How to Find a Good Domain Registrar
It is easy and simple, and most of the time cheap, to register a domain name. But which company should you get your domain names from? There may be hidden fees and charges that you may not be aware of if you are blinded by their cheap advertised price. The quality of service you receive is not reflected by the price.
Your domain name is the heart of your Internet business or your website. If you for some reason lose it, you may have a long fight ahead of you to get it back that can cost you a lot of money and even more time. Don’t risk it – choose a reputable Domain Name Registrar for your domain names.
Horror story examples: How you can lose your shirt with the wrong registrar
This is luckily not my own experience, so I am just re-telling someone else’s misfortune. The person had registered 30 domains with an UK based registrar. At first, their prices were low, so he did not mind the lacking customer service.
Over time, the company started gradually, but steeply increasing their prices (remember, you pay for your domain name registrations yearly), while the quality of their service remained low. Eventually he decided to transfer his domains to another, cheaper and better, registrar. And lo – that is when he found out that the first company had introduced a charge of about $100 per domain name to agree to transfer them.
It cost him around $3,500 to transfer his OWN property to another registrar. Given that domain transfer is fully automated process, charges like the above are nothing short of highway robbery.
Other ways to lose your hair in the process of dealing with domain registrars include losing domain names in transfer to a different registrar (that has happened to me TWICE). They just vanished from the face of the earth, and it took me weeks to get them back.
With dodgy registrars you may also get double charged, charged incorrectly, and the usual signs of a badly managed or deceitful company.
Always read the small print!
How to choose a good domain registrar
- ICANN accreditation: Make sure the domain registrar is ICANN accredited. Registrars usually mention this on their websites as it adds credibility to their operation.
- Cost: Check the cost of registering your domain as well as the annual renewal price. Some companies offer cheap, or even free, offers for your first year, and then charge you an arm and a leg to renew the registration.
- User interface: Make sure that the company has an easy-to-use, streamlined control panel for managing your domains.
- Free DNS changes: If you have spent any time on my website, you will already know that I recommend getting your domain names from a different company than hosts the website. In order to point the domain name to your web host, you will need to change DNS server address. Some companies charge for this (and they shouldn’t). Make sure yours does not. Luckily, this is such an obvious rip-off that the practice has pretty much disappeared.
- Free domain transfers: You should not have to pay to transfer your name to another registrar.
- Free forwarding: You should be able to forward your domain name to a different website, as well as to forward e-mails from your new domain to other email accounts for free.
- Have privacy settings available: For a fee you should be able to purchase feature to hide the details of the owner of the domain. This feature is usually not free, and that is fair enough.
- Expiration notifications and auto-renew: Your registrar should send you automatic notifications when it is time to renew your domain, or provide an option to automatically renew when the time comes to do so.
- Domain locking: Domain locking prevents anyone from making unauthorized changes to the ownership and DNS information of your domain. Domain locking is now offered by all reputable registrars.
Remember that it is not a good idea to simply run after the cheapest price. Choose a GOOD domain registrar, not just simply a cheap one.
Read my recommendations and review for the best domain registrars here!