Staring a new firm or business? Your website is so closely tied in with your business that it almost IS your business.
Whether you’ve had the luck to find a great domain, or have simply come up a basic, but suitable one, it will now take on its own life as a digital asset. So where do you register it? When checking out a company to handle domain registration, known as a Registrar, it makes sense to go with one of the leaders and avoid the many lesser-known companies that will register your domain at a lower price.
Better offerings
What do the better registrars offer? For one thing, flexibility. You may very well decide to build your website using the same company who registered your domain, but what if you don’t? From our experience building hundreds of websites, we recommend finding a registrar that lets you make your own choices for all the downstream functions hinging on that domain name. Typically these start with your email and website, so you want to be free to follow the recommendations of your IT vendor and web developer.
That means having the ability to change your domain’s “records”. This simple act sets where your services are performed. So the “A Record” controls where the website is hosted. Your “MX records” controls the server responsible for your emails.
It’s simple to change these: all it takes is updating a single number, called an IP address. With this one action, you can designate any server to host your website.
But many of the registrars in the bargain category make it excruciatingly difficult to do this. So hungry are they for the aftermarket services – hosting, email and assorted marketing services – that they hide, obscure or eliminate the tools to let you do this. We’ve had more than one a client driven to tears. The best registrars have an easy to use interface, and don’t sweat it if you want to have your website designed or hosted by others.
Which registrar would we recommend? Contact us and find out our recommendations today.
This post is an update of an earlier article. Logos used in illustration are the copyrighted property of their respective owners.