What is a Domain Name?

We’re with BlueHost right now. We have a web hosting plan with them and most of our domain names are registered with them. (We do have a few .info domain names registered with GoDaddy)

But, eventually we’re going to have to renew, so we’re always keeping an eye on the market. Deals come and go, good web hosts become bad ones. Who knows. If a good deal comes up, we might transfer our domain names over.

We’ve posted our domain name research below. The list is growing. If you’ve noticed a deal has gone sour, just post a comment and we’ll update the table. Remember. You can’t get a refund on a domain name - so it’s buyer beware!

Yahoo sells domain names and webhosting as part of their Yahoo Small Business services.

• Domain Names go for $9.95 per year.
• Privacy registration costs $9 per year (if you only get a domain name) or $0.99 per month (if you get a webhosting package)
• Be careful of their webhosting package. Yahoo doesn’t provide access to their .htaccess file which means if you’re going to do some serious webdesign, you can’t protect your website from hacker by blocking their ipaddress.

We just found 1&1 Internet and when our time with BlueHost comes up for renew next year, we’re going to seriously have to compare the two. Here’s what is catching our attention…

• Each Domain Name costs $6.99 per year and includes:(Sigh. We fell for it again. !@?! it says first year is $6.99. After that standard pricing of applies. We called their 1-800 number and the sales guy said that right now every year is $6.99, but the fine print on their webpage is a little worrisome.)
• Free Domain Forwarding & Masking
• 5 subdomains
• 5 external domains
• 1 email account (POP, 2GB) and 200 email aliases forwarding
• Free Private Domain Registration

We’re with BlueHost and we like it a lot. But it’s not for everyone. Here’s why.

• You can’t register domain names if you don’t have a web hosting plan ($10.00 / yr)

End of story. If you’re looking for a cheap domain to point to your free blogger account or a website on a different webhost, then skip to the next review. If you’re planning on running a self hosted wordpress blog or some other website and are in a market for a webhost, then here’s what we liked about BlueHost:

• Each Domain Name costs $10 per year and includes
• free unlimited domain name forwarding,
• free unlimited email accounts and free unlimited email address forwarding,
• free unlimited subdomains
• free unlimited external domains
• full DNS access,
• free parking, and…
• free privacy. (The free privacy was the reason why we didn’t go with GoDaddy)

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