from Dotster and was a reseller with them for over a decade. Then I moved to GoDaddy.com. And they were good, until they weren’t. For now going on 12 years my domains have been with Namecheap. Besides having the best price (which is a big reason), the other reasons to go with Namecheap are:

• Industry Leader – While their commercials may not show it, GoDaddy is the largest domain registrar in the world. They are serious about domains and are involved with all the governing bodies that make the rules for domains.
• Full DNS management – this is just a fancy way of saying you get the ability to directly edit all aspects of your domain. Some other providers charge an additional annual fee for this or have poor tools that can make this difficult.
• Privacy – Namecheap includes private registration.

Tips for Domain Registration

• Short and easy to remember should be your guiding principles when choosing a domain.
• Just the .com is enough – Unless you have a trademark name or unusually ruthless competitors, there isn’t typically a need to register other TLDs (top level domains) such as .co, .info, or .biz. The only reason you might consider an additional TLD is if you need it for a test site or if you wanted a separate  site for internal or partner use.
• Always take advantage of promotions – You can find them on the site, by searching Google for “domain registration” and clicking on a Namecheap ad or by searching for Namecheap coupon codes and using those found on typical promo code sites.
• Turn on auto-renew for domains you plan to keep – One underappreciated way to have a really bad day is for your domain to expire. If you have set up a domain to send & receive email or used it for a website, turn on auto-renew.