Almost hosting providers now come with attractive package: free life time domain if buy a hosting plan. For me it is a mostly a trap and many people who already experience knew it is wrong, Why? Hosting and domain industry need difference competencies. For domain registrar sell domain is their main sales contributor, but for hosting providers it’s a marketing gimmick.
First: Domain Registration Price
The cost of domain registration consists of 4 components:
- Domain registration
- ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) registration
- Private Whois (optional)
- Price Tier
These 4 components, especially tiring, make price of a single domain from domain registrar will around $5 lower. One domain from domain registrar will cost you $7 – $9 a year including private whois. When you buy from hosting provider they will charge you $15 or more. Many domain registrar regularly provide domain name discount or monthly coupon code for new domain or domain extension.
Second: Managing Domain
Since hosting put domain as marketing gimmick, they don’t have special tools to manage domain so you’ll use hosting’s control panel which has limited management features, especially when they use cPanel. In domain registrar control panel will allow you to edit Name Servers, managing DNS, do URL forwarding, manage Private Whois, manage name servers, or do transfer accounts.
Third: The Real Problem when You Get Trouble
This is the thing that make people realized that they make a mistakes not to get domain from domain registrar. Relationship between domain registrar with their customer is a lifetime relations, but relationship between hosting provider with its customer sometimes only last within months.
When over then two problems come up: you have to move your hosting and you usually want to transfer your domain. In this case, website transfer process is in your control but domain transfer not. Domain transfer will be more complicated if your hosting provider just a domain reseller.
There are many recommended name including Godaddy.com, Dotster.com, Name.com and Namecheap.com. These companies are the safest place to buy domain name. They all ICANN accredited, however we believe not to put all your domains in one companies.