Purchasing website domain outright

[HeartyTinman]

Hi,

 

I am trying to setup my own website (based in UK) and want to own the doman outright.

 

If anyone has any advice on this, it will be gratefully recieved,

 

Best regards,

Ben

[iRileyx]

As far as i know you can't outright buy a domain name.

 

The closest you can get to owning one is registering one, and so long as you keep renewing the "lease" it'll stay registered to you.

[Warlockben]

Just now, RKRiley said:

As far as i know you can't outright buy a domain name.

Correct, the organization that controls them does not sell at the retail level. Instead you must go through a registrar (like GoDaddy, 1&1 Internet, etc.) in order to buy a domain. It sucks and really shouldn't be that way, but it is what it is.

[mariushm]

Yeah, you rent it and pay yearly for it.  Some countries still have lifetime purchase, and some new TLDs have different terms (not one year) but those are crap.

 

I'd recommend Namecheap (I use them for my domains), be careful with others, read reviews etc  ... for example GoDaddy used to have some "search for your domain" box on their site and you entered the domain to check if it's free and they would automatically register for a short period, forcing you to buy it from them if you wanted it. Stick to bigger ones, some of the smaller ones and those with very cheap prices.. check terms, some may give you cheap price  by forcing you to minimum 3 years of having domain at them or other tricks.

For example, you may get domain cheaper bundled with a company's shared hosting plan which may be free for the first year (included in domain name price) but afterwards costing you 1-2$ a month or something like that, so in the end you pay more for the domain for one year compared to buying from a bigger registrar.