Tag Archives: Domain Name

What Should You Have Before You Buy Web Hosting Space?

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Buying web hosting is a matter of a few clicks. But what planning should be done before you buy it? Not everyone knows what to do once they buy the hosting space and many months are wasted planning what to do after you have bought the space. A good plan of action helps you to save money and utilize your purchased space better. How much disk space you need, how much bandwidth you will consume all depends on your goals. This article helps you plan the use and usefulness before you purchase a web hosting plan.

Domain Name

One step before a hosting account, comes your domain name. You need to book or register a domain name which will point to your hosting space. The domain name will represent the name of your brand online. Domain names like bookbinder.com and tablerepair.net are self-explanatory and can bring the right visitors to your website. You can usually purchase a domain name starting from $5 to $100 depending on the name and its novelty. Hosting providers also sell domain names and sometimes may offer them free or at a discounted price along with their hosting packages. Availing of these offer bundles can help you save big bucks.

Website Design

Are you going to have a website for your domain name? Or are you going to use it only for email? If you are planning to have a website, it is essential that you do a bit of homework and know what it takes to make it successful. The purchase of web space and setting up the website design should go hand in hand so that neither the money spent on the designing or resources spent on the hosting account go waste. As soon as your design has completed the pilot testing stage and is ready to be put into production, it is ideal to purchase the web space.

Budget

If you don’t have a big budget, it’s very important that you draw out a plan for your website. Many companies jump into expensive software or online products, without knowing how to implement them or how to get their employees to start using them. A website or web app is no different. You can get a lot of off-the-shelf software which you can start using immediately, but do you really need it? How long will training and adaptation take? Will you be able to easily migrate your systems from old to new? All these are questions you need to ask yourself before you jump into buying it. If you haven’t planned properly, your purchase of web space and a domain name will go waste.

Email Accounts

What Should You Have Before You Buy Web Hosting Space?

What Should You Have Before You Buy Web Hosting Space?

If you are going to have email accounts for this domain name, it is best to plan out the email account details and the space that you plan to allocate to each account. This can be estimated from existing email traffic or you can simply choose the minimum limits and keep upgrading as your requirement increases regularly. Individual email accounts must be created with a password and quota setting. You can also plan out if you are planning to forward emails to another email address or domain name. Similarly, any internal email policies should be planned out before you jump in to purchasing web space.

Resource Usage

How much space you need is one of the most important questions that you should be prepared for when visiting the website of your favorite web host. Do you need additional features or resources from the beginning? Or can you upgrade your account later? It’s always a good idea to start off with a plan with the bare minimum resources that you need and then later upgrade in advance, incase you anticipate a higher requirement. Start with how much space your website actually takes up at the moment, almost all hosts will allow you to upgrade your plan on a pro rata basis and adjust the amount you have already paid, towards the upgraded plan.

Are Cheap Domain Names For Real? Whats The Catch?

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Are Cheap Domain Names For Real? Whats The Catch?

Where should you purchase a domain name from is purely your own decision. Although the differences in domain name management facilities are few across different providers, the pricing varies drastically. There are various factors (besides competition) which contribute to this disparity in pricing. Knowledge of these factors is important in influencing your decision in how to and from where to buy domain names. Savings can range from a few dollars to even $50 per domain name. This article explains why domain names are available at such a cheap price and why sometimes it maybe an illusion to fool the customer.

Addon Services

Many Domain Name providers offer the cheapest pricing because they provide only the basic rudimentary domain registration services. They do not provide any extra services and only allow minimalist domain management options. Domain Name Servers (DNS), Email Forwarding, Domain Forwarding, Free Landing Page, WHOIS Privacy and some other services are facilities which are charged extra. If your domain name provider is giving you these services for free along with cheap domain pricing, it is definitely worth it. But to maintain a slim margin and to undercut the competition, most domain registrars charge a hefty additional fee to provide these addons.

