Registering a domain is one of the first steps necessary to get your website online. A domain is the unique address that can be used to access your website over the internet. I recently moved my final domain away from GoDaddy – the domain registrar I started using when I first began designing websites. When I first began creating websites GoDaddy was among the cheapest domain registrars and by using coupons I could always get a discount on the listed price. The company however faces competition from many other companies both in idealism and price.

GoDaddy, like many other domain registrars advertises it’s suggested products through the checkout process. GoDaddy does this very prominently and you have to be careful not to purchase anything more than what you intend to. The user interface for the website has been infamous for being convoluted which has led the company to redesign the site. This has helped somewhat with the user interface of its website.  I have never had to contact the company with a problem so I do not have any experience with the company’s tech support.

I have gradually been transferring my domains to Namecheap and I recently moved my last one over. Despite wanting to keep some domains on a different registrar the benefits of doing this do not justify having to deal with different domain pricing and different control panels. The .com domain names are cheaper at Namecheap than at GoDaddy and the website is simpler to use. Since I design websites for clients the price point is an important selling factor. If one domain registrar disappoints the domain name can be transferred to another one so there is no threat of your website name being kept hostage.

Once the nameservers for your website are configured and the domain name propagates there is little interaction required with the domain registrar other than to renew the domain or update contact information. As a result of this the domain registrar you choose may seem trivial. I have selected the cheaper and simpler domain registrar and have not had any problems with them so far.