How To Make A Free Website Domain

How To Get A Domain Name From Namecheapcom

Namecheap is another popular website for buying domain names and getting website hosting. As their domain name prompts, they often have a lot of good deals and somewhat lower annular prices than GoDaddy, for example.

So if you love a good bargain, heres how to buy a domain name via Namecheap.

Step 1: Run your desired domain name search first and review available options. Namecheap has a really huge collection of new TLDs such as .art .digital, .luxury among 400+ other options.

Also, if your name isnt available or youd like to get some more ideas, switch to their advanced search view aka the Beast Mode:

As you can see from above, you have a lot more features to play with such as price range, suffix/prefix, and so on. This can help you drill down to that perfect domain name that is short, memorable, available, and yet cheap!

Step 2: After youve chosen the best contenders, proceed to your cart to start the checkout process. At this point, you can also add some extras and customize your order:

With Namecheap, you get a lifetime free WHOIS protection for every domain name, plus they recently added a bonus premium DNS offer . When you enable it, your domain gets yearly protection against DNS/DDoS attacks , plus ultra-fast global DNS response. This gives you some extra leverage in terms of your website speed.

On top of that, you can select some affordable up-sells such as:

Also, you can play around with your renewal. Namecheap provides a small discount for 2+ years.

Why You Should Consider Paying More Than Free For Your Website

Editors Note: I highly recommend using BlueHost for your first website, and you can get started now at only $3.95/month. BlueHost make it incredibly easy to get a new site up with their one-click automatic WordPress Blog installation.Making a website for free with your own custom domain sounds like a great way to save money.

However, in the long run, free websites are rarely a smart way to proceed.

For example, free web hosting providers will not usually allow you to display your own advertisements on the site. In fact, many of these sites will display their own advertisements

Another problem is that when you sign up for free hosting, your website will go ridiculously slow especially if you have images or videos hosted on your site. Web hosts cant afford to give free users oodles of bandwidth, so youll end up getting whatever trickle of bandwidth is left over after the paid users have had their fill.

Many free web hosts will also fill your website with their own branding. They may not let you edit the footer of your website, for example, which is where they display a link to their own site and other branded information. Not only is this unprofessional but it can encourage users to click away from your own site.

One final problem is the lack of storage space. Free web hosts may only provide you with 20MB to 100MB of storage space, for example, which is hardly enough to upload more than a handful of images.

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So Which One Should You Choose

If youre creating an eCommerce store, go with BranchBob or Shift4Shop. Theyre both free and come with robust features for you to sell online for free. Although, if you reside in the US, Shift4Shop has a slight advantage as they have more advanced features built-in.

If you just need a beginner-friendly website builder to build a simple website for your business or personal site, then ConvertKit, BigCartel, Ucraft, and Google Site are great.

But if you need maximum customizability, advanced plugins, and blogging features, WordPress is undoubtedly the best tool for it.

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Add Interactions And Animations Without The Added Headaches

Before Webflow, creating animations and interactions involved working with tedious code, or bribing one of your developer friends with pizza to do it for you. With Webflow, you can forget about wrestling with code and keep that large pepperoni pizza for yourself.

Interactions and animations are super easy. Our multiple triggers and effects open up a world of design possibilities that all work beautifully across browsers and mobile devices. Just a few clicks in our intuitive interface and youâll have fun, engaging animations and interactions that will improve navigation as well as creating a fun and visually exciting experience for the user.

Less Design Time Means More Creativity

Your workflow should flow like a river â not a sputtering faucet. Webflow keeps you moving with easy-to-use prebuilt components so you can design faster and style elements with ease.

Webflowâs prebuilt components include navigation, sliders, tabs, forms, lightboxes â and so much more. And of course, you can adjust every detail of these components, including typography, colors, and more. Every detail is yours to make your own. And with our Symbols feature, you can style components to perfection, then reuse them across your site with a click of a button.

This lets you spend more time on whatâs important â shaping your website to fit your creative vision.

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Do I Need A Domain Name

Yes, every website on the internet needs its own domain name for visitors to be able to find it. A custom domain name can make your websitelook professional online. It builds your brand, makes your website more memorable, and helps visitors find you online. With Website.com,you can start with a free website name, and all premium Website.com plans include a professional custom domain at no additional charge!

