Teach me: Buying a domain

I am considering a change/addition to business.  I think a website and email from that site would be a good thing to have.  I have never bought a domain.  I went to go daddy and found a domain available.  G-daddy says that the domain is 99cents the first year and $17.99 the following year.  Does it continue to go up in price every year there after?  

I am naive, is there somewhere other than G-daddy to buy these from?  What is the best way to proceed so as to not have the name get held hostage to escalating prices?  

No they just discount the first year.  I've not heard good things about godaddy.  I use pairnic for my domains and pair for my webhosting.

You searched for a domain? You have 24 hours to buy it before a bot does and the price sky rockets.

RevRico said:

You searched for a domain? You have 24 hours to buy it before a bot does and the price sky rockets.

 

There seems to be some truth to this  

I've had my domain name since 1998, I think.

I registered the name through one source, and web hosting through another, and later transfered both.  It would be good to do it all in one.

I think I originally registered through tucows.  I'm now registered and hosted through justhost.  A buddy did his business through 1and1.  It probably doesn't matter.  You can read reviews of each hosting service, if you can trust that the glowing reviews are not "plants."

The registration is pretty cheap, and does not seem to increase much if at all.  Hosting the site is pricier, though you could do a "domain forwarding" and have it go to your facebook site or something.  There is more clout in you@your-domain.whatever vs. you@free-email-host.somthing.

As a true nerd - I registered my kids' names as domain names when they were born.  They don't know yet.

I used namecheap the last few times. 

I use hover.com - they seem to be generally a bit cheaper than G-Father and the advantage is that they're only doing domain stuff, so they don't end up selling you assorted overpriced crap.

While you technically don't "own" the domain name (you rent them), you can move them to a different provider if you're not happy with your current one and it's a reasonably simple process as well. I generally don't like getting domain names from the place I'm getting hosting from as it tends to complicate matters if you're moving things.

Another domain registrar I hear good things about is gandi.net. I've been meaning to try them but haven't got around to that yet.

Also, if you need basic webhosting I might be able to help as I'm running a webserver for my own stuff anyway. Depends a little on the traffic.

Yes, I know it all seems to come with the slimy-ness that is the internet.  Then, I'll just have to act soon.  

My website goals are very limited at this time.  I just want to be able to get an email address @ my domain name and have a front page, contact page for potentials who may contact us or research us.  

Apparently Google sells domains, too? domains.google.com

Looking at my ebay name for a domain name and for .com, it'll cost me $12/year.

In reply to John Welsh (Forum Supporter) :

I'm speaking a bit with a forked tongue here because I do run my own email server, but I've also been running those since the late 90s. For email, I would go to a straight up email provider like Fastmail or Protonmail (or hey.com whenever it gets released). Yes, you'll have to pay for them to host email for your domain name, but they'll do a better job than most hosting companies who offer email as an afterthought. Especially with Google making up their own rules as usual, you want to make sure you're using someone who just does email, and does it well.

In reply to FuzzWuzzy :

They do, but given Google's history of great customer support and long running products, I'd be a bit wary. Plus I'd rather support a smaller company than one of the FAANGs.

$12 is pretty cheap though, most smaller registrars charge between $13 and $15/annually for .com, although some give you discounts if you register the name for multiple years and/or if you have multiple domains.

SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:

RevRico said:

You searched for a domain? You have 24 hours to buy it before a bot does and the price sky rockets.

 

There seems to be some truth to this  

 

I don't know if it's a 24 hr thing but I learned not to search names I wanted prior to buying. I have a bunch of domains and use namecheap. Never had a problem with them and their customer service was good when I used it because I'm not a computer guru and needed help learning how to direct things to my online store.

when y'all say "searched for", does that mean you used a search engine to ask if your desired domain name was available, or did you just type domainnameiwant.com into the URL box and hit Enter?

In reply to SkinnyG (Forum Supporter) :

I got stampie.com just because I got tired of Stampie always being taken by some freaks that like to make ink stamps out of potatoes.  They call themselves stampies for some reason.

You can just buy a domain and "park" it, but often times get a discount on it if you host with the same company.  Most (all?) of them will have an introductory price that will ramp up after the initial pricing is over.  Like, if you pre-pay a 3 year plan, after 3 years it'll go up in price.  However, you should be able to get discounts on renewal.  Plus, if you use coupon sites when signing up, you can get the initial purchase even cheaper.

I started working for a hosting company about 6 months ago.  I'm still new to the business, so I'm learning, but the pricing structure seems equivalent to our competitors.  We tack add-ons when you buy that many people don't uncheck (like automated backup) that can raise the price a bit.

Ping me offline (my username plus @rocketmail.com) if you want more details. 

-Rob

What I found was that if I was considering certain names I wanted to use and typed domainiwant.com in googles, firefox, or other search engines that name would get locked up (although not bought by someone else) and you'd be asked if you wanted to pay an extra fee for a "specialist" to get that name. Somehow it seems the companies have a way of tracking what was searched.  Go daddy did it to me a bunch of times years ago before I figured out what was going on. Then I tested my theory and searched a scrambled bunch of letters that didn't spell anything and it got locked up requiring the additional fee if I wanted to buy that name.

I buy them through google. I have 8 of them set aside for ideas.

The latest few, express3d.com and .net and 164Red.com and .net. Maybe I never get past the domain name, but as fast as the bots buy them up, if I think there is a minor possibility I might one day want to move forward with the idea, I buy them.

I use dreamhost and have a number of websites that I host for myself and others.  I'd be happy to help if you'd like.  

Sensing that time was running out before hostage rates kick in, I grabbed what I wanted from the site Stampie recommended.  Just under $20 for 2 years ($4 first year and $15 second.)  That doesn't seem like too much.  Not really ready to do anything with it but for $20 it is there and waiting for me.  

In reply to Wally (Forum Supporter) :

I am Lord of the manor! 

I have my sites and email hosted by PairNIC too - they've always been good to deal with.

Also ended up buying one with Pair for the $20. Thanks!

Now to figure out how to use that free Weebly thing.

FuzzWuzzy said:

Also ended up buying one with Pair for the $20. Thanks!

Now to figure out how to use that free Weebly thing.

Pair can host your website as well - they have most of the common web design platforms available - Joomla, WordPress etc.