Hosting & Domains

[niallb]

Hi.
I was told recently that it is not a good idea to buy your domain names via your web hosts.
The main reason I was given was that if they went out of business I would not be able to switch my domains to another hosting company as ownership of them rested with the now-defunct company.
Can anyone confirm if this is correct?
Thanks in advance

[maximilian]

That does not sound right? Where did you hear this from? I originally purchased my domain from Godaddy, but when we were ready to upload our site we found Godaddy to be far to expensive for hosting so we went with HostGator instead and redirected our domain from Godaddy to HostGator, I don't see how a company can keep the domain you purchased from them as it now belongs to you since you purchased it.

[michael_s]

There may be a grain of truth in there somewhere.

Basically, you can purchase your domain from any valid registrar. Things can get a little tricky as there are thousands of domain resellers that are not actually a registrar, but simply resell for one of the bigger registrars.

So lets say you buy your domain from a company that is a reseller for a larger registry. You also get your hosting from the same company. Then one day that host goes out of business and you cannot contact anyone regarding your domain name or hosting to renew or transfer it.

The problem is that the parent registrar that this now defunct company resells for will not deal with you directly because you are not their customer, but their reseller's customer. Eventually you can get it all sorted out, but it can take a very long time to do.

Another nightmare scenario - the reseller registers the domain for you and uses their name as the registrant/contact information. Now you have no access to the domain and there is no listing anywhere that you actually own it.

The importance here - make sure you deal with registrars and resellers that are reputable and also make sure you keep your whois information current and it has you or your company listed as both the registrant and administrative contact.

[pgmarshall]

An example of this would be to use AABox Web Hosting | Web Hosting for the 21st centrury (owned and run by Michael_s)

Why not get your hosting and domain names from the people who write and support the software you use! I do and I code a good portion of osCmax!

You will find that if things go wrong you get much better support.

Anyway that is my 2ps worth.

Ps. RidexBuilder also has a supported service at http://info.ejsolutions.co.uk/ for those needing UK hosting or coding assistance.

Regards.