Buying a domain name

Buying a domain name is pretty straightforward these days, choosing a domain name less so.

But first things first. For my purposes, at least initially, there are no requirements other than registration, which makes things much simpler. There are a few big names in the business (1&1, GoDaddy, etc) and they are all able provide many more value-added services than simple domain registration. But, as I won't be requiring these, there is a short list of features I need from a domain registrar beyond the actual registration.

Firstly, the ability to transfer a domain in or out of the provider if I need to. Secondly, my need for customer support should be limited as the service is only going to be used for domain forwarding to Blogger so no real need for bells and whistle there. Thirdly, domain privacy may be of use, not necessarily for protection of my name but shielding of my address might be useful depending on where my interests take me in the noosphere. E-mail forwarding may be required but not initially. All are bread-and-butter functions so all the services are able to provide them.

Therefore the decision boils down to cost and ease of use. The big boys are extremely fond of upselling and rely on their advertising to recruit new customers and their services are priced higher than a lot of the competition; except for their subsidised pricing for new domain registrations (funny that). From a bit of web searching it appears that a lot of people use Namecheap. There are also two sites I found for registration price comparison that took me a while to uncover (domcomp and TLD List), which gave me a few more low-cost operators (Porkbun and NameSilo). Another option is Google Domains, which is in an extended beta phase at the moment. The yearly price differential between the others and Google Domains when you include Whois guard (ie domain privacy features) is broadly zero with both at ≈£10/yr.

It seems that using a discounted code from GoDaddy or 1&1 to obtain the domain name then transferring the domain out before the first year is up to someone like Google Domains or Namecheap is the cheapest option. If I were running multiple (>5-10) domain names then the cost saving from using a low-cost provider would probably be worth it, but purely for ease of use I will go with Google Domains.

Two things to do then,

Check the domain transfer process into Google Domains

But first I need to come up with a domain name.

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