Choosing Who to Register Your Domain Name With

Web hosting companies seem to be all over the internet these days. All offering many services for webmasters including domain name registration. However there are some things to consider when purchasing your domain name, and as the old saying goes, you get what you pay for.

Due to the number of companies that now offer domain name registration, the competition has grown fierce and prices are slashed in order to get new customers. Because of this, some companies that offer ultra cheap domain name registration also throw some stipulations that could hurt you in the long run.

For instance I've seen domain names advertised for as little as $2.99. However this particular company states in their terms that if you do not host your website after registration that additional fees may be applied. Other companies offer them as a package deal, which means that you may not have control over your domain without jumping thru hoops and playing the waiting on email game. Some companies also offer a free domain with web hosting. However be weary of this as to when you close your hosting account, you may loose your domain since it is a package deal.

The best way to tell is to read the company's terms of service and search around the internet for comments made by users of the company. As this applies to most companies on the internet, domain name registrars are no different.

It's best not to look for the cheapest, but figure out what you need in a domain name service. If you plan on switching the DNS servers, make sure they offer access for you to do so. I had a website that was registered with one of these companies and it took nearly three months before the DNS was set up to my new server. Causing mass confusion on the part of my users, not to mention the money lost due to lack of visitors and such.

So in order to find a good domain name registration service, my advice would be to figure out what kind of control you want in a domain name. Then search for companies that offer that kind of control. Once you've found the domain name registration company you would like to use, do a little research and see if you can find problems other users have had. Usually what I look for is not the problem itself but how it was handled by the tech support and the time it took to fix.