$15/yr Domain Name Registration - *NOT* a promotion

[nekote]

Hey, my first original "Hot Deals" post.

It hadn't occured to me to post the $7.77/month full service web hosting deal.

But when I saw it, the light went off about their (subsidiary's) companion service: $15/yr Domain Name Registration

Know exactly zero about them, other than what can be read on the web sites.

Looks like they are genuinely trying to offer low cost Internet services, partly by minimizing administrivia (e.g. by only offering 1 or 2 year sign-ups, rather than monthly billing (they do have a 30 day guarantee)).

I know nothing about the internal costs of running a successful hosting business, so I don't have a clue if $7.77/month or $15/yr (DNS) is a really great deal or doomed to eventual failure.

Other than uptime and adequate access bandwidth, both of which could be tested in the first 30 days (the guarantee period), what's at risk? Moving on to another, more expensive, hosting company???

 

[darkie]

GoDaddy has a better deal. Less than $10 for one year's domain.

 

[Poochy]

... so I don't have a clue if $7.77/month or $15/yr (DNS) is a really great deal or doomed to eventual failure.

Do they really provide DNS service for the $15/yr package, or is that for domain registration only? I can't find anything about the former on the webpage.

Anyway, I'll add them to my list of "cheap" (sub $15) registrars, most obtained from previous AT postings:

[*]hostandsave.com
[*]www.godaddy.com
[*]www.dotster.com
[*]registerclub.com
[*]domainsite.com
[*]domainsnext.com
[*]gkg.net
[*]dnsresearch.com
[*]servercentral.net

Cheapest I've found with DNS service is $15/yr by servercentral.net. Anyone knows any cheaper registar with DNS service? I know about those free DNS services (granitecanyon & zoneedit) already, but I prefer not to depend solely on them if possible.

 

[nekote]

<< GoDaddy has a better deal. Less than $10 for one year's domain. >>

Their site says $6.95/yr. They did do a pop-up window.

Thanks for responses so far.

Hadn't dawned on me my post might turn out to be a &quot;stalking horse&quot; to let me (and others) find even *better* deals!

Thanks!

 

[tsee]

I'm wondering. If I use a free hosting service, eg. NBCi.com, do I need DNS service?

 

[BlingBlings]

Use an Enom.com affliate to register a name. Like DomainNicNames. Its $12, and they give you 50 free email fowards, and a discreet URL direct for 10 subdomains. There are other Enom registers out there, but this is just one that I know of. So far I've been impressed with Enom.

 

[ResearchEverything]

I prefer domaindirect.com. They are a subsiderary of Tucows.com. They are $39 a year or $70 for two years. They have great benefits that you don't get with other registrars. Anyone thinking of doing ligetimate stuff should check them out. Good luck.

 

[Jokeram]

could you give us a list of the benefits? what about dotster.com?

 

[anandfan]

I use MyDomain. $15/yr for the name registration (through NamesDirect). Free DNS and email forwarding. Working great with my ISP provided webspace (@Home). I can reconfigure the DNS /email portion any time I want to go to another web site in case I change hosts. I may move my web site to TheHostPros for only $3.90/month so I can have cgi capability.

My domain: GraphTablet-Free Graph Paper

 

[royaldank]

If you are looking for a host to step up and do programming, check out datapacket.net.

I've had a site on there for awhile with no problems.

$4.95/mo - $25.00 Setup.

ASP, ColdFusion, FrontPage Extensions, CGI, unlimited DSN, ...

GoDaddy is great for registering...I've never had any problems from them.

 

[MasterDog]

For domain registration, I've been using gandi.net. It's 12 Euro (~$10) / yr. Not bad, but you get what you pay for; ie. no DNS.

 

[nekote]

<< I may move my web site to TheHostPros for only $3.90/month so I can have cgi capability. >>

From the &quot;companion&quot; thread to this one, &quot;ImNew&quot; recommended: $3/month, which offers 50MB and CGI + a ton more.

I've never seen a hosting company have rates per *week*. For my personal taste, seems kind of a bit too detailed, even though being able to buy extra capacity / services on demand, for a week, is quite appealing, to me.

Interesting:

Weekly Service Charges
(before any volume discount)
$0.03 per MB of Disk Space
$0.01 per MB of Traffic (outgoing)
$0.15 per Email ID
$0.20 for an SMTP account
$0.10 for Content Indexing (+ space)
$0.15 for Mailing list/100 members
$0.35 for Perl/CGI (per 1,000 hits)
$0.25 for SSL access (shared)
$0.15 for FrontPage® extensions

You can use our calculator to determine the exact weekly charges for various combinations of services. Charges are calculated separately for each site.

Example Weekly Costs
A typical site might use the following services:

8MB Disk Space (24 cents)
61MB Outgoing Traffic (61 cents)
1 Email account (15 cents)

The total, in this case, is $1, which earns a 10% volume discount, leaving a charge of only $0.90 for the week ($3.90/month). More than half the sites we host never exceed the $0.90 per week minimum charge, and the vast majority never go over $1.75 per week ($7.59 a month) after the discount. A heavily visited 50MB site with 2 POP email accounts, generating 500MB of traffic (over 10,000 web pages served in a week) would have total charges of $6.80, minus a 49% volume discount, for a final cost of just $3.07 for the week (equivalent to $14.85/mo.).

 

[kbcrowe]

<< If you are looking for a host to step up and do programming, check out domainpacket.net.

I've had a site on there for awhile with no problems.

$4.95/mo - $25.00 Setup.

ASP, ColdFusion, FrontPage Extensions, CGI, unlimited DSN, ...

