Where to Buy your Domain Name

Fourth, think twice before building your online reputation on the back of someone else’s domain. Do you really want to invest hundreds of hours adding value to a subdomain of wordpress.org, blogspot.com, or myspace.com?

Sixth, as a rule of thumb, do not registrar your domain through your web hosting provider. Most likely, they are resellers and can make it difficult to transfer should you desire an alternative service. Some actually retain ownership of the domain their customers think they've purchased (make sure this doesn't happen to you).

For those who are not familiar with the process of building an online website, registering a domain secures the name and enables you to point to the server where your website is hosted. Thus, the supplier of your domain name can be considered separate from the company that hosts your web site. Web hosts often offer free domain names, which can be "ok" as long as you maintain complete control.

Seventh, keep in mind that the cost to the registrar through which you obtain your domain is $6.25. And this does not include the company’s operational costs, ICANN charges, infrastructure expenses, salaries for support, etc. Any company selling a domain for less that $6.25 is doing so at a substantial loss. Although this may be your gain, the motivation behind the discounted price is to get you to buy other products (e.g., hosting) and may be an indicator of future problems.

Finally, there are not perfect discount registrars. The inexpensive price always has some other trade-off to be considered and the best strategy is to find the one that meets your specific needs.

Having said this, here are a number of the companies I’ve dealt with through the years:

Enom – has a great reputation for reliable service and customer support. Although domain prices are high if purchased direct, there are resellers whose costs are as low as $6.95 per domain. However, when dealing with a reseller, remember to make sure you have control. [FYI - Namecheap is an enom reseller with a good reputation].

Registerfly – once an Enom reseller, Registerfly is now ICANN Accredited (apparently the transition was painful for some). My experience with their customer support has been unpleasant (they were slow and communicated poorly). Although they are not the cheapest, they have outstanding sales ($2.99 .net registration right now) and include whois privacy for free so that your name, address and phone number are not available for the world to see.

1and1 – Consistently inexpensive ($5.99/domain), 1and1includes privacy guard for free. Their domain management control panel is cumbersome but the price is right. Support is slow and some have said transferring from 1and1 is difficult. My experience has been positive although I’ve noticed that DNS changes are quite slow.

GoDaddy.com – Easy to use control panel and, from my experience, good customer support. Often coupon codes can be used to get discounted domains ($6.99) and whois privacy ($1.99). While GoDaddy has served me well, I've found that when renewal time comes, prices are generally higher, especially if whois protection is desired.

Ipower.com - Tucows/OpenSRS reseller with great deals to build a customer base and sell hosting. Although several friends have been delighted by their periodic $2.99 specials, I prefer an established registrar whose main business is not web hosting.

There are, of course, many others that will have to wait for either my experience or your comments.