Should I Buy My Own Domain Name?

Buying a domain name is one of the most important decisions when creating a website or a blog. Some web hosting companies offer a free domain name along with their hosting. The question is if you should depend on the web host’s free domain or register your own domain name at a separate registrar?

I’ll rather go for the 2nd option. Registering your domain at a separate registrar will keep you in the safe zone if ever you wish to change web host in the future. Consider this case:

You purchase a hosting package at Hosting Provider A. After some months you find that the service provided by Host Provider A is not to your expectation or maybe your website is growing and need a more powerful hosting service. To keep using the domain name which you got for free with your current Hosting Provider, you will have to change the domain nameserver to that of your New Host.

But you do not have any control on the domain. Therefore you will have to ask your current hosting provider to make the nameserver changes. Now, your current hosting provider can voluntarily slow the process and take all his time to do the change with the hope that this will discourage you for the move and you will stay with them!

Another case can be that where the Host Provider asks you an unreasonable amount of money to transfer the domain to a registrar of your choice and to your name!

I know of a friend who had a similar problem with a local hosting reseller two years ago. He was not satisfied with the hosting service and went to host his site at Hostgator. However his domain name was registered by his previous host (a reseller). He spent nearly one month and dozens of phone calls to finally get his domain transferred to his name – Having said this, I always advise anyone to purchase their own domain name.

Keep the domain name completely independent from the host. In this way whenever you need to change web hosting service, you just need to change the nameservers setting in your domain name registrar panel.

My personal favorite domain registrar is Name.com which also offer private whois at only $2 (Free with some Name.com promo codes) – Godaddy is also good but their slow panel somehow irritates me however their prices are very good.

Tagged as: buy domain name, disadvantage free domain name, domain name registrars

This article was contributed by Kurt Tewin

Kurt is a webmaster, blogger, and PHP developer who lives on the Paradise island of Mauritius and who has a crazy obsession for everything Wordpress and Blogging. He founded Icy Tips to share some of his tips with the community. He is also the owner of IC a famous multi-niche daily updated community blog and the C.E.O of Icy Evolution Ltd.

Kurt has written 24 awesome articles for us at Icy Tips