Registering Domain Names: Free Domain Names
When searching for places to register your domain name online, you may very well have come across sites offering free domain name registration, or domain name registration for a nominal fee. This almost sounds too good to be true, and in a lot of cases, it is too good to be true. There are companies out there who use the alluring promise of "free domain names" to mask the hidden charges for services such as:
POP3 email accounts
Email forwarding
Domain forwarding
Transferring your domain to another provider
By registering a domain name through Domain Names Guru.com, you get all the above features included in the basic cost of registering your domain name. No hidden fees. No costly adminstration charges. Of course, there is nothing physically preventing you from registering a free domain name, and there are companies and individuals who make use of them without negative incident. However, the following article briefly addresses the main pitfalls surrounding the registration of free domain names.
Free Domain Names: The hidden costs
Free Domain Names: Don't put all your eggs in one basket
Free Domain names: Protect your freedom
Free Domain Names: A possible solution?
Free Domain Names: The hidden costs
Just the mere possession of a domain name is often not often sufficient to meet the needs of the average business or individual. You may require some email addresses to work with your domain, or you may wish for your domain to be 'pointed' at a website you already have on the web. When registering your free domain name, care should be taken to ensure that the services you require can be provided to you without significant further cost.
Before taking the plunge and registering your free domain name, it is always worth the time taken to contact the relevant ISP and determine exactly what is included in your domain name package and how much cash you would have to part with to have extra services set up. You know what you need, so make sure that you get it.
Free Domain Names: Protect Your Freedom
A lot of hosting companies and Internet Service Providers offer free domain names as part of their service. However, care should be taken to ensure that the ISP in question will register the free domain in your name (making you the owner) rather than in their name (which would make them the owners).
If your ISP owns your domain name, then they are primely poised to charge you for any service you may require that they deem to lie outside their usual sphere of service. For example, if you wish to transfer your domain name to another ISP, they may charge an unneccessarily high price to complete the transfer, in order to discourage you. Since they have ownership of your domain name and you need it for your business they may charge you a lot of money to allow ownership to be passed on.
With domain name registration packages such as the ones offered at Domain Names Guru, all domains are registered in the name of the purchasing individual or company, not in our name.
Free Domain Names: Don't put all your eggs in one basket
Even if you are happy with your ISP having ownership of your free domain name, it is always worth maintaining an air of caution. Imagine the scenario: You have dedicated months of your life to building and promoting http://www.myispowneddomain.com. The domain name appears on your company literature, your business cards, it has a prominent placing in the major search engines. Then your ISP goes out of business. Since your ISP wa controlling your domain name, you may find that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible to gain control of the domain name yourself. The net result? A failed business venture.
It is worth considering whether a relatively small cast outlay at the start of a project is likely to pay for itself in the event of a disaster. Even if no disaster ever looms on the horizon, the outlay may still pay for itself several times over where peace of mind is concerned.
Free Domain Names: A possible solution?
The only guaranteed way to benefit from a domain name owned by a third party is to register the domain as a backup. As long as the 'free' domain name' is not your primary domain name, then the effects of potentially losing the domain are considerably lessened.
In short, the best solution may be to register a domain in your name to and use a free name to point to your primary name. The best of both worlds, perhaps?
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