What Does Buying A Domain Mean

How To Get Domain Privacy Protection

What You Should Know Before Buying a Domain Name

Multiple registrars give domain privacy protection for free as long as you have a domain that was registered through that company, and as long as the TLD of that website supports privacy then it comes automatically with the domain.

If the domain name is purchased through a registrar that doesnt automatically give privacy protection, then it will need to be purchased. Prices tend to fall in the $10-15 a year range per domain.

For many that price is well worth the benefit.

Our Top Recommendations For Getting A Free Domain

If youre looking for an all-in-one website builder, a Wix paid plan is the best way to get a free domain name. However, if you want to go the self-hosted route, Hostinger and DreamHost are excellent choices for most users.

Equipped with your free domain and affordable web hosting, you have everything you need to get your new website up and running in no time.

What Is A Domain Name And How Does It Work

Almost everyone who uses the internet has heard of a domain name. But what exactly is a domain name, and how do they work? Should you have your own domain name?

No matter which Development Career Path you’re following, it’s important to understand the fundamentals of domain names. In this article , we’ll answer all of your domain name-related questions. Use the table of contents to jump to a specific section.

Getting started with your website

Connecting The Dots: Domain Names Websites And Web Hosting

Domain names, websites, and web hosts are different elements of your web presence, but they work together to help people find you online. When someone types in your web address, a web browser sends a request to a network of web servers throughout the world that is part of the Domain Name System . After a quick search, these servers locate your website address and request access to your web page.

The server that receives this request and houses all your website files is managed by your web host. In addition to giving your website a secure online home, your web host has a system in place to gather the data associated with the requested web page and send this information back to the browser that initiated the process. In a matter of a few brief seconds, your web page opens and is ready for viewing.

Use Your Domain For A Custom Email Address

When you buy a domain name, how long does it last?

Youre a professional, so why are you still using that personal Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, MSN email address you created 10 or even 20 years ago?

If the email youre using to communicate with customers isnt branding your business, then its time you kick that free email to the curb and set up a custom email using the domain you just purchased.

If you register a domain, you can set up a personalized email address such as YourName@yourdomain.com. Thats so much better than YourFirstandLastName_1975@gmail.com, right?

You can put that custom email address on your business cards, the side of your car, everywhere you promote your business.

With Professional Business Email from GoDaddy, not only will you get 24/7 customer support, but youll also get as many email aliases as youd like .

Youll look more professional, credible, and with so many email address options, you can guarantee that emails are going to the right people.

Also Check: What Is Ultimate Domain Protection And Security Renewal

Want To Register Another Domain Name Heres Your Chance

If youve registered a domain name, you probably have some idea of what you want to achieve, but you might not know where to start. Follow along as I break down a few options that might make sense for you and your business.

Ill bet more than one will fit the bill.

Editors note: Ready to get started with a website? Check out GoDaddys Websites + Marketing for free.

Build Your Business By Registering Your Domain

After weighing the benefits and drawbacks of free or paid domains, you should get started on your search for the perfect domain name. Domain names can go quickly and there’s a little more competition than Symbolics had in 1985 so it is important to register the one you want before it is too late.

Registering a domain name is quick and easy, but it does take some time to brainstorm the right name, select the optimal suffix, and find the right domain registrar for you. As such, there’s no better time than now to get started on registering your domain name.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in February 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Originally published Jun 20, 2022 7:00:00 AM, updated August 03 2022

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Dont Hesitate To Register Your Perfect Domain

If you already used Media Temples domain name search tool to find a web address your client will love, make sure you register it without delay. Each day thousands of domains are registered taking them off the market. Once you find an available domain that resonates with a brand, register it and any variants, and then help your client get started making their way online.

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Things To Do After Buying A Domain Name

How To Buy A Domain Name From Google Domains

Buying a domain name means youve registered your desired name so that no one can use it.

But its half of the battle. You need to do a few more things to build your site and secure the future of your business.

If you have a domain name but dont know what to do next, read on. In this post, I will be sharing 9 things to do once you have a domain name.

Now follow these simple steps to build your website.

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Cost To Register A Domain Name

According to HostGator, domain name cost ranges from free to tens of thousands of dollars, with the average domain name settling around $10-$12 annually. These factors will affect what you’d pay for a specific domain:

The demand for the particular name you choose
The TLD domain extension
The domain registrar you’re purchasing from
Whether the domain has already been purchased by someone else
Whether you commit to an annual payment or another payment schedule
Add-ons such as privacy

Whether you choose a free or paid domain will depend on your budget and your website’s purpose. For example, you might need a basic website or something simple and temporary. In that case, a free domain name might be a good option.

