Domain Names for Small Business

What a domain name is

A domain name is the address people type to reach you: yourbusiness.com. When somebody enters it, the internet's directory system looks up where that name points and sends them to the right server. The name itself is not the website and it is not the email; it is the signpost that directs both.

You do not buy a domain outright. You register it for a term, usually one to ten years, and you can keep renewing it for as long as you want it. While the registration is current and listed in your name, it is exclusively yours.

If you are still working out where the domain ends and the website begins, start with domain name vs web hosting, which is the confusion behind most of the calls we take.

Who needs one

Anyone who wants a website, a professional email address, or simply to stop somebody else taking their business name. That last reason is the one people underrate. Registering the obvious version of your trading name costs very little per year and removes a problem that is expensive to solve later.

• New businesses, before printing anything with a web address on it.
• Established businesses whose domain is registered to a designer, a nephew or an agency they no longer work with.
• Businesses that changed name and are still operating on the old domain.
• Anyone whose email currently ends in a free consumer provider.

What to compare before you register

Registrars mostly sell the same product, so the differences that matter are not the ones in the advertising.

Search for a name

Type the name you have in mind. If it is gone, take the closest sensible alternative rather than a long hyphenated variation nobody will spell correctly over the phone.

Search for a domain name

Search Domains

Type a full name such as yourbusiness.com, or just a keyword to see what is available.

Transferring a domain you already own

Moving a domain from one registrar to another does not change the name, the website or the email. It changes who bills you and where you log in to manage it. People usually transfer to consolidate renewals, to escape a registrar that is hard to deal with, or because whoever registered it originally is no longer involved.

The steps are consistent across the industry:

• The domain must be more than 60 days old and not have been transferred in the last 60 days.
• Unlock it at the current registrar and request the authorisation code, sometimes called an EPP code or auth code.
• Make sure the administrative contact email on the domain is one you can read, because the approval message goes there.
• Start the transfer at the new registrar, enter the code and approve it.
• Wait. Five to seven days is typical for .com and .net.

Your site and email keep working during a transfer as long as the DNS records are not changed mid-move. If you plan to change hosts as well, do the transfer first and the DNS change afterwards, not both at once. How to transfer a domain has the full procedure, including what to do when a transfer stalls.

Renewals and what happens if one is missed

An expired domain does not fail politely. It stops resolving, which takes down the website and, if your email runs on that domain, the email too. Recovery gets progressively more expensive:

1. Expiry. The domain stops working. Renewing at the normal price usually still works for a short window.
2. Redemption. The name is held but recovering it costs substantially more than a renewal, because the registry charges a redemption fee.
3. Release. The name goes back on the open market and anybody can register it, including people who monitor expiring domains with traffic.

Two things prevent all of this: auto-renew turned on, and a billing card and contact email that are both current. Check those once a year. If a domain has already lapsed, what happens when a domain expires covers how to tell which stage it is in and what to do first.

Privacy and keeping the name secure

Every domain registration is recorded, and by default parts of that record are public. Domain privacy replaces your personal contact details with a forwarding service so your home address and phone number are not published to anyone who looks. Read how domain privacy works for what it does and does not hide.

Alongside privacy, the practical security measures are unexciting and effective: keep registrar lock on, use a strong unique password on the registrar account with two-factor authentication, and make sure more than one trusted person at the business can get into that account.

Mistakes that cost businesses their domain

• Registering it in somebody else's name. If a former web designer is the legal registrant, the name is theirs, not yours.
• Renewal notices going to a dead mailbox. The address on the domain must be one somebody still reads.
• Buying a name that fails the phone test. If you cannot say it aloud and have somebody type it correctly, it is the wrong name.
• Hyphens and creative spellings. Customers will reliably type the version without them and land on a competitor.
• Letting the domain live at the same place as nothing else. Scattered accounts mean scattered renewal dates and no clear owner.

How AldoMedia helps with domain names for small business

We register and manage domains for businesses that would rather not think about DNS. In practice that means we do the setup, put the registration in your company's name, turn privacy and locking on, and stay reachable when something needs changing.

If your domain is currently somewhere else and you are not sure who controls it, that is a normal starting point. Tell us what you know and we will work out what state it is in.