Choose Auto Renew Option
Auto renew is one of the most important tools at your disposal to help keep the domain names you want in your possession indefinitely. This charges to renew the domain when it comes up for expiration, and helps protect you from a wide variety of potential issues.
This way you wont just forget, or you wont lose the domain because youre away from an internet connection. This even covers if youre in a hospital or injured. If everything is set to auto renew then as long as the payment information is current, youre good to go.
Which brings up a pro tip:ALWAYS have a current backup payment on file. You dont want to lose a business domain because your old credit card expired one month before renewal and there was no backup payment plan in place.
Buying An Original Domain Name From Scratch
For many users, creating a domain name is the first step in the journey toward building a consistent, reliable online identityand that step generally involves brainstorming a catchy, original domain name or generating one with one of the many online domain name generators. With a name in mind, users can use name search tools or even a simple Google search to see if the name is available or if other names in use are close enough to cause confusion.
Buying a domain name doesnt necessarily mean making a one-time purchase and owning the name forever. A typical domain name purchase involving an original name actually means that buyers pay for the right to reserve the name exclusively for their own use. To buy rights to a domain name, a user has to register it either directly with a domain registrar or through a hosting provider for terms ranging from a year to several years. To keep rights to the name, a user must renew the registration when it expires or risk losing the name entirely.
Creating an original domain name establishes a new and unique online identity for an individual or business, but it can take time and effort to yield traffic and visibility, especially if the new domain name is poorly optimized for relevant keywords. To reduce confusion, new domain name buyers are often advised to buy as many similar names as possibleeven those with obvious misspellings that reflect mistakes people make when typing in a search bar.
Bluehost Best Shared Hosting
Bluehost is one of the most popular web hosting service providers on the market. Its known as being reliable, beginner-friendly, and affordable.
Plus, you can get a free domain name for the first year when you sign up for their web hosting services.
After the first year, you can expect to pay $12.99 per year for your domain.
Each domain name also comes with full control via an intuitive interface, DNS record access, auto-renewal options, domain locking, and 24/7 expert customer support.
Plus, Bluehosts web hosting plans are hard to beat if youre on a budget since they start at just $2.95 per month.
To get this price, however, you have to pay three years in advance. Which may sound scary at first, but building a profitable website takes time and youll save money by paying in advance.
If you decide to sign up for 12 months instead, its $5.95 per month.
However, this is still an affordable price, putting you at $71.40 for a years worth of web hosting.
You can also upgrade to a better plan as your website grows and you need more advanced hosting features.
Bluehost also offers VPS hosting, managed hosting, WordPress hosting, and dedicated hosting if you end up needing more than your shared hosting plan provides.
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Avoid Hyphens Or Numbers
You should keep your domain simple. This means avoiding using hyphens and numbers. These two are a distraction that people tend to misunderstand.
Take note that people getting to hear about a website or those who intend on buying a website dont know whether there is a character/numerical. If you make your website difficult to find, searchers will get discouraged. You may even be sending them to a competitors site.
Questions Related To Contractual Compliance Approach And Process
What is ICANN’s Contractual Compliance Approach and Process?
ICANN approach and process can be found at this link: . ICANN, in collaboration with the different ICANN stakeholders, implemented the Informal and Formal Resolution processes. The processes ensure consistency for all parties involved, including ICANN’s global staff, contracted parties and complainants.
ICANN undertakes various activities to ensure compliance with contractual obligations some of the activities are a result of complaints, some are monitoring and others are audit-related.
The complaints are received by ICANN upon submission by complainants using the web forms posted at this link: or via an email to .
The monitoring activities are ICANN-initiated, based in part on industry articles, social media postings, previous complaints, and trend analysis in an effort to proactively address any alleged failure to comply with contract terms.
Please refer to this link to learn more about ICANN Contractual Compliance Audit program and activities.
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Through A Domain Registrar
If youre buying more than one domain name or want to manage your domain and hosting services separately, you can use a domain registrar like domain.com or NameCheap.
This route makes sense if youre launching a business website and want to buy all the possible variations of your business name to prevent others from doing so. Many domain registrars offer bulk discounts but you wont be able to get your domain for free.
Check out our top domain registrar recommendations, here.
Who Actually Owns A Domain Name
No one. Its all very tricky. Just as you registering the name is basically leasing it from the domain company, so the domain company leases it, i.e. pays for the right to lease it from ICANN. But it doesnt stop there the domain name company also has to pay a fee for the different domain extensions that they use. So for instance, the Donuts startup has been given the rights to administer the .rocks top-level domain by ICANN. Each TLD is given to a certain registry operator, and then a domain company also has to pay a fee for the TLDs they want to offer to their clients.
So, you pay your registrar to lease the domain name for a period of up to 10 years. The registrar, in turn, pays charges to ICANN and to registry operators that work with specific TLDs. In the end no one actually owns a domain name.
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How Do I Permanently Buy A Domain Name
You cant. Was that too upfront? Its the truth, though domain names are just not designed to work that way. While big and small businesses have been trying to permanently own their domain names for decades, ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, has made it impossible for anyone to own a domain name for life.