However, paid domain names look more professional and are more likely to grow with your brand. You should ultimately decide what will work best for your business and goals.

Pro Tip: You can get free hosting and link your custom domain to your site for free when you build it with HubSpot CMS.

How To Backorder A Domain

The process outlined above is the easiest way to buy a domain name that is taken, but sometimes that isnt possible. If you still cant get the domain you want, your other option is to backorder it.

Backordering means that you wait for a domains ownership to expire and purchase it the moment it becomes available.

However, keeping track of a domains expiration date manually can be tricky, so youll want to use a backordering service.

Some of the popular options:

However, even if you use a backordering service, theres no guarantee that youll get the domain you want. The current owner still has to let their ownership of the domain expire, and many hosting services give owners an extra grace period where they can renew after the official expiration date. Typically, thats 75 extra days.

Also Check: How To Create An Email At Your Own Domain

Is Domain Privacy Protection Worth It

This might vary depending on whats fully offered. I would say for the majority of people domain privacy is worth paying for if it doesnt come with the domains youre buying.

Endless spam messages offering questionable SEO, dropshippers from overseas, or other spammy services are annoying to parse through. A good privacy protection policy can help take care of that.

If I want to build a website and put it up for sale, it will eventually end up at a marketplace. The active website built on a domain will have the contact information where I want any inquiries.

Having the name and personal contact information removed from the WhoIs is good for privacy and safety, and ideal for most online investors.

How To Buy A Domain Name For Less Than You Think

If you want to start a website, you need a domain name. Buying one takes less than five minutes. And costs a lot less than you think, especially when you bundle it with web hosting. You need both to build a website, so why not get them together? If youre wondering exactly how to buy a domain name or how to save money when buying a domain, youre in the right place.

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Before We Begin Dont Just Go And Get A Different Tld

If your desired domain name is taken, you might be thinking that theres a third option worth considering: getting the same domain but with a different TLD, like .net or .org instead of .com.

However, this is not a good idea. First off, people will never remember what your correct TLD was, so they will usually go for .com anyway ending up at the wrong website.

Additionally, registering existing names can also result in legal trouble. The owner of the original .com might argue that youre trying to infringe on their brand name by registering a similar domain name.

At the end of the day, youre really better off either trying to get the original domain name that you wanted from the start, or changing your focus to a different name entirely.

With that said, lets talk business:

Keep Your Domain Name Locked

Whenever your domain name is locked, it prevents anyone, including you, from making any changes to the information associated with it. If you do want to make any changes â for example, change the IP address that the domain points to after switching web hosting providers â then you need to unlock your domain name.

The problem is that an unlocked domain name can potentially be transferred to another registrar or third party and picked up by someone else. That’s why it’s important to unlock your domain name only when you absolutely need to.

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Can I Transfer My Domain Name To Hostinger

Yes, its possible to transfer domain names from another registrar to Hostinger.

However, there are a few requirements before transferring a domain to your web hosting account:

More than 60 days must have passed from the registration or last transfer date.
You must have the domains auth-code from your current registrar.
The domains WHOIS privacy protection has to be disabled.
You have to point your domain name to Hostinger.
The domains status cannot be Pending Delete or Redemption.

To transfer a domain to Hostinger, go to the Hostinger Transfer Domain page and enter your domain name. Then click Transfer.

After finishing the order and entering the domain EPP code, the transfer process will begin and youll receive an email regarding the domain transfer that you will have to confirm.

The domain registration will also be renewed for a year after the transfer, except for ccTLDs like .es, .co.uk, or .com.br.

Keep in mind that your website might be unavailable during the DNS changes, which can take up to 24 hours to propagate fully.

Avoid Numbers And Hyphens

Domain name forwarding – buying a domain name [9/9]

Imagine asking your 10 friends to spell or pronounce a domain name filled with numbers and dashes. It wont work.

If you choose a domain name with these elements, youre likely going to lose traffic to people who cant remember your domain or effectively tell someone else how to find it. We probably wouldnt have Facebook today if you had to go to Face-Book.com to reach the site.

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Have An Authoritative Email Address

Buying a domain isn’t just about websitesyou can also use them for email addresses. This means, instead of an address that ends with gmail.com or outlook.com, email addresses can end with a domain owned by your company.

