A subject I see coming up quite a bit on business forums is never buy domains from the same company as your host. Now for the “kiddie” hosts who answer support tickets when they get home from school this may be true but for other business like ourselves this doesn’t hold water..
You know just as a test I have just been to Godaddy to make a trial purchase of a .com and what a faff on it is!
The checkout is very confusing and they do an almighty job of trying to add additional extras onto you.
When you finally get to the end, the price comes in at £6.59 for a one year .com registration. Obviously there is no VAT as they are a US company but this price will fluctuate with the exchange rate so you will not know how much it’s going to cost you to renew.
Now ours are registered through eNom which is the second largest registrar in the world for £7.99/year which ex-vat (if you’re vat registered) is £6.94 so 35p difference and you register with a UK company that actually have a good customer service record
In addition they charge for transfers in, we don’t…
I know domains are one of those point and forget things but what about when something goes wrong such as the domain not being renewed or worse still, being hijacked; which has happened to GoDaddy customers in the past.
Turning to 123reg for UK domains, they proudly state domains are £2.99 per year and don’t obviously advertise the facts that the price is subject to VAT and is also a two year registration. So a full registration would cost £6.88 inc vat whereas we are £7.98 a whopping £1.10 over two years more expensive
They, as we are, are members of Nominet so they get charged exactly the same for UK domains as we do. Interestingly their .com is £9.99 + vat
So onto protection…
Lets say we go bust today. There is more chance of me giving birth to twin headed alligators but I digress..
For all non-uk domains, eNom would be able to step in and allow you to manage the domain, move to another provide just by contacting them. Their response time is about 4 hours which for a multi-national is unheard of.
For UK domains, Nominet would be able to update the IPS tag in about ten minutes after a phone call allowing you again to move the domain.
Protection all round…
So to summarise, for the sake of a few pence per year you are going to a multi-national company, both of whom do not have a crystal customer service record and there is absolutely no risk whatsoever from buying from the “little guy” as long as you have done your research.