In fact, even when you purchase a domain name, you dont really own it. Its more like leasing the domain name. You head over to a domain company to register a domain for a year , but youre only renting it its not really yours. Domain names are like the addresses for websites, so while you can rent yourself an address for a couple of years, and then renew the lease before it expires, you cant really own the address itself. Yep, domain names are elusive like that.
But its not all bad news! First off, theres a good reason why the ICANN designed domain names in this way. Secondly, there is a way in which you can get as close as possible to being the permanent tenant of a domain name. Read on to find out why domain names were designed to work this way, and how you can make sure that youll remain the legal registrant of your domain name for as long as possible.
Why Own Your Domain Forever
Strategic brand names
Secure your brand identity, forever. With a forever domain, your brand and company are protected from missed renewals and price increases. One less thing to worry about when running your business.
Family names and personal names
You and your family are brands. You can protect your digital brand by securing your family and personal names once and forever!
Time capsules and Archival content
For persons and organizations with unique content, it may be important to think about archival legacy. With a Forever domain and Forever hosting, it is possible to leave a footprint — Forever!
Charities and organizations
Organizations that have a steady flow of volunteers or dependent on donations are sometimes at risk of losing their domain due to non-renewal. With a forever domain, staying online is one less thing to worry about!
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How To Buy A Domain Name In 5 Steps
Before we go any further, its worth noting that its only possible to register an existing domain name with a valid domain extension that other people or businesses dont already own.
Were going to dive deeper into the steps to register a domain name from finding a trusted registrar through which to buy a websites address to finally getting into the registration process.
Here are the five steps to buy a domain:
The Advantages Of Blockchain Domains
Here are a handful of the benefits from choosing a blockchain domain over a traditional type of domain:
- When you purchase this domain it belongs to you so there are zero renewal fees involved and no risk of losing it in the future unless you wish to sell it.
- It utilizes blockchain technology and as a result, is decentralized and no organization such as a government can control your domain.
- It can be used for blockchain wallets, websites and other projects so there is greater flexibility and usability with this type of domain.
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Reasons Domain Names Might Expire
It is all too easy to overlook the fact that a domain name registration is a temporary thing. Even though at the time, the domain name is yours, and could be for years, there is still a chance for that domain to pass out of your control. There are a variety of ways this might occur:
- Renewal reminder notices: If you have switched off renewal reminder notices, you could be setting yourself up for disaster. While auto emails and notifications can clutter your inbox, they can also be lifesaving. Even if you manually switched off renewal reminders , Domain.com will begin sending reminders by email to your listed email address approximately 30 days from the domain expiration date. We guarantee you will receive at least two reminders before the expiration date and one within five days after expiration. So, pay attention to your inbox, or alter your settings to flag the words, expiration, or renewal, to ensure you dont miss these important reminders.
- Auto-renew is not enabled: By going by your account information and switching your domain name to auto-renew, you save yourself from possibly forgetting. When auto-renew is in use, it will automatically renew your domain name prior to the expiration date, generally a day before expiration. This feature will continue to run and auto-renew unless changes are made or if there are issues with your billing information.
Can I Transfer My Domain Name To Another Registry Even When Expired
Domain registries cannot stop you from transferring your domain name to another registry unless you have unpaid balances or penalties that need to be settled.
Even if expired, as the last person to register that name, you have every right to claim it for transfer. In the event the domain name has been deleted, the registry needs to recover it before you can transfer it.
There may be appropriate charges that the registry may impose on this.
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Learn How To Buy A Domain Name Forever
Before we answer the question of can you buy a domain name forever? lets answer the questions that we initiated in the intro.
ICANN, the internet corporation that oversees domain names, allows a domain to be assigned for 10 years at max. So when it comes to the domain name, Forever and Lifetime only mean as many as 10 years.
So just like Google, the same incident can happen to everyone. And if you purchase a domain name, and keep renewing it for every subsequent year, chances are more that you will face this type of situation even more frequently.
Now that the questions are answered, lets show you the way to purchase a domain name forever, 10 years to be more exact.
How Can Ionos Afford To Offer Free Domains
First of all, IONOS is not a free domain name service provider in general. We usually have very competitive pricing for our domain customers however, you will not be able to enjoy free domains all the time. The reason we can occasionally give away domains at little or no cost is that our large customer base enables us to attract a lot of registries that work with us.
One example of such cooperation might be a registry that launches a new TLD but does not intend to do all of the marketing and sales activities by themselves. Nevertheless they would like to see quick growth in their user base and to reach this goal they give IONOS very attractive offers. Then, for example, we can sometimes offer free domain registration.
On the one hand, this is a great opportunity for our customers to benefit from fantastic offers, on the other hand it can evoke the wrong impression about the hosting industry in general. In the long run, it is impossible to offer free domain name registration and cheap web hosting services at a high quality level.
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Do I Own The Domain I Have Registered
Domain names are technically digital addresses that you lease under a domain registry.
Domain registries get these domains from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers , who have control over domain names.
Hence, when you get a domain name, you are leasing it from ICANN, through a domain registry, that acts as a broker.
What happens when you register a domain name is that a domain registry checks with ICANN the domain name you plan to use and its availability.
If available, ICANN lets the domain registry award the name to you, under a lease agreement.