Top 5 Best Places to Buy Domains That Are Cheap (& Reputable)
There is one thing that every business person knows very well; if you take care of the cents, the dollars will take care of themselves. This is the reason why every business person is always looking at ways by which they can cut costs. I am sure you already know that having a domain name is something that is no longer just a want. It has become a need. Did you know that you can get cheap domains in the market easily from a number of sites?
I have spent some time shopping the market to identify some of the cheapest domain names you can purchase for your business. In this article, I'm looking at the companies from which you can buy a cheap domain. I am however cognizant of the fact that just because a domain is cheap does not mean that it is the best.
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My number one domain may not necessarily be the one that is cheapest in price, but one that provides the biggest value for the price you pay. The prices I'm including on the comparison sheet are the ones that each of the sites quotes, but you will have to look at all the conditions that come with these prices.
Platform | Offerings | Rating |
|---|---|---|
phone, tutorials, chat, user forums | ||
Namecheap | email, chat, phone | |
GoDaddy | phone, frequently asked questions, email, and chat | |
1 & 1 | phone, frequently asked questions, forums | |
Dotster | phone, email, chat |
#1 HostGator: Over 3 Million Domains Can’t Be Wrong
The most basic package you will get at HostGator starts at a price of $2.78 a month. So what can you expect for this price? You will get a single domain and single click installs. Your bandwidth is unmetered but the SSL certificate is shared. If you want to buy this plan, just ask for the Hatchling Plan.
If you want to go a step higher, you can always buy yourself the Baby Plan. With this plan, you get an unlimited domain and your single click installs come standard. Just like the cheapest plan, the bandwidth is unlimited. You share the SSL certificate.
The real stuff happens at the Business Plan. The designers at this company know that if you are in business you certainly mean business. Apart from getting an unlimited domain, installs that just take one click and unmetered bandwidth, you can expect to walk away with a private SSL and IP for absolutely free. Add to this a toll-free number that you will not be paying for and you will know why I recommend HostGator.
As if all the extras above are not enough, this company will add a few more. These include some specific tools and warranties that come with each plan. Tools you can get include those that help you build your site and the installers of scripts. When you buy a domain name from this provider you can expect to get a website builder and up to a whopping four thousand five hundred unique templates to choose from. If you are also looking for an unlimited number of emails, this is where you should be buying your domain name.
#2 Namecheap Domains: Trusted By A Million Direct Customers
The second place on my list goes to Namecheap. The reason why I included this provider of domains for inexpensive prices is that it comes with some exciting features for the price you pay. They host packages starting from around $10 per year with what they promise to be 100% uptime. However, anyone who has a domain knows that it is easier to say this than to do it.
Namecheap operates from Los Angeles and has been in business for over fifteen years now. They're managing around four million domains. I think this is a testament to their reliability. Their own direct customers are just about a million. I don't think that a million customers could all be wrong. This is partly the reason why I found it easy to place the site close to the top of my list of some of the world's top providers of cheap domain names.
While the people at Namecheap will tell you that you will pay prices as low as $9.88 per year for their Value Plan, you will soon discover that there is a renewal price of $38.88. This renewal is paid annually. This goes up to $78.88 annually if you take their most popular plan, the Professional. The highest plan on this site will be your Ultimate, which comes with a renewal fee of $129.88 per year. The Business plan costs $19.88 per month with no annual renewals,
If you are on the basic plan, you can expect to get up to twenty gigs of disk space. Add to this a bandwidth that is unlimited and up to three websites. The most popular plan is the Professional. It offers hosting of up to 10 websites, powered storage, and a bandwidth that is unlimited. The Business plan comes with fewer users per server and thus enhances storage. If you are looking to get into e-commerce, then Namecheap Domains is the place where you want to be.
#3 GoDaddy; $2.99 Too Good To Be True
If you think that $2.99 per year is too good to be true, it is because indeed it's too good to be true. Initially, when you look at GoDaddy you may think that they are the leaders in offering affordable domains but you will soon realize that the $2.99 they quote only applies if you are registering for two years or more. Any of the subsequent years you register for will cost you around $14.99 per year for the most basic package. Therefore, it is a mistake to think that you will pay $2.99 forever.
GoDaddy has over 51 million names under registration. If this was all I used to determine if a company offered the most domains for cheap prices I would have certainly put it on top of my list. I could not do this as they do not declare upfront that the prices you see on their landing pages is subjects to considerable conditions.
The people at GoDaddy know one thing that is important; the importance of misspellings in directing traffic that would have been coming to your site to other sites. This is the reason why they would advise you to also register most of the common misspellings of your name. This will help keep underhanded organizations that want to steal your site visitors at bay. It will also help direct more visitors to your site from additional domains.
Go Daddy features among the top five where you can buy a cheap domain name because when you buy from them you get a number of extras. These include monitoring the status of your domain and informing you if there has been a change. You also get extra features in the form of domain masking and forwarding. Any domain name you buy will direct visitors to your website.
#4 1 & 1: Only $0.99 But...
Initially, when you land at the 1 & 1 website and you see prices of $0.99, you will be excused for thinking that this is the cheapest by far. However, as you look closely you will soon see that they will tell you that the price you pay depends to a great deal on the name you select. This means that you will never know what you are really going to pay before you have typed in the name you want. Popular names will cost more than the names that are more unique.
However, even with the above being said, I still think that 1 & 1 is among the top sites where you can register inexpensive domains, including all those that have similar names and misspellings to your name. Read more about what misspellings can do to your domain here.
So what features can you expect when you buy domains for cheap prices at 1 & 1? These guys always have a discount. You see, my biggest problem with someone who is always offering a discount in the way 1 & 1 does, is that I just end up thinking that the discounted price is exactly the price I should have been paying in the first place anywhere.
If you register a domain with 1 & 1, on their basic plan, you can expect to get a single email account with space in the mailbox of up to 2 gigs and forwarding of your emails is unlimited. You will also be able to structure your website, thanks to subdomains that are not limited. Your personal information will be safeguarded with the Whois privacy feature. Add to this support on a 24/7 basis and a wide variety of domain extensions such as .nyc and you will understand why I have this site on my list of places to buy a domain cheap.
#5 Dotster: Famous For Unlimited Bandwidth
The last of my best five places where you can get the cheapest domains is Dotster. The price you will pay for your domain name on this site will depend on the extension you select. For example, I noticed that packages with the extension .me will cost you $9.99 while something with the extension .mobi will go for $11.99. However, you can expect to get prices as high as $269.99 when you want the domain extension .coop.
Other services offered by Dotster include an offer of free set up with no long term commitments. This site offers varying plans of which some offer email addresses. If the plan you get offers and email addresses you have the liberty to create as many mailboxes as you can. However, each mailbox does not exceed 500 megabits or ten thousand emails. It all depends on what comes first.
If you are looking for unlimited bandwidth, then Dotster will be your preferred place to buy your domain name from. The people at this site promise that they can support the bandwidth needs of more than 99.5 % of those who use them as a service provider.
Dotster is able to offer these high levels of bandwidth because they deploy what is called shared architecture. Customers share the hardware that transmits the data over the web. The engineers at this company are always monitoring bandwidth use. This ensures each customer receives optimal performance.
Conclusion
With so many good providers of affordable domains from which you can buy inexpensive domains, I know making a choice may be difficult. Even though I have taken some time to look at the competition, I am still of the opinion that HostGator is your best bet if you are looking for a solution that is not only cheap but also offers class leading benefits such as website building tools. Check out this video I discovered on YouTube to learn more about them;
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