Feel like everywhere you turn there’s a new fee, an extra charge and another way to be blindsided by another sucking sound from your bank account?
So let’s take domain privacy. To avoid copious amounts of extra spam I use domain privacy on every domain I host. Domain privacy is quite simple and is easy to set up with most providers. Per ICANN you must have a publicly available domain contact to “…allow rapid resolution of technical problems and to permit enforcement of consumer protection, trademark, and other laws.” Your hosting provider should provide a service whereby they don’t post your real email, phone number and address in WHOIS but provide a proxy address.
For example if you look up affiliatesonfire.com in WHOIS you will see this:
Domain Name: affiliatesonfire.com
Registrant Contact:
affiliatesonfire.com Private Registrant
affiliatesonfire.com@proxy.dreamhost.com
DreamHost Web Hosting
417 Associated Rd #324
Brea, CA 92821
US
+1.2139471032
Now that isn’t my phone number and it isn’t my email address. Send an email to that address and it will get to me (or my spam folder) and that meets the requirements for providing a registrant contact.
Anyway, the point is that this stuff isn’t magic and shouldn’t cost the earth. You could be forgiven for thinking that GoDaddy’s privacy service provides gold plated emails because they’ll charge you $9.99 per year PER domain! So 5 domains that’s an extra $50. 10 domains an extra $100… you get the idea. FYI it’s not gold plated and it’s a pain to set up because they send you off to yet another company’s web site to pay for and configure it! Ugh.
Both Dreamhost and 1&1 currently offer free private registration on all your domains. Dreamhost has done this for years – thank you DH!
When choosing a provider look for all these little fees – they add up quick. Maybe you need a certificate, a shopping cart, a static IP, privacy and more. Do all these cost extra and is it extra for every single domain or can you spread the cost across all domains. Check out Dreamhost’s list for all the features included in their domain hosting:
Disclaimer: I love Dreamhost – they are my preferred hosting provider!
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on Wednesday, April 11th, 2012 at 7:32 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.
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