Equinnovation : Websites : Save Money - Register Your Own Domain Name

Save Money— Register Your Own Domain Name

Why You Should Register Your Own Domain Name:

Most website developers or designers will register your domain for you, so you don't need to worry about the technical aspects of domain registration. But there are plenty of good reasons to register your own domain name:

Save Money: Registering a domain for your equine website takes a bit of work, especially the first time. It is only fair that your website designer will charge you something for the time involved in the registration and setting up the DNS entries. But if you are willing do this part yourself, you can save your web designer time and yourself money. When you register your domain name yourself, you can select the registrar with the best price. Since the price for domain registration varies from $4 to $35 depending on the registrar, and the cost will be passed on to you by your website designer, it is easy to see that choosing a lower cost option will save you money.
Don't Let Your Name Get Taken: Even if your horse business isn't ready for a website, or you have not decided who will design or host your site, you can grab the names that you want now.
Maintain Control: When you register your own name, you will be listed as the registrant (owner) of the name, as well as it's technical and administrative contacts. You also have the ability to sell your domain name to someone else. While most website designers are ethical, there are some who will register a client's domain name under their own name. If the client and designer split in the future, the ownership of the name becomes a point of contention.
Make Your Website Portable: If you are the registrant, technical contact, and administrative contact for your website's domain name, you are free to move your website to a different hosting company or another web design firm. If your current designer is the registrant or the technical contact, you may have difficulty or a time delay in transferring your domain. Whether you are moving from one domain registrar to another, changing website design firms, switching to a different hosting company, or selling your domain name, being listed as the registrant and contacts makes movement that much simpler.

There are two drawbacks to registering your own domain. First, you need to become a little bit familiar with how the registration process works, and how to set up your DNS entries (unless your web developer will do that for you).

Second, you may get junk mail through the post office and email from companies that will try to trick you into changing registrars or hosts. If you fall for one of these tricks, it can be a big hassle to straighten out. So the best course of action is to register your name with a cost-effective registrar, pay the renewal fee as it comes due each year, and leave it at that.

Where to Register Your Domain Name:

There are a lot of places you can register domain names for your horse business. These companies offer essentially identical service but the prices vary from $4 to $35 for a one year registration depending on the domain extension (.com, .net, and .org cost more). Since there is no difference in value between the services, I recommend choosing the company with the best prices. I register all of the domain names for my own businesses and for my clients at GoDaddy.

GoDaddy was one of the first companies to offer domain names at low prices, and they continue by offering specials for registering certain domain extensions. The fee for registering a "top level" domain name—such as the best choice, .com—is only $8.95, plus a $0.25 fee to ICANN (the global domain registration authority. That brings the total for each domain to only $9.20 per year, with added discounts for registering the name for longer than one year.

GoDaddy also has specials on the less-favored extensions, such as .biz, .info, and so forth. For example, those extensions have been on sale as low as $3.99 plus the $.25 ICANN fee. The low price makes it appealing to register your domain name with various extensions in order to keep other people from snapping them up.

Save Money—

(The link will open a new browser, so you won't lose your place on the Equinnovation website)