Domain names are vital to anyone’s online presence, but its value is also often undervalued. Problems can arise when domain names are leftto expire or become open for anyone to register under their name, from identity theft and impersonation to extortion and malware injection.This is why Website.com offers domain auto renewal when you have an active plan subscription, to help prevent these problems from appearing.

Are Custom Domain Names Free How Much Do They Cost

While a domain name itself is not free, you can get one for free from Website.com.

The cost of a domain name depends on where youre buying it from, as well as the domain extension youre buying. For example, country-specific domain names such as .ca and .co.uk are generally more expensive than the generic .com or .net. A .com domain name typically costs around $10 to $15 per year.

Many other website builders tag on a free 1-year domain registration when you sign up for an annual service plan. But, the free domain offered by Website.com is different in two ways:

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Also Check: How Do I Transfer A Domain From Godaddy

Site Speed And Tech Support

Your website loading speed is also important. You don’t want to lose visitors just because your site takes a long time to load. Twenty-four-hour technical support is vital if you’re creating a website yourself and need help when you get stuck, even if that’s the middle of the night. Finally, although pricing shouldn’t be the main yardstick you use to measure a good website builder, you don’t want to pay too much for a mediocre website builder, so compare prices as well.

Two Ways To Get A Free Top Level Domain Name

We also understand that beginners are always short of budget, so they are looking for the free or cheapest domain names. Now everyone has different prescriptions about free domain name registration and its consequences. Some say that having a free domain name will cause the most considerable credibility effect. While others say the domain name is just the website address, it doesn’t affect your credibility. The only thing that affects your online credibility is your website content or business quality.

However, according to experts, you can get the free domain name for your website and register it. So here we will share the top 2 ways to get a free top-level domain name and start your online business.

You can choose your required or suitable method as we all know everything also has some pros and cons. So go through each process and choose a convenient way to get the free domain name for your website.

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How To Set Up A Free Domain With Site Builder Plans

Easily connect or get your free domain by upgrading your Wix account.

Site builders offer a much easier way to build a business website. For example, with Wix, all you need to do is create a free account, select a template, and customize your site based on the elements of your choice. When youre ready to go live, click the Publish button in the upper right-hand corner of the site editor to upgrade to a paid plan that includes a free domain.

Wix throws in a free domain starting from $16 per month . In general, all-in-one site builders like Wix and Squarespace are much more pricey than the drag-and-drop WordPress builders provided with web hosting plans, but they are also more beginner-friendly.

Still, before purchasing a site builder plan, see what inclusions it comes with. Wix, for example, doesnt offer free business email on any of its plans, but Squarespace offers a free Google Workspace plan for one year with all plans except the base tier Personal plan.

Here are the best site builders that provide domains for free for the first year with paid plans:

Want more help deciding which is right for you? Get the complete breakdown of the best website builders for small businesses to see all the platforms with a free website domain.

How To Get A Domain Name For Free

To get a free domain name, you just need to purchase one of our Premium or Business shared hosting, WordPress hosting, or Cloud hosting plans. Free domain registration is available for the first year. The free domains include .com and other professional extensions to help establish your sites credibility.

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Pay For A Business Email Service

Along the same lines as paying for a site builder plan and receiving a free domain, you can pay for a business email service and receive a free domain. Places like GoDaddy will allow you to pay for a business email account while receiving a free domain for the first year.

Keep in mind the drawbacks that we mentioned in the last section. With some of these services, you will have to pay any ICANN registration fees for your domain. You also will have to begin paying fully for the domain in year two and beyond, and some of these renewal rates can be quite high.

Do your homework before you try to obtain a free domain name by subscribing to a business email service. You may find that its a better deal to just pay for a web hosting service like Hostinger to receive your free domain name.

Bluehost Free Domain Name And Hosting For WordPress

Bluehost is a recognizable leader of the niche and the number one hosting provider officially recommended by WordPress. The platform comes with lots of advantages that distinguish it from the competitors. These include one-click WordPress installation, abundance of integrable scripts and plugins, strong uptime rates, fast page load speed, affordable pricing, eCommerce features, localized SEO and content marketing options, widgets and apps for business websites and many more.