First Year Pricing

Most domain name providers offer a very cheap price for domain name registrations to lure new customers to their service. However, many providers mislead people into buying from them by displaying an extremely low price for registration. They do not mention what the price for renewals will be. Renewals are offered at the normal price which most providers offer, which will obviously be much higher than the price of the first year registration. Most customers do not read the fine print at the time of registration and follow the price carrot into the providers net. This is often a reason why customers are delighted at the time of registering the new domain but are frustrated the next year when realization dawns upon them. A transparent host will clearly indicate that the domain pricing will increase from the next year onwards, as the offer or pricing is only applicable on fresh registrations.

Reseller Discounts

Some websites offer cut-throat pricing for Domain Registrations, Renewals and even Transfers. This is possibly due to the fact that they themselves receive a heavy re-seller discount from domain registrars and are able to pass on the discount to their customers. Registrars do not usually sell domains to the end user in a big way. Their retail pricing is very high and discouraging for retail clients. The easiest way for them to get customers is to shift the burden of customer acquisition on the resellers. The incentive given to resellers is proportionate to the yearly commitments of the resellers. Hence if you try and compare a reseller’s price with the price of the same registrar, it will be like comparing apples and oranges i.e. they are uncomparable.

Bundled Pricing

Many hosting companies offer heavy discounts on domain name pricing if you bundle a domain name with their hosting packages. If you cease to keep their other products or services, your domain which is bundled with it will be renewed at their regular or standard pricing. The cost of the standard or regular pricing maybe much higher than the discounted pricing, but it is natural that the service providers who offer such discounts will obviously offer an incentive to promote their products or services. If you really need the bundled product, then it would be a good idea to take the package, but some clients often buy the bundle just because of the price illusion that they are getting the domain name free. This is not the case, especially due to the fact that the cost of the domain name has also been factored into the price of the bundle. Similarly it will offer a good perspective on how much the principal product should really cost.

When Should You Transfer Your Domain Name To A Different Provider?

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When Should You Transfer Your Domain Name To A Different Provider?

Many people have kept their domain names with the same old provider whom they first registered it with. We also had a couple of clients who kept their domain names running at the old domain name provider by renewing it every year. They finally realized that they were paying for literally nothing, when they wanted to develop a website and decided to get some hosting space. At that point of time they realized that their domain name had not been renewed since a couple of years and the domain registrar also never realized it. This and other such stories should prompt you into sitting up and realizing what you maybe missing out on, if you have a domain name. This article explains some of the red flags which should indicate that it’s time to switch your domain name provider.

Price

When you purchase the domain name, many providers charge a lower price for the first year and then charge a higher price for renewals. Many people ignore the higher price and continue to renew the domain name or setup an auto debit on their credit card. This can sometimes mean paying upto 300% more than what an average domain name provider would give you. While the difference may not seem much, if you have taken the domain name for the long haul, then you might as well get the most out of your money. Switching to a different provider may give you monetary benefits along with all the cooler features.

Features

Domain Name providers often give free services along with the domain name. This may include free DNS, free domain name forwarding and free email forwarding. If you need these services or have been paying extra for these services then it’s time that you switched over to a provider who will give you all these for free. Many domain registrar provide free premium DNS with all their products and services. This could save you a lot of money every year, if you want to have premium DNS for your website. If you planned to register the domain name without having a website, email forwarding or website forwarding options could also be useful for you.

No Control Panel

All Domain Registrars give you a control panel with which you can manage your domain name. If you have not got control of your domain name or are not even aware of how to login to your control panel, then you should be concerned. Wherever you may have bought your Domain Names from, you should have received details of your Domain Control Panel. Your Reseller or Web Designer or even Software Developer from whom you bought the domain name should be able to help you out with it.

Lack of Support

Every Domain Name is backed with the support of the Registrar that has registered the name for you. But before you approach the Registrar or the Registrar entertains your request, you will need to go through the reseller or the person whom you actually bought the domain name from. If this person does not give you support or refuses to give support, you can file a complaint with ICANN and get the Registrar to provide you the control of the domain name. After you get control of your domain name, you can move it out of that Registrar to a different Registrar. Lack of Support from the Registrar is a sure sign that you should move your domain to some other place where they will atleast care to respond about your issue.