Why Small Business Owners Should Own Their Domain Name

First and foremost, I am recommending that small businesses register a domain name that makes sense for their business. Registering a domain name is the first step towards creating your online presence. If you aren't particularly tech savvy, you may be tempted to allow your web designer to take care of registering your domain name and creating your website. Unfortunately, this is a mistake that we have seen many times - often after things go sour between the business owner and the web designer. The reality is if you are not listed as the owner of your business's domain name, then you aren't the owner of your business's domain name and there is nothing we can do to help you get your domain back.

If you aren't very tech savvy, don't worry, registering a domain name is easy. Get started by creating a free account with your basic contact information, listing you as the owner of the account. Make sure you use an email address that you will have regular access to as this will be the email that we will use to contact you about your domain. You'll also need to create an account "birthday," which is an extra layer of security we use to identify you as the account owner. It doesn't have to be your actual birthday, but it needs to be a date that is easy for you to remember because if you forget it, we will have to reestablish that you are the owner of the account, which can take time.

Once your account is set up, you can use our domain search to find the right domain name for you (you can also search for domains first and then our system will prompt you to create an account at checkout). As you can see we offer several top-level domain (TLD) options including generic domains such as .COM and .NET and country code domains such as .CO.UK for the UK and .DE for Germany. You can find more information about the differences between each TLD on our TLD page. An option with your domain registration is adding whois privacy (depending on the domain). This protects your contact information from being found through a whois lookup (though if you are using your business information, this may not be necessary). You can get more information on our domain privacy page.

If you are planning to have a website designer take over the creation of your website, you can have them create your site without giving them your Dynadot account information. You just need to have them give you your site's name server information, so you can point your domain to your website. We have video instructions that will walk you through the process of setting your name servers and if you need help we have a great team of customer service reps that can help you! Feel free to contact us via chat (top right of our site), phone (650) 262-0100, or email [email protected].

Looking to get started by registering your domain name? Check out our past post on our April Domain Sale Extravaganza going on now!

Post by Robyn Norgan