Do I Have to Register All My Domains With My Hosting Company?

Article Posted by Expert Author: Jesse Schwarz  on 02/01/2013

If you are planning on only having 1 domain, then you might as well take advantage of the freebie. Usually, hosting companies will give you a free domain for the first year along with the hosting plan and then charge higher than normal prices to renew each year. For example at the time of this article in 2013, the renewal cost with JustHost was $13.99 per year. If you only have 1 domain it is better to have everything in one place and the renewal price difference isn’t significant once you average in your free year.

However, if you are planning on having more than one domain, we suggest keeping all the domains in one place with a company that specializes in domains. Without a shadow of a doubt, we recommend Godaddy which holds approximately 32.5% of the market share among ICANN Registrars. eNom with 8% and Tucows with 6.7% are options, but are priced higher. Their customer support is by far the best experience I have ever had in any industry. You can take our word for it or ask any of their customers and you will get the same response. Their pricing at the time of this article was $8.19/year. They also offer additional discounts for multi-year registrations.

Once you register your domains you can then point the nameservers to the new host. If you are not familiar with Nameservers, we have an easy tutorial - Changing Your Nameservers - that will quickly get you on your way.

Why not choose Godaddy for Hosting as well?

Their entry level plan is only supports one domain. We have hosted with them in the past, but when you have multiple domains, it is definitely an advantage to have the ability to host multiple domains under the same package. Their next tier offers unlimited domains, but limits the number of databases and this is at a higher price than some of the other companies that specialize in “hosting.”

What to Watch Out for – What is Domain Hijacking

Some hosting companies actually will register your domain under their name giving them full control of the actual domain. If you ever want to move the domain over to a different host or registrar, they either won’t do it or will charge astronomical fees. We have experienced this in the past and rather than single out companies, we simply suggest keeping domains with domain companies and hosting with hosting companies.

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