Bluehost provides extensive free domain name connection options included into its subscriptions. The choice of the most suitable plan should depend upon your website type, complexity, structure and some other crucial aspects like storage space, bandwidth, extra SSL connection options, email accounts, security options etc. Whatever plan you decide to pick, you will get a domain name as a bonus without having to pay for it.

Its up to you to choose the most suitable solution that works best for your project and comes up to your individual web design needs. Whatever option you eventually pick, you will get a possibility to get a domain name absolutely for free.

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Content Management Managed Visually

If content is king of the web, then no website creator is complete without a built-in content management system . And while many website creators do include a CMS, theyâre often either extremely limited or require extensive knowledge of PHP and/or database languages to customize.

Webflow CMS is different.

Whatever your content is â whether itâs a landing page, portfolio, blog to grow your online presence, sell products with an online store, app reviews, team member bios, whatever â you can structure and format it exactly the way that you want it, without even thinking about code. Itâs a level of customizability you wonât find with WordPress unless youâre a developer.

Webflow is also the first site builder that lets you access and design with your content, so you can immediately test your ideas and make optimizations with a full suite of enterprise-grade SEO tools And any changes you make to content on one page will automatically cascade across your site.

What To Consider When Choosing A Website Builder Platform

The best website builder is the one that best fits your needs. Ask yourself some of these questions about your new website:

• What type of site will it be?
• What key features do you need?
• Are you running an online store? If so, how big will it be? Some website builders have Ecommerce plans that limit the number of items you can sell per month.
• What is the vibe of your business?

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How Do I Start Selling Online

You can design your online store for free and start taking payments in minutes with GoDaddy Payments, but if you want a fully-featured online store, youll need to purchase the Ecommerce plan. Heres what you do:

Creating An Account With WordPress

WordPress will ask you to create an account with your name, email and username. Then youll be asked to find a domain. Using the same example, when you search for mybusinessname, WordPress will offer you available alternatives you can purchase.

The fully free version will look something like this: www.mybusinessname6838183.wordpress.com. Of course, this isnt exactly pretty or easy to remember, which is good to keep in mind and may make Weebly or Wix a more desirable choice.

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Webflow Is Your Starting Point And Endpoint For Web Design

Whether youâre starting from scratch or want to use a template, Webflow gives you a running start, so you can create a website quickly.

Choose from one of our 100+ HTML5 responsive templates for your blog, business, or portfolio. Our professionally designed templates will give you a solid framework for creating a website youâll love. And you can customize every element of our templates with the code-free Webflow Designer, so you get complete control over the final look and feel. Youâll never want to use one of those cookie-cutter templates offered by other free website builders again. And with our preview feature, youâll be able to see exactly how your website will look and function on any device.

Which Free Website Builder Is Best For Ecommerce

Now that weve seen its possible to have a website at no cost, you might be wondering if you can also create free online stores. Weve taken a look at these four tools and checked their offer:

Find more alternatives in our guide to the best free ecommerce website builders.

In a nutshell, if youd like a really simple, free ecommerce site, our recommendation would also be Square. Feature-wise they offer much more than all the other store builders in this test. Another option to sell online is Ecwid, but youll need to already have a website to add this ecommerce plugin.

Also, we would only recommend a free store if you have means, other than Google, of getting traffic to your website. Without being able to use your own domain name, it will be rather difficult to receive organic search engine traffic. You can find low-cost options in our best ecommerce website builder guide.

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It’s More Expensive To Get It Free

I subtitled this article “The High Price of ‘Free’“because as you can see from above, it’s really more expensive in the long run not to get your own domain name. Domain name prices are cheap,at about $10 a year , so it’s really wiser to justbuy a domain for your site before you start out.Even if you really decide to abandon your website later, you’ll only have lost that $10 . But if your sitereally takes off, that paltry sum will become a worthwhile investment that pays off many times its original amount.

Copyright © 2009-2020 by Christopher Heng. All rights reserved.Get more free tips and articles like this,on web design, promotion, revenue and scripting, from .

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