GoDaddy is great for registering...I've never had any problems from them. >>



Hmm, I tried domainpacket.net and got a &quot;Cannot find server&quot;.

 

[santokki]

<< Example Weekly Costs
A typical site might use the following services:

8MB Disk Space (24 cents)
61MB Outgoing Traffic (61 cents)
1 Email account (15 cents)

The total, in this case, is $1, which earns a 10% volume discount, leaving a charge of only $0.90 for the week ($3.90/month). More than half the sites we host never exceed the $0.90 per week minimum charge, and the vast majority never go over $1.75 per week ($7.59 a month) after the discount. A heavily visited 50MB site with 2 POP email accounts, generating 500MB of traffic (over 10,000 web pages served in a week) would have total charges of $6.80, minus a 49% volume discount, for a final cost of just $3.07 for the week (equivalent to $14.85/mo.). >>



&quot;A heavily visited 50MB site&quot;? 50MB is so little. Most of the smaller web sites that I run averages 100MB traffic a day. Some are 1GB traffic a day. You never know how popular your web site will get, so you should always plan ahead and get a host that will allow unlimited traffic.

I recommend http://www.phpwebhosting.com/index.html for hosting ($9.95 a month for &quot;EVERYTHING&quot. I don't use them right now (yet), but I plan on switching to them some time in the near future. As for domain registration, they all pretty much provide the same service, so just go by price.

 

[sjshaw]

Here is a question:

I have my domain at freeservers.com. I registered it about 1 1/2 years ago from network solutions for $70. (I know, I know... I wasn't aware of anandtech's Hot Deals back then.)

Anyway, I want to get in on GoDaddy.com's good rates to extend my registration for 5-10 years. Then I want to use win2000hoster.com to host my site for $1.75/month. Do I have to sign up with godaddy.com's hosting plan to extend my registation, THEN move over to win2000hoster.com?

Obviously, I could ask this question of godaddy's customer service, but I figure I might get a more accurate answer from here....

 

[beni]

No, you don't need to sign up for any hosting through GoDaddy. Just buy the domain for however long you want, then when they ask you for the nameservers you put in the servers doing your DNS hosting.

I personally used GoDaddy for 2 domains and I also use MyDomain for my DNS. It gives you great control over your hosting setup and is totally free. Setup was totally painless, and the cloaked forwarding works nicely. Plus, once I get a broadband connection and set up my own dedicated server, you can do direct IP forwarding which is just like having a &quot;real&quot; site of your own.

Nice, cheap and easy.

 

[FastEddieG]

I use http://www.DirectNIC.com

I transferred all of my domains from NetSol.com and Register.com to them. I am very happy with the service, and customer support is great. I would recommend to everyone.

-Ed

 

[Poochy]

Poochy which one of your cheap domains REALLY good and worth? ie. fast, no popups, etc

If you're asking about the webhosting service aspects (since you mentioned &quot;popups&quot, I have no idea since I'm only interested in domain registration with DNS service. If you're talking about which registar main webpage is fastest and has the fewest popups, I don't remember either but I don't think any of them is that bad. The thing I look for in a registrar is the amount of FAQ/help/setup info they have over how pretty/graphic-ish their site is (if it's all text, even better). I also try to send them an email or two and see how quickly they respond. To make a long story short, I ended up going with servercentral.net for $15/yr, which was the cheapest I could find at that time and they answered my emails in less than 5 mins. They are using the enom.com service, which has been mentioned already, and which I have used before so I'm familiar with the setup. Let me know if I didn't answer your question.

Edit: Thanks to all those who mentioned sites not on my list, updating it now .

 

[nekote]

<< Edit: Thanks to all those who mentioned sites not on my list, updating it now . >>

Care to post it here when you're done? Thanks!

 

[Poochy]

Care to post it here when you're done?

Will definitely do, once the thread slows down a bit (or maybe I'll just update the list in my original posting ).

 

[Wiek]

<< For domain registration, I've been using gandi.net. It's 12 Euro (~$10) / yr. Not bad, but you get what you pay for; ie. no DNS. >>



MasterDog, gandi.net has free DNS service. linky

 

[zmatrix]

Hey guys, I was told that if the company whom you register your domain name goes kapoot, then your domain name goes too and is up for grabs, is that true?

 

[Poochy]

Hey guys, I was told that if the company whom you register your domain name goes kapoot, then your domain name goes too and is up for grabs, is that true?

Supposedly, ICANN requires that all ICANN-approved registrars (which I believe means all registrars) have a contigency plan to handle this situation, which may even include some kind of insurance specifically for this scenario. Unfortunately, I am not a registrar and I can't find the relevant info on ICANN web page (it's all legal speaks to me anyway). The closest thing I've found is this entry in Gandi.net's FAQ:

What if Gandi stops their activity?

Like all the other registrars, Gandi commits itself to find a solution in order to fulfill the pending contracts through another registrar. In other words, up to the date of your domains expiration date, the agreement will be transmitted free of charge to another registrar. Then you will have the possibility either to keep on working with this registrar or to locate other providers to solicit their services.

 

[bobbysworld]

thats a good question that i would also like to know the answer for

 

[Zach]

<< Hey guys, I was told that if the company whom you register your domain name goes kapoot, then your domain name goes too and is up for grabs, is that true? >>



I think the companies just resell access to a main area, like Joker.com sells access to domains in CORE. Network solutions is on it's own though, as is register.com I think. So it depends..... I'd be willing to bet you wouldn't lose a domain, you'd be able to sue for them giving away your leased property. If a building owner goes under, he'd at least have to give you your 30 days.