You can read about , but it boils down to a few key points.

Branding. Emails look like they’re coming from your company, not from a free email service. This looks more professional.
Control. You can give employees an address ending with @companyname.com, which you can take control of should they leave the company.
Flexibility. You can point your domain to any email service, meaning you can switch email providers without having to inform all of your customers about a new email address.

Need an email host? Check out our list of .

Everything You Want To Know About Owning Real Estate On The Internet

Put simply, a domain name is the mechanism that helps identify and locate computers and resources connected to the Internet and while there are free domain names, you usually have to purchase them through domain registrars.

One of the most essential features of a domain name is that it is unique, which is to say that no two computers on the Internet can have the same domain name.

If you want a presence on the Internet you need to register a domain name that will then serve as your unique online name. Visitors will interact with you using this domain name either via your website or via email .

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Where To Register Your Domain Name

Youve decided on the name you want, but where do you get it? I mean, the site you built with Wix is nice and all, but having a site at narwhals.wix.com is really hurting your branding strategy.

Well, you have a lot of options. The choice just comes down to what you need. Check prices for your desired domain name on all of the sites! Look at their policies to see if theyd have any problem with the sort of content you want to publish. See if their values match your own. If youre new to all of this, find out if they prioritize newbie-friendly features or expert-level features.

That said, I do have a few recommendations:

The Reliable Brand

For reliability and sheer name recognition, GoDaddy is hard to beat. Theyve been around since well, almost the beginning of the internet, and have a long history of pretty good service. My own personal experiences are mixed: I like their domain services. Im generally unimpressed with their hosting services . But if you just want to register domains, they have a history of standing by their customers when things go wrong.

For Good Deals

To get the best pricing, well the domain name economy is something else entirely. Most domain names that arent filled with super common keywords will average around $10-15 USD per year, as Im writing this. But the actual price can be affected by the keywords in question, the language, the TLD, whether or not the domain name is related to a currently booming industry almost everything.

How Domain Names Are Structured

I Bought A Domain Name Now What? 7 Amazing Things To Do

There are two more bits of jargon you should know: top-level domains and subdomains.

Top-level domains are the bit of the domain name at the end: .com, .org, .net, .co.uk, .com.mx all of those are TLDs. There are hundreds of possible TLDs nowadays, most of them country or region-specific. There are even TLDs for industries: .design, .tech, .news, .marketing, and so many more.

So yes, if your narwhal-focused company happens to loan people money, your website address could literally be narwhalsareawesome.loan. As Im writing this, that domain is actually available.

For my personal portfolio site, I picked the .works TLD, because I thought having the ezequiel.works domain name would be awesome, and it is. I let my old domain lapse, though which was a mistake. Ill get into that later.

Now we get to subdomains. Lets say you have a table tennis team called the Narwhals, and your domain name is narwhals.team. Now, lets say you want to set up a fan community website separate from your main website, while still on the same hosting server.

There are a number of ways to do that, but one of the easiest is with a subdomain like fans.narwhals.team. Thats literally all a subdomain does: it adds a bit of text before the main domain. Then, that subdomain can be directed to an entirely different website but remain under the narwhals.team branding.

Want a real-world example? If you use Google Drive to store any files at all, you might be familiar with drive.google.com.

Recommended Reading: How Do I Point My Domain To Google Sites

What Does It Cost To Purchase A Domain Name

Domain names can range from free though always with an asterisk related to later costs to tens of dollars to millions of dollars. There are many factors that will determine how much it costs to register a domain name, including the following:

What is the TLD? The cost of new registrations and renewals are is regulated by ICANN and the respective domain name registries that set the prices . Registrars will have to pay that cost whenever a domain name is registered through them, which is why prices and special offers may differ from one registrar to another. *.com, *.net and the other popular TLDs are usually less than $40 per year, while some newer TLDs like *.ceo cost hundreds and *.rich cost thousands.

Is this a new registration or does someone else already own it? As previously mentioned, new registration costs depend on those domain name registries like ICANN and your registrar. However, if someone else already has your preferred domain names, you may have to pay them for it.Note: if someone else owns a domain name that violates registered trademarks you own, you have a clearer path to securing it. At that point, it becomes a legal matter. We recommend referring to ICANNs Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy for what options are available to you.

Did you register your domain name somewhere else but would rather have it with us?

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