How to Find and Buy a Domain Name (And What Not to Pay For)

A domain is the address people type to reach you, and unlike almost everything else in a business launch, it is cheap, fast, and permanent if you keep renewing it.

Get the .com if you can

Despite every alternative extension that exists, people still assume .com. If your exact name is taken, adding your city or your trade is usually better than switching to an unusual extension, because customers who half-remember you will type .com regardless and land on someone else. Local extensions are fine as a secondary redirect, not as your only address.

What a fair price looks like

A standard new domain is inexpensive per year at any reputable registrar. Two things inflate that: premium domains held by resellers, which are priced by whatever the holder thinks you will pay, and first-year promotional pricing that renews at several times the advertised rate. Check the renewal price, not the signup price.

Add-ons worth having

Domain privacy is worth it and often free now. It keeps your home address and phone out of the public registration record, which otherwise becomes a magnet for cold calls. Auto-renew is worth it; expired domains are recovered at a much higher cost, and sometimes not at all.

Add-ons to decline

Registrars sell hosting, email, SSL certificates, site builders, and SEO packages at checkout. You do not need any of them at the moment you buy the domain, and the SSL in particular is usually free through your host. Buy the domain, take the privacy, decline the rest.

Keep it in your own name

This matters more than anything else on this page. Whoever registers the domain controls it. If an agency or a nephew registers it under their account, they own your address, and getting it back can be genuinely difficult. Register it yourself, on your own account, with your own email and payment method. Any decent web designer will happily work with a domain you already own.