where to buy

[Cloughie]

I want to register a domain name for a personal site I am doing. I will be hosting it.

I want one that’s cheap, easy for me to set the name servers on it (can this be done on registration?)

Also I see places like godaddy charge $12 per year to hide your personal details n a whois search. Any cheaper way to do this?

Cheers

Daniel

[Chris]

I buy at godaddy or dotster. Godaddy is cheaper but you have to deal with all their advertisements.

I've not seen the anonymous thing for cheaper... but I also haven't looked.

[fonzerelli_79]

id go with an enom reseller
transferring from godaddy to another registry can be annoying sometimes - ive tried to transfer a name from godaddy to enom a few times and the authorisation link keeps messing up

also - youll be able to get cheaper prices from an enom account and there are no hidden charges. Godaddy charges for certain things like url masking etc if i remember right.

:)

[incka]

Easily.co.uk - Its in UK£ but hides your whois details automatically and will change it for free anytime. They do forwarding, masking or server DNS if you own your own server. All Free. The prices are £35 for 2 years for .com, .net and .org. They so .info, .biz, .tv, .co.uk, . org.uk & .me.uk as well. I've used them for 4 years now and have no complaints.

[Mike]

Namecheap.com - ENOM reseller I think, but prices are just over $8 per domain.

[incka]

Do you use them mike?

[Mike]

Yes, I do. A friend of mine told me about them because of their good prices.

[incka]

I thought you liked buying from the UK...

[incka]

Be careful while typing in that web address mike...

[incka]

It's more like $8.88 mike...

[Mike]

I said just over $8, and what do you mean about typing that web address in?

You mean NameCheap?

[Kings]

Just out of interest, but why would you want to hide your details...?

[Chris]

spam... some people crawl domain registries to find webmasters to spam... also people could harass you if you pissed someone off.

[mike639]

Originally posted by incka
Easily.co.uk - Its in UK£ but hides your whois details automatically and will change it for free anytime. They do forwarding, masking or server DNS if you own your own server. All Free. The prices are £35 for 2 years for .com, .net and .org. They so .info, .biz, .tv, .co.uk, . org.uk & .me.uk as well. I've used them for 4 years now and have no complaints.

£35 for two years seems extremely high, I've just switched over to 123-reg.co.uk and I am sure there much cheaper and provide all the features you listed.

[Milano]

I use www.mapname.com, they offer free private registration

[incka]

I only use easily for .uk domains now, I use godaddy for international ones.

[Yoda]

I've been using 000domains.com for about as long as I can remember. The price ($13.50 a year) is a buck or two more than some, but they've been very reliable, quick, and easy.

[DaveM]

My friend has some re-seller account with godaddy. So I just buy thru him .coms are $7.75 I believe. Before that I used registerfly.

[ozgression]

I use www.namecheap.com and haven't had a problem...
________
Toyota Hiace (http://www.toyota-wiki.com/wiki/Toyota_Hiace)

[Mike]

Yeh I do as well, they're excellent.

[incka]

I registered more domains with godaddy last night... Only thing I don't like is the adverts it shows you when you're registering a domain for hosting and search engine submit programs...

[r2d2]

Just registered a new one with Go Daddy last night, cheaper than 123 (I hope, not sure what exchange rate we get on stuff like this?)

Adverts a bit annoying, but not really a problem.

[chromate]

the exchange rate is something like 1.89 dollars to the pound

[incka]

It was a good time to buy the server :)

But not to get a google cheque :(

[chromate]

did you make $1k for feb Incka? Or didn't you quite make it?

[incka]

A bit less, not much less...

Should do better this month (If the smiley central and cursor mania campaigns come back to azoogle... They incresd commision, saying they would be there for a while, then disappeared...)

[FGTH]

Here's an inside scoop on GoDaddy's operations, performance and their strategy.
Company: GoDaddy.com
Annual Sales: $25 Million
Employees: 340
President: Bill Parsons
Marketing: Staphanie Heck
PR: Denise Seomin
Sister Company: Wild West Domains
Spin-off: Starfield Technologies

I'm from Scottsdale AZ, GoDaddy's headquarters, and have been a customer since they first opened shop.

Strategy:
"Walmartized business" - Maximize marketshare by underselling all competition and recouping profits through sheer volume and reduced operating costs. In other words, Godaddy offers the lowest fees for domain registration and transfers, but has the poorest customer support system.

Barriers:
Low margins. Competing companies that cannot sustain itself with equally low margins will eventually either be forced to reduce their margins or exit the business.

Growth:
Scale-out by creating new brands, such as creating sister companies that the same services.

So how does Godaddy.com continue operations when their margins are so low? They've reduced their call-center's capacity to support customers. Although this reduces short-term costs, the long-term effects are negative since the cost of retaining a customer is much lower than winning one back. In an attempt to minimize customer issues and turn-over, Godaddy has re-worked its website several times to improve user experience.

Major issue:
Extremely poor customer support and poor domain expiration policies.
Customers with expired domains are charged $80/domain to re-purchase them.

Case Study 1:
In a one month sampling of 100 telephone support calls, customers were placed on hold from 25 - 45+ minutes. 25% of customer calls were dropped out of queue.

Case Study 2:
Over the same period, 50 support emails were sent to Godaddy. The average response time was 1-2 hours. The average number of exchanged emails was 6 per issue with and without resolution. Emails were not read carefully by Godaddy customer support. The initial responses were from a list of canned answers that neither addressed nor solved the sample issues.

Overall:
Godaddy offers the lowest prices for domains.
Website user experience is below average with confusing and inconsistent layout and navigation.
Customer support is extremely poor.

[incka]

The perfect business model :)

[chromate]

... until you have a problem you'd like them to sort out ;)

[incka]

What problem could possibly happen? Domains are so simple...

[FGTH]

GoDaddy offers derivative services including:
1) Domain Name Transfers
2) DNS Management
3) Web-hosting
4) Domain Forwarding
5) Copyright

With Human-Computer Interface, you have a whole world of possible problems.

For instance:
1) mistyping the DNS entries
2) losing your password and you recently changed ISP so you no longer have access to your email
3) repurchasing an expired domain
4) erroneous credit card charges (this one's a doosy... Godaddy refuses to correct erroneous credit card charges, even if they're unauthorized)

Anything requiring a phone call to Godaddy.com spells certain DOOM for their customers.