Buying a domain name - does it matter where I buy it from?

[MollyBerry]

There seems to be a difference in price when buying domain names but does it matter where I buy it from? Surely I should just go for the cheapest?

I already have a weebly site set up and just want to buy a domain to use for the site I have already.

Thanks for any help!

The key question is how easy it is to transfer out, if for any reason you want to change registrars.

Look at the other services they offer. You may want mail forwarding and or hosting for your domain. If you do it's simplest to get that in a bundle from the same provider.

It's cheap enough that you probably don't need to shave the last penny and you can go to a reputable provider without it costing the earth.

TsoHost has been good so far for all that, I think the whole lot was £20 all in.

For most domains I'd say it won't matter and yes, do go by price. Daily.co.uk, 123-reg.co.uk are two I use for .co.uk domains.

If you want .com, .info, .org or similar there are many more options, such as namecheap.com mydomain.com name.com godaddy.com

If you do register with one of those .com firms, then you may find that a transfer to another one of them works out cheaper than renewing each year. It's pretty easy to transfer from one to another and can save pounds. For example, in January I transferred a few domains to Namecheap as they had a deal on charging $3.99 per domain, while most renewal fees are around $10 and sometimes up to $15.

I'd suggest looking for 'redirection' (so when someone puts www.yourdomainname.com it redirects to show your existing webbly site) and mail forwarding (I'd suggest forwarding mail to say Goggle Mail as that can identify most of the spam and file it away from your inbox).

Thank you for your advice. I have another question if that's ok, how do emails work with domains, do I have to buy them separately?

There are different types of e-mail service, sometimes included when you register a domain, but other times sold as an add-on.

One type of service is a mailbox (POP, POP3 or IMAP might be mentioned). This is where you may be given a certain amount of storage (anything from 100 MB to 5 GB) and set up a mail application on your home system to read new mail from that mailbox. Sending e-mail may go via that company mail service, or they might expect you to use your own ISP's mail service.

Another option might be to provide "mail forwarding" so you could have a mail address like "[email protected]" sent on to "[email protected]"

Various service, like Google Mail, allow you to change your "from" address to use your own domain name. They send a 'verification' request message (with a link you click on) to make sure that you have legitimate use of the mail account you add (so I cannot add, for example, [email protected] as I am not Obama!)